A short story by Charlotte Philby

Hattie’s grandmother was dying, so was it really time for champagne?

Other than the purr of the engine, the car park was silent. The young woman’s fingers clung to the key for a few seconds longer than necessary before, with a sharp intake of breath, she turned it towards her. Without the headlights, the darkness was unsettling. Gradually, she became aware of the warm fuzz of light from the building behind her, deceptive in its appearance.

Two storeys, red brick; uniform windows overlooking a leafy Hampstead street; an inelegant box between Georgian houses.

She closed her eyes, steeling herself, allowing for a quick glance in the rear-view mirror of the car – her first car. How proud her grandmother had been when Hattie called to tell her she had passed her test. She’d laughed approvingly. “A girl needs her independence.”

Raising her hands to warm her fingers with her breath, Hattie looked away from her reflection, not allowing herself too long with her thoughts – she couldn’t risk the tears welling up again. As she looked away, she caught sight of the L-plates which she had yet to take down. She told herself she had been too busy, too distracted by her return from university, her job on the newspaper… with “everything that was going on”. but the truth was she wasn’t ready to take them down. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to go it alone.

“You’re here.” Her mother’s voice was unnaturally upbeat, muffled on the other side of the car. Hattie swallowed before pushing open the door and stepping into the night air. It was not long past 7pm but winter had folded in quickly, catching her by surprise, the chill seeming to grab her in a silent headlock.

“Sorry, the traffic on Malden

Road was terrible.” She pushed away the image of her Fiat Punto pulled over on the street outside the car park, her body completely still but for the tears that streamed down her cheeks.

“That’s OK, you’re here now, and she’s…” She didn’t finish her sentence, she didn’t have to.

The man at the reception desk nodded, respectfully, the perfect note of restrained cheer. Death’s stoical foreman. Hattie tried to smile back at him, but the skin pulled sharply at her mouth.

“They’re not wards,” her grandmother had explained, that first day. “They’re rooms. This one’s mine – have you seen the view? Only the best for this old toad.”

Her voice was pride laced with a hint of the absurd, her signature. She had giggled then. The same conspiratorial wink she had given when, years earlier, she would defend Hattie against her mother’s dressings-down, the Christmas her father left. “It’s not you she’s angry with, it’s him,” her grandmother whispered and Hattie nodded, grateful for her grandmother’s support, for her indomitable free spirit. It was the same wink she would use to soften the impact when, three months ago, she told her granddaughter of her diagnosis.

“Don’t get old, Hattie – there’s no future in it.” She had laughed, taking a slug of brandy from a china cup, but there was a flash of terror, too, in the blue of her eyes, so fleeting that Hattie would later wonder if she had imagined it.

“I’m just popping to the loo, I’ll meet you in there.” Her mother’s expression was swollen, child-like, under the strip lighting of the corridor. Inside, the room had the same chalky magnolia scent Hattie remembered from the old rambling farmhouse where she had spent summers as a child and weekends through her university years. The cupboards stuffed with out-of-date tins and the freezer packed with bags of paprika chicken.

Her grandmother’s eyes were closed now. Hattie should say something. She should tell her grandmother she was here. “She can hear every word you say,” the nurse had assured them a few days earlier, though her voice was drowned out by the thoughts that clogged Hattie’s mind. How could it have happened so quickly? Why hadn’t they been warned?

Without her grandmother’s laughter, the silence was so all-consuming that Hattie did not know how to break it. She was relieved when she heard her mother in the doorway, her face frozen in an unconvincing smile.

“Is this… will she…?” Hattie’s words fell away. Her mother was on the other side of the bed, busy as ever, shuffling items around the bedside table: a small tray of drinking water and the sponge from which her grandmother could now barely suck. A pile of books; stories she started collecting as a nurse, in the war. Hattie felt a stab of pain. Clearing her throat, she reached into her bag. “I bought something. Grandma, it’s champagne.”

Looking at the motionless body in the bed, she felt foolish, guilty for thinking this would be a good idea. For thinking they still had time. “What a great idea.” Her mother laughed, drawing two plastic glasses from next to the water jug as Hattie popped the cork. Smiling, her mother poured a small amount of champagne into the tray and carefully dabbed the sponge into the bubbles. “Here you go, Mum.”

Hattie watched as her grandmother’s lips pursed around the sponge, the corners of her mouth gently lifting in a smile.

Charlotte Philby’s debut novel, The Most Difficult Thing (Borough Press, £12.99), is out on Thursday. See Express Bookshop on page 77.