She lasted two minutes before she began struggling for air. She emerged with a splash, a gulp and a gurgle, the cold air bristling her skin and a pain in her heart so sharp it felt as though she was being skewered. I want to see you! I want to touch you! Rabbit? The pain remained, even after washing her teeth, when her mouth was clean and her hair restored to its soft, bouncy self. Even when her body was cleansed of stale air and all trace of death had been vigorously scrubbed from every pore, her sore eyes and lips moisturised and protected – even then the hurt persisted. She knew what it was; she knew it was the agony of loss, so she found a little comfort in her discomfort. Searing pain made her feel closer to Rabbit somehow. She wiped the steam from the mirror, revealing a woman who looked like someone else. She felt like someone else, too. Marjorie without Rabbit was someone else.

‘Who are you now, Marjorie Shaw?’ she asked.

Her reflection had no answer.

Chapter Four: Jack

Chapter Four

Jack

JACK WAS SEVENTY-SEVEN at the time of his youngest daughter’s death. He’d lived a long and happy life up to that point. It had its share of loss and worry and sometimes even fear, but he had made enough good choices to be able to look back with pride and good humour.

In the immediate aftermath of Rabbit’s death, Jack slipped out and into the corridor before anyone else. She was gone, and he couldn’t stand to be in the room that took her for one second longer. He sat in the hospital garden, on a damp bench, the same one he’d sat on the day before when she was alive. How extraordinary, he thought. He remembered Rabbit’s birth in a car sales garage forecourt, with his wife screaming and the salesman threatening to throw up his lunch, Jack at the business end, panicked and telling everyone to calm down and calling to the head that was crowning in his wife’s nethers: ‘Come on, little one, the world is waiting.’ One moment she wasn’t there, the next – and so suddenly and unbelievably – she was in his arms, screaming blue murder, eyes screwed shut and fists balled ready to take it all on. She did take it on. By God, she took it on. Then that morning she had fought her last fight; one moment she was here and the next she was gone. Her birth so joyful, her death so sorrowful, yet both so natural. Rabbit had stepped into his life and filled it with light before stepping out.

Daddy loves you, Rabbit. Daddy will miss you every day till I join you somewhere, or if you’re right and there’s no life after death, I’ll join you in the abyss. My Rabbit.