To: Jonas Zebila
From: Abi Zebila
Subject: Is it me?
Thursday, 16 July 2015
Dear J,
So here we are. Two weeks later and nada. I’ve had daily texts from her saying hello and asking how we are, but nothing more. No asking to meet up or to talk on the phone, nothing.
Clearly she’s keeping us at arm’s length. Declan – yes, I finally told him everything – reckons it’s to do with Gran. But he would say that, seeing as he’s terrified of her. We’re all on a knife-edge in the house, except Lily-Rose who asks to see the photos again and again because she’s fascinated by having so many photos of this woman who is her aunt, once being as small as her. She’s not that close to Declan’s sisters, mainly because Declan won’t spend that much time with them. Not sure why, but you know what? My family’s F’d up enough, he’s not forthcoming on sharing that with me.
I hear Mummy and Daddy talking sometimes in the middle of the night, and, you know, they can’t seem to get over this barrier between them and say what they really feel. I mean, if I had the child I hadn’t seen in nearly forty years walk into my life, I’d be talking with the only other person who’d understand how I felt. They can’t seem to do that. They’re a lot nicer to each other nowadays, and there’s far less of an atmosphere, but they don’t talk.
Declan and I talk all the time even when we’re not living together. He’s actually been really supportive during all this, and I wish I didn’t have that fear of being with him all the time. If I start to rely on him, will he let me down again? I know it was years ago, but I’m sort of waiting for him to do it again.
Maybe that’s what Mummy and Daddy are thinking. That if they talk, they have to go over what happened, and why they did it, and what it means about them. Because I can’t imagine what’s going through their heads.
Ivor is on another planet. I don’t know what his f-ing problem is, but he’s been saying stuff about Clemency being a con artist. He never says it in front of Mummy and Daddy, but if it’s just me and him, he’ll make some comment about how we’re such a trusting family and how she could be from anywhere. I’ve told him to tell that to Mummy and Daddy if he truly believes that – funnily enough, he won’t.
I wonder if Declan is right and this is all down to Gran – Clemency did look like she’d seen a ghost when she came out of Gran’s room. Maybe Gran told her to back off? But she wouldn’t do that, would she? Look who I’m asking!!! Gran cried with the rest of us, though, so I’m not sure why she’d warn Clemency off.
Thing is, Gran’s not always rational these days. That’s a realisation I’m coming to accept. She isn’t making sense a lot of the time, she forgets things, she becomes incredibly angry if you point out something contradictory. On top of the other stuff wrong with her, I’m not surprised Mummy wants to get her proper, specialist care from people who can tend to her needs around the clock, give her meds at the right times in the right doses. Also, sometimes it’s a struggle to get her to take the meds. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t like the side effects, wants to skip some in case they’re what’s making her ill.
I’ve said to Daddy that I’d get her a nice room at our place, I could work out a good deal, I’d see her almost every day, there are nurses who are trained to deal with people who aren’t handling their long-term illnesses very well. When I mentioned it at dinner, after Lily-Rose was in bed, Daddy got really angry. ‘That’s not how we deal with problems in this family,’ he said. We were all sitting there and he raised his voice. ‘We find a way to take care of family members, we don’t move them out and abandon them at the first sign of trouble.’
None of us said anything and even Ivor looked uncomfortable. It took Daddy a couple of minutes to realise what he’d said in the light of all the recent revelations and he seemed very embarrassed and ashamed. Maybe that’s what the problem is, why he and Mummy can’t talk – they’re ashamed of what they did. Not that I think they’d ever admit it to anyone – not even each other. Kind of ended the discussion about what next for Gran, though.
Why doesn’t Clemency call? Things got so much better at home after she arrived, and now we’re all in this limbo of waiting for her to get in touch again. I miss her. I miss you.
Lots of love,
Abi
xxxx