Page 52 of I Would Die for You

Cassie can’t remember making the two-mile journey, the route thankfully hardwired into her brain.

The communal front door is on the latch, as it so often is, and the hall is thick with the pungent aroma of what the Victorian building’s twelve residents had for their dinner—people who, on this normal Tuesday night, have no idea that a woman is dying just down the road; people who will wake up tomorrow morning and get on with their day, while Cassie’s life will never be the same again.

As she reaches Nicole’s first-floor flat, there’s a low, pulsating beat of music drifting up from under the front door. Cassie stands there for a moment, listening to the dulcet tones of the duo singing, wanting to give Nicole a couple more seconds of life as she knows it.

She knocks quietly, hoping that Nicole won’t hear; but, knowing she can’t put off the inevitable forever, she knocks again, louder this time.

“Shh, there’s somebody at the door,” Cassie hears Nicole say.

Cassie can’t help but feel incensed that, while their mother’s lifeis ebbing away, Nicole is entertaining a random man in her flat instead of being at home, where she belongs. The irony that Cassie also wasn’t where she should have been until thirty minutes ago is lost on her.

“Nicole!” she calls out, banging on the door with an open palm. “It’s me, Cassie!”

The ensuing panic can be heard over the music, as feet clamber on the wooden floor, no doubt shuffling away evidence. When Nicole eventually opens the door, her face is angst-ridden.

“What areyoudoing here?” she asks, her tone accusatory as she peers out through a crack.

“It’s Mum,” says Cassie, her chest collapsing in on itself. “Dad wants you to come straightaway.”

The color drains from Nicole’s face as she bolts away from the door, leaving it swinging in her wake.

“Stay there,” she calls out from the bedroom. “I need to get dressed.”

Cassie has no intention of crossing the threshold, knowing that doing so will give her a view into the tiny flat’s bedroom. She doesn’t need to see who her sister was about to screw, if indeed she hasn’t already, though the white pixie boots beside the tape deck indicate he might be cooler than some of her previous mistakes.

So instead, she stands at the doorway, listening to the music:

“There are things I could never teach you, no matter how hard I try,

Because only you can decide how high you fly…”

A lump forms in the back of her throat as the lilting melody reaches into her soul; the poignant words resonate as if they were her own. But there’s something even more than that, something recognizable that she can’t quite put her finger on. It’s not a song she’s heard before, but the voices—they wrap themselves around her like a security blanket she didn’t know she needed, their familiarity socomforting that she could just lie down right here and travel away with them to a place where death doesn’t happen—to where good people get to live forever.

She checks herself as a completely ludicrous thought occurs to her. It seems insane to suggest it—because how could it even be possible? But the longer Nicole keeps her waiting, the more Cassie is convinced that the voice belongs to someone she knows.

“Is… is thatyou?” she asks when Nicole appears, falling over herself to get her pumps on.

“What?”she exclaims, patting down her unkempt hair. “Of course not.”

“But it sounds…”

“How would that even be possible?” says Nicole, pushing Cassie out of the door, clearly flustered.

“You’re not going to leave him there on his own, are you?” Cassie asks.

“Who?”

“Jesus, Nic, I’m not stupid.”

Nicole grimaces.

“So, who is he then?” asks Cassie, more because she doesn’t want to talk about their mum than because she’s nosy.

“He’s just someone from work,” says Nicole.

“Is it serious?”

“No,” says Nicole, far too quickly. But Cassie sees something in her eyes that she’s not seen before and can’t help but wonder why Nicole would lie.

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