Page 94 of The Love of Our Lives
Even if you have five minutes left.
And when you do that, you inspire other people to do the same – you lift them up just by being. Just as I did for William, I’ve realised. Just as he did for me.
Just as Emily has been doing for me this whole time.
I get up out of bed now, but not before gently kissing Adam on the forehead as I go, and as he murmurs a ‘see you later, love you,’ I know that’s the last time I will ever hear his voice – he’s heading off to the workshop early this morning after all. Then I slip back into my sweater and shorts, and head back quickly across the hall.
Because I have a plan for today – and the plan is this: stay in my flat and do not leave it for anything. Seal myself off from the world, and stop whatever accident happened to Emily the first time around from happening today.
Save her life and the baby’s, and let mine go.
I know what being alive really means now. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and tasted it with my own tongue. And I know that I would rather have one year of living fully like this, than twenty safe years of not really living at all. I have finally learned to follow my heart to the end, and maybe that has to be enough.
Now it’s Emily’s turn to go on and live with Adam and their baby.
And I’m going to make sure she gets to.
So I pull down all the blinds and bolt the door. I unplug all electricals and turn my phone off. Then I head into the bedroomand sit on the end of the bed. We got the call about the heart at twelve noon that day, which means I only have to get through another few hours before I’m out the other side. Before I go, and she comes back.
Then she’ll wake up here, in her room, like nothing happened. And walk straight back into her life.
It has to work.
I can feel it inside of myself too, this build – this surge – like change is coming. Like all of Emily’s memories and experiences are coming to a boiling point. My dreams have been filled with them this week, of images that are not mine, all jumbled together.
It is coming.
Minutes pass; hours. And I think about how this was essentially my life before, just staying in one room like this. Scared of the world and everything in it, and I count my lucky stars that this happened to me, even as my heart races in my chest as I try to imagine what it will feel like to finally go.
To finally disappear.
Will Cat be there to meet me?
I’d like to think so.
I think about my parents, Jess, Graham and the boys. Cat. I think of a memory of us as young girls, screeching through the forest in waterproofs, I think of my parents hugging me between them one Christmas, I think of Adam, kissing me good morning, every morning, and I try to draw them all close to me in these last moments – everything I hold dearest.
I cling on to that thought as I wait, that shred of comfort, as I place my hand across my belly and I stare out the window, concentrate on the leaves waving in the breeze. I focus on the green shape of them, the blue behind them, which seems to be getting hazy for some reason; blurry.
I feel a little nauseous suddenly, maybe one of those pregnancy symptoms again.
Then it hits like a sledgehammer: the most intense pain in my head.
Blinding agony.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘Maggie,’ a voice says above me.
Then again, ‘Maggie.’
Bright light, blurry faces above me. That chemical-human smell of hospital again. I’m lying down on a bed.
Where am I?
Who am I?
My eyes snap open now and I look around to see Mum –my mum– hovering above me. Jess, too. Dad. And even as I’m overjoyed to see them in front of me, a great crushing panic comes over me.
