I? Nothing’s moved on. You haven’t so much as researched new vocations. Office management clearly doesn’t suit you – your words, not mine. And so what about the inland revenue? I saw something in the supplements about them looking for heaps more tax inspectors.’
‘I hate numbers, Mum. They’re the main reason I don’t like my existing job.’
‘So useful to have a head for numbers in this world. Oh dear …’ She balled the tissue in her hand and looked around, eyes wide with panic: it was a moment before I realized it was because she couldn’t see an accessible bin. I took the tissue from her and crammed it into my own pocket.
‘It’s not up to you to have the answers,’ I said softly.
‘I feel terribly disappointed for you.’
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
If you’re disappointed tell me it’s because your granddaughter will die before she has even lived, or that you lost your husband before his time, not because I don’t get on with office spreadsheet software.
Six. Seven. Eight.
Breath. Breath.
Then reply:
‘You don’t need to feel disappointed, Mum.’
‘And you look exhausted. Though this light is very unflattering. Come on, let’s get more fruit and veg into you.’ She piled courgettes into the crook of one arm and hooked a bunch of bananas with her free hand.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But Dave doesn’t like bananas so we don’t buy them.’ She laid the bananas back with a sigh. ‘Although I saw some banana milk in his bag the other day, so that could have changed? We’re not getting the chance to catch up on that kind of thing … or anything much.’ Mum hadn’t interrupted me so I kept going. ‘I honestly don’t feel like talking about anything at the moment.’
She was rolling lychees between her palms like Chinese stress balls. ‘The weather doesn’t help. We all feel a bit low in the rain, particularly if the sun is supposed to be out. Now come on – if he doesn’t like bananas, then what? Peaches?’
I looked behind me. A mother was heaving her toddler-filled trolley toward us as if the summit of her mountain was still so far away. As she passed us she pulled a bag of something off a shelf and, tearing it open, crammed the contents into her child’s mouth. Bored and hungry, her toddler needed feeding and she needed silence.
‘Peaches are fine. Thanks.’
‘Well, I can’t reach them.’ She tipped her head in the direction of a green plastic basket on the top shelf. ‘Can you?’
I craned over the lychees and blueberries, holding Mia against me, and slid out a box of peaches I knew we’d never eat. ‘I’m cooking when I can, Mum. I even made a stew last week. I’ve got some left. You could come back and maybe we could have lunch? It would be nice to talk through some of Mia’s stuff. I … What’s wrong?’
Mum’s brow was furrowed and she scratched at her temple with nails she’d filed into soft-pointed triangles.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. I’d given her bad news, again. ‘If you’d come up with that plan before … but I’ve got a church meeting and it’s important that I go. Attendance hasn’t been good this last month. Any other time. Or maybe you’ll have dinner with me next week? Let’s say Wednesday. I’ll cook a chicken the way you like it, with all that artery-clogging butter. We’ll do that. Seven p.m. sharp.’
‘Dave’s mum and dad might be coming to stay that night.’
‘Oh. They’re babysitting again, I suppose?’
Mum was stockpiling green peppers into the bottom of the trolley, and wouldn’t meet my eye. I had no use for seven, eight, nine green peppers but I had even less use for an argument about whether they’d stay in the trolley.
‘They’re only coming for dinner, Mum, and if they stay the night they get to spend time with Mia first thing. It’s hard for them to see her otherwise. They both work in the week. It’s nice that I get to see you during the day. When you’re around.’
She tried a smile. ‘I suppose there’s an upside to my being too old to contribute to the economy. What marvellous people Dave’s parents are, fitting it all in.’
I stroked the length of Mia’s spine to calm the restlessness in her and in me. ‘The truth is that we don’t see many people at all at the moment. I just don’t feel like seeing—’
Mum came to an abrupt standstill opposite the yoghurts. ‘Look at me,’ she said. I looked down at Mia. ‘No, look at me, Cath.’ I looked at her. ‘Don’t think I’m not listening when you tell me repeatedly that you don’t want to see anyone. Are you getting out of bed in the morning? I don’t suppose you have a choice, what with the little one. Do you need pills again? At least we know which ones work. You must say something, you must ask. They did warn you, Cath. If you catch it once you can catch it again.’
‘Depression isn’t like getting a cold.’ My fingers worried at the folds of Mia’s sling, itching to pick up a pot of yoghurt and hurl it across the aisle as I screamed. Anything to shock her, to reboot her.
‘I wasn’t suggesting it’s a cold. But depression can be passed through the genes.’ She coughed into a balled fist. ‘I’m not at all sure whose side you’d have got it from. I did have an aunt who—’
‘I’m not depressed.’
‘I’m only trying to help.’
She took a deep breath and began buttoning her coat because the freezer section was always cold. I watched her as she did it, all the way to the topmost, strangle-tight button.
‘You’ve got a newborn baby,’ she said eventually. ‘And this rainy summer is very depressing for everyone.’
‘It’s not the weather.’
‘Even people who are normally very cheerful can end up feeling at odds. I heard a programme about it on the radio. In some countries they make children sit under light bulbs or none of them can get out of bed.’
‘That’s Vitamin D.’
‘No, I’m sure this was for depression.’
Mia squirmed angrily. I paced to keep her still, paced to walk off some of the blistering hot anger I felt at always having to soothe my mother every time she came into contact with something about me that she found difficult. As if I was a puzzle she found too frustrating to solve. Over and over. Time after time. I came to a halt at the end of the frozen aisle.
She’d followed me, a few steps behind. ‘What support are you getting?’ she said. I turned to see her, arms crossed tight across her chest. The cold was really coming off those freezer cabinets.
I looked at her closely and wondered when she’d decided to put fine lines of black back into her gold and silver hair, and when the skin had begun to sag off her bones like that. Like sheets draped off ladders. Because it was like seeing her again after an absence of years – as I thought, if Dad had been here, you wouldn’t have had to ask about what support I was getting because
