‘What do you mean, you’re getting divorced?’ Kate demanded as she stared at Elizabeth Duggan in disbelief. Her mother had suddenly announced that she’d left their father and that she was leaving him permanently.
‘I can’t live with him any more, Kate. I think he’s a sociopath. He’s horrid to live with.’ She looked down at the floor as she spoke. ‘He just doesn’t understand me.’
‘But, you and Dad, you’re a team. You’ve always been very much in love. Everyone says so. Besides, where the hell would you live?’ Kate’s mind reeled, the fact that her mother had chosen to run and stay at her house was enough of a warning sign.
‘I’ve wanted to tell you before. But your father insisted that I shouldn’t, he said you had enough guilt on your shoulders about what you did to both your brother and your sister, without thinking you’d split us up too.’ She rambled on at speed. ‘Besides, he’s been working away. It would never have been the right time to tell you.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Kate took a deep breath. It was as though someone had just punched her in the stomach and she stared aimlessly, hoping she’d heard the words wrong. ‘What did I do exactly? Why the hell is any of this my fault?’ In her own mind Kate had always blamed herself for what happened, even though rationally she’d known that it was nothing more than a horrific accident. It had been no one’s fault. And for her mother to actually accuse her had blown her mind.
Rummaging through the utensils, her mother began to lift them out of the drawer and onto the worktop. ‘Darling, if only you hadn’t insisted that James had driven you that night. None of this would have happened.’
Kate spun around on the spot. ‘Why… why would you even say that?’ she demanded. ‘I couldn’t have predicted what happened. I’m not responsible that he crashed the bloody car.’
‘Darling, where do you keep the potato peeler? I can’t find it.’ Her mother slammed the drawer and opened another and Kate seriously wondered how on earth she didn’t know which drawer the peeler was in, especially after she’d cleaned, and tidied and reorganised all of her drawers in the past few days.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, Kate simply watched as her mother continued to search. ‘You really do blame me, don’t you? Do you think I want you and Father to split up, because I’ll tell you now, it’s the last bloody thing I want, because if you did I’d hate to think where you’d end up living.’
Her mother turned and glared with annoyance. ‘Kate, we don’t always get what we want. All I know is what we are left with. We just have to make the best of it, don’t we?’ Again, she opened a drawer. Slammed it shut. ‘And if you kept things in order, we’d all be a lot happier.’
‘The best of it?’ Kate shouted. ‘Good God, Mother, how the hell do we make the best of what we have left?’ She pointed to the picture of James that stood on the sideboard. ‘James is dead. Eve is paralysed. And I have this… How can any of us ever put that right?’
‘Katie, don’t be so dramatic. I’m leaving your father, lots of people get divorced nowadays and that’s that,’ she said, as she hastily chopped at the carrots. ‘I can’t live with him, he’s too bitter and twisted and I wish I knew why,’ her mother growled as she stood facing the range. ‘Every time he talks to me, he says something nasty, something insulting and I don’t like it.’
Kate laughed out loud and thought of the irony. She looked at her mother’s back and wondered if she actually ever listened to what came out of her own mouth and for just a moment it occurred to her how alike her mother and father really were.
‘James was running late for his date,’ Kate began to whisper. She was sick of shouting, her head pounded and after the day she’d already had, she really needed a drink. ‘We were just doing what we’d always done. James always took us to town on our birthday; always made out we were too much trouble.’
Kate closed her eyes and thought of the times her brother had teased both her and Eve. He’d always moaned when they were in the same clubs as he was but had always invited them along anyway. ‘Don’t you dare be in the Alabama Alligator club tonight, especially around ten o’clock,’ he’d tease with a wink. ‘Last place I need to see you two is at the bar.’ Which had been his way of saying, be there and I’ll buy you both a drink.
‘The car spun off the road, it was no one’s fault,’ Kate said as she thought back to the accident, remembered the way she’d been launched across the car at speed. How it had spun repeatedly, before turning over and over.
‘That’s right, dear, no one’s fault. That’s why my son doesn’t visit me any more. You are scarred for life and my darling Eve now sits in a wheelchair,’ Elizabeth said as she calmly continued to chop vegetables for the evening meal. ‘Of course, if you want to believe that pulling your sister from the car and crippling her was not your fault, then that’s fine. It’s you that has to live with yourself and even your father said that if you’d only caught the bus that day rather than taking the car, none of it would have happened. He’d still have his precious law firm and James would still be working there. But because of you, he had no choice but to sell it.’
Kate was shocked. Eve was right, her mother really was having a nervous breakdown. She thought that James simply wasn’t here, rather than being dead. And, even though she’d always suspected that both her mother and father had blamed her, it was the first time that either of them had actually come out and said it.
‘I need to phone Eve,’ Kate grabbed at her phone, thought of the conversation she’d had with her just the day before. She’d said that mother had been upset, crying, but now there was no emotion. There was no sorrow. No sign of tears and the words had been said with the same amount of feeling she’d have used when reading a weather report. ‘Monday will have showers with a hint of sunshine,’ Kate imagined her mother saying, ‘and Tuesday will see a rather dramatic divorce happening around the vale of York.’ Kate took a step back, felt stunned and had no idea what she should do.
‘Do you want boiled potatoes, dear, or roast?’
‘What?’ Kate slammed her hand on the table. ‘Mother, stop chopping the bloody vegetables like you’re feeding an army and sit down. We really need to talk.’ Her chest heaved as pain and realisation tore through her body. She’d tried to put the accident behind her, but now it was all she could think about.
Had she really been responsible for Eve’s injuries? Was Eve in a wheelchair because of her? Had she pulled her out of the wreckage?
All the thoughts raced around in her head all at once. Like a huge tornado spinning violently through her mind. In the course of one day, she’d discovered that her boyfriend was a lying, cheating rat, that her parents were getting divorced and that they both blamed her for the accident that had destroyed everyone’s lives.
‘Mum, the accident. I think you should know…’ Kate closed her eyes. She had no idea where to start. How to tell her that James was dead and not just refusing to visit?
‘I know, dear, you’re sorry. Could you pass the gravy jug?’
‘Are you bloody serious?’
Elizabeth Duggan walked past Kate, picked up the gravy jug, and then walked back to the range giving the gravy her whole attention. It was an action that made Kate gasp. Her mother was most probably in the middle of a nervous breakdown, while throwing all the guilt at her daughter, but God help anyone who got in the way of her making the bloody gravy. Kate pushed her chair backwards, stood up and walked over to the wine rack, where she studied the three bottles of wine that had sat there for the past three days. Then, like it mattered, she pulled a bottle of red from the rack and without studying the label or caring what the contents were, she poured a large glass, and drank it in a single gulp.
‘Yes, please, darling, I’ll have a glass. Now did you say boiled potatoes or roast? I think roast are so much nicer with beef, dear, don’t you?’ Elizabeth Duggan looked up from the gravy boat that she’d been polishing with a tea towel and as though nothing had been said, she gave Kate a smile.
It was more than Kate could take. Her world began to spin and she sat down quickly as her legs began to wobble. ‘Mother! After all you’ve just said, do you seriously want to know what bloody potatoes I want?’ Kate growled as anger took over her voice. ‘You do know that the accident ruined my life too. Don’t you?’ She snatched at a tea towel, viciously rubbed the make-up off her face. ‘That day ruined everything.’ Kate held her chin towards her mother, pointed at the red puckered ridge that lined her jaw and watched as her mother’s gaze was averted.
In the last twenty-four hours her life had turned from being predictably boring, to being a complicated nightmare. It was now an intricate web of deceit, of secrets and lies, that spread out in every direction, and she had no idea how to control the outbreak.
Kate saw her mother’s bottom lip quiver. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? Does sorry even cut it? You need help, professional help. You need a doctor.’ Kate gulped down the wine, went to stand in front of her mother and tentatively, gripped her hands. ‘Mother, we need to phone Eve. She has a right to know what’s happening, she needs to know about you and Daddy, and I can’t cope with all this alone, not today.’
Her mother nodded, calmly. ‘She knows, dear, I already told her.’
‘She knows? So what did she say? Is she all right, should we go to her?’
‘Don’t be silly, dear, Eve’s fine. She certainly didn’t react like you did.’
With her mind reeling. Kate felt the pressure build up inside. She knew that her mother wasn’t well or acting normally and Kate knew she had no choice but to take control. Somehow, she had to get her mother back to York and to do that, she knew that she had to speak to their father.
Taking in a much-needed deep breath, Kate walked to her mother’s side, took the knife from her hand and pulled out a chair from beneath the table. ‘Here you go mum. Take a seat.’ She swallowed hard and cast an eye across the pile of vegetables she wouldn’t want to eat. ‘Here,’ she picked up the wine, slowly poured herself a second glass, then lifted another glass down from the shelf and filled it for her mother. ‘You have a drink and I’ll… well I’ll make the roast potatoes.’