Chapter Twenty

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I needed some time alone after that.

Kell had come because he knew I needed the support, and I sure as hell wouldn't get it from my dad. And I'd been forced to turn him away.

I hated Dad for that.

I hated him for keeping all of Mum to himself, and never letting us have any of her.

I hated him for putting that look of resignation on Kell's face, the look of someone who's used to being put down, over and over again.

Kell had given me the roses before he left, but I had no idea where they were now. Dad was probably enough of a bastard to refuse them just because Kell had brought them, so I hoped Lori had them. Maybe she'd even taken them into Mum's room by now – assuming that Dad had allowed her in.

I should have been there, but I didn't know how to face her.

I'd accidentally glanced into another patient's room on my way back to reception, and the sight of the withered, frail body inside, grey with cancer, shrunk down to sagging skin on failing bones, had made me want to throw up.

Did Mum look like that now?

The last time I'd seen her, she'd looked like herself – a tired, older version of herself, but still the Mum I knew and loved. But how long ago had that been? I didn't know anymore. I tried to cast my mind back, but everything blurred together.

How fast did cancer physically affect someone?

Would I even recognise Mum if I was ever allowed to see her?

In some ways I didn't want to.

I wanted my last memories of her to be how I knew she looked, not the cancer-ravaged person she might have become at the end.

I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned my head against the wall. I was sitting on one of the seats in reception, but I didn't remember coming here. There was a mug of tea in my hands, but I didn't remember getting it.

I had no idea where anyone was.

I wanted someone to hold me, because I was breaking into pieces and I wasn't strong enough to deal with this. I just wasn't.

I texted Kell, but it wasn't enough. I needed him here with me, needed him to keep me together.

It could have been minutes or hours before Lori came to sit with me. She didn't say anything, just pulled me into her arms, and I went, boneless and unresisting, and let her hold me.

"We'll survive this," she whispered, her voice fierce and anguished. "We will."

I wasn't so sure.





We spent the night at the hospice. Dad still wouldn't let us in to see Mum, but we found an empty room, and no one came in to tell us we couldn't be here, so Lori and I curled up on the bed, holding each other, until finally we fell asleep.

I hadn't thought I would be able to sleep here, and in some ways I didn't.

It was less like falling asleep and more like my body and brain just . . . shut down. I didn't dream. I fell into a black hole and hung there, suspended, until a bird singing outside the window brought me back to reality.

I cracked open one eye. I didn't remember crying yesterday, but I must have done – my eyes were sore and gritty and aching, my throat was raw, and I couldn't breathe through my nose.

My bones felt like glass, like they would shatter if I moved too much. Or maybe they'd already shattered, and that was why everything inside me hurt so much.

Lori's arm was still draped around me, and I carefully eased out from under it. She didn't wake up. She looked so young lying there, curled on her side, her face puffy from crying. There were only three years between us, but she'd always seemed so much older. Now I wondered if that was because she had grown up so fast – if the drink and the drugs and the pregnancy had dragged her forward in time somehow. But she wasn't that much older than me, especially not in this moment.

I placed a kiss on her head, but she still didn't wake up.

It was early morning the next day, judging by the pale sunlight trickling through the windows, but clearly Lori and I weren't the only ones who had stayed the night. Visitors shuffled up and down the hallways; I recognised some of them from the day before. They were still wearing the same clothes.

So was I, I realised, looking down at my rumpled uniform.

I would have burned it if I could.

Mum's room was just down the hallway, but I couldn't go there. Even if Dad would let me in – unlikely – I didn't know that I would be able to cope if I saw her. Everything inside me was being held together by threads, and they would all break if she looked like the person I had glimpsed last night.

I wanted to go back in time. I wanted a do-over of yesterday. I wanted to have cut school so I could spend one last day with her at home.

She would never see our home again.

A cracked sob escaped my throat.

I needed air.

I hurried down the corridors, and into reception, almost knocking over a young man with a haggard face, carrying a bunch of flowers, and then out through the front doors and into the car-park. The grey sprawl of concrete was ringed on all sides by trees and hedges and little wooden benches, probably for patients when they wanted to get some air, and I headed towards them.

Halfway across the car-park I stopped dead.

A figure lay under a towering beech tree at the far corner of the car-park, his head resting on a wadded up blazer.

The starburst of emotion in my heart was almost more than I could take.

Even from here, I knew that scruffy mop of hair and rangy build. I knew the silver rings on those long fingers, and those eyelashes like smudges of charcoal on pale skin.

Kell . . .

He had stayed.

Despite everything, he was still here. He hadn't wanted to leave me, so he had slept under a tree all night, so he could be here for me if I needed him.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as my heart broke right open.

Kell had once questioned if he deserved me, but I was the one who didn't deserve him.

I ran to him.

I was in his arms before I knew it, sobbing into his shoulder, and he cradled me, one hand cupping the back of my head, and I pressed my hands against his shoulder-blades as if I could climb inside his beautiful skin.

Neither of us spoke, not at first.

He held me, gently rocking me while I cried, and when I couldn't cry any more, he stroked my back, my hair. He didn't tell me that it would be okay, because we both knew it wouldn't. He just held me, and that was worth more than words.

Eventually Lori found us out there, tangled up in each other. She didn't comment on the fact that Kell had so clearly slept out here, but her eyes went all soft and blurry, and she looked at Kell like she could see him too, see the beautiful soul that no one else bothered to look for.

"Dad wants to see us," she said.

I didn't want to see him, but this would be about Mum, and I couldn't waste any of the time we had left.

I wanted Kell to come with me, but I didn't even get a chance to ask before he shook his head. Of course he knew what I was going to say. He always knew.

"I can't come, Laini. I'll only make things worse," he said.

I wanted to cry again, to tell him that he was the only thing keeping me together, but it was just more time that I couldn't spare. If Mum was about to go, and this was my very last chance, I couldn't waste it. I had to see her, no matter how hard it was.

Kell disentangled himself from me, and helped me to my feet, wincing a little. Sleeping under a tree couldn't have been comfortable.

"You need to be with your family," he said, holding my hands. "I'm going to go home and change, but I can be back here as fast as possible if you need me."

I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded.

Kell kissed me, and then his hands left mine, and he was loping across the car-park to the exit.

"He's special," Lori said, watching him go.

She didn't need to say anything else.

Kell was special, in a way that most people would never realise because they never looked past his mistakes.

Perhaps that's why Lori had always been so accepting of him, because she knew exactly how that felt.

She was the only other person who didn't seem to judge him, who looked at him and saw everything that he was worth.

"Lori," I said, as she held my hand and we walked back to the hospice together. "Do you ever think about the baby?"

Lori faltered, and her hand tensed in mine. When I looked at her, her jaw was hard as marble, but tears glittered in her eyes.

"You've never asked me that before," she said. "But yes. I think about her every day."

"Did you ever want to meet her?"

Lori sucked in a shuddery little breath, and pressed her free hand to her mouth. "Yes," she whispered. "I always hoped that one day I could ask Mum, mother to mother, and she would tell me where my baby is. I always hoped that one day we could all meet her."

I had no idea what to say to that.

I had wondered if Lori wanted to know about the baby, but I hadn't properly considered she really might want to meet her.

By then we were inside the hospice, and I didn't get a chance to ask her about it more.

Dad was waiting outside Mum's room when we got there.

"How is she?" Lori asked, squeezing my hand.

"She's not going anywhere just yet," Dad said.

I couldn't decide if I was relieved or not. This was what Kell had told me about that time – the awful waiting game. I would have done anything to give my mum more time, but at the same time I just wanted this to be over. I wanted her to let go of her pain and suffering and find peace. She would die here, that much was certain, but how long would it take?

How long would we be stuck in this awful, awful limbo, waiting for her to die, but wishing with everything in the world that she wouldn't leave us?

My heart was a ball of barbed wire, and it hurt with every breath.

"You two should go home," Dad said, not looking at either of us. "I'll call you if there's any news."

"You're sending us away?" Lori said, in a broken little voice.

"There's no point you being here at the moment. I'll call you if anything changes."

Would he? Or would he steal even her dying moment from us?

The barbed wire in my chest became a fireball, scorching my bones, and suddenly I knew that I had to get out of here, because if I didn't, I was going to snap. I was going to tear out his bastard eyes, rip the selfish, selfish skin from his face. He didn't care about our grief, just his own. We were falling apart in front of him, and he couldn't even see it.

This was what Kell felt every day.

I wanted to set fire to the world.

Instead I clamped my mouth shut, sealing all the rage and hate inside, and let Lori lead me from the hospice and the dying mum that my dad would not let me see.

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