Emma, 10th May 2011
Today I called in the solicitor to see me in the hospice. The staff have warned me that I should put my affairs in order – God, that’s such a strange phrase, like I’m having illicit flings with at least six lovers. How disappointing to find that at the end of life it just means sorting out the important things, like your daughter’s future and your estate.
I told the lawyer that I wanted to change my will. I’m now trying not to feel guilty about it. I know Biff has been a good friend to me – my best friend since we were in Mrs Mandy’s class in our Dorchester primary school all those years ago – but I’ve decided to make Michael Katy’s guardian. There, I’ve said it – gone and done it. Biff is not going to like that, not one little bit, but I genuinely believe it will be the right thing for my daughter and that’s what matters now. Us adults will have to muddle through as best we can with the crap hand life has dealt.
I have quite a few reasons for this decision. I haven’t made it lightly as I know it will be upsetting to both Katy and Biff, at least to start with, that’s until they get used to the new arrangement. Katy will recover quickly – she’s at that age. She won’t even remember me in a few years so she’ll certainly get over being eased away from Biff. It might take Biff a few years to see I meant what was best for her too, but hopefully she’ll be mature enough to get that eventually. She was an only child, like me. We both need more people around than fate has given us. It’s time she made a start on that.
My first reason is perhaps not the most noble. There have been occasions over the last few months when Biff has acted as though I’m already gone. I think it’s partly push-back for me having married and made our trio a quartet, but I can hear her talking to Katy sometimes. ‘When Mummy is gone, we’ll…’ ‘Those are Mummy’s favourite flowers. We will have to remember her when we see them.’ It might be that, so close to the end of my own life, I’m jealous of the living, but something feels just off about Biff’s behaviour lately – this past year, in fact. Unhealthy. That’s ironic coming from me, with the non-functioning liver and toxic blood. I’ve been telling Biff to get out, create her own life with a relationship, as we both should’ve done years before. It was fine to join the police together but we should’ve taken separate paths just so we had the chance to form our personalities apart for a while. The wisdom of hindsight. We made it too much like a three-legged race. Even when I left special ops, thinking she’d stay on, she followed me. I should’ve put my foot down then but she made it easier, sharing the childcare so I could still have a career, and go on to meet Michael.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m grateful. She made real sacrifices, going part-time and changing to teaching so she could have the holidays off to look after Katy. I was hesitant to question my good fortune but I might’ve been reading the signs wrongly – I thought she was helping me but I think in a way she was trying to be me. I think she’d reached the point where she couldn’t, wouldn’t disengage, and that’s a bit frightening. I don’t doubt that she loves me and loves Katy but no one wants to be the focus, to that extreme, of someone else’s existence. We all in the end have to be free to stand alone. I can’t leave Katy handling that attention.
But enough. The prospect of death might be making me more clear-sighted, more prone to cutting through the crap, as I just don’t have time for it any longer. Biff is still young and has so much ahead of her. She could have her own children, her own life. None of my hints in the past have worked: she’s carried on living, or trying to live, mine. It has felt oppressive.
But the main reason for my decision is that Michael will never learn to be a proper dad to Katy if Biff is hovering over him, breathing down his neck like she does mine. She’ll undermine his confidence and have Katy with her too much. With Biff kept more at a distance from day-to-day matters (I can’t see him letting Biff wander in at all times of night and day, as she has with me), and with him given the power of the guardian, the father that I know is inside him will have time to emerge. And he can protect Katy much better if Jacob comes sniffing around – a respected academic versus a crazy guy who lives on the fringes like Jacob? No contest. Biff and I, well, we made mistakes, so we are vulnerable if Jacob wants to challenge what we did. That’s the price of our taking those risks. Michael is the safer pair of hands. If it goes to court, they’ll rule in the best interests of the child, and by then that will be Michael.
Biff will think the forced break from Katy is cruel, but I’m being cruel to be kind. You’ve got to move on, Biff. Live a bit.
I don’t think I’ve spelt it out too clearly, not so as to endanger Katy, but I don’t want to leave any hostages to fortune. Except maybe that weak moment at Christmas 2007 – I had to vent somewhere or I would’ve just burst – but I should’ve ripped that out. God, I need to rip that one out. Can I get Michael to bring it in? Or just ask him to chuck that whole notebook? I don’t want to draw his attention to it. And I don’t want Katy to read them ever—
It is an hour later. The nurse came in because my heart rate peaked. She said I was overdoing it with my meetings and my scribblings, as she puts it. She is Irish, would you know. I feel like there’s a touch of my mother in her which makes me forgive her badgering me to rest. I’m soon going to get plenty of that. I had to promise I’d calm down. The pause gave me a chance to think it through. There’s no need to panic. I’ll ask him tonight. I’ll get Michael to destroy those diaries of mine – all of them, including the embarrassing teenage outpourings as well as the more incendiary stuff of my twenties. That’s not the version of me I want to survive. Given the choice, I’d prefer Michael not to know exactly what happened, not for sure, so I’ll ask him not to read these words. I don’t mind him knowing, though, that he has been my huge consolation prize these last two years. Life has kicked me around but at least it gave me him towards the end. My love for him has changed my view on what love can be. If there’s a way of being there for someone when they die, then it’ll be him I’m waiting for – that’s until Katy joins us, many, many years later. I don’t mind him reading that. But burn the rest, my darling.