On Wednesday, it happened.
The only good thing I can say about it is that Nicky and I were together, and the kids were still on their way home from school.
It had already been an unsettling day. Toby had found me when the Bloomers were having lunch, vibrating with excitement as he explained that Courtney had decided to give things another try, and he was catching the bus up to Sheffield with Hazel that afternoon. I wished him well, made him promise to let me know how it went, and arranged to drop all their things off on Friday if he wanted to stay.
At three-thirty, a taxi pulled into the driveway, which wasn’t unusual on Bloomer days, but it was when Nicky had already helped the last mum load her pram into her carer’s car and waved them off.
‘There’s definitely no one still hanging around?’ Nicky asked, peering out of the cabin window, her hands full of dirty mugs.
‘No. Toby and Hazel should have left about an hour ago.’
‘Who’s this, then?’
Before I could hazard a guess at all the people I hoped it wasn’t, Nicky clutched my arm, her intuition flaring.
‘It’s her.’
We both blurted the same swear word.
The back door of the taxi opened, and out stepped the woman we’d been hoping and dreading to see for five years.
‘What the hell do we do now?’ I murmured, not that there was any chance of her hearing me as she wandered over to the cottage’s front door.
‘Improvise?’ Nicky replied. ‘Stay true to ourselves? And no matter what, we damn well stick together.’
We slipped out of the cabin door, which faced the side of my house, scurried across the garden and entered the kitchen via the patio.
‘Here.’ Nicky grabbed my shoulders, then fluffed up my hair before tucking one side behind my ear, untucking it, and then brushing it back again. All her crop needed was a quick smooth over.
‘Everything else presentable?’ she asked, breathless with tension as she bared her teeth for inspection.
‘All good.’
‘You, too.’
‘I guess we’re ready as we’ll ever be.’
‘Which is totally not ready.’ She laughed, a little manically.
‘Did you think she looked old?’ I whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back. ‘I was freaking out too much to—’
Mum knocked on the door with a jaunty rhythm that reflected the tone of the twenty-one postcards stuffed into the back of my understairs cupboard.
‘Did I tidy the hallway this morning?’ I gabbled. ‘I don’t think I’ve vacuumed it since the weekend.’
‘Who cares?’ Nicky hissed back. ‘We don’t give a crap what she thinks, remember?’
Only we did. We gave more craps about this than our hearts could bear to admit. Even so, shoulders back, hair in place, I strode down my only slightly messy hallway and opened the door as deliberately casual, couldn’t-care-less as I could manage.
‘Mum.’ The shock was still like a mallet slamming into my midriff.
‘Libby! Oh my! Oh, look at you, darling! I’ve been looking forward to this moment for 3,872 miles!’ Mum stepped forwards, arms automatically reaching out to hug me. I hurriedly stepped back, leaving them grasping at empty air, which was how she’d left me five years ago.
‘Before you come in,’ Nicky barked, springing in front of me, ‘we need to say something.’
Mum’s jaw dropped open. She blinked at us a couple of times. She wore a yellow T-shirt displaying the Invisible Women support group logo with cotton shorts and well-worn trainers. Mum’s hair, dark like mine with a few strands of grey when she’d left, was now mostly silver. She looked physically older, naturally. But her posture, the light dancing in her eyes and bounce in her step were completely new.
‘Of course,’ she said, with an apprehensive smile. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Right. Firstly, while you were off finding fancy-free Helen, I turned thirty-one. I’ve been “going ahead” without your permission for a very long time. Secondly, Libby’s kids will be home in half an hour. You will be gone by the time they get here.’ She didn’t mention that Dad would be with them. ‘Thirdly, none of this is okay. If you thought this would be some joyous reunion, then you’re even more selfish than this whole farce has proven already.’
Mum’s smile vanished. ‘I did wonder if it might be like this.’
‘Fourthly,’ Nicky said, her entire face covered in angry blotches, ‘you’d better find a seat in the garden because you have five years and two months of explaining to do, and Libby doesn’t want you in her house yet.’
Five horrendously awkward minutes later, we were perched on two benches like emissaries from rival armies trying to broker a peace deal. I was so grateful in that moment for Toby and the time he’d taken to cut the grass and tidy up the borders. I’d hastily filled a jug with iced water because if I’d put the kettle on, Nicky would have yelled at me, and we were all in need of cooling down.
‘You did get the last few postcards?’ Mum asked, with horribly fake brightness. ‘I wanted to keep you updated.’
‘Yes. Did you get ours?’ Nicky asked, her tone even jollier.
There was a moment of confusion before Mum cottoned on to the sarcasm. ‘I loved seeing all the Facebook updates. That was a very thoughtful gesture.’
‘In 2020, you went four months without any contact,’ I said, the first time I’d properly spoken. ‘The world had turned upside down, and after you finished the cruise we had no idea what was going on.’
‘You knew I was in Spain,’ Mum said. ‘Literally nothing was going on. I had no news to tell.’
‘And you didn’t think to phone, or message? You didn’t wonder whether we had any news?’
‘We thought you might have died of Covid in some backwater hospital,’ Nicky said, her flat tone the biggest clue that she was hiding a tornado of emotions. ‘We sort of hoped you had. It felt easier than you simply not giving a crap.’
Mum jerked back in astonishment. ‘How could you think I didn’t care? I’m your mother. I thought about you all the time. And you knew why I had to go…’
‘Why didn’t you ever comment on our posts?’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘You never phoned on Isla’s or Finn’s birthdays, let alone sent a present. You barely acknowledged that they even existed.’
‘Plenty of parents move abroad when their children are adults.’ Mum was starting to bristle. ‘I spent twenty-seven years pouring out every last ounce of strength, love and energy into fifty-three children—’
‘But not your children!’ Nicky cried in exasperation, her blank façade disintegrating. ‘Then you abandoned us. And Dad. You didn’t even have the guts to properly separate, just left him dangling. What did he do to deserve that?’
‘I hardly abandoned you.’ Mum looked askance. ‘You were settled and sorted with jobs, your own families… Adults with your own lives. You surely can’t begrudge me some time to recover mine. I had a breakdown. I needed to recover. And I’m not going to discuss your father, who I’m sure has more than made up for me spending some time away.’
‘When you left, we might have been sorted,’ I snapped, incredulous that she was arguing about this rather than expressing how sorry she was. ‘What about two months later when Brayden walked out on me and our two tiny children to shack up with another woman? You don’t think I could have done with my mum at least sending me a sympathetic text then?’
‘Oh, darling! Brayden left you? You never posted about that.’ Mum pressed a hand against her cheek in shock.
‘On a public Facebook page? Of course she didn’t!’ Nicky sprang up and started striding up and down the patch of lawn, waving her arms about. ‘We also didn’t post about my cancer scare, or the four miscarriages, the last one of which has left me with zero hope of ever becoming pregnant. We didn’t share that I’m a partner in a GP practice, or that Libby is living with an eighteen-year-old lad and his daughter. That Isla has anxiety attacks, and her brother likes smacking people over the head with random objects. Or how Libby has been lost – lost – hiding away in this decrepit cottage for years now, and I’ve been too busy hiding from my own problems to help her. We needed you! Not to look after us or even babysit your grandkids if you’ve really had enough of children, but, I don’t know, just to share some of your amazing advice, or listen to our problems, say you’re proud of us or… give us a damn hug!’
All three of us were crying now. There was only one time in Franklin history when that had happened before, which inevitably prompted my next statement.
‘Don’t pretend we’re being mardy about you needing some time away. Five years without being able to call you is beyond bonkers. It’s downright cruel. And the only explanation is that you’d been waiting since I was sixteen to punish me for sabotaging the future you really wanted. A five-year sentence. Which is fine. If you had the decency to admit it. But what’s totally not fine is that you punished Dad and Nicky, too.’
There was a stunned silence. Nicky came and sat beside me again.
‘That’s not what this was,’ Mum said, her words stiff as though her lips had gone numb. ‘I was very ill. I simply couldn’t carry the weight of anyone else any more. The only way to do that was to make a complete break. But it wasn’t a punishment.’
‘You weren’t still angry with her?’ Nicky asked, slumping back like a deflating balloon. ‘You can swear what happened with Jonah had nothing to do with you rarely phoning, no videocalls, no invites to join you on the high seas?’
‘Oh, you know I can’t handle that type of new-fangled technology.’ Mum huffed. ‘Most of the time I had no phone signal.’
‘Stop it,’ I said, causing Mum to jerk her head towards me in surprise. I’d been an unassuming twenty-four-year-old when she’d left. I wasn’t that woman any more. Even if the transformation had only happened in the past few weeks. ‘It’s time to cut the crap. If you want to see either of your daughters again after you leave in—’ I checked my watch ‘—eight minutes, then start being honest. Because if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that we really don’t need you. So, if you’d like to have any sort of relationship with us at all, you’d better find a way to make us want you in our lives again.’
Mum looked at the grass for a long moment, before nodding to herself, the decision made.
‘Yes, I was deeply upset by what happened with Jonah, Libby. I tried not to blame you, but we were unable to fully forgive each other, and that caused too much anguish and guilt on top of being so ill. And when the problems between us started impacting your dad, it felt like my bitterness was poisoning everything, and I didn’t know how else to fix it. The Invisible Women showed me that a break would enable us to draw a line under it and start again.’
Nicky was pale with anger. ‘Your ridiculous support group didn’t suggest counselling, or us simply talking it out together? Anything that didn’t coincidentally involve you taking an around-the-world holiday?’
Mum tipped up her chin. She looked just like Isla. ‘It was torture, thinking about you girls, my grandchildren, getting on with your lives and me not being a part of it. If you’re wondering whether I felt awful, then the answer is of course. Then, as time passed, the idea of coming back grew worse and worse, knowing how upset you’d be, sure that the distance between us would be near impossible to bridge.’
‘Five years.’ I had heard her explanation, but it was like oil spilling on water.
‘It was only meant to be one year, and then lockdowns everywhere… I ran out of money so needed to work for a few months. Then another lockdown started…’
Nicky rolled her eyes. ‘You could have bought a cheap disposable phone and given us your number. Arranged a time when we could speak properly.’
‘I was afraid you’d never call.’ Mum started crying again. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about Brayden, and the other things you’ve been through. I can never make up the lost years to Finn and Isla. But please trust me when I say that I had to do this. I wouldn’t have left if I had any choice.’
‘You need to go now,’ Nicky said, sounding as unsympathetic as I felt. ‘But I have one thing for you to consider. We spent our whole childhoods doing our best to love all those children. Being jealous. Even scared of a few. In our house. All the time. We shared birthdays and Christmases and every other normal piece of growing up. And we aren’t complaining. In so many ways we are stronger and better people for it. But knowing what it was like, how hard it was sometimes, you should have at least checked in on us, even if you needed to leave us.’
As Nicky paused for breath, Finn’s excited chatter drifted over the side fence. I got up and hurried into the house, shooing the kids into the living room as soon as they stepped through the front door.
‘Mummy, I haven’t taken my shoes off yet!’ Isla protested. ‘What about the mud on the rug?’
‘Whoops. Take them off here, and I’ll fetch you a snack. I need you to wait two minutes while I talk to Grandad.’
‘What’s happened?’ Dad asked, following me back to the kitchen.
‘Mum’s here.’ I nodded through the window to where Mum was struggling to swing her enormous rucksack onto her back.
He froze, eyes fixed on the window. ‘How is she?’
‘She cried a lot.’ I shrugged.
‘What are her plans now?’
‘We didn’t get that far.’ As Mum started trudging around the house, I hurried down the hallway so I could intercept her on the front drive.
‘Nicky says I can stay at hers,’ Mum said, when I caught up with her. ‘She’s driving me over.’
‘One night.’ My sister looked as though every muscle from her furrowed forehead to her toes were clenched. ‘And we still need to talk about Dad.’
‘It’s been really good to see you.’ Mum was crying again. ‘I know we have a lot more to discuss, and you’re still very upset, but I can’t tell you how much it meant that you allowed me to—’
‘Did you know Jonah lived at the Green House?’ I interrupted, unable to bear any more platitudes.
Mum stopped, her eyes flicking to Nicky, as if she were going to help her out.
‘Did Dad know, or was this something else you kept from all of us?’
I refused to accept her trying to imply that Dad and I somehow ganged up against her. Mum had been the one to step away from our family, a long time before she actually left.
‘I knew.’ Mum dropped her head in what I hoped was shame. ‘I didn’t think it would be helpful to tell your dad.’
I shook my head. ‘You say you didn’t want to punish me, but you banished the man I loved and then never even gave me the chance to see him, let alone to say goodbye.’