I haven’t thought about Simon for a very long time.
‘He was,’ I finally speak, ‘the sweetest child, a cherub, always laughing. He chatted all the time, such a little chatterbox and … he loved me. It was meningitis …’ I hesitate a moment. ‘Meningitis killed him.’
Caroline is listening, not a poised pen in sight. Briefly, I wonder if this is some new tactic of hers.
‘What do you remember of the time around his death?’
I nibble along the width of my top lip. ‘I just remember him being gone. The house emptied. That’s how it felt, like a vacuum. Hollow …’
‘What did your parents tell you?’
‘That he’d been sick, that he’d gone to heaven. My dad described it and it sounded such a beautiful place that I just didn’t understand why we couldn’t all go there. Together …’
I clamp my teeth together, take a deep breath through my nose, and release it slowly through my mouth. ‘I haven’t thought about this for years,’ I confess.
‘It’s painful, obviously; an incredible loss for you at such a young age. For someone you loved, someone who was there for half of your life up to that point, for them just not to be there ever again. It leaves a big hole.’
My eyebrows stretch upwards.
‘And, of course, your parents would have been different afterwards.’
It’s a question without it sounding like one. I nod in silent agreement. I’m not ready to talk about my parents and the almost disintegration of their marriage after Simon died. I didn’t understand it then and don’t really understand it now. Besides, I’m here to discuss the disintegration of my own.
Caroline senses she has almost lost me. ‘Let’s park that for now if you’d prefer?’
‘I’d prefer,’ I tell her, ‘but I’d also rather get it over with. The truth is my parents were in trouble for years afterwards. A couple living together, but mentally apart … I became their everything and I became their nothing.’
Oh shit, her pen is up. It’s like it’s appeared from nowhere and she’s writing. ‘That’s a powerful statement. “Their everything and their nothing”,’ she repeats. ‘Can you elaborate?’
‘I was quiet, thoughtful, pensive – their only surviving child, yet I was nothing like him, a constant reminder of their loss. Simon had filled the house with laughter and joy, and suddenly it was gone. All of it.’
‘Did you feel guilty?’
I sigh. ‘I think, even as a child, I knew how useless that would be, so no … “guilty” isn’t the right word. But I did feel like they’d been short-changed and that I had too. I’d lost my brother and I knew I could never fill that hole.’
‘You had …’ Caroline taps her pad with the nib of her pen. ‘You had been short-changed, all of you …’
We’re both quiet for a minute, then she is first to speak. ‘Do you see any parallels between your own and your parents’ marriage?’
‘Other than the fact that they both hit the skids at some time, no …’
‘Who was it that mentally left your parents’ marriage, if you had to say? After Simon’s death – your mother or your father?’
Really? Sometimes this woman has a talent for making me wince with her jabbing questions. I don’t reply, not out loud at least, now that I can see where she’s going with this particular train of thought. Yes, my father was the bastard. Yes, Adam is the bastard.
I lean forward. ‘How is any of this relevant, Caroline?’
‘Maybe it’s not.’ She shrugs. ‘But it’s probably worth exploring.’
‘Can we park it for another time?’ I use her expression for ignoring it at the moment.
‘Of course,’ she says, making sure that, as she says that, our eyes lock; making sure she lets me know that she knows I’m merely hiding.
Caroline assured me before I left today that most learned behaviours can be unlearned, most bad habits broken. It’s six p.m. and I’ve just drunk a half-litre bottle of sparkling water, brushed my teeth, popped a chewing gum into my mouth – anything to try and convince myself I don’t want crisps. I can unlearn my salt-and-vinegar crisp habit. I do not need crisps. They are wasted calories. My image looks back at me from the mirror in the hallway, the one that’s wall-mounted above the console table. I tilt my head left and right slowly, releasing the creaking tension. ‘What you looking at, bitch?’ I ask my inner saboteur.
‘Not much,’ she replies in my head.
‘You’re horrible, you know that, don’t you?’
‘You want crisps, you know that, don’t you?’
I run my fingers through my hair like a comb.
‘You want crisps, you want salt-and-vinegar crisps,’ she taunts me again.
The phone rings and I grab the receiver. It’s Mum. She’s brief, since she’s dashing out; just wants to make sure I’m still all right for tomorrow.
I’m not all right for tomorrow. I feel like I lost a layer of skin with Caroline today, like somehow I’ll be painfully susceptible to a mother’s probing. Much as I want to cancel, I confirm our plans.
The next day, as suspected, my mother is no pushover. Having worried myself sick that she will be able to read me like a book when I see her, I insisted we meet for lunch halfway, purely to keep her away from the house. Allowed into the house, she would, like an anteater, sniff out the absence of Adam. Instead, we are lunching and shopping at John Lewis in High Wycombe.
Unusually, Mum is full of chat about herself. Her latest course at the local adult education centre, where she is learning how to manicure nails; her friend Trish who cheats at bridge; the vicar’s wife who’s seeing the guy who runs the off-licence. I listen for ages, smile, and laugh appropriately. I love my mother deeply. Sybil Moir has polar-white hair, having refused to succumb to hair dye like the rest of us. It is styled in flicked curls that curve away from her face. A few facial lines reveal she’s in her sixties, but it’s her grey eyes that light her face. If eyes can make a face smile, my mother’s, fringed with thick silver lashes, do – without ever needing the curve of her lips.
Her staple clothes choice of jeans, a polo-neck sweater and Barbour jacket hasn’t changed in years. Today, a bottle-green sweater hugs her neck. Black jeans ride above black leather ankle boots, Chelsea style – Mum doesn’t do heels – and her black padded jacket hangs on the back of the café chair.
I’m quite tickled at the fact that my phone lies have worked so far and all is going swimmingly until, grey eyes looking down into her latte, she asks me how Adam is. Really is. She just detects that maybe all’s not well. Then she looks up and stares right at me.
I dig deep. Right down into that monkey-nut inner core, match her gaze and tell her that Adam’s fine. Really. He’s really fine. This isn’t even a lie. He is allegedly very fine. He’s having lots of sex with another, younger woman.
