Thank you, and goodbye, my darling Hedgehog.
Me xxxxxxxxxxx
Chapter Forty-Six
EARLY MARCH–Three Months Later
The day my life changes forever, I’m gearing up for my first Tinder date. I feel quite stupid with nerves. (It doesn’t help that Alan is texting me on the hour, every hour, to check I’m not backing out.) She is called Heather, and she has nice hair, and she seems smart and funny. But I still don’t want to go. I actually caught myself earlier, wondering if I could hammer a nail through my hand so I’d have the excuse of an afternoon in A&E.
I have not admitted this to Alan.
It’s also Mum’s sixty-seventh, so I’ve taken her for lunch in Stroud. We’re in Withey’s Yard, which has always been a safe place for her – presumably because it’s hidden up an old stone alleyway, visible to almost nobody – and today she’s full of chat. Felix took her shopping yesterday, and he’s better at it than I am. His only downfall is that he can’t carry as many shopping bags because he has only one arm.
In all honesty I’m only half listening, because I’m busy imagining tonight’s terrible silences and oddly pitched laughs – so it takes me a little while to realize Mum’s stopped talking.
I look up. She’s frozen, staring off to her right, soup spoon hovering centimetres from the bowl. I follow her line of vision.
I don’t recognize them, at first. They just look like two middle-aged people eating salads. She’s wearing a checked shirt and is talking on a mobile phone. He is wearing a cord jacket, and he’s watching her. Like Mum, both of them appear to have stopped eating. I feel a vague shift of recognition, looking at the man’s profile, but nothing more.
But as I glance back at Mum, I know exactly who they are. The only people who could have this sort of effect on her. Her spoon has been dropped into the soup now; its handle is slowly disappearing like the stern of a sinking ship.
I look back at Sarah Harrington’s parents. I do recognize them. Of course I do; they often came to pick up Alex for playdates, or to drop little Hannah off for the afternoon. I remember them always being friendly. So much so that I sometimes wanted to go and play in Frampton Mansell, too. They seemed so solid together; a proper family, whereas mine was made up of a father hundreds of miles away with a new baby on the way and a mother crippled by bitterness and depression.
I have two distinct thoughts: First, what am I going to do with Mum? She cannot be here, two tables away from Michael and Patsy Harrington. And second, if it’s not Michael or Patsy Harrington who died last year,who was it?
I distinctly hear the woman saying, ‘We’re on our way.’ And then they’re both up and gone, not pausing even to straighten up their chairs or apologize to the lady behind the cafe counter. Sarah’s mother is pulling on her coat as she hurries down the alleyway towards the High Street. Mum and I sit still for a few moments, silent amid the hum of conversation and clinking cutlery. It’s not until the milk steamer starts screeching that we look at each other.
In the end we go to the farm shop on the Cirencester Road to get some nice soup to have at Mum’s: after the Harringtons left, she said that her birthday lunch was ruined and she wouldn’t eat any more.
The extent of our conversation about them has so far has been this:
Me: ‘Are you OK?’
Mum: ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
I haven’t pushed her. But I can’t think about anything else.Sarah’s parents.The people who made her. Where were they off to? What was wrong? It didn’t look like a good-news sort of call.
Sarah looks like her mother. Although, actually, she looks like her father, too. I could have stared at their faces for hours, scouring them for tiny details of her.
We get back to Mum’s and I heat the soup, put some beautiful-smelling sourdough under the grill, but I know she’s not going to eat. She seems angry at me, although I’m not sure why. Was I meant to go over and punch Sarah’s parents for having created her? I stand in Mum’s kitchen feeling hollow and uneasy, wondering again who died last August. At the end of her garden, under the plum tree, there’s a little pool of gold where celandines jut bravely through patchy grass. I remember those wildflowers on the coffin and have to have very stern words with myself about the direction these thoughts are taking.
As predicted, Mum won’t eat. ‘They’ve ruined my day,’ she repeats. ‘I’ve no appetite now.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m going to eat mine. You can always heat yours up again if you want it later.’
‘I’d get food poisoning. You can’t reheat twice.’
I’m about to say, ‘Mum, it’s tomato soup!’ but I desist. It’s pointless.
So, solo spoon chinking against china, I eat my soup, soaking in big chunks of buttered sourdough. I finish, wash up, offer Mum her present, which she says she’ll open later, and eventually get my coat.
‘I can stay and talk if you want,’ I say. Mum is burrowed into the corner of her sofa like a cat.
‘I’m fine,’ she says stiffly. ‘Thanks for coming.’
I go over and kiss her. ‘Bye, Mum. Happy birthday.’
I pause by the door. ‘Love you.’
