‘The scans were clear. No sign of anything ominous. You’re free to take her home.’
She checks the bag of fluids has been completely drained, then detaches the plastic tubing linking her mother to the stand and removes the cannula.
The nurse moves to another patient leaving Heather to take her mother’s clothes from the cupboard beside her hospital bed.
‘Are you able to get dressed?’ she asks her mum tentatively, ‘or do you need me to –,'
The thought of helping her mother dress after over a decade of hostility is something Heather is prepared to do, but she is relieved when her mum says, ‘Nonsense. I’m perfectly capable.’
Heather stands behind the blue curtain as her mother dresses. She wonders about the next steps, escorting her mum through the corridors, helping her into her car, driving her home. Small things for a typical mother-daughter relationship, but enormous, almost insurmountable things for them. In some ways it seems as though there is so much to say. In others, the past fifteen years are irrelevant.
Heather allows her mum to slip her arm through hers as they walk slowly along the corridors, speaking only to discuss the shortest route, the location of the hospital shop and whether milk is needed at home. She helps her into the passenger seat of the car, re-positioning the backrest to give her mother as much leg room as possible. It’s only once she pulls out of the car park that her mother begins to speak.
‘There’s so much I’ve wanted to say to you over the years,’ she says.
Heather feels tears prick at her eyes.
‘Me too,’ she says through her clenched throat.
Her mother allows silence to fall as Heather navigates a set of traffic lights followed by a tight right-hand turn.
‘How’s Georgia?’
‘Good. Great. At university. Doing all the typical things. Drinking too much, falling in love, ditching her friends.’
She can see her mother nodding by the light of the streetlamps.
‘University,’ she says wistfully. ‘My word.’
Heather knows how she, as a mother herself, would react to hearing that her granddaughter had grown from a pre-schooler to a freshman and she had been absent throughout. She wouldthink of all the birthdays, holidays, school plays, report cards and dance performances she had missed. The mere anticipation of it breaks Heather’s heart, so how her mother must be feeling when this is her reality feels utterly overwhelming.
‘Will you tell her I said hello?’ Her mother’s voice is gravelly.
Heather keeps her eyes on the road. They are turning into the cul de sac where her parents live.
‘I’ll tell her, mum. Don’t you worry,’ she says. It surprises Heather to think that she probably will tell Georgia about her grandmother when she next sees her.
‘Do you want me to help you to the door?’ Heather says as she pulls up outside the house. The security light activates, flooding the garden and the distinctive red front door with harsh light.
‘Probably best not to this time, pet,’ her mother says.
Heather remains in the car, her stomach a knot of contradictions, until her mother knocks on the door and Doreen lets her in.
As she pulls away from the kerb a message comes in from Claire.
"Open water swimming next week, then? I’ll be there."
Heather had momentarily forgotten about the invitation she had extended to her best friend. She replies with a thumbs up emoji and slowly retraces the route home.
SCOTT
He’s meant to be working, but Scott can’t help but inspect the phone in his hand. Heather declined one of his calls last week and today she gave his text wishing her a good time at the open swimming lesson tomorrow a thumbs up.
It was an enormous risk getting her, a woman he hardly knew at the time, a present which was so left field. But her initial response, her determination to give something new a try, and her gratitude and humour when she opened it, had convinced him he’d made a good call. Now he’s not so sure. A few weeks ago, Heather would have replied to a message like that with an extensive paragraph or a voice note outlining her feelings in detail. An emoji response feels like a kick in the testicles.
Is she being intentionally standoffish, or has he been a fool not to acknowledge something has changed before now?
Firstly, their daughters’ relationship has been much more muted since Christmas. He’s lost count of the number of times Brianna has called, upset about her disintegrating relationship with Georgia. Last night was a case in point.
