she?’
‘What?’
‘Get the clothes? I told her I’d have them ready for her. She’s been really anxious about the exams, and I—’
‘She wanted to know where you were.’
‘What did you say?’ I hold my breath.
‘I said … I just said you were out. With Iris.’
‘And she didn’t ask anything else?’
‘No. She’s too preoccupied.’
I am struck by what must be maternal guilt. The working mothers used to talk about it when I’d meet them sometimes at the school gate or the supermarket. I’d nod and say, ‘Oh yes’, and, ‘Isn’t it desperate’, and, ‘It comes with the territory’, but the truth was, I never felt it. I never left the girls. I was there. I was always there.
‘And Kate rang.’
‘Kate?’ Kate never rings. I ring her. Every Sunday night ten minutes before the news, which usually hasn’t started by the time I hang up. Yes, of course she’d ring me if I didn’t make the effort, but she’s so busy. Especially now, with the play so close. Anyway, she prefers texting to talking. I’m sure lots of young people do.
‘Why did she ring?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Brendan. ‘Something about our hotel accommodation in Galway. She said she couldn’t get through to you.’ He lapses into silence.
‘Is there a problem with the hotel?’ I ask.
‘I think so. I’m not sure. Look, you should really talk to Kate yourself,’ says Brendan.
‘But you were on the phone to her. Why didn’t you talk to her?’
‘I don’t do phones, Terry. You know that.’
‘Well then, I’d better not keep you.’
‘Terry, wait, I—’
I hang up.
That’s the second time in one day I’ve hung up on him.
The second time in twenty-six years.
IF YOU ARE APPROACHING A JUNCTION WITH A MAJOR ROAD, YOU MUST YIELD.
‘Are you okay?’ Iris wants to know when I arrive in the café where they have drained their tea and my father has eaten all of the tiny denominations of his tart.
I am out of breath and very possibly flushed of face, having run from the ticket office to the bookshop, then to the café. I don’t know why I ran. People stared as if they’d never seen a long, loping woman before.
I am out of shape. I can feel the flush of blood across my usually pale face. I had relied on running up and down the stairs several times a day, carrying baskets of laundry, to keep obesity and heart disease in check, and perhaps it did, back in the day. I can’t remember the last time I took the stairs at a run.
I put the book on the table, face up so there can be no confusion. Dad reads the title.
‘The A to Z of L … on … don,’ he reads in the faltering way he has now, dragging his finger under the words.
‘No,’ says Iris.
I take off my cardigan and sit down. I feel the sweat I have worked up collect in the hollows of my armpits, and I am reminded that I have no change of clothes for three days. For any days. I open the book. ‘Well, I’ve never driven in London before,’ I say. ‘Now, whereabouts is the Hippodrome?’ I ask, oh-so-matter-of-factly. I follow that with an offhand, ‘And have you booked somewhere to stay?’
‘You’re not coming with me, Terry,’ Iris says, in her quiet, steely voice that brooks no argument.
‘I am,’ I rally with a casual tone.
‘No,’ Iris says, her voice rising. ‘You’re not.’
‘If it were me going to Switzerland, would you come with me?’
‘If you wanted me to, I would.’
‘And if I didn’t want you to?’
‘Look, this is a moot argument. You wouldn’t go to Switzerland.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because … you’d always be thinking that a cure would be discovered.’
‘Exactly!’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘It could.’
‘It’s unlikely. In my lifetime at any rate.’
‘Only if you insist on cutting your lifetime short.’ I whisper this, but it’s a loud whisper and attracts the attention of a couple at a neighbouring table.
Iris glares at the couple, who whip their heads in the other direction so now it looks like they are taking a keen interest in the hot food, which no one in their right mind would do.
I was going to make seafood pie this evening. I tend to cook fish when Dad is staying. Good for your brain. Brendan doesn’t think eating fish will make any difference to Dad at his stage of the disease – stage five, we think – but it’s important to feel like you are doing something positive. I think about my bright, comfortable kitchen with the rocking chair that faces towards the garden where, only this morning, I admired the tulips I had planted as bulbs last September, dancing on their long stems, a palette of oranges and reds and yellows.
Dad points to a television screen mounted on the wall where a reporter is at the scene of a road-traffic accident. ‘If you are approaching a junction with a major road,’ he recites, ‘you must yield.’
‘You hear that Iris?’ I look at her. ‘You must yield.’
‘Are you all finished here?’ asks a waitress, appearing at our table with a tray in her hand and a wad of chewing gum bulging in her cheek.
‘Yes we are.’ Iris reaches for her sticks, hauls herself to her feet. She sways before she steadies herself, and I see the familiar curiosity in the waitress’s expression.
People like illnesses to be visible to the naked eye. Otherwise there’s suspicion. That’s one of the reasons Iris rarely tells anyone she has MS. To avoid a variation of, You look fine to me.
‘No, we’re not,’ I say to the waitress. ‘I’m sorry but … no, we’re not finished here.’ The waitress is brandishing one of those disinfectant sprays that I cannot abide, for who can tell what chemicals lurk inside?
