Kate was beautiful in defiance. She could sense the admiration of those around her: the doctor, her husband Matt, their children and friends. Her mother would have approved. As far as Kate was concerned, the matter was settled, she was not ready to die and therefore it was not going to happen.

Matt tried to persuade her to get her affairs in order, gently at first and then with increasing impatience, enlisting the doctor’s help. Just in case, they muttered in chorus. She refused to give them an inch, would not talk about wills or funeral arrangements or the children. In public, she was as hard as her mother, elegant and composed and refined and so vitally alive. Still young enough to turn heads, she was definitely not old enough to die.

In private, the fear nagged at her. She did not let the mask did not slip but began to feel brittle around the edges. She could hear the doctor's voice and see the look of dreadful compassion in his eyes as he told her that she had only months left to live.

She had been indignant at first, with the medical advances of recent years she had refused to believe that there was nothing that they could do. After all, she had the money to pay for treatment. But no, the doctor told her there was nothing. She ignored him. Resolutely. She decided that she would just have to look after herself.

Now she spends her mornings sitting at the dressing table she inherited from her mother. She needs this time on her own, to think, to prepare herself for the event that she tells everyone else will never happen. She is a firm believer in being truthful with herself. She hears her mother's voice in her head, If you are going to lie so outrageously, Katherine, you should at least be aware that you are doing it.

She stares into the mirror intently, wishing that she could see beyond it and wonders, if she smashed it, would she be able to see her future, her older self? She could cope with the shock of an unfamiliar face and slackened, wrinkled skin, if she could just see a future. She shakes her head briskly. Nonsense. She has no desire to see the blank space that undoubtedly lies behind her mirror.

She cleanses, tones, moisturises and applies her make-up, subtle yet ever-present. The number of bottles on the table seems to grow, year on year. She can remember her mother's potions, a new one appearing almost every month, changing with the adverts on TV. She sighs and opens the drawer that runs the width of the table, pushing upwards as she pulls, to stop the runners sticking at the back; a trick her mother never mastered.

The drawer is full of a random selection of objects that Kate rifles through, looking for something. Out comes a thick, black-leather Filofax. Neat, pristine and empty, save for the first few days of January. A bundle of receipts follows, held together by a thick elastic band, details of Christmas presents from the year before. Coincidentally, Kate's passport is also tucked into the band.

At the back of the drawer, underneath her dog-eared English-Spanish dictionary, she finds what she is looking for: a pad of lined paper and a Biro. She also brings out a bulky package that was nestled right in the corner, wrapped in bubble-wrap and an old scarf. She peels away the wrappings and opens the velvet-coated box.

Every time she looks inside, she hopes that the letter might have vanished, but it is always smugly sitting there. She can almost hear her mother's lavender tones, coldly formal. Dear Katherine. She shudders, closes the box lid with a snap and pushes it away from her, time to put pen to paper herself.

Dearest Vicky,

It's Monday morning. I have been putting off writing this letter for long enough, twenty three days now. We went to see the specialist this morning, your father and I. The news wasn't good but then it never seems to be these days.

He says I have two months, if I'm lucky. It's not long enough, I have too much to do before then. There's your birthday party to plan for a start and, having planned the thing, I'll be damned if I'm going to miss it. So that's three months at the least.

I don't feel unwell, don't feel much different from usual if I'm honest. I'm tired of course, lethargic most of the time and the mornings are difficult, but then I never have been a morning person. Your father wants me to sort out my will, tidy up the trust fund we set up for you, even plan my funeral for chrissakes. No-one should have to plan their own funeral, it's downright barbaric.

I refuse to be coerced into action, so I've told him I'm doing none of those things, maintain that I am not going to die. But, between you and me, I've contacted the solicitor, set things in motion. I'm not planning my own bloody funeral though, he can do that himself.

It terrifies me, the thought that I am dying and have such a short time left and then what? A vast expanse of nothing? I seem to have walled myself into a corner of bravery and denial and so, now that I am admitting defeat, I have no-one to talk to but myself and no-one to blame for that but myself.

I like to think we understand each other a little, certainly more than my mother and I understood each other. She wrote a letter to me when she died, along with the box of course. I am leaving you that letter. I am leaving you the box as well, although I am not sure that I should, not sure that it is at all sensible.

Read your grandmother's letter as well as mine. There is very little left to say that I can put down on paper. I still hope that this is a letter that will never be sent.

Goodbye Vicky

love, Mum

Kate looked at the letter, hoping her daughter would be able to read her untidy scrawl. Then she folded it once, twice and slid it into an envelope. She wrote Vicky's name on the front and then the envelope went into the black velvet box. At least there was enough time left to collect the other objects that belonged in the box with the letter.

It took her a while to find the scarf. It had been so many years since she had brought it out to look at, yet alone worn it. After a good hour of searching she found it on top of a pile of old things in the bottom of her spare wardrobe. She had put it in a large brown paper envelope that crunched with the tell-tale rustle of tissue paper when she picked it up. Inside was the scarf, neatly folded. She slipped it out of the envelope, balanced it on the fingertips of one hand and sat for a while, as if she could absorb memories through the threadbare silk.

She laid the scarf out on the bed and placed one finger gently on the deep vermilion oval at the centre of the pattern, tracing the arteries outwards in slow, lazy spirals. It brings back memories of Gemma, back when they were more like sisters than friends.

She remembers the smile on Gemma's face, when she came through the arrivals gate on that May morning, and the excitement in her voice as she told tales of her travels. She remembers also the hope and anticipation in her eyes, as she spoke of the life they could share together out in Africa, India, anywhere they were needed, helping others. They needed only their friendship to survive, she said. They could support each other.

Kate had known, as soon as Gemma stepped through the gate, that things were different. She had tasted the distance between them, a new and unfamiliar sensation. Unsettled by the gulf of time and unshared experiences, she had felt suddenly sick, jealous of the people and places that had captured Gemma's imagination and enthusiasm.

She had believed she alone could do that. In that instant, she realised that Gemma's offer of friendship and support could never be enough. The physical need to be the only one to make her stumble over jumbled words, to cram her mouth with ideas and render her speechless, frightened Kate.

She did not behave well after that. Gemma's face, in the wake of her cold betrayal, still lurks in Kate's thoughts on windy days, white-slapped. The wind will always remind her of Gemma, laughing and tossing waist-length mouse-brown hair on her doorstep, coaxing her out into the world.

They would walk along the canal in the wind, feeling cold thighs chafing in their thin jeans and talk, never minding numb fingers and running noses. The memory hurts. But that is good. It makes sure she never forgets how sometimes you can want something so badly that even having it won't assuage the need. She has learnt that it is best to deny yourself the things you want the most.

She folds the scarf again, such an insubstantial thing, and places it into the box.

The book is easy to find. Kafka's 'The Trial', well thumbed, with pencil-noted margins; a memento from her earnest student days. Gemma has left her mark on this too, written into the cover. In pencil, of course, and on the back cover rather than the front, It's so cliche dear, so cliche. She has written in her usual cramped capitals, Kate never did find out why it always had to be capitals.

Never confess your innocence as guilt, dear Kate. G.

Kate allows herself a smile at the memory of the smug superiority of their student days, when everything seemed so simple. Nowadays, she thinks, there is hardly any innocence left to confess, as guilt or otherwise, and Kafka has moved on to mean entirely different things.

It was no surprise that The Trial drew her in back then. Living with her mother often felt like being on trial for an unknown crime, with no hope of ever giving the right answers that would let you go free.

The other objects tumble in, with little thought in the finding or the storing. She hopes Vicky will understand her intentions but supposes that, by then, she will be past caring. The biggest gamble of all comes last, a gift.

She has bought a ticket to an art exhibition in London. Two tickets in fact, knowing Vicky would never go anywhere so intimidating on her own. The exhibition is of modern art, featuring Rothko's seascape murals, on loan from the Tate Modern.

She goes to visit those paintings herself, often, and every time they leave her breathless. There is something about the half-light of the dim room in which they are kept. And something too about the vast expanses of canvas. The starkness of a red-wine doorway daubed over a lavender sunset speaks of desolation.

When she sits on the low wooden benches, she loses herself in the paint and fancies she can see Rothko in his last moments, sat on his studio floor like a statue. She read that they found him, elbows slashed, in a pool of his own blood.

But she does not see that. Sitting in the dusk she sees a pool of maroon paint, the colour and texture of watered down wine, sees him staring at something she cannot comprehend. The pool of paint is a doorway for him.

Vicky has always preferred her art to be realistic, to contain people, places and events to which she can relate. Modern art has passed her by, she sees no use for it. Kate can live quite nicely without dismembered animals, thank you very much, but feels a pull from abstract paint, a communication from the artist. She hopes Vicky will go to the exhibition, if only to appease a dead woman's wish. The rest will, she knows, look after itself.