The Last Smile

*Warning, contains content of child loss that some readers may find upsetting. 

It had been twenty-four years since she’d seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. Twenty-four years to the day, and it was for that very reason that she nearly didn’t go. To come back on the exact same date that she swore she’d never step foot in that place again seemed too much like cruel irony. 

But it had to be today. Tomorrow might be too late. 

A crisp wind whipped the leaves up beneath Sharon’s feet and seized her scarf, threatening to carry it away. She caught the fabric before it escaped and tucked it securely into her tweed coat. 

She’d been standing at the end of the driveway for a while already, trying to swallow the pride that had kept her away all these years. But the pride kept creeping back up again, like the sour taste of bile. 

At first it was anger that stopped her from coming. No, not anger. Outrage. Resentment. Maybe a little bit of shame mixed in there too. But now it was definitely the pride. 

There’d been several occasions over the years where she almost backed down, almost came. 

Last year she’d made it as far as the M25 before she decided she couldn’t - wouldn’t - do it, took the nearest slip road and headed back up north. 

She still wasn’t certain this wasn’t just another one of those occasions; that she wouldn’t ring the doorbell and run away like a child playing a game of Knock Down Ginger. 

But she knew that she needed closure, and this was going to be her last chance to get it. The last chance she’d have before the final grain of life-giving sand slipped out of the hourglass and took the opportunity away.

It was early evening, but at this time of the year it was already dark outside. The lights were on in the living room, which meant Sharon could see everything inside. That alone was proof that things were really bad. Her mother had always been very particular about privacy

She was sitting in a wheelchair, pulled up beside the bergère where she would normally sit. The yellowish glow of a TV lit up her face. A face that was significantly different.

She’d expected her to look older. It had been almost a quarter of a century and the woman was on her deathbed, of course she was going to look older. But Sharon hadn’t prepared herself for this; for a face that was grey and both sunken and puffy at the same time, and a body so frail it looked like she would shatter at the slightest touch. 

Perhaps it was better she had changed beyond recognition. Perhaps it would make this conversation easier if the woman no longer looked like her mother. 

The room she sat in, however, looked completely unchanged. There was the same wallpaper, the same furniture, all arranged in exactly the same way. The decor had been dated twenty-four years ago, now it was historic. Or perhaps it’s one of those things that circles back around to become fashionable again.

Sharon placed a cigarette into her mouth, cupping her hand around the end as she set it alight. She already tasted like an ashtray, and couldn’t count how many deathsticks she’d worked her way through since she left home this morning. She blamed her mother for that, too. 

She’d stopped smoking the best part of a decade ago, but the reality of seeing her mother again forced her hand, and she had to stop at the first Newsagents she saw upon leaving Leicester, and again when she was nearing Luton. 

When there was just a nub of it left, she dropped the cigarette to the ground along with the others and stomped it out beneath her kitten heel shoes. 

She breathed out a plume of smoke on her way up the garden path, and it drifted off into the cool evening air in a way that made Sharon envious of its ease of escape. If only she could float away, drift into the clouds and float above the earth. Life would seem more bearable. 

She rapped loudly on the door three times using the tarnished brass knocker, then stood waiting with her sweaty palms clasped together in front of her, and began to count. If no one had answered by the time she got to ten, she’d give herself permission to leave. 

She decided to count quickly. 

One...Two...Three...Four...Five...Six...Seven… 

“Hello, can I help you?” 

The woman who answered the door was not her mother. She wore a light blue tunic with a collar and white detailing, there was a watch clipped to the breast pocket, and an ID badge clipped to the waistband of her trousers. 

Donna James. Nurse. 

“I’m Marleen’s daughter,” Sharon said nervously. 

“Marleen never mentioned a daughter.”  

Sharon felt a familiar gripe rising from her throat.

“It’s alright, Donna. Let her in.” 

Aunt Mary barely looked a day older than the last time Sharon had seen her. She wore an ivory coloured cardigan, a matching knee-length skirt and a scowl on her face that said a thousand words. But her mouth only said six. 

“I didn’t think you would come.”

Sharon shrugged. Neither did she. 

“Come on through.” Aunt Mary nodded toward the living room, and Sharon followed her in. “Marleen, you’ve got a visitor.” 

She spoke loudly, practically shouting, but Marleen didn’t respond. 

Her eyelids were heavy as she continued squinting in the glow of the TV - predictably, the six o’clock news. Her skin looked like overbaked pastry, patchy in colour and cracking. 

“Marleen,” Aunty Mary said, even more loudly, and slowly Marleen’s eyes shifted toward her daughter. 

“Sarah.” The word sounded like a gurgle and as it pushed its way through a collection of phlegm, but Sharon heard it clear as day. 

And it made her blood boil. 

Twenty-four years of silence, and the first word Marleen spoke was one she knew would be like a dagger to Sharon’s heart. 

“I’ll get some tea,” Aunt Mary said as she left the room. 

Sharon took a seat on the sofa. It was a duller shade of cream now, more beige than anything, and fabric was fraying at the arm. But beneath the tatters Sharon could see a line of blue ink, and for just a second her heart stopped beating. 

Sarah had been curled up in the corner of the sofa, doodling in a notebook. She got distracted by something on the TV and didn’t notice when her pen slipped off the paper, permanently marking the - then new - three piece suit. 

Sharon had gone ballistic, jumping up, spilling tea, and screaming at her three-year-old daughter. Her reaction was so startling that Sarah immediately descended into floods of tears and wouldn’t stop sobbing for about half an hour. 

Marleen, on the other hand, was nonchalant about the sofa. She called it her “Sarah splodge” and said she’d think of her granddaughter and smile every time she saw it. 

Sharon brushed the mark gently with her fingers. There was so much she wished she could change. So much she wished she could take back. All of the snarky comments. All of the disregard. All of the times she made her daughter feel like something as unimportant as the washing up was more important than her. 

Sharon remembered her life back then, and how it had felt like a series of constant chores: cooking, washing up, doing the laundry, picking up the endless stream of toys that seemed to follow Sarah around the house like a conga line. She felt inundated with it, crushing under the pressure of trying to keep up. But the second Sarah was gone, she realised how truly little she really cared about all of that other stuff. 

“I didn’t know how you take your tea now.” Aunt Mary placed a tray on the coffee table. There was an envelope between the teapot and a bowl of sugar cubes. She picked it up and held it out to Sharon.  

“Your mother wanted you to have this.” She said it as though Marleen were not even in the room. “With the way her memory was going, she felt like she had to write it down.” 

Sharon looked at the letter in her aunt’s hands and hesitated. 

Mary’s scowl returned. “You don’t have to read it. But it’s the least you could do.” 

Sharon took the envelope.

It had clearly been sealed once upon a time, but age had dried the glue out and now it only stuck in a couple of places. Sharon stuck her index finger into one of the gaping holes and swiped along the flap to open it. 

Inside was a small piece of paper with only two dozen words written on it. The letters were a shaky scrawl that barely resembled her mother’s handwriting. 

Sharon read them to herself silently, all too aware of her aunt’s scrutinizing glare. 

Dearest Sharon, 

I loved Sarah, too. 

I never blamed you for what happened. 

I’m sorry if you thought I did. 

I love you. 

Mum.   

It felt like someone had shoved their fist down Sharon’s throat, taken hold of her heart and squeezed it violently. 

Her mother didn’t blame her? 

But she did. Didn’t she? 

Wasn’t that the very reason that Sharon had walked away from this place, swearing never to step foot in it again until her mother was literally on her deathbed? 

Suddenly overcome with guilt, confusion and a rising sense of hysteria, Sharon forced the memory into her mind. 

It was twenty-four years, and six weeks ago…

Sharon had been at work all day and got stuck in traffic on the way to pick Sarah up from nursery. The manager scolded her for being late, again, and explained that unfortunately they’d have to charge her for the extra half hour this time. As if Sharon could afford that on her minimum wage, single parent income. 

She didn’t have time to cook a proper dinner, so once again Sarah was sitting at the table eating beans on toast for tea. Not that she seemed to mind as she picked up fistfuls of slippery, saucy beans and shovelled them into her mouth. She seemed to be having a great time. Though, of course, after all that she needed a bath. 

This was also welcome news to Sarah. She loved the bath. 

For her birthday, she’d received a toy whale that flashed and sprayed water and it had rapidly become her new favourite. She loved it when the bathroom lights were off as it made the whale’s psychedelic colour display even more fascinating. 

Sharon smiled at her daughter, pulled the light cord so that he bathroom plunged into darkness, and told Sarah that she’d be back in just one minute. 

She went into her bedroom to grab the washing basket, and on the way downstairs collected every stray sock she could find. She rammed everything into the machine, glugged an unknown quantity of detergent into the draw, and hit buttons at random until she could hear the satisfying sound of water filling the drum. 

When she turned around she noticed that Sarah had used the baked beans to do some Jackson Pollock inspired artwork on the dining table. She grabbed a wet cloth to clean it before she forgot and rinsed and repeated until the table had returned to its former glory. 

Then, just as she was about to go back upstairs, her stomach grumbled an aggressive complaint. As usual, she hadn’t eaten breakfast, but she’d left both her lunch and her purse at home too, so all she’d had to eat that day was a packet of stale crisps she found at the back of her desk drawer. 

She turned the oven on and went to the fridge freezer to find something for her dinner. She hadn’t been shopping for nearly a week. It was slim pickings. Eventually she found a battered up pizza box in the metal basket of the freezer where the vegetables ought to be. She slid the broken margherita onto a tray and shoved it in the oven before heading back upstairs. 

“Just five more minutes!” she shouted along the way.  

She could pinpoint the exact moment she knew something wasn’t right. She was three steps away from the landing, and besides the creaking floorboards underfoot, she couldn’t hear a thing. No laughing. No splashing. Absolute silence. 

It was one of those moments all parents go through when their toddler is suspiciously quiet. When your heart falls into your stomach and your mind is stuck between oh no, what are they up to, and please, God, let them be okay. 

But on this occasion Sarah wasn’t okay. 

She was under the water. Completely still. The net that was supposed to be suctioned to the wall, holding in all her bath toys, was now wrapped around her small body. Rubber ducks floated aimlessly around her.

Over the next several minutes Sharon didn’t think. She only did. 

She hauled her baby girl out of the rainbow coloured water and dropped her onto the hallway carpet. 

She searched for a pulse. She couldn’t find one. 

She listened for a breath. She couldn’t hear it. 

She scrambled for her phone, and at first her slippery fingers wouldn’t work on the touchscreen. She cursed. She wiped her hands along the carpet and tried again. Success. She called 999. 

She couldn’t remember much after that. Couldn’t remember the journey to the hospital, or what the room had been like where she was waiting. She couldn’t remember the face of the doctor who came out to give her the news, but she could remember his words: 

“I’m sorry. We did all that we could, but we were not able to save Sarah.”

And she could remember the stark contrast in emotions. How the sheer terror that woke up every fibre of her being was swiftly replaced by absolute numbness, like her own life had ended the moment her daughter’s had. 

Her mother had picked her up from the hospital, and Sharon had stayed in her childhood home for a full two weeks, unable to do anything but sleep. 

Aunt Mary had done her fair share of journeying back and forth to Sharon’s house, fetching her clothes, clearing up the bathroom, and eradicating anything that could trigger the painful memory. Except for Sarah’s bedroom. She left that exactly as it was, unmade bed and all. 

The first time Sharon had stepped into her home again, she had been adamant it was something she needed to do alone. She climbed into Sarah’s small bed and sobbed until exhaustion overcame her, then woke up with an excruciating headache several hours later. 

It was six weeks after Sarah’s death that Sharon had last spoken to her mother. They’d been sitting together in the living room, Marleen in her bergère, Sharon on the sofa, stroking the Sarah Splodge with tear filled eyes. 

As usual, she was ruminating about that dreadful day. Wishing that she hadn’t shouted at Sarah to “hurry up” that morning. Wishing she’d given her ice cream for dessert when she’d asked for it. Wishing that she’d never bought that damn toy net for the bathroom, and wondering why she never heard Sarah calling for help. 

Time and time again, she asked her mother, “What could I have done to save her?”

Every other time she asked it, Marleen’s response was, “Nothing darling. You did everything you could.” 

But that day, on that occasion, the response was different. She looked into her cup of tea, blew on it gently, and whispered: “You could have not left her in the bath alone.” 

Sharon screamed. Just a sound at first, not even words, but the words quickly found their way out, and they didn’t stop spewing from her like a crack in a water pipe until she was in the car, halfway home. 

And then she had not spoken a single word to her mother again, until now. 

“Hi, mum,” she said, reaching out to touch Marleen’s cold, soft hand. 

Marleen tilted her head at Sharon, and a weak smile found its way onto her lips. 

“Sarah.” She sighed happily. And no one argued. 

They stayed that way until the six o’clock news turned into the ten o’clock news, turned into the rolling news channel for the night. Until Marleen’s eyes fell shut, and her skin became colder and colder. 

Until no amount of coaxing could stir her, and she was finally gone for good. 

Sharon couldn’t help but wonder what life would have looked like if she’d answered one of her mother’s many phone calls, if she’d answered the door when she knocked. If she’d done anything other than stubbornly shut her out of her life. 

Perhaps the years wouldn’t have been quite so hard. Perhaps they wouldn’t have hardened her quite so much. Maybe she would have been a kinder, happier person. Maybe she would have found a way to live again, if she hadn’t been doing it alone. 

Perhaps she would have more memories of her mother to cherish, now that she was gone, more smiles to remember. 

But as she looked at her mother’s face, old and strained as it was, she could still see the glimmer of that last smile lingering on her lips, and Sharon knew she was the one that put it there. 

Even if only for a few hours, they had been together, they had been at peace, and that was all that mattered.