the severity of it from the children. The cancer had metastasised all over her body and she knew there would be no remission. When I arranged for the kids to go on the skiing holiday, she saw a window of opportunity, to leave without fuss a life that promised nothing but more suffering, physical and emotional. She didn’t want to die in a hospital, or a hospice, looked after by strangers, however kind. ‘I’ve had enough, Des,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure how much longer I can stay in control. I’m tired. It’s time to go, and you’ve got to help me.’ I think our GP guessed her intention and decided tacitly to cooperate. Her principal means of pain relief was a battery-operated syringe driver - a fairly new device in those days - which administered a continuous supply of diamorphine subcutaneously, refilled by the visiting nurse as required. Maisie was able to increase the supply herself according to need, but only up to a safe level. She also used Distalgesic tablets when the pain was very bad. Towards the end of Christmas week our GP wrote a prescription for a larger than usual quantity, ‘to see you through the New Year holiday’, and as he handed it over he looked me in the eye and said: ‘Too many of these combined with alcohol can be dangerous.’ On the last night of the year I crushed twenty Distalgesic tablets and helped Maisie swallow them in a mixture of warm milk and brandy. She turned up the syringe driver to maximum. I kissed her, lit a night-light candle beside the bed, and lay down beside her, holding her hand, until she fell into a deep sleep. Then I sat in an armchair and watched her breathing until I fell asleep myself. When I woke at 4 a.m., the candle was out, and she was dead, her face quite peaceful, her limbs relaxed. I called the doctor at six and he came round. He didn’t ask any questions, and in due course he signed the death certificate. Later that morning I phoned the ski resort in Austria to tell Anne and Richard.
‘You poor darling,’ Fred said, when I had finished my story.While we had been talking daylight had faded outside the windows and the red glow of the electric fire was the only illumination in the room. She came across and knelt on the floor and took my hands in hers. ‘How awful for you. And how brave you were.’
‘Not as brave as Maisie,’ I said.‘But would you do the same for me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Catholics aren’t supposed to, of course . . . but if it came to the point, and you asked, I probably would. What you did for Maisie was an act of love.’
‘I’d like to think so,’ I said. ‘But the trouble is, I wanted her to die. I wanted the whole miserable business to be over - almost as much, I believe, as she did. I had to struggle to conceal my relief afterwards, disguising it under grief. It left me with a residual sense of guilt that I think I’ve never entirely got rid of. And now it’s all happening again. Of course I don’t want Dad’s life to drag on pointlessly - but not just because it would be horrible for him. Because it would be horrible for me.’
We talked for a long time, and Fred did her best to convince me that I had no reason to reproach myself over the death of Maisie, nor would I if I decided against the PEG procedure for Dad. She invoked some abstruse Catholic casuistry about ‘double effect’ - if you did something with a good reason but a bad side effect then it wasn’t a sin, something like that. I wasn’t sure how it fitted my case, but I was grateful for her support. In the event I was spared the decision. Dad developed a chest infection over the weekend and by the time I had the interview with Kannangara it was obvious that he was in rapid and irreversible decline. Meanwhile Fred and I camped out in the house in Lime Avenue. Neither of us felt like sleeping in Dad’s bed, or sleeping apart, so we took the mattresses off both beds and made up one for ourselves on the floor of the lounge, the one room in the house that still looked in any way inviting. We did not attempt to