Not a freckle had ever dusted his strong, handsome face and the only time his tan faded was as he lay wasting away in the hospital bed. His skin turned a dull sepia colour, as if dying leached everything from a person.
‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t want to leave you and the kids, the grandkids …’
Those had been almost the last words he’d spoken to her and she treasured the memory.
Lillie had struggled to find words to comfort him. Then it had come to her, a gift to the dying, the only thing she could give him: ‘We all love you so much, Sam, but it’s the right time to go, it’s safe for you to go. We don’t want you to suffer any more.’
Saying it and meaning it were two entirely different things. In her breaking heart, Lillie didn’t want Sam to die. She could now understand people who kept loved ones alive for years even when they were in a vegetative state from which there was no return. The parting was so final.
But people sometimes needed to be told to go. One of the hospice nurses had explained that to her. Strong people like Sam, who had fiercely protected their families all their lives, found it hard to leave.
‘They worry there’s nobody there to take care of you all,’ the nurse had said. ‘You need to tell him it’s OK to go.’
And Lillie had.
When Sam had been dying, the hours seemed to fly past because she knew they were his last.
Since then, time had slowed to a snail’s pace …
Now, standing in the hall, she rubbed her eyes furiously as more tears arrived. She was so tired of crying.
Her cell phone pinged on the hall table with a text message.
Are you coming walking today? I did my stretches and will seize up if we don’t start soon. I am leaning over our park bench and will be stuck like this. Doris xx
Lillie smiled as she put her hat on and grabbed a pair of sunnies from the table at the door. Doris could always cheer her up.
As soon as she rounded the corner at the community centre at the Moysey Walk, she saw Viletta and Doris gossiping happily as they half-heartedly did stretches ahead of their walk – five miles today.
It was a beautiful trail to walk. The girls had been walking along the beach, local parks and now, along the Moysey Walk for nigh on twenty years, long before everyone and their granny began extolling the virtues of walking. Today, autumn leaves were beginning to fall from the trees, and to their left, lay the glittering sea below. ‘Hi, girls,’ Lillie said, glad that her sunnies were hiding her eyes.
Hearing the faint catch in Lillie’s voice, Doris looked at her shrewdly. ‘You’ve just missed a gang of young rugby guys jogging,’ she announced, keeping her tone upbeat. ‘Viletta told them they had great muscle definition and they all went red.’
Viletta laughed. ‘I could be a cougar,’ she said with a put-on sniff. ‘They’re the hot thing in Hollywood – young blokes wanting older women.’
‘Older rich women, honey,’ said Doris, and Lillie joined in the laughter this time.
They walked two or three times a week, fitting it in between their chores and pursuits. Viletta, the oldest of the trio at sixty-nine, was a yoga buff and nobody seeing her in her walking sweats and simple T-shirt would imagine she was a grandmother of five. Her hair, she liked to joke, was the giveaway – pure white and falling poker straight down her back; she kept it tied in a knot for the walk. Doris, tall with salt-and-pepper hair and a tendency to roundness, regularly complained she wasn’t as fit as Viletta, who set the pace.
‘You get toned blokes in yoga classes and I get knee injections in the surgery,’ Doris would say in mock outrage. And Viletta would smile at the notion. She hadn’t looked at a man since her husband had died more than fifteen years earlier, for all her talk of cougars.
Lillie liked to amuse herself considering how the three of them must appear to strangers on their rambles: Viletta would appear to be the trainer, a lean, tanned woman urging her two more curvy friends on.
Though she didn’t have Viletta’s toned muscles, she didn’t look like a woman in her mid-sixties. That was most likely down to the hair, she reckoned: even a few greys in her thick strawberry blonde curls couldn’t diminish its warmth. Her Irish inheritance coming through. In the mirror she saw her face had become thinner since Sam’s death and underneath her iris-blue eyes were faint violet shadows. She hadn’t used make-up to hide them: vanity seemed so futile in the wake of her loss.
They were halfway into the walk and had settled into their regular rhythm when Doris managed to get herself beside Lillie, a few paces behind Viletta, who was storming ahead as usual.
‘You look a bit down, Lillie,’ she said conversationally. ‘Everything OK?’
Doris had known Lillie long enough to realize the effort required to maintain a smile on her face, a smile that would disintegrate the moment somebody put on their Poor dear, lost her husband voice or showed pity. Which was why Doris talked to her friend the way she’d always talked to her, in the same warm, vibrant tones.
‘I’ve been thinking about my brother in Ireland …’ began Lillie.
Beside her, she could sense Doris relax.
‘I’m going to Ireland to visit him and to find out about my birth mother,’ she said. There, it was done: she’d decided.
When Doris grabbed her and hugged her tightly, Lillie was so surprised she almost lost her balance.
‘I’m so glad!’ shrieked Doris, never one for volume control. ‘It’s exactly what you need. Oh, honey, I’m so glad!’
Lillie relaxed into her friend’s embrace. It felt lovely to be held. There were fewer people to do that these days. Her sons weren’t huggers, not the way Sam had been. Her hugs now came from her grandchildren. From Martin’s daughter, Dyanne, and from Shane, Evan’s seven-year-old, who held her tight and told her she was the best nanny in the world.
‘If I’d known you wanted to be rid of me that much, I’d have gone ages ago,’ she teased Doris when they separated.
‘Witch!’ said Doris, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m happy for you, Lillie. There’s no secret recipe for getting through what you’re getting through, but doing something different might add another ingredient to the pot, so to speak.’
Lillie nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking it over and over. Sam and I had talked about visiting Ireland, but I don’t think I’d ever have done it by myself at my age. But now Martin’s so excited about finding Seth and Dyanne’s desperately hoping the Irish relatives are rich so she can stay with them when she goes off on her big trip.’
Both women smiled. Dyanne was the same age as Doris’s grandson, Lloyd. Many amused conversations were had about their grandchildren, who were both going through an ‘I want to be famous’ phase, when they weren’t too preoccupied with ‘Can I have an advance on my pocket money?’
‘Are you stopping for a rest?’ Viletta called back to them.
‘No,’ yelled Doris, and they started walking again. ‘It’s going to be tough, Lillie, you realize that? You’ll be alone on a very emotional trip.’
Lillie nodded. She could rely on Doris for utter honesty.
‘I’m going to be fine,’ she said, and gave her friend a smile.
For the first time since Sam died, Doris caught a glimpse of peace in her friend’s iris-blue eyes.
‘Sam will be with me,’ Lillie added, touching one hand to her chest above her heart. Then her lips quirked in a smile like the Lillie of old. ‘I’m ordering him to come!’