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Dagmara was a bastion of patience, understanding and common sense and she was spot on with what she was saying. What harm was it doing to Roberta, remembering she was on a lovely holiday with her sister the day Princess Diana’s car crashed, when Shay knew for sure her aunt had died the previous year? Being impatient with her, forcing her to try and remember the real truth when her brain wanted to reject it as a lie would not glue all the missing pieces back together and make her whole again. When coping with a loved one with the onset of dementia, it was necessary to acquire a new set of skills, one of them being knowing when to back off and shut up.
Roberta Corrigan had once been such a sharp cookie, an intellectually gifted woman fluent in five languages, with a working knowledge of at least two more; she absorbed them like a sponge. She’d been a teacher in a private school, then she’d become a self-employed tutor in order to fit aroundlooking after her two daughters and her aged parents. Now, she couldn’t even remember the name for a skip in her own native tongue.
‘When are you back then?’
‘I’ll see you Monday.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘Just a weekend.’
Roberta scraped some potato away from the skin and then dumped the latter at the side of her plate.
‘You should eat that skin, it’s the best part,’ said Shay, feeling, not for the first time, as if their roles had reversed. Roberta had made her daughters eat potato skins, stressing it was where all the nutrients were. Shay didn’t like these moments; they were a pollution of world order.
‘Nope, I’ve never liked it.’
But she had. Another tongue-biting moment. It was hard to watch a loved one lose her sense of self. Her mother’s mind had always been so strong and here it was being chipped away at so cruelly.
Roberta had her usual small tub of ice cream after her tea. Tonight it was strawberry which triggered off a recollection.
‘Oh, I had a phone call from Courtney this morning.’
‘Did you?’More than I’ve had, thought Shay.
‘She’s changed her name, hasn’t she?’
Shay rolled her eyes. Courtney had rechristened herself Strawberry Blue for whatever reason just before she’d left home. Bruce had refused outright to call his daughter Strawberry Blue, said the name that fitted her best was ‘Wrecking Ball’.
‘She sounded jolly,’ said Roberta, speaking through her ice cream and spraying pink droplets. ‘She’s working at a clothes shop, isn’t she?’
‘That’s news to me. Last I heard she was behind a bar in a nightclub,’ said Shay. She didn’t disbelieve it, because Courtney changed jobs like underwear and none of them seemed to fit. Shay respected that her daughter was just trying to work out who she really was and what she wanted and if it entailed a little exploration, then so be it. Bruce, who had always been perfectly content in his own skin, had never wanted to change his name to John Pliers/Marvin Starface, and had known since he’d been a foetus that he wanted to be an electrician, was less understanding. When post started arriving at the house addressed to Ms Strawberry Blue, he’d had a mini meltdown, declared that she was an embarrassment and said that the sooner she sorted herself out the better. It was then that Courtney had made an accelerated effort to find an alternative place to stay and wouldn’t be persuaded by her mother to change her mind.
‘Not heard from Sunny though,’ Roberta carried on. ‘There’s something not right there,’ she added. ‘It’s not like him not to ring his grandma.’
It wasn’t, Shay had to agree with that.
‘I don’t like her that much,’ said Roberta, scraping the last of the ice cream out of the tub with the small plastic spoon supplied. She preferred that to a teaspoon, said it made her feel as if she was at the cinema having a treat.
‘Who?’ asked Shay. Her mother often flitted from one subject to another and it was hard to keep up sometimes.
‘That Karoline our Sunny’s with. Something not right about her.’
‘There’s something not right about everyone you know,’ said Shay with a chuckle. The Balls, Karoline, her local MP, Chris – Paula’s husband. Maybe she had a point with himthough. He was so far up his backside, he could have sucked his own uvula.
‘Not everyone. And you can scoff all you like, but I’ve always had a very strong intuition where people are concerned. She’s not all she seems, that one,’ said Roberta, disapproval shading her expression.
‘You’ve only seen her once.’
‘You only need to see someone once toknow.’ Roberta tapped the side of her nose.
‘What’s she done to make you think that?’
‘Nothing, yet.’
‘There you go then. Anyway, Sunny’s happy with her and that’s all that matters.’
He’d been bowled over by her from the off, she was like no other girl he’d ever met he said, and if Karoline was good enough for him, then she was good enough for Shay.
