The sharp trill of a phone cuts my dream wide open. By the time I’m fully conscious, I can’t recall who I was running from. My dreams are troubled, vivid, and sleep is fitful. The landline almost never rings, so the sound is alien. I’m frozen to the spot. I know what’s about to happen when the ringing stops.
The answer machine kicks in and I hear the voice I’ll never hear in real life again. Mum. The same husky tone as mine brings a fresh batch of tears, each syllable like a stab straight to my soul. Mum’s voice triggers an echo from my dream. I try to remember, grasping at it from the sleep mist clustered at the back of my mind. But it’s gone. I can’t reach it. I push the heels of my hands into my eyes, summoning the courage not to feel defeated before the day has begun. The caller clicks off and I hear the dialling tone, then the beep as no message registers.
I’m getting more and more glimpses of who I am without Mum. They’re fleeting, but I know they’ll become more concrete eventually. I’ll find my new normal and if I keep saying I’m fine in response to kind enquiries, it’ll, surely, eventually, become true.
At least I have the pressing task of packing for Greece. Now that it’s happening tomorrow, I’m excited to have a purpose to throw myself into. To have my thoughts consumed with something that isn’t heartbreak. And aside from the main mission of finding Mum’s painting, my mouth waters at all the food I’m about to discover. Filling my mind with cooking inspiration, swapping grey murky weather for sparkly seas, is surely a preferable way to journey through my sorrow. I can follow in Mum’s footsteps, using travel to inform my work, just as she did each summer.
The idea of Methoni propels me into the day. I pull out a battered suitcase from under Mum’s bed and brush off the dust bunnies. It’s scuffed and scarred from years of travels. Fragments of stickers half scratched off. To be in this room breathing in the air and soaking up the remnants of her is both agony and comfort in perfect collusion. The dressing table is still strewn with make-up, pots of creams and bottles. It looked as though she’d just popped out. But she’s not coming back and the more the house looks as though she might, the worse it’ll feel for me left behind.
But sorting through everything would make it feel too final, separate our bond like severing ties, and I’m just not there yet. I can’t even face clearing out her studio. I did go in there for a rummage to check if the Methoni painting was hidden away to save me from embarking on my overseas voyage, but it wasn’t.
That would have been far too straightforward.
* * *
‘May you find sunshine, peace and return with big, fat thighs … Cheers!’
Tasha announces her silly toast with aplomb and I clink glasses with her and Angus. The Indian restaurant nestled in a Fulham side street is one of our places. Run by three generations of the same family and in the years we’ve been coming here, we’ve seen their little ones grow up, marry – some have had their own babies. It makes us feel old, but their balti is the best! We sip our Tiger Beers – soda water for Tasha – and pile pickles and relishes onto crunchy poppadoms.
‘Yes to the first two and no to the latter, thank you very much!’ I reply, piling creamy cucumber raita on my starter, narrowly avoiding splattering my jumper with yoghurt.
‘Well, I think it’s brilliant, Soph,’ says Angus, putting his arm around the back of Tash’s chair. ‘And any misgivings madam here has are purely selfish. I think it’s bloody brave.’
He fixes Tash with a provocative grin, knowing she’ll take the bait.
‘Thank you, darling, for your support,’ replies Tasha with faux haughtiness. ‘I cannot deny, I’m utterly jealous about missing out on a road trip. If it weren’t for the pre-IVF prodding, I could come with you. Oh, to be like Thelma and Louise, obviously without the tragic car crash, roaming the olive groves for an Adonis with abs like Brad!’
‘Before Angelina!’ Tasha and I add at the same time, laughing.
‘You two really do have the same brain – it’s quite terrifying.’ Angus shakes his head, amused, and takes a gulp of beer. ‘I’m not sure anyone else could put up with you pair together.’
‘Apart from you, darling, Mumma Lyns was the only one who could deal with us. Honestly, my lot just couldn’t cope. On our annual trips with my family in France – I think we drove my mother to drink and drugs even more in between her screaming matches with Granny. One hideous time, Soph, and I got so sick – do you remember, we were … twelve, maybe’
‘Don’t remind me! Urgh … we found a bottle of Aperol thinking it was French Lucozade and were so ill. I don’t think we saw your mum for the rest of the trip after all the orange vomiting.’
I clutch at my stomach as the memory makes me feel momentarily queasy.
‘Standard behaviour from my mother dearest,’ Tasha says, almost concealing her deep-rooted hurt at her parent, but she doesn’t fool me. ‘Honestly, you’d think she could manage an eight-week stretch with me. But no. She just disappeared with some playboy up the coast to Cannes, leaving us with dear old reliable Granny. Anyway, thankfully, I had some actual parenting from Lyndsey, otherwise, God knows how I would have turned out!’
She raises her eyebrows at Angus, encouraging him to imagine the alternative.
Tasha made her peace with her perpetually absent mother with enviable maturity when we were little, gratefully making my family hers, and we gladly made her part of ours. Tasha’s mum, Melody Barton-Bamber, was a model with a massive trust fund and had returned straight back to work after Tasha was born, leaving her little inconvenience with the matriarch that was Tasha’s grandmother to bring her up: the source of the trust fund but not a source of love. That was left to my mother, or ‘Mumma Lyns’, as Tasha named her.
Tasha was picked up from school with me, fed and watered before being collected and taken back to her grandmama’s house in elegant, leafy Kensington. Quite different from our Victorian cottage near the slightly rougher end of the Fulham Road. Those hours we spent together formed an unbreakable bond, our special club of two. Polar opposites in colouring, Tasha with her long blonde locks and big blue eyes, a quintessential English rose, and me, brunette with Mum’s olive skin and Mediterranean colouring. Tasha inherited her mother’s supermodel height, whereas I am as petite and short as she is tall and willowy.
We’re embroiled in most parts of the other’s life. With my catering company and Tasha’s bespoke, high-end event-planning business, we often work together on society parties and charity balls. Although we have a tight friendship group that survived school and university, of our original gang of five, Brittany, Sarah and Abi all have children now. Tasha and I are the only two without … that is, until Tasha’s IVF works. While I’m still close with the others, Tasha is my ride or die.
‘Well, it’s lucky one can choose friends and not family, isn’t it? Cheers to that!’ Angus raises his glass to his toast as Tasha kisses him firmly on the cheek and runs a finger down his nose with adorable affection.
‘Oh yes,’ agrees Tasha, ‘to friends: the family you get to choose!’
‘Are you on the hormones already? You’re actually spouting Hallmark slogans!’ I laugh.
‘Look, I’m just going to miss you. And my hormones are fine, thank you very much, as we found out today at the hospital. I love you, and I forbid you from going a single day without letting me know how you are. And I hope you find that painting, and hurry back safely.’
Her hand reaches across the table for me to shake in agreement.
‘Deal!’ I say and feel the nerves at my imminent adventure begin a flitty dance in my tummy.
‘So, please let me be Miss Practical as per usual, Soph. What about work? I know you’ve let Tiff crack on with the business while you were looking after Mumma Lyns, but isn’t it time you got back in the saddle? There’s the event I’m running at the end of May for that book launch and your company is doing the catering. So, why don’t you work the event? Tiff can take the lead, but it may be a gentle way to take that first step back into your life.’
I sigh and sip my drink, grateful to have her sensibility to help organise my life.
‘You’re right. I need to do it. I’ve spoken to Tiff and she’s happy to carry on as we are for now until I’m ready. But it’s like properly admitting Mum has gone if I return to life before it all happened.’
‘It’s totally understandable to feel like that,’ says Angus warmly, ‘but I suspect Tash is only insisting you work that night to ensure you come back from Greece and don’t run away altogether!’ He indicates Tasha with a nod as she swipes him on the arm, laughing.
‘Well, I promise to come back and I’ll think about working the event. Anyway, cheers to you two and what comes next.’ I raise my glass to them and we drink. ‘And the consultant seemed happy with Tasha at the hospital today.’
‘Absolutely, we’re good to go and start the injections as planned. Thanks for being there, Soph. I’m just sorry I couldn’t.’
Angus curls his arm around Tasha’s shoulder. His shift work as an A & E doctor prevented him from attending today’s appointment and I gladly filled in.
‘It’s the least I could do,’ I reply, smiling. ‘You’ve both been incredible friends to me and have helped me so much. So, here’s to the next bit. For all of us …’
As we toast each other again, the waiter appears with a large hotplate for the table and breaks the build-up to bon voyage. I’m done with tears; I need to find my new now and it all begins tomorrow … I hope.