I wish I could stop the pain of this happiness.

The orchestra plays ‘Happy Birthday to You’, Mum’s all smiles, and Dad’s playfully ruffling my hair as my cheeks redden at the attention. I’m literally beaming with joy as Bath’s Grand Pump Room erupts into applause, my bulging eyes flitting between the chocolate cake being carried my way and Mum, my beautiful mum, whose mouth forms the words ‘I love you’. This is where this dream should end. Where it would end. If only I could make that happen. 

I’d pause it right there and we’d live forever in the moment. My family. Together.

But I can’t. 

I can never stop this grotesquely familiar memory from playing out to its conclusion when I close my eyes at night.

And, however hard I try to rewrite the ending, I never reach her hand before it slips away. Before she slips away. Gone before I can say sorry.

I was supposed to simply blow the Death Star to smithereens and fly away, my new X-Wing fighter battle-scared but triumphant. Instead, after shattering Alderaan into space debris, the Death Star would further demonstrate its unquenchable thirst for destruction by wiping out my entire world. 

“Wake up, Jimmy. He’s pissed on the couch, again! I told you if he did it again, he’d have to go. So much for you making him stop. It’s gross! He’s gross! First, you’re going to rub his nose in it, then you’re finding him a new home. Do you hear me?”

I do hear her. So, too, do the startled birds I’ve just watched flee the tree outside our bedroom window, flapping for their lives as they try to escape her shrill scream of frustration. 

I should be glad that Amber’s shocked me from my sleep, forcibly ended my recurring nightmare before it reached its blood-curdling climax. But I also know what’s coming next in this particular drama. I’m just hoping that if I stay silent, her anger will swiftly abate.

No such luck. 

“What the hell was that for?” I shout, recoiling from the impact of a pillow hitting my head.

“Don’t ignore me, Jimmy, you know I hate being ignored! I want him out of here.”

She’s right. I know both those things, especially the latter.

“Look, Amber,” I say, in a tone that demands attention and hopefully a little understanding. “Firstly, rubbing his nose in it is inhumane. It’s beyond cruel. And secondly, he’s not a dog, he’s my grandad, and he’s not going into a home.”

The thing about being slapped in the face by Amber (which has been a regular occurrence this past week) is that it tends to elicit distinct behavioural responses from each of us. She will scream her frustration and storm off. I will clean up Grandad’s piss. Pavlov would have loved us. 

Arguing with Amber this morning was not how I needed the day to begin. I barely slept last night for thinking about the people I must make redundant today, due to my own mistakes, not theirs. I keep worrying about how each one is likely to react. Jo Symington will no doubt frantically wave her hand in front of her eyes (like a hummingbird vibrating its tiny wings) to try and stop herself crying. Greg Nolan will probably shrug his shoulders, apathetic at the news, ask how much he’ll receive as a redundancy payment and exit the office with a stash of stolen stationery. Star Wars fanatic Guy Lambert will try and use ‘The Force’ to crush my windpipe with his fingers while standing fifteen feet away, then depart in silence when it hits home that he isn’t a Sith Lord. In fact, only Jordan Chambers remains a wild card.

Jordan’s been with us less than a month, a hire of Heidi’s, the group editor at my publishing company, Bath Time Inc. Heidi always bring new recruits into my office on the day they start, to say a quick hello, but she never did so with Jordan. All I know of him is the date he joined, and that he has no significant others to support; information gleaned from a list I asked for, to select the thirty percent of staff I need to lose to cut costs. A mere sticking plaster over a gaping wound. 

Once Jordan is sitting opposite me, I see the obvious signs of his youthfulness. The spots around his mouth; the attempt to hide them by growing a hipster beard; the haircut that suggests he shares a barber with Kim Jong-un. Comfortingly, this also tells me he has plenty of time to bounce back. 

I get straight to the point. “Listen, Jordan. Financial pressure dictates that I have to let you go. I’m genuinely very sorry.”

Jordan looks bemused. “I don’t get what you’re saying?” he replies. 

“Well, to put it another way, I cannot afford to pay you to work here any longer.”

“What?” 

Surely he can’t still be in the dark? 

“But you barely pay me anything as it is,” he then says, his brow furrowed as if still confused, or appalled. I settle on the latter, and it touches a nerve.

“Barely pay you anything? You ungrateful little shit! You’ve only been with us five minutes.” I can feel my heart drumming its rage. “You know, your attitude epitomizes the greed of your entire generation. This insatiable appetite for instant attention, instant appraisal, and instant gratification, coupled with this wildly misplaced belief that you can turn your hand to anything so long as you believe. There are no ladders to climb in your world, no dog turds on your road to success. 

“You lot are the reason we now have all these fame-hungry, chef-cum-fitness freaks on TV like Abs Fab, knocking out five-minute, five-ingredient, sugar, wheat, and flavour-free recipes in between doing ten-second bursts of jumping sodding jacks, just because you want everything immediately, without expending any effort.

“Well, guess what? The instant is fleeting. Contentment comes over time. You need to take the rough with the smooth. It’s a fairytale wedding one day, and a Tinder date with Piers Morgan the next. 

“But you should make a commitment and stick to it. Not just scarper at the first whiff of piss, like the rest of them. 

“And here’s something else you can do instantly; get out of my office! You’re fired!” 

“What’s all this about?” Heidi asks, entering my office as Jordan shrugs his shoulders at her on his way out.

“I need to save money,” I snap.

“By sacking my intern? We only pay for his bus fare to come to work.”

“Jordan is your intern? Then why the hell is he listed as permanent staff?”

“What’s wrong?” Heidi asks, her concern clear.

“At the moment, pretty much everything. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

Instead of talking to Heidi, I head straight to The Sitting Duck to confide in Stella Artois. I’ve made the same journey so many times of late that Amber now refers to Stella as my mistress. As such, Stella’s aware of everything: the fat lady ready to sing of Bath Time Inc.’s imminent downfall; the fear that I’m unable to make Amber happy, or even less angry, which would be a start; and at the top of my mind right now, my overwhelming sense of hopelessness about Grandad’s health. It’s the third time this week he’s wet himself, but we haven’t discussed why. Or even that it’s happened. I suspect he’s too proud to acknowledge the fact, and I’m certainly too proud of him to say anything. Or perhaps he’s unaware. On most occasions he’s as sharp as a tack, like when he and Amber lock horns, but at other times it’s clear his mind has been blunted. 

My afternoon rendezvous with Stella accounts for why I’m now seeing double as I hand Grandad a tumbler full of Bushmills whiskey, no ice. It’s hard to recognise either of the two faces looking up at me as Grandad’s, both with sunken cheeks that drag the eyes down, their effervescence all but extinguished.

“Thanks, Jimmy love,” he says, his Belfast accent the one constant, having never softened despite his many years in the US.

Grandad’s sitting in his chair. It’s chestnut brown, its leather worn to a shade of almond on the arms, and to me it’s never empty. Even when he forgets that’s where he sits, I still picture him sitting there, his stomach jiggling as he laughs at something on the TV. 

“Is Amber all right?” he asks, once I’ve slumped onto what used to be a pristine white sofa, but one that is now stained a murky yellow in the middle of all three cushions. “She went straight up to bed when she came in.” 

“She’s fine,” I lie, having left four unanswered apologies on her voicemail. I’ve been apologising to Amber for the past few months, ever since she opened the door of her new home to the sight of a stark-naked old man struggling to put his teeth in. Screaming was the best I could have hoped for, as in hindsight I probably should have told her about Grandad before she gave up her life in the US to live with us in Bath. Yet hindsight also gave me reasons not to do so.

“Your grandmother made me happy,” he then says, the sides of his mouth curling into a smile and his eyes twinkling. “The first time she smiled at me, I was dumbstruck.” 

His eyes are focussed, but only on the past. “We were at a concert where I was part of the security, and she was in a crowd of thousands. They were all staring at the stage. All except your grandmother. She just kept looking at me.

“There was a queue for autographs afterwards at the stage door and your grandmother waited there for over three hours until she got to the front. When she finally made it, she ignored the star and asked me to write my name in her book! I didn’t stop laughing with her from then on.”

Grandad talks of my granny every day, but recently he’s been repeating the same stories even more frequently. This one has always been a favourite. 

“Now the kiss! The first time we kissed, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, true as God. And her laugh! Ah Jimmy, if you could only hear her laugh.

“She was a special woman, so she was. But what made us special was the laughter. Even when she was gravely ill and I knew she was in great pain, she’d find a way for us to smile every day. That was her magic. That was our magic. 

“And she’ll be smiling down from heaven at us now, Jimmy, so she will. Just as I will be smiling down at you when I’m gone.” 

I’m about to admonish him for having such thoughts when I see the sheen of tears in his eyes. 

He then tells me that his doctor informed him earlier this week that the prostate cancer has returned, only this time it’s come back as untreatable tumours on his brain. I wasn’t even aware he’d made an appointment.

Almost instantly, my body jolts and I’m sick onto my lap. The next thing I’m aware of is Grandad’s hand gently rubbing the back of my neck while my head dangles, and my vomit forms a trail from my jeans onto the sofa. Amber is going to kill me, I think. 

“I know, Jimmy. I know,” he says, unable to find any suitable words when none exist. “And you know, whether I’m up there, down here or, God forbid, right down there, it changes nothing. I love my wee Jimmy, and my wee Jimmy loves me.”

“Why didn’t you ask me to come with you to the doctor?” I protest. 

“For what reason? I didn’t want you to hear any of that.”

But I’m not wee anymore! I want to yell. I could have asked questions, challenged her, demanded a second opinion or a different drug, or a radical treatment in another country. I could have fought with every fibre of my being for another outcome. Any outcome other than this. I could have changed minds, overturned decisions, saved his life. I could have done it all, couldn’t I? 

Right now, I can barely even breathe. 

An intense heat rises, engulfing my whole head, and no amount of deep breathing can extinguish it. I blink wildly, trying to clear my blurred vision, while what feels like the weight of an anvil on my chest squeezes out an ever-faster beat from my heart.

I have an urge to slip down from the sofa and curl up into a ball on the floor, to protect myself from what’s happening. Not from what’s happening to my body. (It’s a panic attack. Another one.) But to protect myself from the unfolding situation. 

I make it down to my knees before Grandad picks me up. He holds my face in his hands and tells me that I’ll be all right, repeating the same words again and again in ever decreasing decibels so that the last time they leave his mouth, they are only a whisper. 

“I want all our moments together to be happy ones, Jimmy,” he says, as his brave smile forces my breaking heart to calm. 

I don’t ask him if he’s been told how long he has left. I don’t want this to be any more real by attaching a date to it. But as if reading my mind, he says, “I’m not sure when the last of my marbles will roll away, so I need to tell you something while I can still remember it.” He gently lowers me back to the sofa and returns to his chair. 

“You’ve made so many sacrifices for me, I’m going to sacrifice something for you.”

“Sacrifices? What are you talking about? You gave up your life for me. That’s a sacrifice. I’ve done nothing of the sort.” 

“We both know that’s not true, Jimmy. Don’t think I’m too far gone to know that money is the reason why you’ve been drunk almost every night these past few weeks,” he says, the room now seemingly set on a spin cycle. 

“Listen to me,” he instructs, edging forward in his chair. “I’ve a story for you that will shock the world. A secret I swore I’d never give up and never did — not even to your grandmother. You’ll know better than I do how to make as much money as possible from it, but I don’t doubt for one second that it’s highly valuable.”

Before Grandad has a chance to say anything else, I vomit again. Having at least managed to spare the sofa a second helping, I watch aghast as I heave in the direction of the Louboutins I bought Amber as a peace offering, and see a spray of sick, in apparent slow motion, before it splatters the limited-edition heels. 

“Are you okay, love?” he asks. And when I look up to offer false assurance, the speed at which I lift my head sends my brain spiralling, like an out-of-control carousel, the horse hooves crashing into my skull.

“Jimmy, are you listening? This secret...” 

Try as I might, I just can’t focus on Grandad’s words. They’re slipping past me. I’m concentrating too hard on taking deep breaths to force back a new wave of vomit that is rising. I fail and throw up into a bag I plucked from the floor at great haste. Amber’s Chanel tote. Another peace offering.

I hear Grandad sigh.

“I think it’s best we continue this conversation in the morning, when your head’s clear,” he says, defeated. “Though if you fancy a wee bit of bedtime reading, the story I have to tell you starts with these.” 

I can feel my brow crinkle in puzzlement. And when I raise my head gingerly from between my knees, I see that he’s placed two books beside me. My brow remains crinkled.

Both books are dog-eared and travel-stained, their titles unfamiliar: The Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Autobiography of a Yogi.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “Is this one of your jokes?” But when I turn to Grandad for an explanation, I see that he’s already halfway up the stairs to bed, chuckling away.

Next morning, my head remains foggy, and Grandad is dead.