The Second Life of Sally Mottram

Sally sat there, bathed in elegance, but her face immobile. She was thinking hard. The sun beamed. The picture windows were spotless. Not a crumb sullied the carpet. Her future lay before her. She was thinking about what to do with the rest of her life. Big stuff when you were starving.

Judith brought orange juice from real oranges, perfect buttery peppery scrambled eggs, and good strong coffee. She left Sally to it. Sally resisted the temptation to gulp it all down. This was one of the great moments of her life, to be able to enjoy a good breakfast barely eighteen hours after she had almost thrown herself over a cliff and ended that life.

When she had finished eating, Judith brought more strong coffee, and joined her.

‘You look as though you’ll live,’ said Judith.

‘I think so.’

Something in the way Sally said it caused Judith to look at her with an expression she had never seen from her before. She suddenly realized what was different. Judith was taking her younger sister seriously.

Sally took a gulp of coffee and braced herself.

‘You’re not angry with me any more?’ she began.

‘I rang my doctor to discuss you. I had to. I was worried. He took it all very seriously. He told me to be very careful, and I do what doctors tell me, Sally. I think you ought to see him and get yourself checked.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘You should see him.’

Sally decided to give way on that one. The next few minutes were going to be hard enough, without an added disagreement over the doctor.

She forced herself to say what had to be said. She felt very nervous. She wasn’t yet quite as strong as she had thought. ‘I … I’ve a lot to tell you, Judith. Yesterday, I began to realize, without really realizing it, if that makes sense, that – this’ll sound trite, but to me it’s massive – that I have only two ways I can go. Up or down. I decided to go up. Again, I didn’t really realize I had decided.’

Judith didn’t speak. Sally had the distinct impression that she was listening properly to her, with all her being, for the first time in her life.

She told Judith about the cliff edge, about how she strode towards it before she saw the boat. If Judith had been silent before, she was now very silent. Sally was grateful for that. She sensed that if she didn’t tell the whole story now, she never would.

She told her next about her financial situation.

‘You mean …’ said Judith. ‘No. Carry on.’

‘You’re right,’ said Sally. ‘Doing those three viewings was a farce.’

‘You could have told me.’

‘No. I couldn’t.’

‘But you can today?’

‘Yes.’

And then she told Judith about the letter to her son. She had an awful feeling that she was going to cry. She didn’t want to. She hoped that she had cried herself out. If she cried again, she felt that she might let it destroy her, that she would cry and cry and crawl away to die like a sick rabbit.

She had an awful feeling, also, that Judith was going to cry. She had never seen her sister cry. She wondered if she ever had cried. She didn’t cry now, but Sally believed that she had come close to it, that she had been truly moved. But the memory of how utterly she had failed to recognize what was going on in Barry’s head was too recent; understanding Judith was a hope, an objective, but not yet, if ever, a reality.

Even when Sally had finished speaking, Judith said nothing. Sally had the impression that she had hunted for the correct words and not found them.

‘Well, Judith,’ she said. ‘We’d better cancel that viewing.’

Judith looked shocked, almost as shocked as at anything in Sally’s tale.

‘Do we need to? Can’t we just go?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve already rearranged it. Difficult now to cancel it.’