Marla is kneeling on the sitting-room carpet,
tearing pages from
a paperback.
I’m home. This is Lucy, I say.
She doesn’t look up.
You’re not Peggy.
She holds the book aloft.
Is this mine?
Who’s that?
Everything’s yours, I explain,
wishing she was sane today.
This is Lucy.
Shall I make tea?
Coffee, she snaps.
And a sandwich. Did you pick up ham?
When’s dinner?
I’ve been hungry since last Sunday.
Did you know Michael Jackson died?
They just said it on the telly.
I loved his song about killers.
‘Thriller’.
‘Thriller’. That’s the one.
With all the zombies.
That was great.
Who else is dead that I should know about?
We have ham, I say.
Lucy follows me to the kitchen,
slumps at the table.
What’s wrong with her?
She helps herself to an apple from the
fruit bowl.
She forgets stuff, I say. It’s dementia.
Old people are nuts! She laughs.
Something in my stomach knots.
We ascend the stairs on tiptoe,
avoiding the final one which creaks.
Lucy strolls to the window.
So Marla’s your great-aunt?
She hadn’t been listening,
which I suppose,
when it comes
to stuff about Marla,
isn’t a bad thing.
No, she’s my sort-of-stepmum’s mother, I say,
repeating the lie
and able to tell something about how I arrived
and found Kelly-Anne gone –
replacing Marla for the man in the football shirt,
telling Lucy some of the truth for once.
I want to get away sometimes.
Mum is a total migraine.
She paws at a porcelain ornament on the dressing
table –
an angel with a harp –
turns it upside down to read the bottom,
like she knows what the markings mean.
Then she opens a drawer,
the top one stuffed with patchwork quilts,
rummages a bit,
closes it again.
What are you looking for?
Dunno. I better go actually,
I’ve a drum lesson at seven.
The clock on the wall ticks loudly.
It is five o’clock.
Don’t you want to have your coffee?
I’ll make it and you can chat to Marla.
Jan’s expecting me.
I better go, she repeats,
and she does.