¿Nos quedamos o nos vamos?

After the death of her father—consumed over years by a long and devastating dementia—Kay Wilkinson and her husband Cyril make a pact that is as simple as it is unsettling: when they both turn eighty, they will commit suicide together. They will never endure what Godfrey went through; there will be no dependency or humiliation, and they will spare themselves and their loved ones that slow, inexorable decline that turns the body into a burden and memory into a landscape of ruins. In their early fifties and in enviable health, they are both convinced that the future can be planned with the same precision as a medical prescription. Over the ensuing decades, as the world moves forward amidst a mix of progress and bewilderment—from Brexit to the coronavirus pandemic—Kay and Cyril walk with clear-eyed resolve toward that date marked on the calendar, like people approaching an immovable horizon. But are life and death truly so easily calculated? Can love sustain such an irrevocable pact? What happens when life, even in its most uncertain phases, continues to offer glimmers of meaning or pleasure?