After Isabella Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  LIST OF PAGES

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  For Alli and Annie Tibbatts with all my love

  Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2016 by Allen & Unwin

  Copyright © Rosie Fiore, 2016

  The moral right of Rosie Fiore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

  Allen & Unwin

  c/o Atlantic Books

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  Phone:020 7269 1610

  Fax:020 7430 0916

  Email:[email protected]

  Web:www.allenandunwin.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Trade paperback ISBN 978 1 76029 241 6

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 95253 373 0

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  She’d been restlessly asleep for hours, her fingers plucking irregularly at the covers, her eyelids fluttering, her breathing rattly and noisy. Esther sat and watched her. She’d been told that these were all signs that the end was near. It was quite possible that she wouldn’t wake again. Her breathing would slow and then stop, and that would be it. Esther leaned back in her chair. She hadn’t slept for a long time and she was weary. She shut her eyes for a second, just to rest them.

  The breathing stopped and Esther’s eyes flew open. The face on the pillow looked awake and alert, her eyes wide open and almost amused.

  ‘Caught you napping.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Esther said. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No thanks.’ She smiled a genuinely warm, attentive and lovely smile. ‘You must be knackered, sorry.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Esther. ‘Honestly. How are you doing? Want more morphine?’

  ‘No pain right now. But I tell you what, my feet are bloody freezing.’

  ‘Your feet? Really?’ The room was warm, and the bed was covered with a heavy, fluffy duvet.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can I get you some socks?’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll work. I think my body’s storing all the heat around what’s left of my essential organs. I don’t think I’m able to generate my own heat for my extremities. Maybe a hot water bottle… only I don’t think I own one.’

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ said Esther. She paused for a second. ‘I read somewhere, although I suspect it’s completely spurious, that when D. H. Lawrence was dying, he complained his feet were cold, and his wife, Frieda, put them in her bosom to warm them.’

  ‘Her bosom?’

  ‘I haven’t got much of a bosom, but I do generate quite a bit of body heat.’

  The chuckle from the bed sounded lively, not at all like the chuckle of someone dying. ‘Would you? Would you do that for me?’

  ‘For you, Millais, anything.’

  Esther folded back the duvet from the bottom of the bed and lay on her side. She lifted her shirt and drew the two cold feet to her, pressing them against her stomach, then drawing her jumper and the duvet down over them. ‘Better?’

  ‘Better. Thank you. Your belly is so soft. Squidgy.’ A smile, silence, and eyes that closed slowly.

  Esther lay still, breathing softly and watching, until she too fell asleep for a time.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘The first time I saw Isabella, I was nine years old. We’d moved from Richmond to north London. It was only ten miles or so, but it might as well have been the other side of the world. I knew I’d never ever see my friends again, and that I would be alone forever.

  ‘My mum took me for my first day at the new school, and they called Isabella to the office to take me to my classroom. The head, who was one of those touchy-feely enthusiastic types, leapt up and stood with her hands on Isabella’s shoulders as she introduced us. “Isabella Millais is one of our star students!” She beamed. “She’s just won a competition and had a picture published in a national magazine, fancy that!” She went on about how Isabella was a credit to her teachers, and Isabella looked straight at me. It took me a moment, but then I realized we were exactly the same height. We had the same long, straight, dark brown hair, and the same dark eyes. She had skinny legs and bumpy knees like me too. She could have been my twin sister. It was like looking in a mi
rror.

  ‘I must have been staring, because she stared back. She kept her face quite still, but then she very slightly crossed her eyes so she was squinting and stuck the tiniest tip of her tongue out of the corner of her mouth. I couldn’t believe her nerve. If the head had spotted her… She didn’t even seem to care that my mum, who was standing next to me, could see her. And as quickly as she’d pulled the face, she stopped, and said, “Welcome to St Mary’s. I’ll show you where the classroom is.”

  ‘I picked up my bag and followed her, and my mum stayed behind to talk to the head. Isabella and I walked down the corridor together. She walked fast, and she held her head high. She always walked like that, looking straight ahead. She walked like that for as long as I knew her. I had to trot a bit to keep up. We got to the classroom door and she stopped and checked her watch. Then she yanked my arm so we were bent double and couldn’t be seen through the glass panel of the door. She pulled me along, past the classroom and on down the corridor. We went down some stairs into the gymnasium, which was empty. She took me across the room to a huge pile of gym mats, and we sat on the floor behind them, so we couldn’t be seen from the door. “It’s fifteen minutes to lunchtime,” she said. “We’ll go back at one minute to, and then there won’t be time for embarrassing introductions and making you stand up in front of the class. We can just go straight to lunch.” She reached into her blazer pocket and brought out a squished chocolate bar. She broke it in two and gave me half. The bigger half. I knew then that she would be my friend for life.

  ‘And she was. All the way through school, and through university, even though we weren’t in the same city. She was always on the end of the phone, or sending me funny letters and pictures in the post, or turning up at my room in halls at eleven o’clock on a Friday night to stay for the weekend. She held my hair back the first time I got drunk enough to be sick. She was my bridesmaid when I got married, and she was godmother to my little girl, Lucie.

  ‘When she found out she was ill, she didn’t want to tell anyone. She had this idea that she could just carry on, live her life and have her treatment. She couldn’t bear the idea that anyone would pity her, or whisper about her, or think of her as “the one with cancer”. She didn’t even tell me. I only found out when Sally rang to let me know. Isabella was so sick, she couldn’t look after herself, so Sally moved in with her. Now to us, growing up, Sally was the annoying little sister, trailing after Isabella and me, wanting to join in our games – we used to hide from her, or send her on impossible errands. Sometimes we even locked her in the cellar. But when the chips were down, it was Sally Isabella needed. Sally gave up her job and looked after Isabella 24/7 for a year and a half until… Until the end.

  ‘And here we are. The end, the end of Isabella. The most vibrant, hilarious and brilliant person I have ever known. An amazing architect, cook and friend. I know she meant something different, something special to every single one of you, or you wouldn’t be here to say goodbye. It just seems… unbelievable that a light like that can have gone from the world. I know it’ll take me a very long time to get used to it. I’ll still expect to hear her voice on the end of the phone, to see her name popping up in my inbox with a crazy, witty message. I can’t believe I won’t get another one of her handmade birthday cards. I can’t begin to imagine how this feels for Sally, and Isabella’s mum, Joan. Our hearts are with you, Sally and Joan, and we’ll all be there for you, anytime of the day or night. Rest in peace, Bells. The sister I never had. I can’t believe you’re gone.’