When Petals Fall | Geves Lafosse

Prologue

Sunlight gilds her skin. She’s fifteen months old, and kneels on a carpet of shredded flowers, plucking them from their stems, her eyes and fingers absorbing the colours and textures. Beyond her is London in the height of summer, and the blasts from traffic and lawnmowers throw the quiet little scene into relief. As I watch, I press into memory the scent of cut grass, my daughter’s expression, the blue of her dungarees and the pinks and lilacs of falling petals. It’s two years before her diagnosis.

I open my eyes to silence the alarm. It’s dark, and the rain spatters an irregular beat against the glass. Leaving the light off, I grapple across the room to find my running clothes, and I pull them on. They are stiff and musky with yesterday’s sweat. Hushing the bedroom door closed on my sleeping husband, I step through a quiet house, hearing no sounds from the children’s rooms. Outside, icy rain pricks my face. I have no hat, or gloves, but turn anyway towards the hill that leads out of the village. As I run, the slick blackness of the pavement judders under the light from my head torch. It’s steep, and I push my legs to turn faster, whipping my stubborn lungs into a pattern. Inbreath, step, step, outbreath, inbreath, step, step, outbreath. Halfway up the hill, I welcome the pain that edges into the large muscles of my thighs and my calves. Inbreath, step, step, outbreath. I pull the pain closer, and it strums through me in cleansing beats. I go harder, and my breathing breaks into ragged snatches as I top the hill. I enforce the rhythm. Inbreath, step, step, outbreath, inbreath, step, step, outbreath. I turn my legs faster, ignoring the shriek of muscles that want me to stop. I stumble on the mud-wet road, heart racing, but I won’t slow. Won’t stop. My living, breathing body pulses with blood, and it will feel every note of this pain. I run a rope noose of lanes, fluid streaming from my mouth and nose, then back through the graveyard, purging my mind of what I know lies there. I run until my knee pops, and keep going.

On a cold mid-winter Monday morning, Juliette stood next to me in the kitchen with her face lifted to mine and announced its arrival.

‘Mummy,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a lump on my cheek.’

I dried my hands and bent down to look. Juliette’s blond hair shifted, and in that instant, I saw two bulges the size of robins’ eggs under my three-year-old’s chin, but where she pointed to was under her left cheekbone.

Gently, I felt the place. There was a hard lump, the shape of a peanut, which didn’t move as I pressed it. ‘That’s a bit strange, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not really.’ Juliette shook her head and smiled up at me. Her green eyes were bright.

I was seasoned in children’s illnesses. Juliette, her five-year-old sister, Elodie, and younger brother, Pierre, almost two, had all had the normal childhood run of chickenpox, coughs and colds, and tummy upsets. Other than her swollen glands and being slightly pale, Juliette didn’t seem unwell. But the three children had not had the Measles Mumps Rubella vaccination, and I was twelve weeks’ pregnant. Should I be worried?

‘I think we’ll take you to the doctor, darling,’ I said.

I made an appointment then rang Juliette’s nursery to explain, knowing there had just been a chickenpox outbreak amongst the children there.

‘Let’s hope it isn’t mumps,’ said the nursery manager.

At the surgery, the doctor pressed the lump in Juliette’s cheek, and then felt around her neck.

‘Is it mumps?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know if you remember, but I’m pregnant. Would mumps affect the baby?’

‘The only risk is if you didn’t have it as a child.’ The doctor raised his eyebrows. These were long and bushy, and the reason Elodie and Juliette called him “the eyebrow doctor.” He was a nice man.

‘I’ve had mumps,’ I said.

‘Nothing to worry about, then.’ He looked at Juliette. ‘Anyway, I don’t think that’s what this is, but then I see so few cases these days I can’t be sure.’

‘What do you think it might be, then?’

‘Oh, probably a virus.’ He scrutinised Juliette. ‘I’d like to keep an eye on it, though. I won’t be here next week, so if the swellings haven’t gone down, can you bring Juliette to see my partner?’ He paused. ‘Actually, I think I’ll ask him to take a look at her now. Is that okay, Juliette?’ She nodded.

The doctor pressed the intercom button on his desk and mumbled a few words into it. After a moment, the senior partner appeared, and in silence, he examined Juliette.

The first doctor locked eyes with his partner. ‘I don’t think it’s anything malignant?’

‘No,’ the senior partner said firmly. ‘Probably some virus, but it’s as well to monitor it.’

That evening, Stéphane arrived home while I was bathing the children. I told him about our visit to the doctor. Sitting on the edge of the bath, he said, ‘Can I see, Loobyloo?’ Juliette tilted her head for her dad, a small smile on her face. She loved being the centre of attention. ‘Strange,’ he said, feeling the lump on Juliette’s cheek. ‘They don’t know what it is?’

‘They didn’t seem worried, just to take her back if the lumps don’t go down.’

The next day, Juliette woke up full of energy. ‘Am I going to school, Mummy?’ she asked.

I stifled a yawn. My first trimester tiredness hadn’t lifted yet. If Juliette took her zest to school, my morning at home with

Pierre would be slightly more peaceful, and the doctor hadn’t told me to keep her away from other children.

‘If you’d like to go, sweetheart.’ I said. ‘Do you feel okay?’

‘I’m fine.’ Happy, Juliette bounced and pumped her fists.

When we arrived at the nursery, I smiled at the manager who’d been worried about a case of mumps. ‘False alarm,’ I said. ‘It’s just a virus.’ Juliette gave me a brief hug, then strode towards her friends already playing in the light-filled converted barn.

I collected Juliette at lunchtime. A member of staff said she had been, ‘a little less energetic than usual, but alright.’ Juliette fell asleep in the car on the way home, but this was normal for her.

The following morning, we had our weekly music group. Juliette and her little brother, Pierre, both loved it. Although Juliette was still pale, she sang along to The Wheels on the Bus and Wind the Bobbin up, just as she always did.

In a gap between songs, one of the mothers asked about Juliette’s swollen glands. I shrugged. ‘Still there, but she seems fine.’ Juliette was sitting beside me on the floor. I asked her to look up, so that my friend could see.

‘Wow,’ said the mother, and I looked more closely. The lumps under Juliette’s chin had definitely grown.

Over the next two days, Juliette looked paler, and the swellings did not shrink. Stéphane and I were taking the children to London for a pre-Christmas weekend with old friends, and they had a new baby. What if Juliette had something contagious? I made a second appointment for her at the busy Saturday morning surgery to rule it out.

In going back to work, Stéphane had ostensibly returned to normal life, and there was an enormous force of expectation or hope from others that like him, I should wind back my grief and re-engage with the living. Ten weeks on, outwardly I did everything that was expected. I made meals, cleaned the house, and took the children out. I went through the motions to disguise the fact that my body and mind had become a giant, bleeding wound from which Juliette had been brutally extracted. Every day I tried to act as though I was managing my emotions in the hope that eventually I would feel it.

I'd made a dentist appointment for Elodie, Juliette and Pierre before we left for Southwold, and I decided to keep it. The children loved their dentist. She spoke several decibels louder than necessary, with a huge smile and very small words. At previous appointments after a perfunctory sweep of their mouths, she had removed her glove and blown air into it.

‘Lady or man?’ she asked.

According to the reply, she delighted the children by drawing a face on the latex with permanent markers. This appointment was a little different.

‘How was your holiday in Southwold?’ she boomed.

‘Well, not great. Juliette died.’

She deflated like one of her gloves.

‘I'm so sorry,’ she whispered.

I sat with Raphi on my lap, wishing I had cancelled the appointment. The dentist’s eyes filled with tears as she examined Pierre’s mouth and my instinct was to say something comforting, but I had no energy whatsoever to make our tragedy easier for anyone else. It had taken all my reserves just to leave the house, to do this normal thing. I wanted to be back there with the door shut, so I could howl in private.

Over the past couple of weeks I'd watched the panic on others’ faces as they groped for the right words. What were these words? Sometimes I wanted to hear that they too had loved Juliette, and for them to tell me what they missed about her. At other times, I wanted them to gloss over it, because then I wasn’t plunged back into the depths. I wanted to hear what they loved and remembered about her. Always, especially if there was any uncertainty, I preferred to hear, ‘I’m just so sorry, I don’t know what to say,’ than for people to say nothing at all. It was an impossible, awful situation. I wouldn’t have known what to say to me either.