I’m sure. It’s not a problem.’ I smile. ‘But before you go, do sit down and relax for a bit. Would you like a glass of red wine?’
He sits on the sofa. The wine is already open on the mantelpiece and I pour us a glass each. As I hand Craig his glass, our fingers touch. I leave my fingers resting on his for as long as I can before he moves them away. I sit next to him on the sofa, pushing my leg against his. Again he moves away.
What is it, Craig? Are you frightened of me?
The door key rattles as it turns. Rob is home. His footsteps pad across the hallway. The sitting room door opens and he is standing in front of us, dripping with familiarity. I know from the shadows of sadness beneath his eyes that it hasn’t gone well for his elderly patient.
Craig jumps up from the sofa.
‘Thanks so much for looking after the boys. Great to see you both, but I must go. I’ll leave you in peace.’
‘You’re welcome to stay, mate,’ Rob tries to insist, but Craig is almost at the sitting room door.
‘No thanks. Stuff to do. Got to make the best of my opportunity while Carly has the children. It’s been rather hard work lately.’
‘Carly has the children?’
‘Yes. After a day out. Fast asleep upstairs.’
‘Wonders never cease.’
I give him my look. My ‘stop teasing me’ look.
‘I’ll drop them round after breakfast,’ I say, following Craig to the front door, leaving my husband to pour himself a glass of wine and sprawl across the sofa.
In the hall, Craig kisses my cheek. A dry, pastry-brush kiss.
‘Thanks again.’
I open the front door and he walks slowly down the front path. Halfway towards the gate he turns to look back. I give him my best smile, the one I practise in the mirror sometimes. My Scarlett Johansson look.
When I return to the sitting room, Rob is lying on the sofa, feet up on the arm, shoes tossed off in front of him. He moves his legs so that I can join him.
‘What was all that about?’ he asks.
‘Me being helpful with the children? Haven’t you noticed? I’m turning over a new leaf.’
‘Of course I haven’t noticed. I don’t notice anything except for my patients.’ He laughs as he waves the remote at the television. ‘If there really are five children upstairs let’s hope they stay asleep.’
I hold her frail hand and comfort her. I lift water to her lips to ease her dry mouth. I keep to a routine: food supplements, anti-depressants, pain relief. Days and nights are dominated by medicine; morphine in higher and higher doses. Outside, beyond these four walls, other people’s lives continue. People rush past late for work, or laugh into their mobiles. The postman drops letters we no longer care about. Strangers stagger past the end of the road, late at night, after an evening at the pub. They are ignorant of the thin existence we cling to in here. The edges of their jovial conversations pull me towards happier times, but we each have one turn at life and I must accept hers is almost over. I have prayed and prayed to the Lord, and still she isn’t getting better. It must be her time.
Sometimes when she has enough energy, Mother still worries about small details, irrelevancies to me, given the state of her health. Whether the bins will be put out at the front on Wednesday. Whether the dishwasher has been emptied. Maybe the routine of minor details helps her hold on to life. But for the most now all she does is sleep.
I fear that I will lose my father almost immediately after she dies. He is not coping; when he isn’t staring at my mum, he stares into space, leaving me to run the household. He does not eat. I don’t know whether he sleeps. From time to time he clings to me and cries and cries.
I miss my family so much, stuck here in this prison of death. My husband, the musky sweet smell of him. The kindness in his eyes. My boys. The softness of their skin as I hold them at bedtime, cheek to cheek. Their energy. Their laughter. I hope everything will be all right when I’m back home with Craig. Lately, as I spend so much time sitting here, watching my mum sleeping, the rise and fall of her body beneath the counterpane, I feel my family moving away from me. Craig is coping so well without me. Better than I expected. Carly is being so helpful, which is unusual. She seems to have risen to the challenge of five children, coping better than she does with just her own. She has the constant support of her own mother, Heather – I hope it is not Heather who is bearing the brunt. A few months ago, I was worried about Carly; not enjoying her summer holiday, not enjoying her husband or her children. I was sad for her. But now, the tables are turned, Carly is on top of everything, and it is me who is sinking into quicksand.
Mum is calling me. A weak cry on the edge of the wind.
The boys are restrained in their car seats; tightly, as if they are convicts, and Pippa is sitting – back straight – on her booster seat. Everyone is making too much noise, Pippa being Little Miss Cheery, Little Miss Too Helpful, as usual.
‘Quiet boys,’ she thunders, making more noise than they are. The percussion already beating around my temples explodes. I pray for the ibuprofen I took twenty minutes ago to start working, and press a button on the steering wheel. Classic FM glides silkily into the Volvo. I turn the volume up to drown out the sound of the children. ‘Fingal’s Cave’ by Mendelssohn takes me away from here. I could be swimming in a Scottish ocean. Watching waves crash through sea-hollowed rocks. Anywhere but here.
A horn beeps discordantly through the music. The car behind is telling me the lights have changed. I press the accelerator and the car jerks forwards across the road junction in the middle of town. Next left and we are outside Craig and Jenni’s house – a few more minutes and I’ll only have my own three to put up with. Half an hour and Rob will be home. Rob. Always so helpful. Always doing something useful. Working at the surgery. Looking after the children. Doing DIY at home.
Please, Rob, will you just grab a glass of wine and sit and talk to me? Even if the children are running wild upstairs. Even if the dishwasher needs unloading. We had a world together before we had the children. A world of quiet conversation on the sofa. Gentle nights out sharing a Chinese, a curry. Trips to the theatre. Trips to the cinema. Holidays that were holidays, not child-care assault courses. And now? The children are drowning me, stopping me from being the person I used to be. No longer Carly, but ‘Mummy’, a stereotypical shadow of what is inside me. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. The word is beginning to disgust me. As I attempt to park the car, the rear beeper chirruping like a maniac, my stomach tightens as I think of last night. Rob hovering over me as I loaded the dishwasher.
‘Don’t stack the bowls that way. They don’t fit properly.’
He took them out. He put them back in again in a row on the upper shelf.
‘There you are.’ A pause. ‘See.’
