AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her thoughtfulness brought back the tears, not that they’d ever really been that far away. Chloe too had been crying on the drive over. Even though her eyes were hidden behind dark tinted sunglasses, the pile of screwed-up tissues in the car’s footwell gave her away.
We had driven together on many occasions, but this was the first time I’d seen Chloe on an apparent mission to break every single speed limit. We drove in silence for most of the journey; her attention on the traffic and mine on a lifetime of memories that were flashing past my eyes even faster than the passing scenery. It was like flipping the pages of a photo album and seeing Mum beside me for every single ‘first’ in my life: word, step, day at school. It was almost impossible to visualise my world without her in it.
Chloe was the first to break the silence. ‘She gave me such a tough time, you know, when Hope was first born.’ I swivelled in my seat to look at her, wondering why in all the years, I had never heard this story before. ‘Faye made it perfectly clear to Ryan that she didn’t think I was competent to look after a baby.’ She laughed softly at the old memory. ‘I think she wanted Hope raised by a Norland nanny rather than an ex-librarian.’
‘I wish you could have known her – properly known her – back before she got sick. She was so funny. And feisty.’
Chloe glanced away from the road to look at me. ‘Well, that explains where her daughter and granddaughter get it from.’
I reached over and squeezed her hand where it sat at precisely ten o’clock on the steering wheel. Chloe wasthatkind of driver. ‘Well, whatever my mum might have thought, you were the personIwould have picked, if I’d been able to.’
‘If you’d been able to pick someone, they’d never have been needed in the first place,’ she reasoned. And there it was: our entire complicated history compressed in a single sentence.
When the first signpost for the care home came into sight, I felt one of the heavy boulders crushing my chest shift, ever so slightly.Hang on, Mum, I’m almost there.
*
‘Your father spent the entire night here,’ the manager of the home informed me as I quickly scribbled an illegible signature in the visitors’ book. ‘We tried to persuade him to get some sleep in one of our empty rooms, but he wouldn’t leave your mum’s side.’
I nodded, unsurprised. If he’d been the type to have a tattoo, Dad would have hadFor Better Or For Worseinked across his heart. When this dreadful disease had tried to tug the woman he loved from his arms, he had simply held on even tighter. He was still doing it.
It had been little more than a week since my last visit, but the deterioration since I had last seen Mum brought me to standstill at the threshold of her room. There was so little left of her now, she scarcely looked bigger than a fold in the blankets. Ignoring her for a moment I hurried around to the far side of the bed where my dad was getting wearily to his feet to greet us.
‘No, sit down,’ I urged, afraid not for Mum – there was nothing I could do for her now – but for the man in his seventies who’d spent the last sixteen years of his life beside one hospital bed or another.
‘How are you holding up, Daddy?’ I asked, slipping back to that childhood name without even noticing.
‘Soldiering on,’ he replied gruffly. He came from a generation of stiff upper lips, strong cups of tea in a crisis, and unbending stoicism, but I knew him better than that.
‘Is she in any pain?’ I asked, reaching down and picking up one of Mum’s practically skeletal hands.
‘No. Thank goodness. They have her on morphine, and she drifts in and out for most of the time.’ He wiped a gnarled hand roughly beneath his eyes. ‘I’m glad you’re here now, Maddie.’ He looked across the room at Chloe, with a gentle smile. ‘Thanks for bringing her here, lass.’
‘You don’t need to thank me, Bill. You and Faye are my family too.’
*
When Ryan and Hope arrived some thirty minutes later, carers magically appeared with more chairs and offers of refreshments that none of us could face. There was probably a rule about how many visitors the residents were allowed in their room, but today no one was enforcing it.
Dad had been right, Mum was drifting in and out of awareness, mumbling sentences that only he could decipher. ‘She wants to know why Maddie isn’t in school,’ he translated, his eyes sad as he directed his gaze at Hope who was still wearing her school uniform. I thought I was long since immune to the pain of her mistaking my daughter for me; it happened so frequently. But just this once I longed for her to recognise me, to know thatIwas Maddie.
‘I’m just going to get some air for a minute,’ I said, hurrying from the room so fast I nearly tripped over a chair leg. I knew the way to the gardens, and yet I got lost twice in the maze of corridors. I eventually burst through an exit door and out into the warmth of the day like an escaped prisoner. I walked blindly through the grounds, stopping only when I reached a large willow tree, with its fronds dipping into a pond.
I stood at the water’s edge with my eyes closed, listening to the birdsong and buzz of insects as though this was just any other day.
‘I thought I’d find you here.’ His voice made me jump, but I didn’t need to open my eyes to see who it was. ‘Willows always were your favourite trees.’
I opened my eyes slowly, as though the tears sparkling on the long dark lashes were weighing them down. ‘I’m surprised you remember that.’
Ryan said nothing, but his arm came up to rest around my shoulder. Once, a long time ago, I would have fallen against him for comfort; my arms would have circled his body, and my tears would have saturated his shirt. But today the arm around my shoulders was enough.
‘Your dad never gave up on her, did he? Not once in all these years.’ I cast a sideways look, knowing where this was going. ‘I should have waited for you, Maddie. I should have been more like Bill.’
I shook my head. This was all too far in the past to hurt me. Only the present had the power to wound me now. ‘It was another time, and we were two very different people back then. You found the person you were meant to be with.’
‘But have you?’
Mitch’s face came into my head and for a moment it felt hard to breathe. I blinked in the bright sunlight as I shook my head. ‘I don’t think that’s how my story ends.’
