Page 113 of The Art of Loving You

Ever.

But if I choose Jack, am I effectively saying goodbye to my family? My friends? My resolve not to have the surgery earlier is weakening now that I am faced with the distraught, tear-stained faces of Mum and Alice.

A quieter voice now whispers that I haven’t seen Jack at all. It was psychosis, a hallucination, a side effect of the tumour that has lodged inside my brain, and it is this thought that makes me hesitant to agree or decline. That makes me question the times I have spent with Jack since he’s been gone, seen him, heard him. Were they real? Any of them? I understand that there may be a medical explanation, of course I do, but itfeltso real. Solid. Nothing like a dream. We talked. We laughed.

‘I saw him. I heard him.’ It’s all I say but Alice knows, she heard me talking to him after all.

‘I know you thought you did.’ Alice squeezes my hand. ‘And I know it must have felt very real to you. But it was your mind manifesting things, Libby.’

I’m only half-listening as Alice also says shock has the power to whisk memories behind a hazy curtain, sometimes replacing them with a better, shinier version – the way we wished things were, Jack still being here.

‘But I’m here and I need you,’ she says. ‘Your niece needs you. We’ll get through this together.’

She is offering out hope when I have none, a gift for me to unwrap and hold close. She places my hand on her bump and I feel a fierce kick. Strong. Undeniable. Absolute. A surge of love floors me. I draw back from my sister who winces and shifts her position, but as uncomfortable as she appears, she still doesn’t leave my side. Can I consciously choose to leave hers?

Another pulse of pain. Another wave of nausea. I’m dizzy. Sick. Afraid.

Alice is talking me round. She’s always been able to wrap me around her little finger. Sometimes I hate her. Not often, since we were kids, but on days like today when she just won’t leave me alone. She won’t let me go without a fight. I wouldn’t if it was the other way round but it’s my choice to make and mine alone.

‘I think …’ I tail off, unsure what I think. What I know. She’s been telling me a new life, a better life is what I need. What I deserve.

That word plucks a hollow laugh deep from my belly.Deserve.

Do I deserve …this? To have lost the only man I’ve ever truly loved. To have lost the life I should have had. To have this … this thing inside my brain?

‘Youknowwhat you have to do, Libby. Youmusthave the surgery.’ Her voice is thick with tears. ‘For your sake. For Jack’s,’ she adds softly. ‘For mine.’

Should I do what she is asking? If I agree, it’s an admission that my life has been built on a lie, it’s accepting that these past few months have been nothing more than a figment of my imagination. Dancing with Jack, lying on the sofa together, I’d be admitting it was all fake. And it isn’t only that, if I’m honest; the childish part of me taunts. Why should Alice get what she wants when I can’t have what I want?

Jack.

But I know that’s a ridiculous way to think. If nothing else, I do at least accept that the mass on my brain is causing my erratic moods. But I’m not convinced I have conjured Jack up. He was as real to me as Alice is right now.

‘Please, Libby, please,’ she pleads. ‘I know it’s a big ask. I know you weren’t expecting this – none of us saw it coming. We never thought for a second you were seriously ill. We thought it was grief. We put everything down to grief, all of your symptoms, and God I wish we hadn’t, but now we know.’ One whispered word, ‘Please.’

Neither of us speak. The clock ticks. In the distance, the sound of a tractor. Alice’s perfume fills my throat, something light and floral. She whimpers as if I am causing her physical pain and I probably am.

‘Jack—’

‘Don’t speak his name—’ I bite before she can tell me what he’d want because I know she would be right. He would want me to live.

‘I won’t stay here and watch you die.’

Hewantsme to live.

Alice flinches as I snap at her, perhaps wondering if I might slap her again, but still she doesn’t leave. She’s waiting for an answer as she tucks her long blonde hair behind her ears. Mum is waiting for an answer. She doesn’t add anything, she knows Alice has said everything she can and I’m more likely to listen to my sister than anyone else. I lean back in my chair, eyes flickering over the nicotine-yellow ceiling we never did get round to painting bright white, as though I might find the right response written there.

Yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no.

The words are loud. I raise my hands to my head, fingertips digging hard into my scalp.

Mum and Alice or Jack?

I can’t decide.

Mum and Alice or Jack?

I won’t.

---