What was wrong with my mother? ‘Mum, that’s nuts. You can’t cover up a heart attack with a spa day. You’re ill. You could be here for some time. Everyone at the company cares about you. They’d want to know.’
‘I just bet they would,’ she said. ‘Phoebe, how many times have I told you that people will exploit their advantage. I’m not about to give them an excuse.’
‘These aren’t just people, Mum, they’re your friends. Your employees. You’ve worked with them for years.’
She waved away my protest. ‘You’d hope that friends wouldn’t use something against you, but why would I take the chance when I don’t have to? If you’ve learned anything from me, darling, I hope it’s that.’
Then she pulled off the covers and started to swing her legs to the floor, sending the machines into a meltdown.
‘Mum, don’t!’
A nurse hurried into the room, probably expecting cardiac arrest. What she found was the world’s worst patient peeling off the tape holding the monitors to her chest. ‘What are you doing?’ the nurse demanded. ‘Get back into bed. You’ve got to rest. And keep these on.’ She pulled off another length of tape with a furious tear and stuck it to my mother. ‘If you need the loo, push the button and someone will help you.’ She glared at Mum. ‘Do not leave this bed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured to the nurse as she left. ‘Mum, why can’t you behave?! You need to stay here until they know what’s wrong. These people are trying to help you.’
‘I know that, Phoebe, but I’ve got things to do. I’m very busy. We didn’t build our business by sitting around on our bums, you know.’
How many times had I heard that over the years? Whenever I didn’t do things the way she thought I should. Which was almost always. ‘Being in hospital with a heart attack is not just sitting around on your bum,’ I reminded her. ‘Besides, you’ve got Dad looking after the bids, so you don’t need to worry about anything.’
She rolled her eyes. Then she zeroed in on my hair which, I remembered too late, was still in its ponytail from work. ‘Couldn’t you have done something with that?’ She patted her own perfectly coiffed gingery head. She looked like she’d had it styled on the way over in the ambulance. ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression. You could look so much better, you know, if you tried at all.’
Despite my mother being mortified by a hair tie, I actually think it looks all right, thank you very much. It might not be as shimmery and because-I’m-worth-it as Mum’s, but it’s a nice brown, long, straight and thick.
‘You made a great first impression with that nurse,’ I said. ‘You’d better be careful or she won’t give you the good biscuits at teatime.’ I heaved a great sigh. ‘Do you need anything? I can run downstairs to the shops.’
I was desperate to get away for a few minutes to catch my breath. Besides, my tummy had been twisting into knots since the drive.
She always did that to me. My mother didn’t get ulcers, she gave them. Which said everything about our relationship, really.
By the time I got back with all Mum’s shopping, Dad was there, sopping wet from the squall that had whipped up outside. His dress shirt was stuck to his chest and little rivulets dripped down the sides of his face from his flattened hair. His whole head had gone grey early, but at least he’s still got it, and despite the stress of being an entrepreneur, he doesn’t look his age (fifty-eight). He does look like a builder, which he is, even though he spends more time on email now than on building sites.
‘You really didn’t park in the garage?’ I asked him.
‘You really did?’ he shot back. ‘I told you it was a waste of money.’
That’s pretty much what passes for a friendly greeting in our family.
Dad wasn’t offended because he’s cheap. We’re talking about the man who drives a £60k car. He and Mum went on exotic holidays. He’s not afraid to spend his cash. He just hates feeling ripped off. That’s why he buys own-brand baked beans if the good ones aren’t on sale. Tesco won’t ever put one over on him.
Not Mum, though, aka Spendy McSquillions. She’d never met a purse she couldn’t empty. It was a good thing their business had done well.
‘I’m only supposed to have one visitor at a time,’ Mum said when I gave her the carrier bags from downstairs.
‘I’m sure it’s fine, Bev,’ Dad said. ‘Phoebe’s driven all the way here.’
‘I know, thank you,’ she said to me. ‘But really, you don’t have to stay, now that Dad’s come. I’m fine, don’t worry about me.’
I could tell that she was fine by the way she was just as critical as usual.
‘Mum’s right,’ Dad added, glancing at his phone. ‘You’ve got to get out of that garage,’ he said, like the parking attendant there was holding my car hostage.
‘I don’t care about the money, Dad.’
But I let them convince me to go back to their house. He’d only keep going on about the expense anyway, and clearly Mum wasn’t in any danger.
I couldn’t say I was completely at home at my parents’, but it felt comfortable enough. Like I said, it wasn’t where I grew up. They sold that when they decided to make their fortune a hundred miles south. Still, I flattered myself that the guest bedroom where I always stayed was ‘my room’, and that I’d at least get first dibs over any Tom, Dick or Harry who came to visit.
Dad didn’t stay at the hospital very long after me, but he went back to work and then out for some dinner meeting that couldn’t be moved just because his wife and business partner was dining in Critical Care.
When I got to Mum’s room the next morning, all I saw was a lump in her bed with a sheet pulled over it. Exactly like they did in films when the paramedics had done all they could to save the patient.
She was dead! ‘Mum!’
‘What!’ snapped the voice under the bedding.
‘What are you doing?’
Mum appeared with an angry yank of the sheet. She had her phone to her ear.
‘You’re not supposed to use that in here!’
‘No kidding, Phoebe, so stop shouting about it or the nurse will hear. Shush.’ She waved me away as she continued to talk and scribble in the notebook I’d picked up for her in the shop.
‘That could interfere with the machines, you know,’ I said when she’d hung up.
‘Don’t be such a worrier,’ she grumbled. ‘It’s my machine, so it’s my risk.’
‘There are other patients with machines on the ward,
