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Text Message from Cate:Millieeeee! I’m still in pain with this bloody stomach. Called my doctor and they want to see me at 4. I’ll meet you at the treehouse. Ralph said I can bring his car. Don’t wait around for me and miss check-in. So sorry. Anyone want a fucked-up stomach? Free to a good home. X
Chapter Twenty-Two
This impromptu trip to pop in and see Mum is not about what I told her it was about – extra deckchairs for the treehouse we absolutely do not need. I’m going to see Mum to check in. Dad is away again, on shift, and Mum sounded almost too musical when I called her after I’d seen Dad; too high-pitched to be normal. Like someone pretending to be OK, even when they’re falling apart at the seams. Dad had gone home after two nights in Auntie Vye’s symbolic conservatory, apparently, but something Mum said, slipped up with, told me he’d slept in the study on the futon.
Mum is already on the driveway with the garage door open when I pull in. She looks tiny in there, amongst Dad’s things. When she turns and smiles at me, I can see how sad she is, by her eyes. And she looks thin. Gaunt. Grey. Weeks without a proper appetite, and Dad’s grandiose pizza-oven creations.
‘Hello, darling.’ She smiles, folding a black, pearl-knit cardigan around her.
‘Hi, Mum. How’re you?’
‘Oh, fine, fine. I’m just trying to find the .?.?. pink deckchairs?’ she says with a hollow chuckle. ‘You know, the ones with the cup holders? These are fine, these blue ones, but the pink ones are much sturdier and easier to carry. Your dad says so. He’s probably put them .?.?.’ She pauses then, and looks up to meet my eyes. Rain from the over-flowing guttering falls over the edge of the open garage, like a water feature, slapping the ground. ‘Gosh, sorry, I’m a bit of a mess at the moment.’ Then Mum brings a hand to her face. I step forward to hug her. ‘No, no, darling,’ she says a palm up, a gentle stop-sign. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I can stay for a bit?’ I offer.
‘No, no—’
‘I don’t mind. Let me.’ And it’s seeing Mum, so small, so lost, amongst a life-time of possessions and memories of a life lived with the man she loves, that softens my heart like a baked apple.
Within moments, the deckchairs are left leaning against brick of the house, sheltered beneath the pitched roof above the cottage’s front door, and we head inside. I make us a cup of tea and feel heartbroken at the sight of the silent kitchen. When he isn’t working, Dad is usually here, marinading something, fixing something, talking at length about the things he’s picked up from the local farm shop. Dad isn’t home a lot, but this room feels more silent, more empty than ever. It’s the absence of him having been home; of normality. He’s always calling, leaving meandering voicemails on their old-fashioned answer machine, half-finished projects of his – door handles he’s fixed, glued and propped up to set on the kitchen counter, new spices he’s yet to open, purchased and ready for a new recipe he wants to try in his outdoor wood-fired oven, on the kitchen shelf. The Sky box leaping into action, murder mystery shows on series link.
‘How’s .?.?. how’s Julian?’ I ask. And Mum’s eyes brighten. I’ve skirted around Julian, not even uttered his name, up until now.
‘He’s – all right. I .?.?. I don’t know really, Millie. I’ve – not seen him this week. Or last.’
‘No?’
Mum shakes her head. A quick, rigid judder. She says nothing else.
‘And you. How are you, Mum? Truthfully,’ I say, and it’s like that final word lands between us on the table; and she considers picking it up for a while, resists, and then finally grasps it.
‘I’m sad, Millie. I’m – really sad. I wish I could say otherwise, but – I’m sad. I’m sad for your dad. I’m sad for doing this; lying in the first place, for being caught up in it. But did he tell you he’s coming over tomorrow. Dad. When he lands?’
My heart bungees. ‘Is he?’
Mum nods, gently. She reaches for the salt and pepper shakers in the centre of the table, adjusts the angle of them. ‘He said we’d talk. And I hope so much that we can talk more than the usual five minutes before he walks away.’
‘Do you think he’s going to come home?’
Then Mum sniffs into a balled-up piece of kitchen towel, and squares her shoulders, clears her throat. The quickest gathering of herself. ‘I do hope so. I .?.?. I really thought I knew everything when it came to me and your dad, you know.’ Mum gazes at her hands thoughtfully. Her hands are uncharacteristically clean; no pen, no paint splodges. ‘That everything had been so easy, so perfect, that there was nothing except more of the same on our horizon.’ Her lips are a light, far away smile. ‘Millie, this has taught me a lot. An awful lot. That nothing;no oneis untouchable. That when we make up reasons for why the truth doesn’t matter, that it isn’t important, it’s just that.Made up. Excuses. Lies. Because the truthalwaysmatters the most. Even when it’s hard or painful.Especiallywhen it’s painful.’
I nod, let Mum’s slow, careful, wise words sit with us here, at the table, like a soothing song. ‘I thought you were perfect,’ I admit. ‘You and Dad.’
Mum laughs then; an almost mirthless laugh. ‘Nobody is. But I’m really glad you thought that. For such a long time, I was so worried about getting it wrong, like my parents did; always so haphazard, so erratic. I just wanted you to see me and Dad as these strong, able, can-cope-with-anything sort of people. So you could be that too.’ She smiles, shakes her head. ‘Strong. Happy. And I think, perhaps, in my desperation for that, for you both, I’ve been misguided. I’ve not let you .?.?.be.’
Silence stretches between us, and rain continuing to spit against the kitchen window. The willow tree in the garden, the one I used to sit under on blankets when I was a child, with Kieran and triangle sandwiches and Wotsits, is leafless and bowing sadly in the wind, its branches skinny, spindling. I’d dream of everything back then. Doing everything. Dancing, singing, grabbing everything and enveloping myself in it. ‘She’s a wildcard, is Millie,’ my grandparents used to say, and Mum, with almost eye-rolling but warm exasperation, would say, ‘I know.’
Where did she go? Where did that Millie go? Before she was too afraid to say everything out loud in case .?.?. in case,what? People didn’t love her. So what? As Jack would say. So what?
Mum reaches over and holds my hands with both of hers. ‘Please tell me things about you. Anything.’
I smile.
‘Erm.Well.I met a guy I kind of like,’ I say, and boom. There it is. I like him. So much, it’s here with me, at a table in my childhood home. ‘That I – reallylikeactually.Not kind of. Just –like.A lot.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful, Millie.’
