This is it. Her eyes filled, nose blocked, ears buzzed, throat burned. ‘Safe trip, Rabbit,’ she said, and she wanted her to go. She wanted her to get into that invisible van and go because she couldn’t stand waiting one more second. One moment later, her child’s grip loosened and she was gone. Oh God, what have I done? Oh no. She didn’t move, the urge suddenly left her and she couldn’t feel anything now. She was numb. Just let go. Outside on the windowsill a bird twittered. Inside and just underneath that window, the heater hummed. A spider tootled across the window before jumping onto the wall. Molly sat up straight, her head and spine perfectly aligned, caressing her daughter’s head. In her final moments she’d abandoned her own flesh and blood. She deserved to be alone, adrift and hopeless. She was unwholesome, unworthy, unforgivable. She had willed Rabbit dead; she valued a cup of tea over the life of her child. ‘Just let go.’ In that moment Molly had lost her child and her God. A woman of faith who’d lost all faith in a just or forgiving God. She lost faith in herself. No one had ever asked her about those last moments before; everyone sleeping in that room presumed Rabbit died in that coma. She didn’t correct them. How could she admit what she did, how she felt in that moment? Relief. Gratitude. Oh God. She decided that there was no God in her life, not because she didn’t still feel his presence but because they were unworthy of one another – we are not friends, you and I. She missed him, though, not as much as her child but the loss tore away at her; she had to stop herself from calling out to him, from talking to him, from seeking and gaining small comforts. She lost her girl and she lost her God and she deserved to be alone. Finally admitting what she had willed her child to do in those last moments of her life and how her child had responded was both a terrifying and liberating experience.

‘Just let go.’

‘People say and think that all the time. It was a mercy, Molly,’ Father Frank said.

‘I had a pain in my arse, Father,’ she said, ‘It had fuck all to do with mercy.’

‘God loves you.’

‘I hate him.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I do.’

‘You miss him and he misses you.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Is it?’

‘I want to hurt him,’ she said, and tears burned her eyes. ‘I want to be hurt.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘It’s not OK. We let her down.’