fifteen

I came to visit her again the next day, and again two days after that. It was a long drive, but it gave me something to do rather than go home to an empty house after work. I brought her lunches, sat on a bench in the hospital park with her. She was barely allowed to leave the hospital grounds, but we didn’t mind. We had enough to talk about to last us a lifetime. I told her about George – about the years we spent together, the daughter we raised, I suppose in hope that if she saw how much I had loved him, it might make up for the pain I caused her. I never quite brought myself to apologise directly. She didn’t want to hear it, either. 

“It’s been a long time”, she said. “I’m not upset about it anymore. It would have been a completely different life, and I quite like the one I have now.” 

One time, when I tried to bring it up with her, she just put a hand on my arm and looked at me with a smile that struck me almost painfully with how clearly I at once recognised it from the days of our youth – the only difference the fine lines that appeared around her eyes, that made her face seem softer than it had been then. “Not today, Olive”, she said. “It’s a Tuesday.”

That was the last time we talked about him.

Delilah’s death came unexpectedly. She had been through a major surgery to remove whatever could be removed, and we had been told the recovery would be tough, but manageable. She didn’t look well the last time I visited her at the hospital, but I told myself that was to be expected after having a good portion of your lungs taken out. 

I found out at the hospital. She had died only hours ago. I gave the receptionist her name and knew immediately from the look in her eyes. I met Cassandra in the hospital bathroom and embraced her without either of us saying a word. She sobbed and sobbed into my jacket and I just held her as Delilah had held me, and I could smell the shampoo in her hair and the cigarette smoke that clung to her like a ghost.

Delilah had not deserved to die before me. The idea was unfathomable. From the earliest stage of our friendship, it had been an established fact that I was the reckless one, the one who broke things, lost things, slept late and drank too much; I was the one who deserved what she got. Delilah was the good one.

As I drove home that night, I thought of Millie. I had asked myself so many times whether I would change the course of history, if I could. Whether, if I got another chance, I would turn George down, do the right thing, be a good friend. The answer always appeared in my mind immediately, a loud and clear no – for if things had gone any differently, my daughter, whom I loved like nothing else in the world, would never have been born – but a quieter part of me could not stop ruminating on what might have been. If Delilah had married George and I had met someone, anyone, else – where would our road have taken us? For there was no doubt in my mind that wherever it was we would have ended up – we would have found ourselves side by side.