‘Where did you even find Amber anyway, Mum?’
Josh’s pomposity was unbearable. Once he’d realized he couldn’t keep pretending the situation with Rachel was no more than a minor festive blip, he’d decided it was time to ‘take control’. He was pink in the face, demanding answers, his face not unlike the one that used to look up at me as he strained on the potty. He’d insisted on ringing Rachel himself, personally outraged by the way her phone went straight to voicemail, just as it had for the past forty-eight hours for the rest of us. ‘Rachel, you need to call home right now,’ he’d snarled. ‘Where the fuck are you?’
It was funny how easily my pride in my son – in his confident masculinity, the way he’d cut a swathe through the legal profession without breaking a sweat – had curdled into something close to repulsion. Like his father, he was so ill-equipped to find a path when life didn’t cleave to his will. I’d made both of their lives far too easy for them – now we were all paying the price. Nick had driven to Rachel’s flat to ‘double check’, even though we all knew perfectly well she wasn’t there.
Sophie was still snivelling into a Kleenex, and I absently rubbed her broad back.
‘Stop shouting at people, Josh!’ she said. ‘It’s not helping. She needs us to love her. How can you still not understand that?’
I was grateful for the distraction. I was tracing back in my mind how I actually had found Amber. It was as if her name bubbled up from the ether, passed from mother to mother as the last resort. It was one of the old school mums, Deborah Madden, who’d ultimately given it to me.
Josh snorted.
‘Tough love, not fucking handouts and aromatherapy. Amber must have a fucking website; she’s a therapist.’
He jabbed angrily at his slab of an iPhone as I turned my attentions back to Sophie. I knew already the website wouldn’t yield much. I’d tried to find her address that way, back when I’d sprung my surprise visit on her, but social media of any kind was not her style.
‘Sophie, Rachel must have said something to you – anything – that gave you a clue as to where she could be.’
Sophie eyed me nervously.
‘But Mum… she’s not a child. I don’t know, but even if I did…’
Rage flamed up inside me.
‘Your sister is having a breakdown! Do you not understand that? She needs us – she needs her mother – more than she ever has.’
Something crossed Sophie’s face – was it pity for my self-delusion? – that made me imagine my hand cracking itself hard across the soft pillows of her cheeks.
‘It’s a retreat, I think. They’re going to work on their problems together, as a group. But I don’t know where it is.’ Her chin tilted upwards, defiant. ‘And even if I did, I wouldn’t betray her like that! She doesn’t want you to know – can’t you get that, Mum?’
I waited for a long second before I deigned to respond to her.
‘Do you have amnesia, Sophie? Some kind of head injury you haven’t told us about?’
She was wrong-footed, groping for a response.
‘Mum…’
‘Have you forgotten the past few years? What we’ve been through? If your sister ends up dead – choking on her own vomit or stuffed full of pills – you’ll remember this moment. You’ll remember choosing her delusions over my mothering. And you’ll have to ask yourself, are you the reason she’s in the ground?’
How quickly I could alchemize my hurt, transform it into anger and weaponize it against my own flesh and blood. I used to think it was a skill, a useful way to shepherd them through a messy, dangerous world without scaring them with my own vulnerability. With everything that’s happened since, I have to wonder if it was always a curse.