Page 53 of The Golden Girls’ Road Trip

‘Grandma,’ he says again, but more urgently this time.

‘Simon, you don’t have a grandmother. Who are you talking about?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Mum, your own mother: Elizabeth Fitzgerald. The woman who gave birth to you.’

‘Please be clear what you’re saying, because I haven’t seen Elizabeth Fitzgerald for all the years you’ve been alive,’ I say, desperately trying to get a grasp on the situation. Alex is walking towards the van now, her hip swinging out to the right as she goes, but there’s a lightness to her steps despite the pain I know she’s in.

‘Well, yes, of course I know, and that’s a shame to be honest, because I’ve been in contact with her for the last ten years.’

26

We leave Bridgwater on the A39 heading towards Minehead. Bardo is curled up in the back again now the food has gone and the radio is giving us the news headlines, but I can’t hear them because Alex is talking incessantly at me.

‘Connie, you know I’m the last one to offer up my unsolicited opinion,’ she says, and my response is to scoff. ‘But I think you should go to the home.’

‘Why would I do that? Why would I bother after all these years? We drew our battle lines fifty-two years ago. I’m not going to back down now. It goes against everything I stand for.’

‘What utter bollocks! What do you stand for? You stand for being a bloody good mother who puts her family above her own happiness. You don’t stand for decades-long grudges against decrepit old women. Simon is asking for you to be there, for him. Are you going to stop being his mother because your own is suddenly in the equation? I doubt it.’

My fingers grip the steering wheel and my foot is to the floor. Admittedly, it usually is to the floor, otherwise we’d never get anywhere, but the road is becoming windy, and I should probably slow down. Alex clearly agrees.

‘And, you need to slow down, Connie.’

I ease my foot off the accelerator and my heart rate seems to slow with it.

‘She might want to make amends with you. Would you let her go to her grave without the chance of doing that?’

‘Oh, stop being so Scottish. I’m from the emotionless south and I don’t care.’

‘Rubbish, you’re the most emotional person I know. Look, Connie, your mother let you down when you needed her; I get that, but if she’s going to die, then maybe there’s things you’d like to say to her.’

‘She gave me money and told me to go before my father came home. What sort of mother does that? Anything could have happened to me. She didn’t care, only about what the neighbours thought. I was an embarrassment.’

‘And look at you now. A wonderful mother for all these years, single-handed, living an amazing life that I can only wish I’d been a part of, and a soon-to-be grandmother. You rose above it and did what was best for you and your son. My parents pretty much told me I was on my own if I wanted to pursue a career in art. I showed them how wrong they were.’

‘It’s not the same thing, Alex.’

‘I think it is. Parents make choices based on what they think is best for their children. Sometimes they choose poorly. What do you choose for Simon, now?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, does he have to sit by his grandmother’s bedside on his own as she dies? Is that something you want for him?’

‘How does she get to have a grandson? She didn’t want to know before he was born. How bloody dare she have a ten-year relationship with him!’

We drive into the village of Holford and I slow down a little more. I’m becoming increasingly aware of the distance growing behind me to home, to Simon, to my mother.

My mother. She wanted me to go to university and I chose to have Simon instead. She wasn’t remotely sympathetic. She saw her own life of compromise and didn’t want the same for me. She married at nineteen when she was pregnant and hoped that I would dodge that same bullet. The difference was that she chose the man she had her child with and I didn’t get to choose at all.

‘Connie, pull over for a minute. You’re all over the place.’

There’s a pub, the Plough, on the left and I pull over across some white lines outside the front, clearly telling me I shouldn’t really be parking there. Alex leans over to turn off the ignition and then takes my hand.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Of course it’s up to you and I’m sure you know best. But, I would say that people usually regret the things they don’t do, not the things they do.’

I feel the truth in her words, but just can’t reconcile the thought of popping in to visit my dying mother.

‘To do it, I would have to give up all my justifications for a life-long estrangement, for ostracising them from our lives, for keeping a grandson from them, for not attending my father’s funeral,’ I say, my voice becoming quieter the longer my list goes on. Because the truth is that guilt bites at me. Maybe not daily – most of the time I can sit quite comfortably on my moral high ground – but when I occasionally let those thoughts in, it never takes long to overwhelm me. The more time that passes, the easier it is to try and ignore the very real truth – that, actually, I’m not really a very good person at all.