Chapter 703 My Sis-cest/Taboo:>>62

• In the end, it wasn't the drugs, it was the loss and sorrow that took her. I'd checked on her before I went to bed, hugged and kissed her and brushed her hair while she clung to me and told me stories about how she and daddy were so proud of their little girl, and how much daddy doted on me. I kissed her goodnight, and went to bed. As I always did, I woke in the middle of the night to check on her, to find her unresponsive. I panicked and called 999, an ambulance came and bundled her in the back while I called Mikey and told him to meet me at Hereford County Hospital. The nanny Mikey had engaged to help me with the kids while I looked after mummy seemed to be on top of things so I climbed in the ambulance to be with mummy.
• By the time Mikey arrived, and it took a while, it's a long way from Oswestry to Hereford, she was gone; her heart had just stopped, according to the A&E attending, and she didn't know why, but the post mortem would be more revealing. I was in shock, as was Mikey; she wasn't that kind of sick, she had depression, that was all, how could she just lie down and die for no reason? Well, apparently she did; to all intents and purposes that's exactly what she did. The coroner recorded a verdict of 'natural causes', adding the rider that it was heart-failure, and that was it. Now there was just Mikey and I left of our family, my kids would never grow up in the presence of their grandparents, we were all that was left of the Kershaw family.
• The funeral was small, just us and a few of her friends and colleagues, and she was laid to rest next to daddy. Probate quickly sorted out her legacy, mummy and daddy's bank accounts, insurances, and the house, which had been in daddy's family for two hundred years. I didn't want to live there, too many ghosts, I'd be bumping into mummy and daddy's memory wherever I turned, I had the house Max and I had bought in Ledbury, and Mikey lived in his beautifully restored and renovated eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse in Oswestry, the architectural project that earned him his RIBA certification, so we sold daddy's house and put the money away for Finn and Lara for when they really needed it.