The Billionaire Banker by Georgia le Carre

suddenly.
    ‘You’d make me an orphan for your stupid pride,’ she accuses.
    Her mother blinks suddenly, the wind taken out of her sails.‘Are you going to sit there and tell me that if I was dying and had a few weeks left to live you wouldn’t have asked a filthy rich stranger for a bit of money?’
    Her mother says nothing.
    ‘High and mighty ideals and principles are all right when you are not utterly, utterly desperate, Mum.’
    ‘You didn’t just ask him, did you? Tell the truth. You prostituted yourself.’
    ‘Assuming that I did. And I didn’t.’ Lana says a little prayer for her lie. ‘Wouldn’t you have done the same for c 1 0 d
    me?’Her mother begins to cry. ‘You don’t understand. You will, one day, when you have your own child. I am not important.’ She beats her chest with both her hands.
    ‘This is just worm food. I won’t have you sully yourself for this destroyed body. You are young. You have your whole life ahead of you and I am going to die, anyway.’
    ‘No, you’re not,’ Lana whispers fiercely.
    ‘But I am. And it’s time you accepted that.’
    ‘Remember when Daddy left and I swore to take care of you?’
    Her mother’s eyes become bleak. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Would you have me break my promise?’
    ‘I going for another bout of chemo on Monday.’
    ‘What for, Mum? What for? That stuff is so dangerous it’ll probably kill you before the cancer does.’
    Her mother’s lips move wordlessly. Then she covers her mouth with one hand. ‘Sit down, Lana,’ she whispers.
    ‘Please.’
    Lana shakes her head. ‘No, I won’t. What’s the point?
    In all the time I was trying to find a way to keep you alive I never thought that it would be you that would stand in my way.’
    Lana turns away from her mother and begins to walk out of the house. She has sold herself for nothing. She reaches the front door and she hears her mother shout from the kitchen, ‘Do you like him?’
    She turns around and her mother is standing there so c 1 1 d
    frail and breakable. Now she can be truthful. ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’ll go.’
    Lana walks towards her mother.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ her mother sobs.
    Lana takes her poor wasted body in her arms and the tears begin to flow. Neither says anything. Finally, when Lana can speak, she chokes out. ‘I love you, Mum. With all my heart. Please don’t leave me. You’re my mum. I’d do anything, anything for you.’
    ‘I know, I know,’ her mother soothes softly.
    ‘Oh shit,’ Lana says.
    ‘What?’
    Lana steps away from her mother. She puts her hand into her pocket and brings out bits of blue shell. ‘I brought you a blue egg.’
    Her mother tries, she really tries hard, but a giggle breaks through. For a few moments Lana can only stare at the rare spectacle of her mother stifling laughter. Then she too cracks up.
    ‘Take that jacket off and go wash your hand,’ her mother finally says. ‘I’l make us a fresh pot of tea and we’ll have some of those nice biscuits you brought.’
    ‘They are nice, aren’t they?’ Lana agrees, slipping off her soiled jacket and walking towards the sink.
    Lana is wiping her hands on a tea towel when her mother says, ‘And you’ll have to bring that nice man— Blake Barrington, did you say?—over to dinner.’
    ‘Uh, yeah… When you get back from your treatment.’
    Her mother stops and looks at her. ‘I’m going to meet that young man before I get on the plane and I’ll have no more said on the matter,’ she says firmly.
    While they are having their tea Lana tells her mother about the appointment she has made for a wig fitting in Selfridges.
    Unconsciously her mother puts her right hand up to her scarf. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Will that be very expensive?’
    Lana grins. ‘We’re not paying for it.’
    And her mother laughs. For the first time in many months, her mother throws back her head and laughs.
    ‘That’s good. That’s very good,’ and while she is laughing she begins to cry. When Lana goes to hold