Chapter Twenty Five
In different circumstances she probably would've laughed about the fact that she, the girl who had never left London, was about to go abroad for the second time in less than a week. But she packed an overnight bag with the efficiency of someone who did it on a regular basis, only taking the bare essentials. Her Nan ran around silently grabbing things she thought she might need and shoving them into the bag for her.
When she went back downstairs, the bag hanging from her shoulder, Belinda and Dave were stood side by side in the hallway, arms folded. It reminded her of when she'd been little and they'd tried to tell her off for something, not that she could remember what she was supposed to have done.
"I don't want you getting involved in this." Belinda shook her head. "I've been thinking about it and it's just wrong. If you're seen to be helping him kill himself then you could end up in all kinds of trouble."
"Your Mum is right." Dave chipped in. She fought the urge to ask him when he'd decided to actually become a parent.
"We've seen it on the news. It'll be your whole life Molly. If you end up with a criminal record you'll never get a decent job. I'm sure if you asked half of the neighbours they'd agree with me." Belinda carried on.
"He's asked for her to come. She can't just ignore him." Nan chipped in from behind her on the stairs.
"Yes. Yes she can." Belinda glared at her. "She's given them six months of her life, and fat lot of good it's done too by the state of things. It's been the making of you Molly, this job. You're like a whole new person and for once I thought you might not end up stuck here like us. Don't go and throw it all away now. Whatever that family want to do… they can destroy their own lives. I'm not going to have them drag my Molly into it."
"I think I can make my own mind up." Molly cut in, moving down another step and trying to work out if she could just push past them.
"I'm not sure you can. He's your friend Molly. That young man with his whole life ahead of him. I can't believe you'd even consider helping him with something like this!" Belinda's voice was getting more and more shrill. Dave placed a hand on her shoulder as if to calm her down and for a moment Molly wondered if she might turn around and hit him.
"It's not my decision mum, it's Charles'. The whole point of this is to support him."
"Support him? I suppose they've brainwashed you into thinking that?" Belinda shrugged Dave's hand off. "Let me ask you this- how do you expect to sleep at night knowing that you helped him do this? You'd be helping him die Molly- do you really understand that?"
Molly drew in a breath. "I'd be able to sleep at night because I trust Charles to know what is right for him, and because I know that losing the ability to make a single decision or actually do anything for himself has been the worst thing to happen to him." She looked back and forth between her parents, willing them to understand. "I'm not a child. I love him, really love him and I should never have left him. I can't be here, not knowing what's happening. So I'm going to Switzerland, whether you like it or not."
Almost without knowing what she was doing she walked past them and out of the front door, they stared after her like they had no idea who she even was anymore. She wasn't even sure she knew.
She arrived in Zurich a little after midnight. Given how late it was Mrs James had, as promised, booked her into the hotel at the airport and said she would send a car for her in the morning. She thought she wouldn't sleep, but she did- a restless and fitful sleep haunted by images of Charles' face as she'd walked away from him at the airport a few days earlier.
When she woke up the next morning she was groggy and had no idea where she was. She stared at the unfamiliar curtains, the large tv and her overnight bag sitting on the chair in the corner of the room. Then it suddenly hit her as she woke up a bit more where she was and why. Her stomach clenched and she scrambled out of bed, making it to the bathroom just in time to be sick. She sank down on the cool tiled floor, her hair stuck to her forehead and felt a dark fear creeping over her. She should've listened to her Mum. She wasn't up to this, she didn't want to have to watch him die.
She couldn't eat. She managed half a cup of black coffee, then showered and dressed. She sat down in the lobby, watching the minutes go by on the clock. She didn't think she'd ever felt so lonely in all her life. She had briefly contemplated calling her Nan, but the fear that Belinda or Dave might answer had been to great. She couldn't deal with either of them. Not yet.
She jumped out of her skin when the receptionist came to tell her that her car had arrived.
She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting- maybe some white buildings next to a lake or snow capped mountains- but what she hadn't been expecting was to be driven through some kind of industrial estate until she arrived at a very ordinary looking house.
The woman who opened the door knew immediately who she was looking for. "He's here. Would you like me to show you?"
She stopped for a moment, wondering if she was really going to go through with it. She stared at the door, noticing how it was weirdly similar to the door on the annexe back home. Then she took a breath and nodded.
She saw the bed before she saw him. It dominated the room, the dark wood and flowery pillows seemed oddly out of place in that setting. Mr James sat on one side of it, Mrs James the other. They were both ghostly pale. Sophie sat in the arm chair in the corner of the room, her knees drawn up to her chin and her eyes red from crying.
The room itself wasn't particular dissimilar to the hotel room she had just left. It was bizarrely ordinary. It was ridiculous, the way they were all sitting there like they were having some kind of normal discussion.
"So." She dropped her bag on the floor and turned to face the bed. "I'm guessing the room service isn't up to much?"
Charles' eyes locked onto hers, and suddenly despite the fact she'd thrown up twice and felt like she hadn't slept for a year, she was really glad she'd come. Maybe relieved was more accurate, like she'd finally satisfied some nagging part of herself in the back of her head.
Charles smiled, then turned towards his mother. "I want to talk to Molly- is that okay?"
She tried to smile, and Molly saw a million things in the way Mrs James looked at her in that moment. There was grief, gratitude and a faint resentment at being shut out even for those few precious moments, and perhaps even a distant hope that her appearance might stop what was about to happen.
"Of course." She nodded and stood up. Mr James followed. "Sophie, come on." She prompted when her daughter made no attempt to move. She stood slowly and reluctantly followed her parents out of the door.
And then it was just the two of them.
"So.." She said softly.
"You're not going to-"
"I'm not going to try and change your mind, no." She shook her head.
"If you're here you accept my choice. It's the first thing I've been in control of since the accident."
"I know." And that was it, he knew it and so did she. There was nothing left for her to do. "I missed you." She added softly.
He seemed to relax a little. "Come here then." When she hesitated he added. "Come here, right here on the bed next to me. Please?"
She realised then that there was relief in his expression, that he was pleased to see her in a way he wasn't going to be able to say. She told herself that it would have to be enough, that she would do the thing he had asked her to do and that would have to be enough.
She lay down on the bed beside him, her arm across his chest and her head moving gently with the rise and fall of his chest. She could feel the faint pressure of his fingertips on her back, his warm breath in her hair. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of him and tried not to think of anything at all. She tried to just take in the feel of him lying there with her, committing it to memory in the short time that they had left.
When he spoke she felt it vibrate gently through his chest. "Hey Dawes, tell me something good?"
She stared out of the window at the bright blue Swiss sky and told him a story of two people who shouldn't have met, who'd didn't like each other when they first did, and had eventually found that they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. She told him of the adventures they had, the places they had been and the things that she had seen that she never expected to. She drew a world for him that was a million miles away from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still the person he so desperately wanted to be. She told him of the world he had created for her, full of wonder and possibilities that she never would have known existed. She let him know that a part of her had been healed in a way that he couldn't have known, and that she would always be indebted to him. As she spoke she knew that these would probably be the most important words she would ever speak, and that they needed to not be one last attempt to change his mind, but instead to be everything she'd wanted to say to him over the last six months but never found the words.
Time slowed and stilled. It was just the two of them, her whispering in the empty sunlit room. Charles didn't say much, he didn't answer her back or get sarcastic. He nodded his head, kissed her hair gently and smiled at the good memories she was reminding him of.
"This has been." She told him. "The best six months of my entire life."
There was a long silence. "Funnily enough Dawes, mine too."
And then just like that her heart broke in two. Her composure went completely, her face crumpled and she clung onto him so tightly she briefly worried she might be hurting him. The grief overwhelmed her and she couldn't bear it.
"Don't Dawes." He whispered against her hair. "Please don't. Just look at me."
She screwed her eyes shut and shook her head.
"Look at me, please. You're angry and I don't want to hurt you and make you-"
"No." She shook her head again. "It's not that… I don't… I don't want the last thing you see to be my miserable blotchy face."
"You still don't get it, do you Dawes?" She could hear the faintest hint of a smile in his voice. "It's not your choice."
She took some time to regain her composure, blew her nose and took a deep breath. Finally, she raised herself up on her elbow and looked at him. His eyes, so long strained and unhappy looked oddly clear and relaxed.
"You look beautiful." He smiled.
"Funny." She laughed a little and it was almost enough to send the tears flowing again.
"Come here." He said. "Right up close."
She lay down again so she was facing him, catching sight of the clock above the door which gave her a horrible sickening sense of time running out. She took his arm and wrapped it tightly around her, threading her own arms and legs around him so they were tightly intertwined. She placed her head on the pillow so close to his face that his featured became indistinct. She traced his jaw and nose, her hands sliding through his hair as the tears slid down her cheeks. He watched her silently, as though he was storing every tiny piece of her away somewhere. He was already retreating, withdrawing to a place she couldn't reach him.
She kissed him, trying to bring him back to her. She kissed him and let her lips rest against his so that their breath mingled and her tears became salt on his skin.
She realised, that she was afraid of living without him. She held him, all the while silently telling him that he was loved, because she had promised him that she would support him, no matter how hard it was proving to be for her in the moment. She wanted to will him to live, to ask him how he was allowed to ruin her life by leaving her but she wasn't allowed to have a say in his. Instead they both laid there silently, listening to the sound of their breathing.
She had no idea how long they'd stayed like that, but they became dimly aware of a conversation outside the door in the hallway and church bells chiming somewhere off in the distance. He took a deep breath and drew his head back an inch so they could see each other clearly. He gave her a small smile, almost apologetic.
"Dawes." He said quietly. "Can you call my parents in?"