“No, this is new,” Bee reassured her.
“Stupid regulations,” Philip said. “Sanchia wouldn’t be entitled to any maternity leave or any benefits having a baby unless she’s married.”
“How did you decide which of you she was going to marry?” Bee asked.
“We did a DNA test to see who was the father, and it was Ragnar, so she’s marrying me,” Philip said. “That way we are all the parents.”
“This was difficult for us too,” Pat remembered. “Michael was wonderful.”
“I don’t think it’s any of the government’s business. All this regulation all the time. Cameras everywhere. Caring what goes on in people’s bedrooms. All this talk about vice.”
“The cameras are just trying to catch suicide bombers,” Sanchia said.
“And when they do catch them they execute them on TV,” Bee said, scratchily. “It makes me sick.”
“On TV?” Pat asked. “That’s awful. When did they start doing that?”
“That’s your memory being merciful,” Philip said.
Pat and Bee were the witnesses and the only people to attend the wedding. Afterwards the bride and groom went back to Manchester, where Sanchia had lessons to give and ante-natal classes to attend. “I would stay and look after you, but the baby’s due so soon, and I want to be there,” Philip said.
“I understand,” Bee rasped.
Bee was in too much pain from the cancer now for Pat to sleep in the same bed. Pat’s small movements in the night shook the bed and woke Bee, and then she would lie sleepless for hours. So they developed a routine where Pat would cuddle Bee until she fell asleep, then she would get up and sleep in Jinny’s old room. Pat managed the bedpans, under Bee’s direction. “Life always comes down to bedpans,” Pat said. “But it doesn’t matter when there’s love as well.”
“Love and bedpans and Florence, that’s you,” Bee croaked. “Give me one of my really strong painkillers now. That’s the right bottle, yes, the brown one, give it here. Plenty of them, more than enough to last.”
The doctor, an old friend, stopped in regularly to check up on them. When Bee stopped being able to eat the doctor insisted that she go into a hospice.
“You need to be properly looked after,” he said. “And a feeding tube. Don’t tell me Pat could manage that.”
“Call Jinny,” Bee said to Pat as soon as he had gone.
“Flora?” Pat suggested. “She’s so much nearer.”
“It has to be Jinny.” Jinny was Bee’s natural daughter, of course, her next of kin, the only one who could make decisions for her.
Pat called Jinny in Florence, and Jinny flew home right away. Bee went into the hospice, but Jinny and Pat visited her every day. She stopped being able to speak, but her eyes were alive. She squeezed Pat’s hand and Pat sat there talking to her, not knowing what she was saying really but knowing Bee was there, was listening.
Then Bee died, choking for breath, with both of them at her bedside. Pat’s own chest felt tight hearing it and her heart beat faster. Now would be a good time to have another heart attack, she thought at it, encouragingly, but her heart took no notice and kept on beating.
Jinny drove Pat home, and Pat went to bed. She couldn’t forget that Bee was dead, much as she would like to. She knew Bee had made a plan for what would happen next, though she couldn’t remember what it was. She stared into the dark. She had cried so much that her eyes burned but no more tears came. She got up, knocking into the little table they had brought in here when Bee had been sickest. She put the light on and fumbled about for her pills. She had her blood pressure pills, and there were also some of Bee’s strong painkillers left. She thought Bee might have been saving them for her, for now, making sure she knew which ones they were. She went downstairs and poured water into one of Bee’s wineglasses. She swallowed all of Bee’s pills and then all of hers. She sat down in Bee’s green armchair and waited, trying to think of the time she had sat in the Palazzo Vecchio watching the sky darken and realizing that she loved Bee. She took down the photograph Michael had taken of Bee and the babies. She wanted that to be the last thing she saw. She crashed into the mantelpiece and fell on the rug. The pills must be taking effect, she thought. Good.
Then Jinny came in, rumpled with sleep. “What are you doing banging about down here?” Then she saw her. “No. Oh no. Not you too.”
Pat tried to speak and say it was what she wanted, but Jinny took no notice. She was calling for an ambulance. Then it was hospital and a stomach pump.
When Pat woke, Philip and Jinny were arguing. “I can’t believe you did that,” Philip said. “It can’t have been easy for her, and it was so clearly what she wanted.”