Chapter 7

I t’s not nice to profit by misfortune but I can’t say that I’m not glad that Rita has rung in sick. Veronica asked if anyone would like to do extra shifts for a few weeks, possibly longer, and I shot my hand up in the air and shouted ‘Me please’ before anyone beat me to it. I felt a bit foolish as soon as I’d done it because everyone looked at me as if I were a proper idiot – putting my hand up like that as if I was still at school. Anyway, I’m not going to worry about that because I got an extra shift and I’m going to be cleaning Bella’s house. I said I could do a Monday if that was any use as I knew that was the day for Bella’s clean, I can fit it around Mrs Forsyth’s. The two twin set ladies took the rest of her shifts but they didn’t put their hands up like a couple of school kids, they had to be cajoled into it as no one else was really interested.

I’m so excited, it feels like it’s meant to be.

I sort of knew it was going to happen, strange though it sounds. It was just a matter of time.

I know it must sound trivial and a bit weird, but knowing that I’m going to be cleaning Bella’s house makes me feel closer to her. I already feel like she’s done so much for me even though she doesn’t know it – if I hadn’t seen her that day then I wouldn’t be where I am now. I’d still be stuffing my face and getting fatter and fatter; I wouldn’t have even thought about getting a job and I wouldn’t have a plan .

I had a bad night last night though, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about that bloody stair lift. The thought of Mother being able to get downstairs is unbearable and it simply cannot happen. I won’t be able to do a thing if she’s downstairs with me; I’d have to hide my laptop away, I’d never be able to watch anything that I want on television again and as for running – she’ll never allow it. I’d be banned from leaving the house completely and made to sit with her and watch quiz shows all night. And then there’s the garden; she’s under the illusion that I maintain it. The thought of her reaction to seeing the garden is enough to drive me straight to the biscuit tin. I’m fitter now and I probably could get out there and wrestle it back into some sort of shape but that would impact on my running.

And anyway, I don’t want to.

And what if she gets it into her head that if she can get downstairs she can get in the car and I can take her shopping with me? Visions of me pushing her around Foodco in a wheelchair while she regally chooses the food kept me awake for hours; no more microwave meals.

Oh God, the microwave, that’ll have to go too.

My life will be hell .

No. It simply cannot happen. I’m going to stall her for now, at least all of those sleepless hours were useful for formulating a plan of sorts. I’m going to pretend to Mother that I’ve already made a phone call to the stair lift people. I’ll tell her that as it was over three months ago since they measured up they have to do a fresh quote and the earliest they can come to do it is two weeks’ time. She won’t like it one little bit and I’ll just have to hope she doesn’t decide to phone them herself.

Maybe the telephone extension in her room will develop a fault, which might be a good idea anyway as I’m never too sure whether she’s listening in or not. I’ll have to wait until she’s in the bath and do something to it, disable it somehow.

‘We going for a coffee, Al?’

‘What?’

‘Coffee? You alright? Everyfing alright?’ Doris is looking at me with concern.

I laugh, ‘Yeah, course it is, sorry, I was miles away.’

Moppers tiny office empties rapidly, time sheets deposited and wage queries dealt with. I tuck the sheet of paper, with Bella’s address and cleaning hours that Veronica has given me, into my bag. I don’t need the address; I’ve driven around there many times on my way back from Foodco. I’m not stalking her or anything weird like that, I just like to look at the house, imagine how fabulous her life is.

Imagine if my life were like hers.

Doris and I come out of Moppers and wander down to Joey’s Café. It’s my turn to get the drinks and I go up to the counter while Doris bags the table by the window.

I pay for the teas and take them over to the table and put them down, careful not to spill them, then slide into the seat opposite Doris. She watches me with a thoughtful expression as I sit down.

‘Penny for them?’ I say.

Doris heaps three spoonsful of sugar into her tea and stirs it .

‘I was watching you as you brought the teas over.’

‘Were you?’

‘Yeah I was. I can see a big difference in you – how much have you lost now?’

‘Getting on for three stone.’ I can’t help the big smile on my face, ‘probably got another four to go.’ Nearly halfway there.

‘You should market your diet, I’ve never seen anyone lose it so quick.’

‘Starving myself and running until I drop – don’t think it’d be that popular, most people want to lose weight without doing any exercise or eating less.’

‘You’ve done it though.’

‘True. But it’s taken me a long time to realise that I could only do it if I changed my whole attitude and stopped stuffing.’

Doris laughs, ‘So who’s the lucky bloke then? You’ve got to be doing this for a bloke, innit? Otherwise why would you be bovvering?’

‘No, there’s no bloke, honest.’

‘Liar, there’s always a bloke behind it.’ She leans forward. ‘Or are you getting ready to meet someone, a new you sort of fing?’

‘Maybe.’ I shrug. ‘But I’ve a way to go yet.’ Bella’s my secret; Doris wouldn’t understand how Bella has changed my life, changed the way I think. It’s all black and white to Doris, she’d probably think I’m a lesbian and even if I could convince her I wasn’t she’d definitely think I was a complete weirdo or a stalker.

‘You’ll get there,’ Doris says confidently, ‘cos you’re determined, I can see it, you’re, what’s the word?’

I shake my head, ‘I don’t know. ’

‘Motivated!’ she sits back, pleased with herself, ‘That’s the word, motivated.’

Maybe I

✽✽✽

‘Two weeks! Why do they need to come back and re-measure? The house hasn’t changed, the stairs haven’t changed, I’ve never heard such complete nonsense.’

‘That’s exactly what I said to them but they’re insisting on a new survey.’

‘Ridiculous, I’ve a good mind to ring them and give them a piece of my mind.’

I thought she might say that so I’ve taken the precaution of leaving the phone off the hook downstairs. Just in case.

‘Good idea,’ I say in a positive tone, ‘Shall I help you have your shower first? You’ve plenty of time, they don’t close until five.’

She ponders this for a while; she usually likes to have her shower at around ten o’clock in the morning but we’ve had to change this to accommodate my cleaning job. She’s not happy about it but as I’ve told her I can’t pick and choose when I clean other peoples’ houses. Actually, I can, but she doesn’t know that.

She harrumphs and looks at the clock as if it’s going to tell her what to do. It’s nearly lunchtime because of my Friday catch up with Doris.

‘Okay. I’ll have my shower first otherwise it’ll be bedtime and then there’ll be no point in bothering.’ I can’t see what difference it makes; she goes straight back to bed afterwards, it’s not as if she gets dressed, she just puts a clean nightie on .

‘Okay, you have your shower and after that I’ll make some lunch.’ I go into her en-suite, turn on the shower and make sure the pull-down seat is ready underneath it.

‘Not too hot, mind,’ she bellows at me. As if I need telling.

While the shower is running I push her walker up to the side of the bed and help her up and hold the walker still while she positions herself in front of it. She pushes my hands away as I try to guide her towards the bathroom.

‘I don’t need you to help me! I’ve been managing to get to the toilet on my own while you’ve been out gallivanting.’

Gallivanting. Yes. In Mother’s world cleaning other people’s houses is gallivanting.

‘Once that stair lift is installed I’ll be a lot more independent.’ She shuffles into the bathroom and stops in the doorway and turns her head around and looks at me.

‘You’re not indispensable you know, I can manage perfectly well without you.’ With that she shuffles two more steps and shuts the bathroom door with a bang and I’m left alone in her room.

I stand for a moment staring at the closed door. Why does she hate me so much? What have I ever done to make her so dislike me? I try my best, looking after her.

Well, apart from the microwave meals and looking at her bank account, but that’s not so bad, is it? I try to be cheerful and do it with a smile on my face but maybe she can see straight through me and knows I resent her .

I give myself a mental shake. Get on with it. I don’t have very long.

I pad quietly to the bathroom and place my ear against the door and listen; I hear the splash of the shower as Mother washes herself. She doesn’t hang about; wash, rinse and out, that’s Mother. I tiptoe quickly across the room and rummage around in her bedside cabinet drawer, pushing pill bottles and assorted herbal remedies aside until I find the nail scissors. I trace the lead coming out of the phone down the back of the cabinet to the extension socket behind. Pulling the cabinet away from the wall I stretch the lead to the front and near to the floor, out of sight, I make a small nick in the cable. Unnoticeable unless you look for it and there’s no way Mother going to get down there. I quietly pick up the receiver and listen. Silence, no dialling tone. Mission accomplished. I silently replace the receiver.

‘Open the door!’ Mother bellows from the bathroom.

I push the cabinet back into place and get up and walk across to the en-suite.

‘Hurry up will you!’

Needs me now, doesn’t she?

✽✽✽

I let myself out of the front door and jog down the path. I feel the tension slowly leave my shoulders as I start to run. I’ve waited until ten thirty to come out to make sure that Mother is definitely asleep. To say I’d had enough of her for one day is a complete understatement; totally unreasonable, argumentative and downright nasty describes Mother today.

Every day, actually .

When she discovered that the phone wasn’t working she was so incensed that I thought she was going to have another stroke. She went mad; shouting, screaming, demanding that I call a telephone engineer out immediately and get it fixed right now. I told her it wasn’t that simple and that it would take a few days but she just kept on and on and in the end, I went downstairs and stood in the lounge for a while and then went back up and told her that the phone downstairs wasn’t working either.

‘Use your mobile and report it.’ She bellowed at me. I hadn’t even thought of that; there’s me thinking I could just cut her phone off and she’d put up with it. How stupid was that?

As if.

I stood in front of her and I just couldn’t think , I felt in a complete panic. And then a crafty look came over her face and she demanded that I get my mobile phone and bring it upstairs and she would do it herself . I trotted back downstairs like a half-wit and went into the lounge and sat on the sofa shaking while I racked my brains to think of an excuse. Honestly, I felt like crying. She started shouting for me again so I went back upstairs and told her I couldn’t find my phone and I must have left it at Moppers this morning. This caused more screaming and I could tell she didn’t believe me which isn’t surprising as it was pretty feeble.

So much for my stupid plan; I thought I was being so clever but I’ve only made things worse and I don’t know how I’m going to sort this mess out. I’ll have to get a telephone engineer to come out and fix her phone and I’ll have to arrange for that oily stair lift salesman to come out, too. Because she’s determined to have a stair lift this time, come what may. She’s got it into her head that I’m up to something, which I am, and she thinks that once she’s downstairs I won’t be able to do anything without her knowing.

I may as well just give up the running and turn around and go back home and eat and eat until I explode.

I don’t though, the jog gradually turns into a run, faster and faster as if the increasing speed will cause a solution to magically present itself to me. I pound past The Rise and speed up even more; it’s going to be a long run tonight, I need to try and think of something .

I run and run, zig-zagging across the same streets with the same thoughts spinning through my mind on a loop; how to stop Mother getting the stair lift and ruining my life.

I run for two hours and my calf muscles are starting to cramp and my lungs feel as if they’re going to burst.

There is no solution.

I change direction and head back towards home with a heavy heart and my eyes smart and sting and I realise I’m crying.

There’s nothing to be done.

I’ve thought and thought and I can’t think of a way to stop her. One simple obstacle and I can’t think of a way out. A familiar feeling of disgust with myself overwhelms me and my plans for a bright, shiny new life seem fantastic and impossible. Why did I even think that I could change my life with the millstone of Mother around my neck? Who did I think I was fooling?

As I turn into Duck Pond Lane I see the familiar cold, stone outline of our house and from nowhere the solution hits me, so shockingly that I stumble and nearly fall, only my outstretched hands prevent a full face plant into the road. I pick myself up and dust the gravel from my palms and stare at Mother’s bedroom window in wonder. The answer is so simple and blindingly obvious that I can’t understand why I didn’t think of it before. How could I not have seen it?

The answer was there all of the time staring me in the face; all it requires is for me to grow a backbone and stand up to Mother, start defending myself.

I’ve said it myself; without a stair lift Mother is helpless; she can get out of bed and shuffle to the bathroom on her own but she very rarely does in spite of all she says. Mostly she waits for me to help her because she’s terrified of falling and hurting herself, her morbid fear of breaking bones and being taken to hospital and dying there prevents her.

Mother has dominated me for so long that I haven’t been able to see that without my help she cannot function; I do everything for her. She spends her life ordering me around but what can she actually do if I choose to ignore her commands?

Nothing.

She can shout at me, belittle me, threaten me, but what can she actually do?

Absolutely nothing.

Without me she’d be helpless, she’d need carers to come in and look after her and how’s she going to get them unless I organise them for her? Her telephone doesn’t work and short of banging on her window to attract attention from any passers-by, which are few and far between, who’s going to know she’s up there? She doesn’t have any friends, anyone to care about her, except me. She’s made sure to isolate herself and me from anyone else. She could be dead and no one would know.

She thinks she holds the purse strings but she doesn’t really; if I wanted to I could take control of her bank account and empty it. I have access to it and I already use her bank card. She can’t hurt me, she can threaten to throw me out but how can she do that if she can’t leave her room?

A giggle escapes me and I start to laugh and I wonder if I might be mad; nearly one o’clock in the morning and I’m standing in the street laughing until the tears roll down my face and my ribs ache.

I’ve been such a blind, downtrodden fool.

The answer’s been there the whole time.

I’m the one with the power.