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СКАЧАТЬ it had begun. Not Dear nor Dearest. Simply:

      Suzanna,

       Forgive my scribbles. I’m sick at the moment. I feel weak some hours, and not so weak others. Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow?

       That’s why I’m writing to you now, Suzanna, because I’m afraid of what may happen.

       Will you come to see me, at the house? We have very much to say to each other, I think. Things I didn’t want to say, but now I have to.

       None of this will make much sense to you. I know, but I can’t be plain, not in a letter. There are good reasons.

       Please come. Things are different to the way I thought they’d be. We can talk, the way we should have talked many years ago.

       My love to you, Suzanna.

       Mimi.

      The letter was like a midsummer lake. Its surface placid, but beneath?; such darkness. Things are different to the way I thought they’d be. Mimi had written. What did she mean? That life was over too soon, and her sunlit youth had contained no clue as to how bitter mortality would be?

      The letter had been delayed, through the vagaries of the postal service, by over a week. When, upon getting it, she’d rung Mimi’s house she’d received only the number disconnected tone. Leaving the pots she was making unfinished, she had packed a bag and driven North.

      2

      She went straight to Rue Street, but number eighteen was empty. Sixteen was also deserted, but at the next house a florid woman by the name of Violet Pumphrey was able to offer some explanation. Mimi had fallen sick a few days earlier, and was now in Sefton General Hospital, close to death. Her creditors, which included the Gas and Electricity Boards, and the Council, in addition to a dozen suppliers of food and drink, had immediately made moves to claim some recompense.

      ‘Like vultures, they were,’ said Mrs Pumphrey, ‘and her not even dead yet. It’s shameful. There they were, taking everything they could lay their hands on. Mind you, she was difficult. Hope you don’t mind my being plain, love? But she was. Kept herself hidden away in the house most of the time. It was a bloody fortress. That’s why they waited, see? ’til she was peggin’ out. If they’d tried to get in with her there they’d have still been tryin’.’

      Had they taken the tall-boy? Suzanna idly wondered. Thanking Mrs Pumphrey for her help, she went back to have another look at number eighteen – its roof so covered in bird-shit it looked to have had its own private blizzard – then went on to the hospital.

      3

      The nurse wore her show of compassion indifferently well. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Laschenski’s very sick. Are you a close relative?’

      ‘I’m her grand-daughter. Has anybody else been to see her?’

      ‘Not that I know of. There really isn’t that much point. She’s had a major stroke, Miss –’

      ‘Parrish. Suzanna Parrish.’

      ‘Your grandmother’s unconscious most of the time, I’m afraid.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘So please don’t expect too much.’

      The nurse led her down a short corridor to a room that was so quiet Suzanna could have heard a petal drop, but that there were no flowers. She wasn’t unfamiliar with death rooms; her mother and father had died three years before, within six months of each other. She recognized the scent, and the hush, as soon as she stepped inside.

      ‘She’s not been awake today,’ said the nurse, as she stood back to let Mimi’s visitor approach the bed.

      Suzanna’s first thought was that there’d been some colossal error. This couldn’t be Mimi. This poor woman was too frail; too white. The objection was on the tip of her tongue when she realized that the error was hers. Though the hair of the woman in the bed was so thin that her scalp gleamed through, and the skin of her face was draped slackly on her skull like wet muslin, this was, nevertheless, Mimi. Robbed of power; reduced by some malfunction of nerve and muscle to this unwelcome passivity; but still Mimi.

      Tears rose in Suzanna, seeing her grandmother tucked up like a child, except that she was sleeping not in preparation for a new day but for endless night. She had been so fierce, this woman, and so resolute. Now all that strength had gone, and forever.

      ‘Shall I leave you alone awhile?’ said the nurse, and without waiting for a reply, withdrew. Suzanna put her hand to her brow to keep the tears at bay.

      When she looked again, the old woman’s blue-veined lids were flickering open.

      For a moment it seemed Mimi’s eyes had focused somewhere beyond Suzanna. Then the gaze sharpened, and the look that found Suzanna was as compelling as she had remembered it.

      Mimi opened her mouth. Her lips were fever-dried. She passed her tongue across them to little effect. Utterly unnerved, Suzanna approached the bedside.

      ‘Hello,’ she said softly. ‘It’s me. It’s Suzanna.’

      The old woman’s eyes locked with Suzanna’s. I know who you are, the stare said.

      ‘Would you like some water?’

      A tiny frown nicked Mimi’s brow.

      ‘Water?’ Suzanna repeated, and again, the tiniest of frowns by way of reply. They understood each other.

      Suzanna poured an inch of water from the plastic jug on the bedside table into a plastic glass, and took the glass to Mimi’s lips. As she did so the old woman lifted her hand a fraction from the crisp sheet and brushed Suzanna’s arm. The touch was feather-light, but it sent such a jolt through Suzanna that she almost dropped the glass.

      Mimi’s breath had suddenly become uneven, and there were tics and twitches around her eyes and mouth as she struggled to shape a word. Her eyes blazed with frustration, but the most she could produce was a grunt in her throat.

      ‘It’s all right,’ said Suzanna.

      The look on the parchment face refused such platitudes. No. the eyes said, it isn’t all right, it’s very far from all right. Death is waiting at the door, and I can’t even speak the feelings I have.

      ‘What is it?’ Suzanna whispered, bending closer to the pillow. The old woman’s fingers still trembled against her arm. Her skin tingled at the contact, her stomach churned. ‘How can I help you?’ she said. It was the vaguest of questions, but she was shooting in the dark.

      Mimi’s eyes flickered closed for an instant, and the frown deepened. She had given up trying to make words, apparently. Perhaps she had given up entirely.

      And then, with a suddenness that made Suzanna cry out, the fingers that rested on her arm slid around her wrist. The СКАЧАТЬ