Бесплатный фрагмент - As long as I remember you

Author’s Preface

This book was born from darkness.

When I was nineteen, the world I knew collapsed. It didn’t shatter in an instant — it began to slowly, inexorably dissolve, losing its color and sound, slipping through my fingers along with my memory. At first, there were only warning signs: dizzy spells I blamed on fatigue, headaches that seemed like mere nuisances on the path of everyday life.

But soon, the nuisance became a wall. The wall turned into a labyrinth from which I believed there was no escape. Navigating it was terrifying. Vague diagnoses were replaced by one that was clear and cold as a blade. My world shrank to the size of a hospital room, to the circle of light I could still make out, while everything else drowned in darkness. I began to lose my sight, my hearing, my strength. I forgot what happened yesterday. My future, once so bright and promising, narrowed to the next IV drip, the next pill, the next injection.

The words of doctors and acquaintances — «many people die from this,» «it’s rare at your age, but it happens» — hung in the air like a heavy, suffocating bell. Thoughts of impending death were not abstract philosophy — they were concrete and physically palpable. They were the chilling terror at three in the morning, when you feel utterly alone facing an infinite, silent void.

I prayed. I wept. I despaired. And I hoped. Cycles of flare-ups and remissions stretched over two long years. Life turned to shifting sand: today you can almost walk, tomorrow you can’t lift your head from the pillow.

But this story is not about illness. And it is certainly not about defeat.

This story is about the light we find in the deepest darkness. About the beauty we can see even when our eyes are failing. About the love that becomes our anchor, our voice, our memory, and our hands when our own betray us.

Amelia is not me. Her story and her path are different. But the darkness she walks through is chillingly familiar to me. The despair that whispers for her to give up — I have heard its whisper. And the strength that compels her to pick up a brush and leave her mark — that is the very strength that made me fight.

I wrote this book as a reminder. To myself and to anyone who might find themselves in their own labyrinth.

A reminder that even the most difficult struggle is itself a victory. That every painful day is still a day of life. That our worth is measured not by our achievements, but by the depth of our feelings, the sincerity of our love, and the courage with which we face our dawn, even knowing sunset will follow.

I found my way out. I am healthy now, and every new day is a priceless gift. And I believe that a fragment of the strength that helped me lives on these pages.

If this book finds someone who is struggling, who is afraid, who feels alone in their fight — then it has fulfilled its purpose.

You are not alone. And as long as you are breathing, you are writing your story. May it be filled with the light you can find even within yourself.

With faith in your strength,

Madina Fedosova

Part One
The Garden’s Dawn

Chapter 1
Endless Summer

The sun in Kent in July is not just a celestial body; it is the undisputed master of the world. It floods everything with a generous, thick, almost tangible light, transforming the most mundane things into something magical. Long shadows from old, sprawling oaks lay crisp silhouettes on the ground, and the air shimmers with heat, filled with the chorus of cicadas, their monotonous chirring the soundtrack to this perfect day.

Amelia was running along the edge of a lavender field, and she felt as if she were flying. The warm, sun-cracked earth sprang softly beneath her bare feet, and countless purple blossoms brushed against her palms, leaving an intoxicating, spicy scent on her skin. It was everywhere — in the air she breathed deeply, on her lips, in the strands of hair escaping her loose bun. She was twenty-seven, and her whole life lay before her, like this endless, purple sea stretching to the horizon. She felt every muscle of her strong, young body, every breath, every jubilant beat of her heart — fast as the flutter of a hummingbird’s wings.

She slowed her pace, threw her head back, and spun in place, arms outstretched, letting the sun flood her face with liquid gold and the world turn into a dazzling, fragrant kaleidoscope of blue sky, emerald green, and lilac waves.

«You look like that girl from The Sound of Music,» came a beloved, slightly mocking voice from behind, pulling her from the heavens back to earth. «Only instead of the Alps, it’s a farm in Kent, and instead of a meadow, it’s lavender!»

She stopped, breathless, her wind-tousled hair the color of ripe wheat, and turned. Luca was standing at the edge of the field, leaning against an old, time-weathered wooden gate. He was swinging her delicate summer sandals, which she’d kicked off by the car the moment she saw this purple splendor. He looked at her with that smile that made his stern, Eastern European features — high cheekbones, a straight nose, a serious brow — incredibly soft and young.

«And what, isn’t this better?» she laughed, running up to him, feeling the earth’s energy surge beneath her soles. «It smells a million times more interesting! The Alps smell of snow and altitude, but here… here it smells of happiness. Real, simple, earthly happiness. Of sun, honey, dust, and lavender. I can smell it, and one day, maybe I can even paint it. Transfer the very scent onto a canvas.»

«Smells like tourists and expensive lavender soap from souvenir shops,» he retorted, but his laughing eyes betrayed his deep enjoyment of the moment.

«Ugh, you’re such a cynic and a snob!» She playfully shoved his shoulder, took her sandals from him, but didn’t put them on. «You, a man of letters, should understand! It’s all about metaphors and sensations. You just don’t know how to feel the moment, to dissolve in it. Right here, right now, Luca. Close your eyes.»

He obediently squeezed his eyes shut, lifting his face to the sun, and for a moment she admired him: so solid and so vulnerable at once.

«And what am I supposed to feel? Besides my eyelids turning transparent and everything being red?»

«Everything!» She took a deep breath, closing her own eyes to guide him. «Do you hear? The bees are buzzing. There are thousands of them, each busy with its important work. A hawk is crying somewhere far beyond the hill. And the wind… it’s whispering something of its own, murmuring to every flower, every stalk. And the sun… it’s not just shining. It’s warm, heavy, like slow, thick syrup. You can almost touch it. I want to remember this. Every last grain of sand, every last speck of dust in the air. So that one day… I can paint it. Not a picture. But the very feeling of this day. This field. Us being here. So that anyone who looks at it will feel this… this aching, piercing happiness — just to be alive and to be here.»

She opened her eyes and saw he was no longer looking at her with mockery, but with that deep, attentive expression he usually had when reading a truly brilliant manuscript. The look of a man who had seen a whole universe in a single dewdrop.

«You will,» he said simply and firmly, without a trace of doubt. «You’ll be able to transfer even the wind and the scent onto a canvas. I haven’t a single doubt. That is your gift, Amelia. You don’t just see the world, you feel it. And you make others feel it, too.»

They found a secluded spot under a sprawling, solitary apple tree at the edge of the field, from which the first, still green but juice-swollen apples were beginning to fall. They sat on the ground, leaning their backs against the rough, sun-warmed bark. Amelia ran her fingers through the thick, cool grass, feeling its resilience and vitality. An unseen bird chirped in the branches above.

«You know what I’m thinking about right now?» she asked quietly, watching the shadows from the leaves dance on his sun-tanned knees.

«About how to convince me to buy you the entire assortment from that soap shop, so our whole apartment will smell of this field for months?» he suggested, stretching his stiff leg.

«No,» she smiled and leaned her shoulder against his. «I’m thinking about the future. Ours. One just like this… only more, fuller, deeper.»

She paused, gathering her thoughts, trying to put into words the vast, warm, almost overwhelming feeling that filled her.

«I imagine a house. Not in central London, with the hum of cars and streetlights at night. Somewhere here, in the countryside, or in Suffolk, or in Cornwall by the ocean. With big, floor-to-ceiling windows where lilac bushes peek in, and a real garden. Not just flowerbeds, but a proper, large garden where you could get lost. And our children running in that garden. Two. A boy and a girl.»

She spoke, and the picture came alive before her, so vivid and real it made her heart clench with tenderness and a light, tickling fear.

«The girl is just like me, stubborn, with a face forever smudged with paint or dirt, perpetually tangled hair, and a paintbrush in her hand instead of a pacifier. And the boy is your copy, serious, in glasses, with a book under his arm by the age of five. He’ll always be running after her, lecturing her.»

She fell silent to listen to the cicadas and feel his hand cover hers.

«And you and I will sit just like this, on the porch, drinking evening tea with mint from our garden, watching them race across the lawn as the sun sets and bathes everything in that same golden light. You’ll read me something new, something brilliant and unknown you’ve dug up from a pile of manuscripts. And I’ll be sketching. Not for an exhibition, not for sale. Just to capture that moment. That perfect, ordinary, most important moment of our lives. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it worth living for?»

Luca put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She pressed her cheek to his chest, listening to the steady, calm beat of his heart beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.

«It’s perfect,» his voice was quiet and deep, as if coming from his very core. «As if you read my most secret thoughts. Only in my version, the boy will still play football and get his glasses dirty, not just read books. And the girl… let her be exactly like you. Invincible, beautiful, and made entirely of colors and wind.»

They sat in silence, listening to the rustle of leaves overhead, the tireless buzzing of bees in the lavender, the distant lowing of a��cow from the other side of the hill. The world hung suspended in a golden-purple haze of noon, frozen in its perfection.

«All of life really is ahead of us,» Amelia whispered, closing her eyes and feeling the warmth of his body merge with the warmth of the sun. «It feels like we can do absolutely everything. Fame, recognition, that porch, the sound of children’s laughter in the garden… There’s so much of it, and it all feels so possible. So close. Within reach. You just have to be brave enough to reach out and take it.»

«We will,» Luca said confidently, kissing the top of her head, her hair most golden from the sun. «We’re only at the beginning of the path, sunshine. This is our endless summer, Amelia. It’s only just begun.»

She believed him. As unquestioningly as she believed the sun would rise tomorrow morning. She smiled, peering into the distance where the purple field merged with the blurred line of the horizon. She saw her future there — bright, sharp, detailed like her best paintings, infinitely long and happy.

She couldn’t know that this very «endless summer» had already come to an end, even as it was just beginning. She didn’t feel how, deep inside, in the most hidden, invisible corners of her brain, the seed of that quiet, merciless winter had already sprouted and sent out its first, relentless roots. And that this perfect, meticulously rendered day would become her greatest treasure and her cruelest memory. The very picture she would try to paint again and again, no longer smelling the lavender or seeing the color purple, when the world around her began to slowly, irreversibly, and inexorably fade.

We think we are losing memories, but in truth, we are losing ourselves. Piece by piece. Until only silence remains — this thought, alien and bitter, flickered somewhere in the back of her mind and then evaporated, washed away by the triumphant voice of the cicadas and the warmth of her beloved’s hand.

Chapter 2

The First Crack

Returning to London after two days in their Kentish paradise was like plunging into cool, murky water after the bright sun. The contrast was felt in every cell. Instead of the deafening silence, filled only with the buzzing of bees and the whisper of the wind, there was the intrusive, low-frequency hum of the metropolis, composed of the honks of black cabs, the distant rumble of the underground, ambulance sirens somewhere on the Victoria Embankment, and the perpetual sound of tires on rain-damp asphalt. Instead of the intoxicating scent of lavender and sun-warmed pine, there was the complex, layered bouquet of London: the smell of wet stone from old buildings, the sweetish smoke from chimneys in wealthy quarters, the bitter aroma of aged wood from pubs, the scent of freshly cut flowers from a stall at the tube entrance, and the ever-present smell, especially in the mornings, of fresh pastries and fried bacon.

Amelia stood by the large window of her third-floor studio, watching people scurry along the street below like colorful brushstrokes on a gray canvas. In her hand, she clutched a tube of paint as if it were an amulet connecting her to that bygone happiness. The images from the lavender field were still bright, almost tangible: the warmth of Luca’s back under the apple tree, the taste of the strawberries they bought from a roadside stall, the feeling of utter, complete peace.

With a greed born of fear that the memory would fade like an old photograph, she seized her brushes. She didn’t start on a large canvas right away — first, she needed to capture the mood, make quick, impulsive sketches, fix the movement, the play of light, that very «sensation.»

She decided to start with color. With that specific, complex, living purple that she saw not as a pure pigment but as a mixture of a thousand shades: the hazy blue on the horizon, the golden highlights on the buds, the deep shadow under the leaves. She took a heavy wooden palette, placed it in its usual spot by her elbow, squeezed out a drop of ultramarine, added some thick, jam-like alizarin crimson, a pinch of white…

And then it happened.

The fingers of her right hand, which had just been firmly holding the palette knife, suddenly went strangely weak. It wasn’t just numbness — it felt as if her hand had suddenly fallen asleep, but only the skin, the very top layer. Her fingertips became cottony, alien, unable to feel the texture of the wooden handle. The tool slipped from her weakened grip, fell onto the palette with a dull thud, smearing the freshly mixed paint, and then clattered to the floor.

«Damn it!» she exclaimed, more in annoyance than fear. She began vigorously rubbing her fingers, pinching them. The numbness gradually receded, replaced by an unpleasant, prickling sensation, as if her hand had been pinned. «Circulation,» she told herself sternly. «I need to stretch more. I’ve been working in the same position for too long.»

She bent down to pick up the palette knife, and her gaze fell on a freshly squeezed, untouched drop of cobalt blue. Bright, perfectly round, thick.

And then the world tilted.

The color moved. No, it wasn’t like a fleeting illusion in the field. This was something physical, frightening. The blue drop suddenly began to pulsate, like a living, trembling heart. Its edges blurred and contracted, but with each beat it grew brighter, more intense, turning into a tiny, blinding blue sun ready to burn her retina. Waves radiated from it, distorting space — the wood of the palette swam, her own fingers seemed distant and alien, the labels on the paint tubes blurred into unreadable smudges. A sharp pain lanced behind her eyes, a dull, throbbing ache pounded in her temples.

Amelia squeezed her eyes shut, pushing herself away from the table so forcefully she nearly knocked over the easel with its unfinished sketch. She stood with her back against the cold wall, breathing in quick, shallow gasps, as if after a sprint. Her heart hammered wildly in her throat. A wave of pure, animal fear washed over her, constricting her throat, then slowly receded, leaving behind an icy emptiness and utter, deafening bewilderment.

When she opened her eyes again, afraid to see the nightmare continue, everything was in its place. The palette. The paints. The palette knife on the floor. No pulsation. Only the drop of cobalt stared back at her with its usual, clear, and calm color.

«Overwork,» she whispered, and her voice sounded hoarse and unconvincing even to her own ears. «Nerves. I need to distract myself. I absolutely must distract myself.»

She poured herself a large mug of strong Earl Grey tea — a drink she always associated with comfort and safety — trying not to look at the palette, and went out onto the small balcony crowded with geranium pots. London lived its irrepressible life. A bright red double-decker bus hissed past on the cobblestones below, its wheel-spray glittering in the suddenly emerged sun. Pedestrians hurried about their business, turning up their coat collars against the sharp, gusty wind from the Thames. A woman in an elegant trench coat was holding the hand of a little girl in bright yellow rubber boots. Everything was normal. Mundane. Real.

But something inside her had fractured. That unconditional, childlike faith in the world’s infinity and reliability had developed its first, ominous crack.

That evening, familiar footsteps sounded on the stairs — firm, quick, confident. Luca was home. She heard him fumbling with the keys in the lock, taking off his coat, hanging it up. His arrival always brought a particular, chaos-ordering soundscape into the space.

«I’m home!» his voice came from the hallway. «And I bring sensational news and possibly the best wine from the corner shop!»

She was standing by the stove, making Bolognese sauce — his favorite. The smell of garlic fried in olive oil mingled with the aroma of basil and tomatoes. She was trying to cling to these familiar, domestic smells like an anchor.

He walked into the kitchen, energetic, a little excited from a successful day. He was wearing that gray cardigan she loved so much.

«So, sunshine? Did you manage to catch that Kentish rabbit by the tail and put it on a canvas?» he asked, embracing her from behind and kissing that spot on her neck where her blood pulsed.

His touch was so familiar, so dear, that treacherous tears welled in her eyes. She pulled away under the pretext of needing to stir the sauce, and her hand betrayed her again with a tremor as she reached for the jar of oregano. The glass jar slipped from her fingers and clattered against the edge of the sink, fortunately not breaking.

«Careful!» he caught the jar. «Lost in creative agony? Or just starving beyond reason?»

«Yes… just sketching,» she replied, turning away too quickly to the pot of boiling pasta water. Her voice sounded unnaturally high. «Not going well. I can’t capture the right light. It feels like it’s slipping away.»

He sensed something. His perceptiveness, which she usually adored, was now unbearable. He leaned against the kitchen table, watching her.

«Don’t rush. You’re the one who taught me that art is a marathon, not a sprint. It can’t be hurried. Let it settle. Remember how you painted that still life with the pear — you did sketches for it for almost a month.»

«I know, it’s just…» she fell silent, not knowing what to say.

At dinner, he was animated, talking about his day. About securing a good contract for a young writer from Edinburgh, whose novel about a lonely watchmaker he considered a future bestseller. About a funny incident on the tube, when a woman tried to bring a huge bust of Nefertiti into the carriage. He talked, and she nodded, smiled, but caught herself studying his face with a new, greedy, almost painful intensity. Every laugh line around his eyes, every strand of hair at his temple, the play of light and shadow on his cheekbones. She was trying to imprint it in her memory, to make a mental sketch, as if afraid that one day this image would fade, would blur.

«…and he said it wasn’t a metaphor, he actually collects irons!» Luca finished his story and looked at her. His smile gradually faded. «Are you sure you’re alright, Amelia? You seem… absent. As if you’re not really here. Tired?»

He’d noticed. A chill ran down her spine.

«Yes, just a bit dizzy,» she took a sip of water to hide the trembling in her hands. «Must be the fumes from the paint and turpentine. And my fingers… they keep going a bit numb from work. Probably a pinched nerve. Or I just need a break. Spending too much time in the studio.»

He looked at her carefully, and a shadow of the worry she feared to see flickered in his eyes. But, as always, he tried to channel it into a rational, safe direction. He caught himself and smiled, reaching across the table to place his hand over hers.

«Of course, it’s time. Our weekend in Kent wasn’t a rest, just a change of one activity for another. So tomorrow — sabotage. No paintbrushes. What do you say? We’ll go to the National Gallery? Then we can stop by that old bookshop on Charing Cross Road you love. Or just walk in Hyde Park, watch the ducks.»

«The Gallery,» she agreed quickly, squeezing his fingers with such force that he raised an eyebrow in surprise. Going to the gallery meant being in a world of colors, lines, light, and shadow. Her world. To check if it was still intact. To see if the blue robes in Tintoretto’s paintings or the red cloaks in van Dyck’s would suddenly start to pulsate.

«Then it’s settled,» he smiled, stroking her hand. «The Gallery, books, and maybe a giant portion of ice cream. Like proper tourists.»

That night, she woke from a strange, unpleasant sensation. The bedroom was plunged into a deep, almost velvety darkness, broken only by the faint glow of streetlights on the ceiling and Luca’s steady, calm breathing beside her. But her right hand, the one that held the brush, felt alien. Dead, heavy, stiff, insensate. She struggled to wiggle her fingers in the dark, and again, those nasty, prickling pins and needles ran through them, stronger and more persistent this time. A cold terror, quiet and clammy, crept up her spine. This no longer felt like fatigue. It felt like the beginning of something irreversible.

Carefully, trying not to wake Luca, she slipped out of bed. Her bare feet sank into the soft pile of the carpet. She went to the large window overlooking the narrow street and drew back the heavy linen curtains. Night-time London shone with thousands of lights. Somewhere far away, on the roof of a modern building, a neon sign flickered, and its aggressively red light, reflected in puddles on the roof of the neighboring Victorian house, suddenly seemed unnaturally bright, poisonous, almost bloody. It hurt her eyes.

She pressed her forehead against the cold, almost icy glass, trying to quell the fine tremor that had suddenly run through her whole body. Beyond the glass was her city. Her life. Her love was sleeping a few steps away. But between her and all of it, an invisible, glass wall had suddenly risen.

Memory is not a storage room, it is a garden, she tried to summon that bright, hopeful thought from the lavender field.

But now it seemed to her that this garden, her inner, infinitely precious garden, was being stalked by a stranger — invisible and merciless — with the cold, appraising gaze of a gardener, pausing by the most beautiful, most heart-treasured flowers, ready to rip them out by the roots. And the first petal had already fallen onto the dark earth.

Chapter 3

A Whisper from the White Room

The idea of a Sunday trip to the National Gallery, intended to distract and comfort, failed with a resounding, albeit quiet, crash. They made it to the majestic neoclassical building with its monumental columns, even bought tickets from an impassive cashier in a strict uniform, and managed to stand for about ten minutes in the semi-darkness of the hall before Titian’s «Venus with a Mirror.» Amelia stared at the thick, velvety shadows on the canvas, the complex, pearlescent color of the goddess’s skin, the saturated, deep ultramarine of the draperies in the background, trying to find solace in this time-tested harmony, in the genius backed by a steady hand and a clear gaze. But it was futile. Her own vision treacherously swam. And when they moved to the hall of Flemish painting, and her eyes fell on a portrait by van Dyck where a courtly dandy was clad in a cloak of scarlet paint, it suddenly flared with an alarming, unnatural, almost neon light, forcing her to look away sharply, as if from a camera flash. When they approached the Turner room, where the air in the paintings seemed permeated with golden light, mist, and endless movement, she grew so dizzy she had to grab Luca’s solid forearm to keep from losing her balance.

«Just a bit stuffy with all these people,» she muttered, avoiding his alarmed, searching gaze and looking somewhere in the region of her shoes. «And these chandeliers… they’re too bright. The light hurts my eyes. Let’s… let’s just go home.»

He didn’t argue. He firmly led her home, bypassing the tempting bookshop windows and the enticing smells from bakeries. In their quiet apartment, he sat her down on the deep sofa in the living room, made strong tea with lots of sugar — «for the nerves,» as his grandmother used to say — and, sitting opposite her on a low pouf, took her cold, stiff hands in his warm, living ones.

«Alright, that’s enough. The games of silence and «I’m-just-tired’ are over. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m calling and booking you a doctor’s appointment. Starting with a general practitioner. This is not up for discussion, Amelia. Look at me. This is not up for discussion.»

She wanted to resist, to deny, to say it was nonsense, that it would pass, that it wasn’t worth making a mountain out of a molehill and wasting doctors’ time on trifles. But the words stuck in her throat, and she could only move her lips soundlessly. She just nodded silently, unable to tear her gaze away from their intertwined fingers. His — with clearly defined tendons, warm, confident, strong. Hers — pale, cold, and alien, like those of a marble statue.

The appointment with the GP, Dr. Alice Wright, passed in a thick fog. A cozy office filled with soft, diffused light, with a large aquarium where bright, jewel-like fish swam lazily; it smelled of antiseptic and something sweetish, vanilla-like, perhaps the doctor’s own hand cream. Dr. Wright, a woman in her fifties with kind, incredibly intelligent eyes behind thin metal-framed glasses, listened attentively, without interrupting, to the confused, carefully edited story of «overwork,» «stress,» sudden dizziness, numb fingers. Amelia deliberately omitted the pulsating, reality-distorting colors. That sounded like outright delirium, a direct path not to a neurologist but to a psychiatrist.

«A demanding schedule, a creative profession requiring the highest concentration and emotional investment… that can certainly produce such symptoms,» said Dr. Wright, her voice as calm as the water in her aquarium. «Perfectly understandable. But, Amelia, we won’t read tea leaves. To rule out any doubt and reassure your wonderful husband, let’s get you checked out. I’ll refer you for an MRI — a magnetic resonance imaging scan — to see if everything is alright with the blood vessels in your brain, if there are any micro-changes. And I’ll give you a referral to my colleague, the neurologist, Dr. Edgar Reed. He’s an excellent specialist, particularly in peripheral neuropathies. This is just for maximum reassurance, my dear. So we can all sleep soundly. Don’t be frightened ahead of time.»

The very word «MRI» sounded like a cold, metallic sentence to her. And the word «neurologist» — like something final, irrevocable, smelling of formalin.

The magnetic resonance imaging scan became her first real circle of hell. First, an impersonal changing room where she was told to remove all metal, including the silver nightingale pendant — a gift from Luca. Then, a cold, brightly lit hall with fluorescent lamps, where in the center stood a huge, alien-looking white monolith, like a portal to another dimension. The assistant radiographer, a girl with an indifferent face, laid her on a narrow, hard sliding table, placed pillows under her head and knees, put headphones on her ears that resembled giant swimming earphones.

«The main thing is to lie absolutely still,» she said in an impersonal, rehearsed-cheery voice. «The machine will be very noisy. Different sounds. That’s normal. Just relax.»

The table with her body slid smoothly into the narrow tunnel. Being inside that tight, white, hermetically sealed space, with just fifteen centimeters between her face and the top, was worse than any nightmare. A crushing, physical claustrophobia descended upon her, triggering a panic attack she never knew she had. Her heart hammered in her throat, her breath caught, becoming rapid and shallow. And then the noise began. A deafening, inhuman, mind-rending roar, banging, grinding, screeching like an alarm signal. It felt as if the very air around her was vibrating, that the bones of her skull were about to crack from the unbearable pressure, that the atoms of her body were being torn apart by the sound. She lay with her eyes closed, teeth clenched to the point of pain, nails digging into her palms, her only thought pulsing in time with the infernal din: «Get out. I have to get out of here at any cost. I can’t stand another second of this.»

Mentally, she tried to transport herself to that lavender field. To summon the warmth of the sun on her skin, the smell of heated pine, the sound of bees, Luca’s face, his hand in hers. But the images were blurred, unclear, displaced and consumed by the all-engulfing, white, soulless terror of the machine. Something small and defens inside her was weeping and screaming.

When the table finally, after an eternity, slid back out, she was drenched in cold sweat, and the muscles in her back and neck ached from the minutes-long tension.

«It’ll be fine,» the same assistant said, helping her to her feet, which felt like cotton wool. Her voice sounded as if from underwater. «The results will be ready in a few days. The doctor will contact you.»

In a few days. That wait became the most exquisite torture. They tried to live a normal life, to play at normality. Luca worked from home in his study, answering endless messages and taking calls, but she could physically feel his gaze constantly finding her, skimming over her, appraisingly, anxiously, scanning her every movement. She tried to return to the studio, took up simple, meaningless, mechanical tasks — mixing paints on the palette into abstract swirls, washing brushes until they squeaked, rearranging folders with old sketches, re-reading her own journals with notes on colors. But her fingers betrayed her more and more brazenly. One morning, she couldn’t fasten her own bra. Her fingers simply wouldn’t obey, couldn’t coordinate, couldn’t catch the tiny, slippery clasp behind her back. She stood in front of the bedroom mirror, looking at her reflection — pale, with huge, frightened eyes — and quiet, helpless tears of rage and despair rolled down her cheeks.

Finally, the day of the appointment with the neurologist, Dr. Edgar Reed, arrived. His office in a prestigious private clinic on Harley Street was completely different — sterile, cold, high-tech. No aquariums, paintings, or vanilla scents. It smelled of ozone from the air conditioners, cold metal, and a faint, elusive chemical cleanliness. Dr. Reed himself was a man in his sixties, dry, trim, with graying temples and a penetrating, scanning gaze from blue eyes that seemed to see not you, not your soul, but your nerve impulses, synapses, and the speed of signal conduction along your fibers.

He silently studied the MRI results lying on his perfectly clean black glass desk for several minutes. The images showed the gray matter of her brain, streaked with white veins like frost patterns on a winter window.

«We see no vascular pathologies, tumors, obvious focal changes, or signs of multiple sclerosis,» he said in an even, dispassionate, almost mechanical voice. «That is very good news. However, your symptoms, which Dr. Wright reported and which you described in the questionnaire… they concern me.»

He conducted a series of tests, resembling a strange, slightly humiliating dance. He asked her to touch the tip of her nose with her index finger with her eyes closed — her finger trembled, missed, and poked her cheek. He asked her to walk a straight line painted on the floor, as if on a tightrope, first forward, then backward — she swayed heavily on the second step, and Luca instinctively jumped up to support her. He checked her reflexes on her knees and elbows with a small hammer — they were strangely lively, her legs jerking with exaggerated force. He poked her skin on her arms and legs with a sharp object, then a blunt one, asking what she felt. The sensations were dulled, as if the skin on her limbs was covered with several layers of thin cellophane.

Then he took a sheet of thick white paper from his desk with simple geometric shapes drawn on it — a square, a circle, a triangle — and asked her to name them. She looked at the circle, and its smooth, clear contours swam, blurred, as if someone had held a heated glass to it or spilled water on the paper.

«A circle…» she said uncertainly, hesitating. «It seems like a circle. But the edges are… blurry.»

Luca, sitting nearby in a leather chair and having maintained a tense silence until then, let out a sharp, loud exhale.

Then Dr. Reed took a small glass vial with a dropper from his desk.

«Try to identify the smell,» he asked, bringing it to her nose.

Amelia inhaled. Just six months ago, she could easily, with her eyes closed, distinguish arabica from robusta, detect notes of cinnamon, cardamom, or burnt sugar in the most complex aroma. Now she felt only a weak, distant, almost abstract smell of something bitter, ashy, devoid of any nuance or depth.

«Coffee?» she guessed, looking at him hopefully.

Dr. Reed silently, without any emotion, placed the vial back and made another note in her thick paper file. The sound of his pen scratching the paper was deafeningly loud in the tomb-like silence of the office.

«Alright,» he said finally, setting down the pen and folding his hands on the desk. His face was impassive, a professional mask, but in the depths of his too-bright blue eyes, a new, heavy, understanding depth appeared. He was looking now not at her, but at both of them. «Mrs. Jovanovic. Mr. Jovanovic. The preliminary data and the absence of clear signs on the MRI… give us only part of the picture. It’s like assembling a puzzle without the box showing the original image. Your symptoms — numbness, loss of sensation, impaired coordination, possible visual distortions, changes in smell… they can point to a whole spectrum of neurological conditions. Some of them, for example, some types of neuropathy, are quite manageable with therapy. But…»

He paused, carefully choosing his words, his gaze shifting from her to Luca, as if seeking an ally in the face of a difficult conversation.

«But in order to rule out… other, more serious and, fortunately, rarer possibilities, we will require a much deeper and more comprehensive examination. Blood tests, extensive ones, for specific antibodies. Possibly genetic tests. A nerve conduction study. This will take time. And we will need to observe the dynamics. To see… how the symptomatology behaves.»

He fell silent again, letting them digest the information.

«There is a group of diseases… neurodegenerative. They are rare, especially at your age, it’s not the first thing we think of. But their course… is unfortunately often progressive. They affect the nervous system, gradually, step by step, disabling various functions — motor skills, sensation, vision, hearing, cognitive abilities…»

He said something else — about a plan of action, the need to be under observation, the importance of staying calm. But Amelia hardly heard him anymore. She was watching his lips moving in the perfect, sterile silence of the office, and in her head, like an echo of that hellish roar from the tomography machine, only one word was sounding, one terrible, unfamiliar, and therefore even more horrifying word that he had not yet spoken aloud, but which already hung in the air, heavy as lead, soaking into the walls, the skin, the very heart.

Progressive.

It did not mean «curable» or «temporary.» It meant it would not get better. It meant the path led only in one direction. It meant the endless summer was over, without ever having truly begun, and ahead lay only a long, hopeless winter.

Chapter 4

The Silence After the Storm

Emerging from the sterile hall of the clinic on Harley Street, they seemed to fall into another, overly bright and roaring world. London, which had remained behind the heavy oak doors with brass plaques, lived its carefree, bustling life. Dark blue sports cars and sedate sedans swished past on the roadway, young doctors in scrubs smoked and laughed on the steps of a neighboring mansion, and from the open windows of a second-floor apartment came the strains of a piano and someone’s trained voice practicing an aria. The air, which usually held the aromas of coffee from a nearby roastery, the sweetish smoke from chimneys, and the wet copper of autumn leaves for Amelia, was now empty and flat, as if filtered, stripped of all its shades and depth. She walked, mechanically moving her legs, and felt nothing but a faint, unpleasant chemical aftertaste from the clinical air.

They walked in silence to the car parked in a side street. Luca silently opened the door for her, she silently climbed onto the seat of worn brown leather, staring at one tiny, almost invisible crack on the dashboard. He started the engine, and the familiar, dull roar of the motor seemed deafeningly loud, crashing against her eardrums. The world beyond the tinted glass swam like a blurred, nervous watercolor — a scarlet bookshop sign, the emerald crowns of plane trees on a square, the gray-blue surface of the Thames suddenly revealed around a corner — all merging into one restless, meaningless smear.

Luca didn’t drive home. He instinctively turned towards the Serpentine, found a secluded parking spot at the very end of a shaded avenue, under the canopy of a huge, old elm. He cut the engine. Silence fell, broken only by the rustle of leaves overhead, the distant cry of a seagull, and the muffled hum of the metropolis, like the sound of the sea in a shell.

«Amelia,» his voice sounded unusually hoarse; he was the first to break the oppressive, unbearable silence that hung in the car like lead. He turned to her on the seat, his face painfully pale, tiny beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip even though it was cool in the car. «Did you hear what he said? Nothing definitive. No diagnosis. These are just… theories. Possible paths for diagnosis. We need to go through all these examinations, gather all the data, and then…»

«Progressive,» she said quietly, without a single inflection, almost soundlessly, still staring at the same spot on the cracked leather panel. The word hung between them, huge, indisputable, and cold as a tombstone.

«Stop it!» His voice broke into an unexpectedly high, almost hysterical shout, and he flinched at this sudden loss of control. He clenched his fists so hard the knuckles turned white, took several deep, noisy breaths, trying to regain his composure. «I’m sorry. I’m sorry, darling. But we can’t… we have no right to jump so far ahead. It could be anything! A simple B12 deficiency, which causes terrible neuropathies! An autoimmune disease they treat successfully now! Chronic stress, for God’s sake, which can mimic anything! He said it himself — there are manageable conditions!»

She finally turned her head towards him, slowly, with effort, as if against an invisible force. And in his wide, moist eyes, she saw not confidence, but a panicked, animal, genuine fear. He was trying to convince not her, but himself. The sight was a thousand times more painful and terrifying than all the measured, dispassionate words of Dr. Reed.

«My fingers can’t feel small details, Luca,» she said with an icy, detached calm she didn’t recognize in herself. «I can’t tell silk from wool by touch. I can’t tell the difference between the smell of freshly ground coffee and the smell of something burning. I see familiar colors on my palette moving and pulsating like living, painful beings. I can’t walk five steps in a straight line without losing my balance. This isn’t vitamins. This isn’t stress. This is something… inside me. Something that’s gnawing at me from within. Like a worm eating a fruit.»

She spoke evenly, methodically, without tears, without hysterics. This emotionless statement of facts was more frightening than any storm. It was a silent, horrifying acceptance.

He covered his face with his hands, his strong shoulders shaking. He, her rock, her support, her Lukaš, who could negotiate with the most stubborn publishers and untangle the most complex contracts, was utterly powerless against this invisible, faceless enemy. He cried quietly, soundlessly, his whole body shuddering, and these restrained sobs were more agonizing than loud wails.

Amelia looked at him, and suddenly the strange calm left her. A new wave — this time not of shock, but of grief, impotent rage, and absolute, all-consuming fear — washed over her, sweeping away the icy numbness. Her body convulsed in a silent, spasmodic sob, tears streamed down her face, hot, salty, burning her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe, a tight, painful spasm constricting her throat.

He immediately pulled himself together, took his hands from his face, his own eyes red and swollen. He reached for her, unbuckled her seatbelt, and pulled her to him, held her so tightly, so desperately, that it knocked the breath out of her. She buried her face in his chest, in the coarse wool of his jacket, and wept, soaking up the familiar, dear smell of his skin, now mixed with the bitter smell of sweat and fear.

«Everything will be alright,» he whispered into her hair, his voice breaking, his lips touching her temple. «I’m with you. We’re together. We’ll handle this. I promise you. I’ll find the best specialists in the world, we’ll consult everywhere we can. We’ll fight. We…»

«I don’t want to fight!» she cried out, pulling away from him, her face contorted in a grimace of pain and unjust rage. «I don’t want to declare war on myself! On my own body! On my own brain! It’s me! These are my hands! My sight! How can I fight them?! I want to paint, Luca! I want to smell oil paint and turpentine! I want to taste that wine we drank in Tuscany! I want our children running in the garden! I want that porch and that sunset!» She beat her fists against his chest, weakly, helplessly, like a trapped bird. «It’s monstrous! It’s some kind of senseless, cruel mistake! It’s not fair!»

He didn’t stop her, didn’t try to calm her, letting her pour out all the accumulated rage, all the despair. He just held her, accepting these weak, desperate blows like one accepts hail, knowing it will soon end.

When her strength finally gave out, she went limp in his arms, helplessly dropping her head onto his shoulder. The tears flowed on their own, quietly, endlessly, leaving dark, wet stains on his jacket.

«I can’t lose you,» he whispered, and there was such a bottomless, raw pain in his voice that she wanted to scream from helplessness again. «I won’t allow it. I won’t let it happen.»

«You’re already losing me,» she retorted with the bitter, merciless truth of despair. «Right now. This very second. With every breath I take. Piece by tiny piece. What was me — it’s leaving, and it won’t come back.»

He fell silent, just holding her tighter, almost convulsively. They sat like that for what seemed an eternity, until the long autumn twilight began to paint the park in lilac-lead hues, and the headlights of cars passing on the embankment lit up like hundreds of indifferent yellow eyes.

He started the car and this time drove home. The silence in the car was no longer oppressive, but exhausted, burnt out, like a field after a fire.

At home, they were met by the familiar, deep silence of their dwelling. It smelled of parquet wax, old paper from his study, and a light dust mixed with the faintest scent of dried lavender in a vase on the chest of drawers. Their fortress. Their sanctuary, which had suddenly become precarious and fragile as a house of cards.

Luca led her to the kitchen, sat her on a chair at the large oak table, and began making tea. He did it with a particular, almost ritualistic care — measuring the leaves, waiting for the water in the kettle to cool to the right temperature, pouring it into thin porcelain cups inherited from his great-grandmother. The clink of a spoon against porcelain, the hiss of boiling water — all these familiar sounds were part of the old, normal life that had already cracked and was slowly, inexorably crumbling.

He placed a cup in front of her. Steam rose from it in a thin, twisting thread, dancing in the beam of light from the table lamp.

«We will act,» he said quietly, but with a returning, steely firmness in his voice. He sat down opposite her, his eyes serious and full of determination. «First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll start calling, writing, searching. Oxford, Cambridge, the Mayo Clinic, Zurich, Boston. I’ll gather every possible opinion, every existing protocol. We won’t give up, hear me? We won’t give up.»

She watched the steam rising from the tea. It was incredibly beautiful, alive, complex to depict. She tried to imagine how she would paint it — with semi-transparent glazes, light, almost weightless strokes of lead and silver white.

«And if they all… in unison… say the same thing?» she asked, not taking her eyes off the cup, watching the pattern on its bottom disappear under the dark liquid.

«Then…» he paused, choosing his words, and placed his large, warm hand over her cold, motionless one lying on the table. «Then we will live with it. But we will live. Not exist. But live. Every day given to us. Every hour. Every second. We will live as fiercely, as fully, as we possibly can.»

She slowly, heavily, raised her eyes to him. There was no trace of panic or denial in his gaze now. There was a grim, unshakable resolve. There was that very strength that had once made him, a young, unknown guy from Prague, come to a foreign, huge city and build a life from scratch.

«How?» she exhaled, and her voice held, for the first time, not hopelessness, but a question. A weak, frightened, but still a question. A call for a plan. For hope.

«We will remember,» he said simply, without pathos. «I will be your memory. Your hands. Your eyes. As long as I breathe, you will not forget a single moment of our life. Not a single shade of a sunset over the Thames. Not a single smell of a spring rain in Covent Garden. I will tell you about them. I will read you those very poems you love. We will look at albums with reproductions, and I will describe every painting to you. We will live in our garden, Amelia. Even if… even if it becomes difficult for you to be in it alone. I will be your guide.»

He spoke, and there were no sweet, comforting illusions in his words. There was the harsh, unshakable truth of a love that does not deny pain and horror, but accepts them and stands beside you to share the burden.

She didn’t answer. She just turned her palm over and squeezed his fingers. Weakly, barely perceptibly, almost without pressure. But it was a movement. It was not a capitulation, but the beginning of a new, terrifying, uncharted, and only possible path.

She looked out the window. Twilight had fully gathered over London, thousands of lights were coming on, turning the city into a scattering of jewels. Somewhere out there, far away, remained their lavender field in Kent, their old apple tree, their laughter, imprinted in memory. And she made a quiet but firm vow to herself — as long as her eyes saw light, even if distorted, and her heart felt this rending pain, she would cling to it. To every ray. To every, even the most bitter, second.

Art is not about leaving a mark. It’s about becoming a bridge for someone else’s sorrow, a thought, not her own but so precise, flashed through her mind.

Now she had to become a bridge for herself. To throw it across the black, bottomless abyss that Dr. Reed’s office had just opened within her. And the first, most terrible step had been taken.

Chapter 5

The Inner Garden

The thought of saying it all out loud again felt physically unbearable to Amelia. Every newly spoken word made the shadow of the diagnosis — still vague, presumptive, but no less dreadful — more dense, more tangible. It was letting the monster from under the bed into the lit room, giving it a name and the right to exist. Luca took upon himself all the fuss of finding doctors, organizing consultations in Oxford and Zurich, filling the agonizing wait with a feverish, almost desperate activity that gave him the illusion of control, of some kind of forward movement. Amelia, meanwhile, withdrew into herself, spending long hours in the studio, not touching the paints, but just sitting in the old leather armchair by the window and looking at the unfinished, promising sketch of the lavender field. It now seemed to her a cruel mockery, a bright, poisonously vivid memory of a world of sensations that was slowly but inexorably closing to her, like the last ray of sun disappearing beyond the horizon.

But staying in complete isolation was impossible. Rachel called every day, first with cheerful, detailed inquiries about the weekend («So, how was your escape to Kent? I expect a full report with pictures! Did you find that perfect shade of purple?»), then her voice became light, with feigned nonchalance («Hi, it’s me. Where have you disappeared to? Luca is mumbling something about fatigue and deadlines. Check in, or I’ll start to worry!»), then her messages took on notes of growing, unconcealed anxiety. The last message, received yesterday evening, was short and direct: «Amelia. Something is wrong with you. I can feel it. I’m coming over tomorrow morning. Be home.»

And Amelia understood she had to speak. Not over the phone, not in a text. Face to face. It was a duty of friendship, a final act of strength and trust before the inevitable plunge into the maelstrom of hospitals and examinations.

She invited Rachel over, purposely choosing a time when Luca wouldn’t be home. She needed to do this alone. Like the last line of defense she had to hold herself.

Rachel rushed over, as always, swiftly and noisily. Her sports car purred to a halt by the curb, and a moment later she burst into the hallway like a hurricane, filling the space with energy, noise, and the thick, complex scent of her perfume with notes of leather, bergamot, and something woody.

«Well, finally!» she exclaimed, tossing an expensive coat of an indeterminate grey-green, marshy hue onto the coat rack. «I was starting to think you and Luca had secretly run off to Bali, forgetting all your loyal subjects! What’s happened, my dear? You look…» her quick, sharp, gallery-honed gaze instantly scanned and assessed Amelia’s pallor, the slight tremor in her hands, the dark, bruise-like shadows under her eyes, "...not just tired. You look drained. Is this new project sucking you dry? Or has Lucaš driven you to it with his eternal perfectionism? Talk. I’m all ears.»

She walked into the kitchen, habitually, as if at home, took the jar of her favorite Earl Grey tea — the one with cornflower petals — from the shelf and began clattering cups, filling the kettle.

«If it’s that pompous idiot from the gallery in Whitechapel again offering you to exhibit in a basement with graffiti artists, I’ll go and have a word with him myself. I have a couple of concise but very compelling arguments for him.»

Amelia stood by the large oak table, hugging her elbows as if she were freezing, though the kitchen was warm. She watched Rachel move — such confident, precise movements — and tried to find the words. Any words. They scattered like frightened cockroaches, making way only for a lump in her throat.

«Rach…» her voice broke; she cleared her throat. «It’s not about work.»

«What, then?» Rachel turned around, and her lively, mocking smile slowly faded, giving way to wariness and a slight frown. She saw the real expression on her friend’s face — not fatigue, but fear. «Is everything okay with Luca? I mean… did something happen between you? No, it can’t be. You two… you’re the perfect couple. You complement each other like…» she hesitated, searching for a comparison, "...like a canvas and paint.»

«Luca is fine,» Amelia replied quickly, almost sharply. «Absolutely. It’s me, Rachel. Something is… wrong with me. Has been since the beginning of summer.»

She forced herself to speak. Slowly, with agonizing pauses, stumbling and finding the thread again. She told her about the first, barely noticeable lapses — the numbness in her fingertips, as if she’d slept on her hand. About starting to drop brushes, tubes, cups. About the strange vibration that suddenly appeared in bright colors on her palette, especially in cobalt blue, which would start pulsating like a living, blinding, red-hot ember. She told her about the visit to the GP, the referral for the MRI, the terror of the confined space and the deafening thunder that still echoed in her ears. And finally, about the cold, sterile office of Dr. Reed, about his dispassionate, measuring voice listing terrible, impossible, alien words: «neurodegenerative,» «progressive,» «rare disease,» «symptomatic treatment,» «unknown etiology.»

She didn’t cry. She just spoke in an even, monotonous voice, looking somewhere towards the window, where a fine autumn rain was falling slowly, lazily, turning the street into a shiny, wet canvas.

When she finished, a deathly silence hung in the kitchen. The only sounds were the ticking of the old wall clock with a pendulum left by the previous owners, and the hiss of a car passing outside, its tires swishing on the wet asphalt.

Rachel stood motionless, the porcelain teapot frozen in her hand. Her face, usually so lively and expressive, instantly reflecting every emotion, became a mask of utter disbelief and mounting shock.

«This is… this is some monstrous, absurd mistake,» she finally breathed out. Her voice, usually so resonant and confident, trembled, grew quieter. «They know nothing. These doctors… they see hundreds of patients a day, they hand out diagnoses left and right, you’re just another case to them. You’re stressed! Chronically overworked! You work too much, you take on too much! You’re a perfectionist, for God’s sake! You could have that same neuropathy from a pinched nerve that… what’s his name… Reed talked about! Yes, he said it himself — there are manageable conditions!»

«I can’t smell your tea, Rachel,» Amelia interrupted her, quietly but very clearly. «I know it’s here. I see the steam rising from the spout. I see the color — dark, amber. But I can’t smell it. Not a bit. And your perfume… your favorite perfume… I can barely smell it either. Only a faint, flat, papery echo.»

That simple, terrible, irrefutable statement hit its mark like a knife thrust. Rachel slowly, as if in slow motion, put the teapot down on the table. Her slender, always so confident hands were trembling slightly. She took two steps towards Amelia, hugged her with such strength, such desperate tenderness, that it took Amelia’s breath away.

«No,» she whispered into her hair, and her voice broke. «No, no, no. This can’t be. This mustn’t be. You… you’re made of sensations! You live by them! You see right through the world, you feel it with every pore! It’s your essence! Your core! Without it, you’re not… without it…»

And that’s when Amelia broke down. For the first time since the moment they had stepped out of Dr. Reed’s office on that cold, bright day. In the embrace of her friend, who now smelled to her only like a faint, fading echo of bergamot and the warmth of her own skin, she wept bitterly, inconsolably, with a child’s helplessness. She wept for herself. For the self that, just a couple of months ago, had run barefoot through a lavender field and felt every stalk, every grain of warm earth under her feet, every sunbeam on her skin. She was mourning herself.

Rachel didn’t utter empty, comforting words. She didn’t say «everything will be alright.» She just held her, tight-tight, rocked her like a small child, and her own cheek was wet with silent, bitter tears.

When the storm subsided a little, replaced by muffled, hiccupping sobs, Rachel led her to the living room, sat her down in a deep, cozy armchair by the (cold and empty) fireplace, wrapped her from head to toe in a soft, heavy camel-hair blanket, and brought her the very tea that Amelia could not smell.

«What does Luca say?» she asked practically, sitting down opposite on a low pouf and looking her straight in the eye, wiping her own wet cheeks with the back of her hand. Her commercial acumen, her ability to solve unsolvable problems, was already awakening, suppressing the initial panic. «What’s the plan? What is he proposing?»

«He’s looking for the best specialists in the world,» Amelia’s voice sounded tired and hollow, like that of a person after a long illness. «Writing letters, calling, arranging consultations in Oxford, Zurich, Boston. Ready to fight to the end. Says he’ll be my eyes and hands, my memory. As long as he breathes.»

«And he will be,» Rachel said firmly, and a familiar determination flashed in her eyes. «He’s as stubborn as a mule and never gives up. I know that about him. But…» she fell silent, thinking something over, her gaze becoming sharp, focused, the way it always was at vernissages when she assessed a work in seconds and understood how to present it. «But what will you do, my dear? Wait for them to do it all for you? Sit with your hands folded and watch the world around you slowly go out, lose its colors and smells? Let this… this thing… define you, dictate the rules to you?»

«And what can I do?» Amelia asked with a bitter, helpless smirk, shrinking into the chair. «Fight? Spend my last strength fighting my own body? It’s humiliating. It’s like trying to hold back sand running through your fingers.»

«Who said you have to fight?» Rachel jumped to her feet and began pacing slowly around the room, her heels tapping dully on the parquet. She gesticulated as she always did when a new idea struck her. «You are a creator. An artist. You’re not a fighter. You are a builder. You must not fight, not resist, but… create. Right now. While you still can. While your hands still remember how to hold a brush.»

«Create what?» Amelia shrank even more. «Paintings that I might soon be unable to see? Still lifes whose smell I won’t be able to feel? Landscapes whose tangibility will disappear for me?»

«Not that!» Rachel turned to her sharply, and that same fire that ignited interest in the most tight-fisted collectors blazed in her eyes. «Not paintings about the external world. But paintings about the world inside. About what’s inside you. While it’s still there, while it’s still bright and real.»

She came closer, crouched in front of the armchair, her face illuminated by a sudden, dazzling idea.

«You talked about a garden. Remember? About that very house with a garden that you and Luca want, with children running on the lawn. So create it not outside, but inside. Right now. On canvas. While your hands still obey you. While your eyes still see the paints — even if distorted, even if through pain. Create your inner garden, Amelia! The garden of your memory! The garden of your sensations!»

Amelia looked at her, not understanding, trying to grasp the scale of this madness.