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Chapter 15
The call came at two a.m. Derrick had got up to let his little terrier out and noticed that Roberta’s light was still on and her curtains weren’t drawn. He’d looked through the window to see her prone body on the carpet and he’d both rung 999 and had roused Dagmara to ask her for Shay’s number.
Shay and Bruce arrived at the same time as the ambulance. They hurried in and found Roberta still with the hammer in her hand that she’d used to batter gouges out of the party wall to stop the noise of the music still playing through it at full blast. Motörhead –Iron Fist, Shay recognised it, the riotous soundtrack to her mother’s last breaths as the paramedics worked on her. Then the track cut off abruptly and in its place was a charged silence which was equally deafening.
One day, Shay would find a small comfort that she was there with her mum at the end; she would even begin to believe that Roberta had been hanging on for her. But there was no solace at the time, just a cold, all-enveloping numbness.
Rock Bottom
When you hit what you know can’t be anything other than rock bottom, someone is sure to hand you a shovel so you can keep digging
LINDA FLOWERS
Chapter 16
The hours that followed were a blur. Shay couldn’t remember what order she’d rung people in, or what she’d said to them. Courtney had been nigh hysterical at the news. ‘There’s nothing you can do, don’t drive over in a state,’ Shay had warned her, but it hadn’t stopped her. Sunny arrived next at the hospital, looking gaunt and grey. Courtney couldn’t face seeing her gran, she didn’t want to remember her like that but she wanted to be near her so she sat outside the private room where Roberta lay. Shay and Sunny sat in with her, their hands on top of Roberta’s, above the blanket and though Shay’s eyes were on her mum’s dear face, her thoughts were a tumbling mass of blinding rage. All she could see in her head was her mother hammering chunks out of the wall as a desperate protest against the noise, probably falling over the fire companion set, catching her head on the corner of the display shelf in a terrible and tragic choreography because the markers of the fatal collision were clear. How long had Balls been doing that for? Is that why her mother said she couldn’t sleep at night? Is that why he’d asked the workmen to insulate thatwall last so he could torment her with an endless racket? Balls had as much killed Roberta as had the knock she’d incurred from her fall. Shay wanted to march straight from the hospital to kill him.
Sunny was crying hard, berating himself for not seeing his gran enough these past months. What was it about death that plunged people into a cold bath of guilt? She recalled feeling the same when Bruce’s mother passed away, the crippling recriminations that she hadn’t done enough for her, that she’d not been there with her when she had slipped away in her sleep.
Only hours ago Shay had been washing her mother’s hair, nagging her about not eating her dinner and trying to tempt her appetite with a Potterworth’s éclair. They’d had that confusing conversation about skips and Omar bloody Sharif and her mother had said that she loved her and she’d never hear those words again from her. She’d turned around after saying good night, gone back inside just to give her mum an extra kiss, as if on some subliminal level she’d known what was going to happen; such a little act which had grown into proportions of epic size now. None of it seemed real, yet it was and it was horrible.
The door cracked open and Paula walked in, ashen-faced, but hair brushed, clothes chosen with care rather than just thrown on because they were the closest to hand. Sunny relinquished his chair and went outside to leave the sisters alone.
‘What happened?’ Paula asked, sitting down. Her hand came out to touch her mother’s briefly over the blanket before recoiling. But Shay wouldn’t hold that against her; this wasn’t their mother any more and she couldn’t get her head around that either.
‘One of the neighbours saw all the lights on and the curtains were open and rang me. It looks as though Mum was banging on next door’s wall and toppled over and hit her head.’
‘What on earth was she doing that for?’ asked Paula.
‘Because the tosser was playing heavy metal at full blast. You can’t imagine how loud it sounded. He must have seen the ambulance because it suddenly switched off.’
Shay needed to change the subject quick because she wanted to feel grief for her mother, not anger for the Balls. They could wait; she would give them no place in her head at the moment.
‘What happens next?’ asked Paula after a few moments of silence.
‘The nurse said she’d take me through what I need to do. There’s a list of people to inform and forms to fill in and an order to do things in. I’ll work my way through it,’ said Shay.
‘When do we arrange the funeral?’
‘I don’t know. I’m sure it’ll all be on the list.’
‘I imagine there’s quite a lot of paperwork. Plus there’ll be the house to put up for sale—’
‘Jesus Christ, Paula,’ snapped Shay. ‘She’s barely gone and you’re ready for erecting a for sale sign?’
For once Paula didn’t retaliate like for like.
‘It’s just how my mind works,’ she answered quietly. ‘Practical first, emotional second. It’s not really hit me yet.’
She sounded so uncharacteristically meek that Shay felt immediately guilty for snapping at her. She knew what Paula meant. She hadn’t cried yet; if she cried it meant it was real and something in her brain was trying to repel accepting that fact.
‘I don’t mind doing the paperwork side of things if you like,’ said Shay then.
‘Well it makes sense if only one of us does it, we don’t want too many cooks spoiling the broth,’ Paula replied, then adding quickly, ‘we can sort out the terms of her will together after the funeral. I imagine we’ll have to apply for probate. Didn’t she have some property in Millspring?’
‘Just the one cottage. She and Dad sold the others and the monies were all apportioned in their divorce settlement so Mum could fully own the house she lives in—’ she swallowed as the present tense rang out as wrong, but she couldn’t say ‘lived’ instead of ‘lives’. One small change of letter, one giant change of circumstance.
‘Yes, I seem to remember that happening,’ said Paula.
