: Chapter 42

I leave. I leave her room, the hospital. I leave my apartment, my family, and I leave the country. I get as far away from Mimi Valente as I can for the sake of my own sanity.

I can’t watch her self-destruct. I can’t be there. Can’t hold her hand. Yet I can’t stay away, and I hate myself for it. Two weeks after moving to Zurich, after going to great expense to move my office and support staff, I move back to London again.

Because I’m my own worst enemy.

I can’t seem to stay away though I tell myself things will return to normal when Mimi moves back to Florida. As I understand it, this won’t be too much longer. And where do I get my intel? Where else but Polly. She keeps in contact with Mimi’s parents. She lets me know how her procedure went. How her subsequent checkups went. What her cardiologist says. And how quiet Mimi is when she visits.

While Mimi was in St. Barts, I gave up my place to her parents. When she was discharged, I arranged them a small flat near the hospital. It didn’t seem fair for her to move back to a place holding so many memories.

I can’t stay there myself. All I can see is her lying prone on the floor, and when I do, I feel like I’m having my own fucking cardiac arrest.

But I’m there today because Polly wants to “pop around for a chat.” I hadn’t the heart to tell her I’m staying here. I don’t feel like answering the million questions she’ll no doubt have, and I don’t want her worried looks or her sympathy.

I just want to drink whisky and eat carbs from the room service menu and fucking well wallow until my arteries clog, which I manage that quite well in a suite in a nearby hotel.

“Hello, darling.” Poll knows the code to the door, of course, and comes bustling in, dumping her Birkin on the floor. In her arm, she has chocolates and flowers, which she puts down on the island bench.

“Have you bought me flowers?” Jesus, I must look like a sad sack.

“No, silly. Those are for Mimi’s mother. I’m popping over to their flat after our visit.”

“Oh.” I bite the inside of my lip against the notion of asking for news.

“The chocolates are for Mimi, of course. I also bought a bottle of wine for her dad, but I dropped my bag on the way over, so now it stinks like a wine barrel.”

I try not to grimace, thinking of the price of the bag.

“They think Mimi will get the all clear to go back home next week.”

“Oh,” I repeat, then add, “I’m sure they’ll all be very happy to see the back of London.”

“Well, two of them will. One is a little sad that she’s having to leave prematurely.”

“It’s for the best,” I say gruffly. “Want a coffee?” Before she answers, I’m already making my way over to the machine.

“Go on then,” she says, “you’ve twisted my arm.”

I make a couple of flat whites, thankful for the shopping service or else I’d be making coffee with cottage cheese, and hand one to Mum, mainly to stop her going around with a feather duster she’s pulled from the cleaning closet.

“Mum, sit down. I pay someone to do this.”

“I’m just making sure you’re getting your money’s worth,” she mutters, bending down to swipe something up from under a sideboard. “See. Looks like they missed this,” she says, handing me a notebook I’ve never seen before. “They can’t be that good. They’re clearly not vacuuming properly.”

Black and unassuming, I twist the notebook around. It doesn’t exactly scream owned by Mimi, but somehow, I know it’s hers. I shouldn’t read it, I think as I flip through the pages. And then I do as Mum rounds the island to wash her hands wittering on about me making Lavender come and dust once a week in exchange for all the bills I pay. Frankly, I’d rather become a hoarder and live in squalor than have to listen to her complaining every week.

The notebook is blank but for one page when a feminine hand has penned a list

1. Stop caring so much what other people think. You only have one life to live and what you do with it is no business of anyone else.

Well, she should put a line through that one because she fucking achieved it.

2. See some of the world. Pick a project. Do something just for you.

Check again. She saw London and Paris. Her project was me. And what she did? That would also be me. She did me and she did me over.

3. Be fearless. Because what is fear but a monster of your own making? What’s scarier than fear? Only the inevitable.

I sit with that one for a minute, not sure what to make of it. She was obviously cared of Brugada, but not enough to take care of herself. Maybe she’s one of those people who can just bury their head in the sand. What was the inevitable? Surgery? Death?

4. Don’t live in the cages other people build for you. Fly. Run, and not just because you’re feel like you’re being chased for a change. Frolic. Have fun. Fuck—yes, fuck. The thing you were taught not to want, the expression of life itself. Do it. Enjoy it.

Number four makes my heart ache, even though she managed to use the f word.

5. Tell everyone you love how much you love them. Not only that but love them gently in actions and deeds. Love them hard, if they can take it. Love them however you want, but just make sure they know how much you love them.

Scrawled in the margins is a note that reads: Love Whit but don’t tell him. Maybe I’ve always loved him, and have just managed not to admit it. Don’t spoil it, Mimi. He deserves someone better.

Number five leaves a ball of emotion in my throat. Someone better or someone who won’t lie to me?

6. Give up guilt. Live the best way you know how. The rest? Forgive. Forgive yourself and forgive others. None of us are perfect.

True. So true.

7. Stop being hard on yourself. Life can be hard enough without all that mind chatter.

I skim seven in favor of eight.

8. Breathe while you can. A good life and a good death are the best a person can hope for.

Something wanders over my grave and, for a second, I’m back in my bedroom, crying and kneeling on the floor next to her.

“What’s that you’re reading?”

I flip the notebook closed as Polly hops up onto the stool next to me. “Nothing much.” Nothing I can make much sense of.

“Have you seen Mimi since she was discharged?” she asks so airily that I know this isn’t a throwaway line.

I make a vague gesture meant to convey no as I lift my coffee cup to my mouth.

“It’s such a shame what happened to her.”

“Yep. A shame she didn’t look after herself.”

Polly tilts her head to one side. “That’s a little unfair, and not at all like you.”

“She had a cardiac arrest in my bedroom.”

“I’m so pleased you were there.”

“What if I hadn’t been? What if she’d really died? Gone? I would’ve carried that guilt around with me for my whole bloody life.”

“Well, that’s what you do, Leif.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you feel things deeply. That you take on responsibilities that aren’t yours.”

My expression twists in warning. Dangerous territory, Poll.

“I know you had to when your father died,” she says, stretching out her arm, her hand covering mine. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. But I’m here now. I’m okay. When those little toe rags cause you any pain, just flick them back my way.”

“It’s become habit now,” I say, staring down into the foam in my cup.

“And they know it. Honestly, I’m sure half the time they’re just trying to you’re your life difficult. Taking the piss. Especially Lavender.” My head jerks up at Polly’s language. She rarely swears. “She just feels like she needs to be seen. If you take a step back, perhaps,” she suggests softly. “I might be able to make some headway with her. And if you did that, you might have more time for Mimi.”

“Stop,” I say softly. “We tried, and it didn’t work out.”

“It’s just so not like you,” she says, frowning. “You never give up.”

“I didn’t give up. I got involved with a woman who wouldn’t let me in.”

“At first, maybe.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mum. She’s not the person you think she is.”

“She’s not the person you think she is, either,” she retorts sharply. “Take off your blinders. See this for what it really is.”

“And what’s that?” I say, pressing my fist into my hip.

“She didn’t have a death wish, Leif. When the tests came back, the advice from the cardiologist was that she should consider having an ICD fitted. Not that she had to, that death was imminent.”

“If that had happened to me, you would’ve sat on me—kept me in one place until I gave in and said yes to the thing.”

“But that’s what her parents have done her whole life. She’s lived in fear—their fear. And then just think, she couldn’t put their fear down because of the weight heaped on top of it. Not only was she facing her own mortality, but this device, this ICD, would keep her alive, but not without complications, physical and otherwise. Think of the emotional consequences alone.”

“The emotional consequences of staying alive, you mean.”

“To have the operation, to have an ICD fitted meant giving in. Admitting she was at risk. The risk of dying, not just physically but mentally, too. Just like the bomb found near her aunt’s house. She’d live with the threat, device or not, Brugada just ticking away inside her. The device can become faulty and shock a person into a cardiac arrest for no reason. Parts of the device can be recalled; other parts can fail. Batteries need replacing and don’t let your iPhone get anywhere near it, apparently.”

“You’re iPhone?”

“Yes, apparently, it can set it off or something.”

Fuck. Are they really that unstable?

“Getting an ICD is signing up to a lifetime of operations—heart surgeries, possible infections. Those kill, too. But more than that, according to Mimi’s mother, she’d found it so difficult to think she’d never be a mother.”

“I don’t—I don’t understand.”

“Connor and Mimi received this gene from the family. I can’t imagine the risk of bringing a child into this world with those kinds of odds.”

And just like that, everything fits into place.