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34. SUMMER 2013

The smell makes Catherine shrink further into herself: the smell of an old person’s home. Not urine, nothing as definable as that, but a very particular smell. What is it? Bins left a little too long before being taken out? Years of pets? Fur merged with fabric? Fake floral scents plugged in to try and disguise all of the above?

“Hello, darling.” Her mother stands up in welcome, unsteady on her thin legs. Catherine puts down her case and moves into her arms, careful of her fragile bones as she puts her arm across her back. A gentle pat. A mother’s pat, but from her, the daughter who wants to be mothered but fears she is past it.

“Thanks, Mum, for letting me stay. It’s such a mess with the builders and Robert’s away so…” She banks on her mother not remembering that the builders left weeks ago and Robert hasn’t travelled for work for years.

“Is he in America again?” Catherine nods, not wanting to lie to her mother more than she has to.

“Can I get you anything, darling?” It’s seven o’clock and Catherine hasn’t eaten but all she wants to do is lie down in a dark room and go to sleep. She feels sick and her head is throbbing.

“Actually, Mum, I think I’ve got a migraine coming on. Do you mind if I lie down? I’m sure it’ll go in a bit.”

Her mother cocks her head and her smile morphs into sympathy.

“I used to get headaches at your age,” she says.

Catherine walks into the only bedroom in the flat, and puts her case by the bed her father once slept in. Two single beds pushed together. Then Catherine remembers her mother now sleeps in her father’s bed, nearer the door, nearer the loo, so she takes her mother’s old bed. There’s a dirty, dark patch at the end of the quilt, where the cat has been sleeping. She undresses down to her underwear, gets into bed, and closes her eyes. She just needs to sleep. If she can sleep she might be able to think more clearly and then she might be able to start making sense of what is happening to her life.

She hears the slow shuffle of her mother’s slippers on the carpet coming closer. She hears a glass of water being put down on the bedside table, and the click of plastic and tinfoil. She opens her eyes and sees her mother standing over her, two pills in her outstretched hand. She might not know what day of the week it is, but she hasn’t forgotten the impulse to care for a poorly child.

“Thanks, Mum,” Catherine whispers, and swallows the pills, closing her eyes again.

For hours Catherine lies in the dark listening to her mother’s loneliness: a small supper being prepared then eaten on a tray in front of the TV, which talks to itself. And then her mother’s voice answering the phone, suddenly bright and cheerful, putting on its own show.

“Oh, I’m absolutely fine. Catherine’s here. Lovely surprise, yes. Robert’s away. Yes, he’s in America again…” All plausible until Catherine hears her tell the caller that Nicholas is fine, at home with the nanny. “Such a lovely girl…”

Oh, we’re all so good at covering up. Pretending everything’s absolutely lovely and just how we want it. Her mother’s just not as agile at it anymore, slipping in and out of time frames, giving herself away.

Catherine drifts into sleep, the television chirruping away in the next room. She wakes to silence and darkness and turns over to look at the mound of her mother’s body in the next bed. She is lying on her back with her mouth open, the skin falling back from her bones. It is how she will look when she is dead. Catherine studies her, overwhelmed with a sadness of things lost: her childhood, her child’s childhood; her mother’s strength and her belief, once, that her mother’s love had given her the strength to overcome anything. Her belief that she had absorbed that strength into her bones — an armour. She needs to talk, she needs to tell someone. It is too much to hold in anymore.

“Mum…” Her mother stirs a little, her eyelids flicker.

“Mum, something happened…” Her mother’s eyes stay closed and then Catherine tells her everything she has been unable to tell Robert. Out it comes. Her shame, her guilt. All of it. But her mother is silent. Has she heard? Or has Catherine’s story slipped into her dreams? Yes, perhaps she is dreaming Catherine’s tale. She may remember some of it, who knows, and then dismiss it as a dream. To have said it out loud for the first time has helped Catherine, enough at least for her to fall asleep again, a sleep so deep she doesn’t feel her mother reach for her hand in the night, and hold it for a while, then give it a little squeeze.