I was taking a selfie by the river when Rose snuck up behind me and pushed me into the water. I don’t know where her strength came from, but it took ages to get back out. I was too cold and shocked to move when she sat me against the tree, running off to steal matches from the kitchen. After they saw the smoke from the fire she’d lit, Nurse Gabriella and another young care assistant called Molly raced over, got her out of the river, and restrained her – well, that’s what they called it. They pinned her down and carried her to her bed, and tied her there till Chris came. Although I’d earned more in three days than most of my mates would in a month, I was starting to realise this job was hard and stopped feeling guilty because I deserved it.
At least once a day, Rose relived a two-hour event from her childhood, Chris explained after Rose had fallen asleep. She’d run away from the farm with Margie to get medical help, tried to get her across the river, failed, left her by the tree, stolen matches from the farm’s kitchen, lit a fire, left Margie, and swam across the river to get the doctor. Once in town, Rose had tossed a rock through the doctor’s window because he wasn’t answering the door. When they finally got back to the tree, Margie was dead. Run, river, matches, rock, dead. She didn’t always relive the whole thing, didn’t always start from the beginning, or go in order. Run, river, matches, rock, dead. Matches, river. Dead, run. Rock, river, dead, run, matches.
‘The illness seems to make her fixate on the worst things that happened to her,’ Chris said. ‘Her dad telling her she was selfish, and Margie’s death. If only it made her relive my mum’s first steps, or getting her first book published – apparently she skipped all the way to the pub after her agent phoned!’
I spent the rest of the morning helping with tea and getting people to the activity room to watch some local pianist play badly for an hour while tubby Harriet danced badly in the middle of the room in order to encourage joy.
There were seven bedrooms altogether After lunch was cleared up. I decided to check them all out. At the very front of the house were two large bay-windowed rooms: the kitchen/dining room to the right, with a disabled toilet off the back of the dining room, and the office to the left. Behind those rooms were six bedrooms, three on either side. They varied in size, but all smelt and felt the same: a hospital bed on wheels in the centre, one landscape painting above the bed and one on the wall opposite, handrails and alarms everywhere. They all had an en-suite bathroom with a seat in the shower and a raised toilet-seat frame with handles over the normal one. Rose’s room, Room 1, was the first on the left behind the office. Opposite her: the catatonic woman, Nancy, and her depressed husband, Gavin. Jim the ex-rocker was in Room 3, behind Rose. Room 4, opposite Jim, had been Emma’s, and was now empty. A twenty-one-year-old with leukaemia was in Room 5, behind Jim, but he’d gone home for a few days, so I hadn’t met him yet. Room 6, which lacked an en suite, was used as a television room. And the activity room was at the rear, adjacent to the back door.
But it was Room 7 that I was interested in. It was hidden away down to the right off a badly lit corridor, all on its own. The water cooler was outside the door. To look purposeful, I pulled out the rubbish bag, which had ten or so empty paper cups inside, checked to see if anyone had noticed me, and turned the handle to Room 7 slowly. It was locked.
‘You looking for something?’
Nurse Gabriella scared the shit out of me. ‘Yes . . . no.’ I held up the small bag of paper cups. ‘I was just getting the rubbish.’
‘You were trying to get in there.’
‘Okay, I was curious.’
‘It’s not in use.’
‘Why do they bring people to this room when they die? Why not just leave them in their rooms till the undertaker comes?’
‘What a morbid question.’
‘Isn’t that why Rose is scared of it?’
‘Rose is scared of everything. And you, young lady, are wasting my time.’
Sticking out of her chest pocket was a black and gold fountain pen. So, maybe she was the anonymous weirdo in the logbooks. Creepy bitch.
‘Go check on Nancy. She fell out of bed earlier today.’
As I made my way to Nancy’s room, I wondered how this place was a viable business. Marcus obviously earned a fortune, but there were only seven rooms, four of them currently empty. Maybe he was doing it for the love of it. No! No one could love this job.
I’d spotted Nancy several times. In the activity room that first day, staring ahead, not even blinking (How weird is that, not even blinking), mouth slightly open, not moving a muscle. Then later that day in the garden, her husband wheeling her down the path, same face, no expression. And this morning, being fed a scone, her husband pushing her mouth open to pop a piece inside, then chewing in front of her in the hope that she’d copy him, and she did, but she still looked dead. Honestly, if her husband loved her, why didn’t he crush twenty paracetamol into that scone? I would.
Maybe I should have knocked on Nancy and Gavin’s door. Promoting dignity should include knocking. I wish I had. Gavin had his shirt on, but no trousers or pants. His bony arse was bobbing up and down on top of Nancy’s naked yellow flesh. Holy shit, the image of her face would never go away. It would stop me sleeping at night. Her eyes were wide open, not blinking. Her lips slanted downwards, slack. She wasn’t moving a muscle. And her husband was having sex with her.
I shut the door and put my hand over my mouth in horror. What was that? Was it rape?
Nurse Gabriella was heading towards me. ‘Is Nancy all right?’
‘Yes. Well. Is Marcus around? I need to talk to him.’ I didn’t tell Nurse Gabriella. I realised by now there was no point talking to her about anything.
‘He’s writing upstairs and doesn’t want to be interrupted.’
I waited till she was in the office then raced round the back, opened his door and yelled: ‘Marcus! Marcus, are you there?’
‘I’m in the office – come on up.’
When I blurted it out in a panic it didn’t sound like something that required blurting or panic: ‘I just walked in on Gavin having sex with his wife!’
Marcus was working at his PC on a huge polished walnut desk. This room was like the others – smooth and sterile, everything hidden.
He saved what he was doing. ‘And?’
‘And she’s a vegetable! It’s not right to have sex with a vegetable!’
He scratched his head. ‘I see where you’re coming from. I do, but they’re married, and in her advanced care planning statement she said her sex life with Gavin was important to her.’
‘In her what?’
‘Advanced care planning statement. Like a death plan. And she said no matter what, that her sexuality was the thing she didn’t want to lose.’
‘But—’ I didn’t have my thoughts in order, but if I did, it probably would have sounded wrong anyway. She’d lost her sexuality, had she not? It had gone the way her blinking had gone.
‘She was very clear about it. Look, I do understand where you’re coming from. It’s tricky. I’ll check on Nancy. I’ll talk to Gavin about it and I’ll make a note of your concern.’
I felt nauseous but I wondered if I was just being stupid. The idea of any old married couple doing it made me slightly queasy, the queasiness increasing with the age of the couple in question. Maybe it was just my ageism that made it so horrific to me. Maybe all old people having sex looked like that. Blah . . . All I could say was: ‘But . . .’
‘I’ll deal with it. Leave it with me. Are you okay?’
‘Sure, just a bit shaken.’
‘How ’bout a drink after work?’
*
The day went slowly after that. I watched Gavin wheel his wife around the garden, looking for signs of evil. He was gentle with her, loving. He sat on a garden bench and read to her. He moved a strand of hair that was in her eyes. He shooed a bee away from her arm. He walked her around and around, slowly. He seemed to care for her. But.
Nurse Gabriella noticed me staring out into the garden and sent me off to do several loads of washing. Ick. I wore gloves to put the clothes in the machine. Huge pants. Smelly socks. Wet trousers. After hanging them out, she suggested I listen to Jim play his guitar.
I didn’t know any of the songs Jim sang but it wasn’t agonising to listen to him, unlike two boys I dated who just happened to have their guitars at hand and ruined what might have been two perfectly good evenings. One sang obscure songs very quietly, maintaining intense eye contact, so I couldn’t sing along and felt I had to listen. The other wrote a song for me called ‘Feel It’ – not dissimilar to Emma’s rendition of ‘The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond’ in that it repeated one line over and over, and was very bad. (I didn’t feel it again after that.)
Not Jim – he was good, a performer. I laughed, and joined in when required. I liked him. He was the most normal of the bunch, as far as I could tell. He asked me questions about myself and was interested in my answers. ‘Costa Rica! Oh, wow! The grass there is to die for. Roll one for me, won’t you, and dig into a huge platter of seafood after.’ Plus, his life was fascinating. He’d toured with famous bands, although I’d never heard of any of them, and told stories about overdosing lead singers, about getting kicked out of hotels in Prague, about getting rich enough to retire one year, and blowing it all partying the next.
‘So did you have groupies, Jim?’
‘I had fun! Call me Jimmy. And listen, if you get any draw, will you bring me some?’
I found myself being professional. ‘That’s illegal. And bad for you.’
‘Aw, c’mon, just enough for one joint. I’m on my way out anyway. I could do with a giggle.’
I promised I would, and made him promise not to tell.
He was funny, Jimmy – told me three jokes that all made sense and while I’d heard all three many years ago, it wasn’t too difficult to conjure a laugh. I decided to spend as much time with Jimmy as possible. He was old right enough, but not in a stinky, crawls-on-the-ceiling kind of way. He didn’t freak me out.
*
I had a lot of questions for Marcus and I didn’t hold back when we got to the Brunswick Bar.
‘Nurse Gabriella said you were writing?’
‘Oh – aye, but don’t tell anyone. Sounds kind of pathetic, a wannabe novelist. I tell you, I’m Googling some crazy stuff for the story I’m working on. And that, My Lord, is the case for the defence.’
We were drinking bright green cocktails in fancy glasses. I don’t know what was in them, but they were strong and he was paying. ‘So, where are your parents?’
‘Retired to France two years ago. Left me the house and the business.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how does it make money, with so few patients?’
‘The house is paid off, so that helps. And it’s expensive, the fees. We get by.’
He was doing better than getting by. He drove a Mercedes FFS.
‘But wouldn’t you rather do something else?’ Looking at him now, drinking cocktails in the bar like a normal young bloke, I could not imagine why he would choose to stay there. It wasn’t as if he gave off caring vibes.
‘That’s why I’m writing! Hey, enough about me. Tell me the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done.’
Maybe if I hadn’t had two of those green drinks I wouldn’t have leant in as if to kiss him, then flicked his nostril: ‘That.’
He flinched. ‘Ow, I’m your boss, Miss Catherine.’
‘And I’m your feisty wage slave, Mr Marcus.’
*
He dropped me off at six, saw me to my door, and kissed me like a gentleman, ‘Goodnight, Catherine.’
Hmm. He was rich, he had a Merc, he was fun, he was my boss (which I found kinda naughty and naughty made me horny), but his kiss had inspired no tingles. That wasn’t unusual, mind. The tingles had only happened once, with Paul, last summer. We were drunk, and alone at my place after a comedy night at The Stand. We were giving each other marks out of ten for certain parts of our bodies and were both being flirtatiously generous.
‘Nine definitely!’ He’d touched my legs.
I touched his chest. ‘Nine.’
Lips were the last body part we marked. He said ‘ten’ as he moved in and I felt them: the tingles.
‘Woah!’ I jumped up from the sofa, scared to death by what had just happened. I felt something, for Paul. I couldn’t afford to do that. He was the only real friend I had, the only one interesting and interested enough for me to be friends with for ever.
I told him to go, and he did. We never played that game again.
But I have two confessions. After the almost-kiss, I sat in bed and found myself writing him an email.
Paul,
I think I’ll marry you, one day. You know that, don’t you? So please do not attempt to kiss me again until I am thirty-nine.
C
The second confession is that I have written him an email every week since. That’s thirty-six altogether. I never sent any of them, they’re in the drafts folder. Some of them get quite soppy. Some of them get quite rude.
*
Mum was asleep when I got in. She’d obviously been tidying the house. It looked like there was hardly anything in it. No bits of paper on surfaces, no dirty clothes in the washing basket. She’d done one hell of a spring clean.
Ping, and Marcus had requested my friendship on Facebook. I deleted all the posts I’d done about work, and pressed Confirm. Yes, Marcus, we are now friends, and I am online and I am ready to chat.
Ping!
Ta for a fab night, Mx
Backatcha Cx
Sorry to talk work, but can you do 4 to 11 tomorrow instead of 9 to 4? And when you get in, don’t go in the front door, come upstairs first. I want to talk to you before you start.
Right, so this wouldn’t turn into a sex chat. I was glad – I wasn’t very good at those. Once you start them, there’s no going back so you have to pretend to be getting excited for at least twenty minutes (Yes, I’ve taken my bra off, etc. etc.) and then pretend to come at the same time as the person on the other end does and I’m not very convincing. (Yep, that’s me too. Wow, amazing, seeya.) Okay, I messaged. Everything all right?
There was a long pause. Marcus was typing. Marcus was still typing. Maybe he was on for a sex chat. I sighed, got into bed, and prepared for twenty minutes of lying. He was still typing . . . Shit, he wasn’t going to get mushy already, was he? Or feel the need to chuck me? I reassured him before his message came through.
No need to panic Marcus. I’m a laid-back chick.
After all that typing, this is all he wrote back. Must have deleted his first attempt, having seen mine.
Not panicking! Remember to come upstairs first. Back door. See you at 4. ☺
*
Mum had gone to work by the time I woke. While I was making a pot of coffee, I noticed the menu on the fridge. She usually put up a weekly menu on Sundays, but today was Friday, and she’d done a new one for two full months. Eight weeks’ worth, typed and printed and placed neatly under an Oxfam magnet beside the emergency numbers. She’d left a note on the table: I love you Catherine. See you soon, my darling.
She left notes like this every now again, when she felt guilty. I sat down to choose a cheerful movie that did not involve old people, icky sex or guilty mothers. Blades of Glory – perfect.
*
Five minutes into the film and I started thinking about Costa Rica. I could go any day now, which meant I’d have to tell Mum.
Plan A: Just leave her a note. Bye Mum! Gone to see the world! I’ll call when I can. After all, she left me notes all the time, didn’t she? I grabbed the one she left for me and started composing a similar one: I love you, Mum. See you soon.
Plan B: Pack my bags and as I’m heading out to my preordered taxi tell her v casually that I’m off to find myself. Nah, she’d tell me she knew exactly where I was and that was 1. At home with 2. A huge credit-card bill and 3. No career prospects.
Therefore I should unpack those bags immediately and focus!
Plan C: Ask her to sit down with a glass of red and really talk to her. I could tell her I loved her, but that she controlled me, and that sometimes I felt a bit useless around her, like I was a disappointment and a mistake. I could say I needed some time alone; time to get to know myself, to be independent. Hmm. That might work. Maybe it was true, even.
I was a mistake, did I tell you that? My dad wasn’t the one Mum married. He was the drug user she lived with beforehand. He died of an overdose in the one-bedroom flat they shared in Partick. ‘He was a great person,’ Mum would say. ‘Creative and spontaneous and clever and funny!’ They first met when he was studying English literature at uni while she was doing medicine. She flunked her final exams and spent the next few years with him as an unemployed hippy – i.e. smoking dope and marching against injusti: that’s plural for any-old-issue. She was twenty-five and studying International Relations when he died. Mum had a small photo album which she’d mope over on his anniversary. One photo is of the two of them drinking in a campus bar. He had messy dark blonde hair and a huge toothy smile. My dad was a cutie pie – and I had inherited several pieces, with a big dollop of ice cream on top. God knows I didn’t get my looks from Mum, ungracefully-grey non-smiler that she was. In another photo, they’re in their living room. Their eyes were bloodshot – not, I suspect, the red-eye of the camera. A few friends were with them, strewn on the floor of what looked like a middle-class drug den (Victorian fireplace, polished floorboards, whisky bottles, bongs). Mum’s drug problem was short lived, and limited to cannabis and the occasional trip. My father’s got more serious. Impure street heroin had killed him. Apparently, Mum found him in the bath. He was smiling, Gran told me, with all those teeth of his. Way to go, Daddy-o. I don’t blame his parents for not wanting anything to do with the bump in my mother’s belly. The owner of that belly had led their son astray and then to death. She and her bump could fuck the hell off.
A year later, she married a man called Martin Watson, who built apartments on vacant Glasgow lots that had previously been used for burying bodies. He’d known her since she played Maria in The Sound of Music at the Eastfield Youth Theatre. He’d played the oldest son, Friedrich. He’d wanted to kiss her back then, but after four months of rehearsals and five 7.30 p.m. performances as her stepson, he started to feel wrong about it. Five years later, when she inspected one of his river-view penthouses, he finally had the courage to make a move. Gran was ecstatic, the marriage an excellent one. Soon, her daughter would don an apron and stand at the kitchen bench of a large Kelvindale townhouse, making Scottish Tablet with her first child while pregnant with her second. Alas, Mum got tired of Martin’s traditional expectations and capitalist views after a year, and moved us out. I was two, so the only family unit I remember is me and my manic mum, who set about climbing the ranks of non-profit organisations, taking over, saving, the world.
*
‘Your mother adores you, she’s just torn between roles and role-modelling, like so many women are,’ my gran told me when I was twelve. The hormones had kicked in and I’d run away to Gran’s – seven blocks in total. We’d had an argument. Not the usual mother–daughter type like this:
Mother: You will not get a tattoo!
Daughter: Fuck you, I will if I want.
Mother: Don’t swear.
Daughter: Why not? You do!
Mother: And I told you to tidy your room.
Daughter: Whatever.
No, no, Mum was too busy and too serious to waste time arguing about such things. These trivialities were agenda items, swiftly ticked during meetings at the dining room table. ‘You won’t get a tattoo? Good. 2: I’m not going to swear any more. You’re right, it’s a bad example. So you won’t swear?’ No pause before ‘Good. 3: Sunday nights are a good time for you to tidy your room. This, Catherine, is something I would like you to do from now on.’
I got a tattoo when I was nineteen btw – Bacchus, the god of wine, in a black circle on the inside of my left biceps. Gina and Rebecca got Pegasus, but I thought that looked wank. I think they’re jealous of mine now.
We didn’t argue about tattoos, swearing, and tidying, but we did argue, like the time I ran away to Gran’s. We yelled at each other about issues that Mum cared a great deal about, ones I didn’t even know about, let alone give a toss. Refugees, the Middle East, female circumcision, for example. One night she had a dinner party with Antonio and a bunch of colleagues and made me join them. I’d zoned out of the conversation, which was both dull and passionate. I was in the middle of a scintillating text chat with Gina about how chubby Rebecca was getting when Mum said: ‘What do you think about the situation in Gaza, Catherine?’
‘I don’t think about it.’
‘Shall I fill you in?’ She’d gone bright red, angry. She’d probably guessed what I was going to say.
‘Nah, you’re all right.’
After everyone left, she yelled at me: ‘You should be interested in the world! How can you be so self-absorbed?’ She scratched a fresh list there and then: 1. Read at least two articles from the Guardian every morning. 2. Watch the Channel 4 News with me each evening. This. Catherine. Is something I would like you to do from now on!
She threw the list at me, slammed the door.
But that wasn’t the argument that made me run away to Gran’s. That argument was about porn. She’d checked my browsing history and found the site I’d been viewing as a novice masturbator. Gina and Rebecca had been on at me to try it for a long time. You’re so prudish, Catherine! God’s sake, woman, get with the wank! They’d instructed me to use the shower head while thinking of Harry Groves in Third Year. No luck. Maybe because our shower head only reached as far as my belly and the spray wasn’t forceful enough, or because the only image of Harry Groves that stuck was him eating a peach and it wasn’t sexy at all, messy and kinda pukey – a lump of pink flesh stayed on his chin and I’m sure he noticed, but he didn’t bother wiping it off. After several attempts to hone the shower head and the image of Harry Groves, they lent me a dildo and told me to use it in bed while thinking of Brendan Xavier from the telly. No luck (the dildo terrified me and Brendan Xavier’s thick short eyebrows took up the whole screen in my fantasy. He looked like the devil.) After that they’d given me a bullet vibrator and the name of a porn site and instructed me to browse till I found something that worked. I’d tried a few times, but the sites had all made me a little queasy. Not sure I was into – or ready for – all that inside-out stuff. I don’t know if I’d have kept on trying, but before I could even decide, Mum confronted me.
I was embarrassed, being caught, but livid at her response. She made me watch one of videos in front of her.
‘Do you know who that girl is?’ She’d paused the vid, pointed at the woman whose hair was being pulled, eyes open and looking up as a faceless man shoved himself down her throat.
‘What?’
‘Do you know how old she is?’
‘How would I know?’
She zoomed in on her face. She had tanned skin, barely any make-up.
‘Look at her. Eighteen? Seventeen? Maybe sixteen? Maybe younger. Look at her eyes. What do you see? Who do you think her mum is? You think her mum’s seen this? Where do you think her home is, Catherine?’
I wanted to kill her. I’d need therapy about this later in life.
‘She might have been kidnapped, trafficked, stolen. Her family might not know where she is. Or she might have been sold by her father. Or her neighbour might have paid her to do this, taken her to some strange house in some strange place and hit her if she didn’t do what they told her to do. Do you know what her dreams are, Catherine? You know what’s on her list?’
She’d zoomed in even closer but I was too angry to look. My mother’s bullying righteousness was making me want to pay someone to kidnap and kill her. Also, I’d found Mum’s bag of goodies in her bedroom cupboard – vibrator, videos.
‘You are such a hypocrite, Mother! I’ve seen your porn stash.’
She blushed, paused. ‘But I did my research. Those are made by women. This one here, what do you know about it? What do you know about her?’
‘Why don’t you watch the short interview with her before the vid, Mother? Her name’s Rixie and she’s from Texas. She won best blowjob at the LA cock awards last year and wore a glittery gold gown! It’s an industry, a business, and she “like totally loves her job!” Not everyone’s dodgy, God!’
‘Oh yeah? And in the interview did she say what’s on her list?’
‘Not everyone has fucking lists.’
‘Maybe this week she wanted to train for a 5k run. Maybe she wanted to start learning to play the guitar. Maybe she wanted to try and stop swearing. Don’t you realise that by watching this you’re keeping that girl in that room? You’re almost as bad as the traffickers who kidnapped her!’
‘No one trafficked her! She’s from Texas!’
I ran to Gran’s. And I didn’t get with the wank till I was seventeen. (And btw, it was always Paul I imagined. Worked every time.)
*
I loved spending time with Gran, I clung to her, relished her traditional maternalism. Her shortish dyed light-brown hair was always perfect. And right up till she died she wore foundation, mascara and lipstick, all the time. I think she even wore it to bed. She lost her husband when I was five. I don’t remember him at all, but Gran talked about him very affectionately. Apparently he made puns all the time, and believed eating out was a waste of time and money. (‘He’d say: “My wife is a better damn cook than any restaurant chef!”’) They had a happy marriage, Gran told me.
I often visited Gran after school. She would remove my stains and make me three-course meals from scratch, unlike Mum, who at that stage was always too busy during the week to make more than one-course meals from Marks and Spencer’s.
I realise now that as much as I needed to spend time with Gran, I always went home afterwards, home to the mother who was not really a mother. And the reason I always went home, was that I wanted to. She and Gran were the two halves of me that hadn’t quite fitted together yet.
I was eighteen when Gran died. Heart attack, it was. In the kitchen, apron on.
I believed my mother loved me in the same way as she’d loved Martin Watson. I was an attempt at conventionality that failed. I was even clingier than him, after all. I got in the way of several promotions. She told me so. ‘I stayed in Glasgow for you, Catherine! London would have been a much better place, career-wise.’ As it was, she had to commute there at least once a week after she’d reached director level. Gran was around the corner from ours, and I slept there when Mum was away, moving myself back home on her return, often feeling a nuisance and a mistake.
*
I’d go with Plan C: wine, chat, difficult truths. I decided it would happen tonight after work, even checked we had a bottle of her favourite Sangiovese in the cupboard.
On Skyscanner.net, flights to Costa Rica were around £800. On the way to the travel agency, cash in pocket, I ummed and ahhed about the best date to go. I know it’s callous, but one of the most significant factors was how long Rose had left. I Googled dementia on my phone in the taxi, but Marcus was right – there were many different types of the illness, and I had no way of knowing how advanced hers was, although she was connected quite often, so maybe not too advanced. If she lived another year, I could make a shedload more money and have enough to travel the world for months. From what I could gather, the old dear would probably not last years, but may well hang around for at least another twelve months. She was attached to me, and a lot of the time thought I was Margie, so she might well keep paying me to run pointless errands. I decided I should stay at Dear Green for another month at least, and make myself indispensable to her. I booked a one-way flight to Costa Rica leaving in four weeks’ time, making sure it was a flexible ticket that I could change, in case the money was still rolling in and it was worth staying a while longer. I whistled all the way to Dear Green. Mistake-girl was getting outta here. She would be list-free, agenda-free, job-free, post-grad-in-social-work-free and mother-free.
*
An hour later I was by the river, screaming. I had run there shortly after saying ‘Hey!’ to Jimmy in Room 3. I had run as fast as I could, stopped when I reached the rocky bank, and screamed. I was never going to stop screaming. It felt too good to stop. I wish I’d done it aged five, when Mum made me make my own lunch before my first day at school; at twelve, when she made me go to the supermarket to buy tampons; at fifteen, when she dropped me at the sex clinic to so I could go on the pill, despite my assertions that I always used condoms and did not want to go in there alone and sit in a line with the prostitutes and drug users from Govanhill. I should have spent my life screaming at her. I was making up for it now.
I was so excited when I got to work – the ticket to Costa Rica in my wallet representing my new life – on planes, in jungles, on beaches, in cafés. I’d sorted out how to tell Mum and felt confident about it. I was so excited that I forgot Marcus had wanted to see me upstairs first.
I skipped in the front door, poked my head in to say hi to Rose, who was drawing at her table. She was in the present day, but looked worried, writing frantically. ‘Are you okay, Rose?’
She put her pen down and her face transformed. I can’t tell you how amazing these transformations were. Her face and body language became ten. Her eyes opened more widely, inquisitive, eager, optimistic. She held her back straighter. She fidgeted, jiggled a foot, bit at a fingernail. More than that, though. Her skin changed colour, from greyish-yellow to rosy pink.
She stood up easily, something she didn’t do when she was old Rose, and ran over to me, grabbed my arms, kissed the top of my head. ‘Margie, listen. I promise I’ll be back. In an hour. I promise. I promise. I’ll light a fire.’
She grabbed some drawing paper from the desk, ripped at it, scrunching pages into balls, then placed them on the floor at the foot of her bed. She put her pencils and brushes on top, teepee style. ‘Matches! Wait, I’ll run and get matches. Don’t move.’
Holy shite, she was even crying like a kid, too. Not holding back, going for it. ‘I won’t let you die alone. I swear on Dad’s life, I won’t let you die! I’m just going to get matches.’
A couple of days ago, I’d have run off and hidden from this irksome display. I guess I’d changed a bit already. I smiled, and put my arms around her. ‘I’ve got matches. I’ve got them. I know you won’t leave me, Rose, I know. I know, it’s all right.’
I put her in bed, touched her cheek. ‘Everything’s okay. I’m okay. I know you won’t leave me. It’s all okay.’
As I watched her relax and slowly close her eyes, I didn’t see an old person who jumped the line to get on buses, paid for groceries slowly, took up space. I saw Rose Price.
She fell asleep.
Then I remembered. Marcus. Oops! I walked along the hall towards the back door, still happy, still excited. I waltzed past Room 4, and I’m sure I waved to Jimmy in the room opposite. He was strumming his guitar. I’m sure I said ‘Hey there, Jimmy!’ I’m sure as I was saying ‘Hey there, Jimmy’ I decided that I had just imagined seeing something in Room 4. A flash, a vision, from deep within my psyche, perhaps dug out because of the ticket I’d just bought, the escape I’d just planned. I don’t know why I walked back to check if this was the case but I did so without any worry or concern, just a quick check. I walked back to Room 4. The door was half open. I opened it fully, expecting to shake my head with a ‘silly me’. Alas, the image hadn’t come from an imagination fuelled by guilt. My mother was in the room, sitting in the armchair by the window.
‘Mum?’
‘Catherine.’ She’d said my name in an unusual way, as if ‘Catherine’ meant ‘Help’.
‘Did they say you could sit in here? What do you want?’
‘Sit down, sit.’
‘I’m working, Mum. You could have phoned me. Get up! I’ll get in trouble.’
‘Catherine, come and sit beside me.’ She had a piece of paper in her hand and I could see the numbers on the left. She was wanting a meeting, with an agenda.
‘Mother, I have no time for this now. I’m working. Whatever it is, let’s talk about it when I get home. For God’s sake, Gabriella’s coming. She’ll sack me.’
Gabriella had arrived at the door beside me. She gave my mother a kind smile, then touched my arm. ‘You were supposed to go up and see Marcus before you started today.’ Her voice was out-of-character gentle. I flicked her hand off my arm.
My mother bit her lip. ‘I have to tell you something.’
‘Well hurry, I have work to do. So do you. You should be at work.’
‘Honey, nine weeks ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.’
I went like Nancy for a few minutes. Frozen. Maybe underneath Nancy’s blank exterior, her brain raced like mine did in that moment. Three words from the sentence my mother had just spoken beat at my head. Diagnosed. Aggressive. Tumour. No, I thought. That doesn’t make sense. My mother is a chairperson and a director and a righteous bossy boots who makes lists and saves lives and was okay last night, she was okay.
‘Say that again.’
‘Nine weeks ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.’
I repeated the sentence to myself. Brain tumours are deadly. Aggressive ones are deadlier. I noticed Mum’s suitcase at the foot of the bed, a few of her clothes already on hangers in the open wardrobe, a photo of me on the bedside table.
‘Baby, sit down. Come, sit beside me. I knew you’d want to look after me, but it’s much better doing it here. This place has an excellent reputation. I looked into it thoroughly, and it’s easy for you to get to. This is my home now.’
But I was supposed to move out of home first. But if this was her home, where was mine? But . . .
And then I ran to the river.