blame Dad.’ I blurt it out.
The look of horror on her face says it all.
‘He took us on that first snow holiday. He made her love it.’
‘Oh, Jess …’ She takes my hand.
‘I know it’s wrong. I know it.’
‘Is that why you don’t come up?’ she asks simply.
I raise my hand to my mouth, exhale loudly through spread fingers. It comes out in uneven, ragged breaths. The question doesn’t need an answer so she pulls me from the room. As we walk, I focus on the love I have for my mother and the love I know Anna has for me. I close my eyes and will her home, as Mum and I walk arm in arm to the dining table, and together, all five of us eat roast beef with seven different vegetables.
Leah’s quiet on the way home. Pug is asleep in the carrier by my side.
‘How do you think your mum and dad were?’ Gus asks.
My eyes flit to Leah’s who turns around to face me. ‘What did you think?’ she says.
‘You first.’
‘Mum’s going to kill herself running around after him, way before he goes.’
‘I don’t know. He seems … He just seems to have disappeared inside himself. He seems lost.’ I pause a moment before finishing. ‘I didn’t like the look of him.’
‘They did tell us that things would worsen over time, the risk of tinier strokes happening regularly.’
I suppress a sigh; stare out of the window; try not to think of the man I’ve just left as my once vibrant, athletic father; try not to think of the once glamorous woman who takes care of his every need now having piccalilli hair.
‘Do you agree we need to get Mum some help?’ Leah asks.
‘You tried, didn’t you?’ Gus says. ‘Last time you and I were here, you said it to her. She said she didn’t want any strangers in the house, that it would upset your dad.’
‘That was then,’ Leah said. ‘I think it’s probably time. She can’t keep doing what she’s doing. Can she?’ She turns around again to look at me.
‘Mum will do what Mum wants. If she says no strangers, then that means no strangers.’
Leah tuts. ‘She needs help,’ she repeated. ‘The GP has recommended him for a care package. All we have to do is put the wheels in motion and, even then, it could take time.’
‘Look, you’ve tried. Let me talk to her?’
‘Tell her we’ll find someone who looks like Daniel Craig,’ Leah says, removing her laptop from her bag and putting her glasses on.
I smile, despite myself. My mother has a thing for Daniel Craig, though I’m certain care workers who look like him are probably quite rare.
Gus grins at me in the rear-view mirror. Leah has snapped into work mode. There’ll be no talking to her now until we arrive home. Her work is her life. I remember when Anna became pregnant with Rose, together they had cried. Leah with a rare frustration; sadness that since she had willingly decided never to have children with Gus, already a father, it brought it home that she would never have ‘her own’ child. Anna because she, having slept with Sean only once, found herself with an unplanned and very inconvenient pregnancy.
By the time Gus drops me and Pug off, my watch says seven forty and I feel like it’s much later. I am planning a cup of tea, an hour of recorded Downton Abbey, a chat with Anna and then sleep – lots of it. With Rose away still with Sean, I take any opportunity to sleep longer and later. There’s a pile of mail lying on the hallway floor. I open the cupboard under the stairs and, anything with Anna’s name on it, I throw into the black refuse sack full of her post. The only thing bearing my name that I choose to open is a small brown padded package with my address in Doug’s handwriting. Pug is yapping to escape the travel carrier as I rip it open. Inside, there’s an item in a clear plastic bag, the sort I use for Rose’s school lunch. A yellow Post-it is attached.
‘You said you wanted this when we got it back. The police sent it through this week. I charged it but Anna has a lock on it and I haven’t been able to open it with any code that I thought she’d use … Let me know you get it okay? Doug’.
I let Pug out and she immediately wants out in the back garden for a wee. Opening the door, I look at it through the plastic cover. Anna’s phone.
Just as I’m staring at it, as Pug runs back in and I shut the back door, the front doorbell rings. I head towards it, removing the bag, feeling her phone in my palm. It’s as if I’ve been plugged into her once again.
When I open the door, I’m startled by the shape of a man in my porch.
‘Mrs Powers?’ He approaches, a shy hand outstretched. He’s dark blond, with tanned skin, blue eyes and trimmed facial hair. I don’t correct the title he uses for me and he retrieves his hand when he senses my reticence.
‘My name’s Max. I’m a friend of Anna’s.’
Hearing her name aloud makes me catch my breath. Hearing him say ‘I’m a friend’ makes me hold it. He is saying ‘I am’, not ‘I was’. Whoever this guy is, I decide immediately that I like him.
‘Come in,’ I say, kicking Pug’s travel carrier to one side. ‘We haven’t met before, Max, have we?’ I know he’s not one of Anna’s local friends. ‘How far have you come?’
‘Hertfordshire,’ he says. ‘And no, we’ve never met.’
Max. I’m racking my brain to try and remember him. ‘Do you work with her?’
He stares at me a moment as I roll Anna’s phone over and over in my hand.
‘I did,’ he says. ‘We worked together.’
Past tense. ‘Were you … were you?’
We’re standing in the hallway. I point him to the back of the house, to the kitchen-diner that would fit in my parents’ larder. ‘Were you …?’ I try again. My heart thumps a rapid clip-clop beat in my ribcage. My lips are dry.
‘I was on the ski-trip,’ he says, meeting my eyes.
Raw Honey Blogspot 15/10/2014
Mama’s just been screaming at me to ‘move my shit from the front door’. It’s her standard rant and I’ll do it – I’ll move them but can’t promise the pile of shoes won’t build again. I’m a messy cow. One moment Mama tells me I get it from my father, and the next she’s shouting, telling me that laziness is not genetic.
She’s mad! She’s the best mother in the world and I adore her, but, she’s a tough act to follow; sees things in a very black-and-white way, whereas I seem to live in grey. In
