Page 114 of The Spark

‘Everything’s sorted: the funeral and cremation, the whole thing. I didn’t want Mum to be burdened with any of it. And next Saturday... I’m having a living funeral, the night before I fly. We’re going to California the next day. Everyone’s coming. I want you to be there. I need you there, Neve.’

‘Next week?’ I stare at her. We’ve only got a week?

She smiles, but it is frail. ‘Well, everyone’s always at a loose end between Christmas and New Year, aren’t they? Thought my parting gift could be an extra party.’

Despite my best efforts, I start crying again. She can’t be dying. She just can’t be. She’s still so... alive. She’s smiling, forming sentences, ordering me about. This isn’t what dying looks like.

‘At my dad’s funeral,’ she says, ‘we all agreed how happy he’d have been to see his friends and family together in one room. How much he’d actually have enjoyed the day. So that’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to dose up on painkillers and do my best to have a lovely last afternoon with all my favourite people.’

A last afternoon. How unfathomably awful to know it.

‘Don’t be sad for me, Neve. I’m actually... incredibly lucky. A lot of people don’t get to die this way. With time to say goodbye. The best care at their fingertips. I’m fortunate, I really am.’

Trust Lara to find the upside of a terminal diagnosis.

‘If I have any regrets,’ she says, ‘it’s missing out on ten years of friendship with you.’

‘I regret that too.’ I am spilling tears now, struggling not to completely lose it. ‘And I will for the rest of my life.’

‘No. You need to listen to me now.’ Her blue eyes begin to blaze, more fierce than I have ever seen them. ‘I want you to take the years I had left and run with them, okay? Make it up with Ash. Grab love with both hands and don’t let go. It’s too late for me, but it isn’t for you. It’s your time now. Don’t waste another second.’

Chapter 48.

A few days after my conversation with Lara, I drop into Mum’s house after work. The air on my walk over is layered with winter mist, scented by frost and woodsmoke.

Mum is on her sofa, wearing a voluminous kaftan in a geometric print that makes my eyes swim. She’s damp-skinned, hair wrapped in a towelling turban. I’m guessing she’s got a gig tonight, because she’s painting her nails and half singing, half humming to the Michael Bublé Christmas album.

I sit down next to her, scanning the room for booze, because I could really do with something to shear away the edges of what I’m feeling right now. But unusually, I can’t see anything.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I say.

‘Right.’ She draws the brush along her thumbnail with a flourish. ‘Okay.’

‘Lara’s dying.’

My mother rarely looks me in the eye. But she does now.

‘She’s got . . . cancer. It’s advanced. They can’t . . . There’s nothing they can do.’

A thick globule of nail polish drips onto Mum’s kaftan. We both look down at it for a couple of moments.

Without saying anything, Mum holds out a hand.

I pass her a tissue.

She attempts to dab the spilt polish, but ends up smearing it into a vast stain instead. Then, seeming to accept it’s ruined, she folds it over to hide the damage and says, ‘How long has she known?’

‘A few months. She wanted us to... sort everything out before she told me.’

‘There’s really nothing they can do?’

‘They’ve offered her chemo, but... it wouldn’t save her. She’s dying.’

To my surprise, she leans over and wraps her arms around me. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

‘Remember the guy you saw Lara with?’ I say, into her Nivea-scented neck.

‘Oh yes,’ she says, pulling out of the hug. ‘Very suave gentleman.’

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