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‘Not anymore, he’s dead. He caught the Covid.’
I take the first of many deep breaths I’m sure I’ll be taking today, and allow the conversation to reach its natural conclusion.
We walk slowly up the stairs together, her considering each step as she grasps the banister. I stand behind her in case she loses her footing and slips. She has stumbled in the past, and once she almost knocked me down like a ten-pin bowling skittle. Upstairs, I lead her into the bathroom, helping her remove her trousers and underwear. I open a pack of wet wipes so that she can clean herself up, then I pass her an open bottle of talcum powder and a white cloud appears as she pats it into skin that sags like melting wax.
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I say and choose a fresh outfit from her wardrobe. Everything is crammed in here. There’d be a lot more room if she cleared out his clothes. Jackets, shirts and trousers are gathering dust as each day passes. By the time I return to the bathroom, she’s moved into the spare room and is standing in front of the window in just her bra, the net curtain pulled to one side. I can’t help but laugh, bless her.
‘Mum!’ I say. ‘Stop flashing your bits to the neighbours!’
‘Oh,’ she replies, suddenly remembering she’s undressed. She turns and takes the trousers and underwear from me. ‘I could start an OnlyFans page,’ she jokes.
‘How on earth do you know about OnlyFans?’
‘They were talking about it onThis Morning,’ she replies, dressing herself. Aside from myself and the village church on a Sunday morning, television is her closest friend. Sometimes the soundtrackof magazine programmes, advertisements, quiz shows and old movies makes her muddled. Once, she swore blind that she lived in Albert Square and that the cast ofEastEnderswere her neighbours.
‘People make a lot of money from getting their bits and bobs out on the interweb these days,’ she continues. ‘There’s a market for everything.’
‘I think you might end up offering lot of refunds.’
‘Oi, I’ll have you know I was quite a catch in my day.’
‘As you remind me, often.’
‘I could have had my pick of any of the lads in the clubs where we went dancing. All it took was a bullet bra and a plunging neckline and I’d be swatting them away like flies for the rest of the night.’
‘Is that how you caught Dad’s attention?’
‘No, that’s a completely different story. As soon as I clapped eyes on him, I knew he was going to be mine, despite the circumstances.’
‘And what were they?’
‘What were what?’
‘The circumstances?’
She doesn’t answer. ‘I miss him,’ she says instead, and we both go quiet. It’s been fourteen months since he died, a drop in the ocean compared to the sixty years they spent together. Yet I bet to her it feels like an eternity.
‘We all do,’ I add. ‘Why don’t we go back downstairs and I’ll make us some breakfast? I think we have some croissants left in the breadbin.’
‘I’m not trying any of that foreign rubbish,’ she replies, dabbing at a tear in her eye with her finger.
‘Didn’t you and Dad live in France for a while?’
‘Did I?’
‘That’s what you told me. You must have eaten French food there.’
‘Marmalade on toast will do me.’
‘Marmalade on toast it is then.’
We make our way into the kitchen, where she sneezes and wipes her nose with a patterned cloth handkerchief tucked under her sleeve. It’s part of the uniform for women over a certain age. ‘Do you think I have the Covid?’ she asks.
‘No Mum, I think you’re fine,’ I say. I ask Alexa to choose a random playlist of 1950s music. Nothing relaxes her more than humming along to tunes from her teenage years. I leave her alone for a moment, pick up my handbag from the floor and remove the two framed photographs I’ve brought with me. In one, I’m a young girl sitting on a yellow bike with stabilisers attached to the rear wheel. I’m a teenager in the other, dressed in an oversized East 17 T-shirt and ripped jeans. I place them among the pictures arranged on the console table in the hallway. Apparently it helps to have familiar faces surrounding her. Some of the others I’ve already framed are holiday snaps taken in various European cities, others are from her wedding day and many are from their early years of married life. They look so relaxed in each other’s company.
It saddens me to think it’s unlikely I’ll ever experience a love like theirs. I know that, at forty-two, my life is hardly over, but as the years march on, the opportunity to find happiness with a like-minded soul is slipping further from my reach. I don’t have the time to offer anyone else my attention even if they did come along. As her vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s continue to tighten their grip and she forgets who I am, it would be nice to have at least one other person in this world to care for me like I care for her.
CHAPTER 2
