by Kate Bradley
Then, when Selena was found dead of an overdose, I’d started to speculate about things I didn’t want to ever think. She cut it short. ‘Lisa, you’ve always been hysterical. It’s my fault: you had a difficult start to life.’ When I’d dared to pursue it even tentatively, sharing my darkest fears, it was the only time I saw her get angry. Even when she came in, her nose bleeding and her eye swollen, and found me with the blooded knife in my hand, kneeling over my sleeping-but-now-dead father, she wasn’t angry. She was cold and calculated – she took the knife. Wiped it. Firmly gripped it in her hand, fingertips pressed with hope.
‘Don’t you ever . . .’ she hissed: ‘Tell. Anyone. About. This. Ever.’
I don’t think I was the only one who passed on personality traits to my child.
Then another time, after I’d had another row with my son about Jack, she didn’t take my side. This time she didn’t make things better. This time, she gripped me by the shoulders, hissing again: ‘Selena was a drug addict. Has it ever occurred to you why your son might have pursued a relationship with a drug addict?’ She shook me to evidence the point. ‘You need to stop persecuting him. He’s the victim.’
I withdrew my hand. I’m sorry that she had to see the truth for herself. I’m sorry she had to see that I was right. I’m many things, but I’ve never wanted to be right – the opposite – I would’ve so much preferred to be wrong about it all.
Without thinking, I went to the bathroom cabinet, where I knew she kept a medicine box. Inside – I know because an addict is always checking these things out, even if they are clean – were the DF118s my mother had for her sore back. She didn’t take them because she said they made her constipated. I seized them and then went back to her.
I stared at her body. Her hair: grey, too long for a woman of her age, was still barely ruffled, something I noticed as mine was so easily knotted. With practised fingers, I pressed against the blister pack and popped out four 30-mg tablets, popping them straight into my mouth.
I didn’t think of Jack. I didn’t think of myself. I thought only of my dead mother. I could see the lines on the soles of her feet, like lines on a map travelling out from here, to be anywhere but here. She was leaving me again.
Again, I wasn’t ready for it – hadn’t foreseen it.
I dry-swallowed. It struck me that my mother must have taken good care of her feet: they were smooth, her heels rounded and un-calloused. She walked a lot – she loved to walk everywhere since she’d been released from prison, yet they were the pink feet of someone who rubbed moisturiser on them nightly. It surprised me, this unexpected self-interest.
It occurred to me then, that perhaps I didn’t know my mother like I thought I did. One tablet had caught in my throat and I swallowed until it was gone.
I paused for a moment longer, trying to catch the thought that followed my not fully knowing my mother, but it was already away before it had had a chance to form and arrive. Like a starling, it slipped into a thousand, a tumbling flock of thoughts and ideas that I should’ve grasped and yet, somehow, have failed to understand, and took flight from me.
Perhaps the thought was not to take the codeine, but if it was, it was too late.
I gave another dry gulp, just to be sure. Then I turned the gold sixpence necklace around my neck – the one she’d given me all those years before – put the pills in my pocket and left.
I couldn’t risk leaving Jack alone for a minute longer.
fifty-eight:
– before –
I pushed my way into April Dale’s flat. It was the same drab landscape of beige and vanilla, only accentuated by landscapes in gilt frames and dark wood furniture.
April had seated Jack on her sofa and, although there was no daisy display, she’d given him a pink wafer. The thought of its oversweet crisp dryness made me gag. But he was chewing it with delicate nibbles, slowly, in case he wasn’t given another one.
When I came in, he watched me silently with his beautiful eyes. Was he thinking about the cage? April came and joined me in the identical small hallway as my mother’s. I glanced at her bedroom door; I was glad it was shut.
‘My mother is dead,’ I said, realising how blunt I sounded only after I had said it. She sighed heavily. ‘I need you to call the police,’ I asked, ‘but only after we’ve gone. I can’t . . . be here, it’s not . . .’ I cut a glance at Jack, who was licking his empty fingers with thoughtful, neat licks. ‘You should bolt your door after we go,’ I said, still not looking at her.
She pressed her hand against the wall, as if to steady herself, then said: ‘If you like, I won’t say I’ve seen you – if it’s simpler?’
I could still feel the imprints of the capsules in my throat. I swallowed. My mother was dead. It didn’t feel like this was even happening to me. ‘Thank you. I think . . . Jack and I have to . . . go.’ I turned to look at her. Her glasses were thick, her cheekbones showing that she was still a handsome woman. ‘I can’t risk them holding us back.’
April regarded me from behind the dense lenses with watery eyes. ‘Leave now then, dear, if you need to.’ She patted my hand. ‘I’ll tell them that I found the . . . your mother.’
‘Would you do that for me?’
She looked surprised. ‘Of course.’ A thought occurred to her. ‘Wait – I have something that you should have.’ She headed into the kitchenette and took a tin off the top shelf of the cupboard. She pressed it into my hands. ‘Your mother never wanted to keep all her eggs in one basket, she said. She thought it made sense if she kept some emergency money with me. She didn’t trust banks and seemed to think there was a reason that I should look after this for her.’ She pushed the tin at me. ‘It’s quite a lot.’
I pulled the lid off; inside was a thick roll, bigger than my fist, of twenty-pound notes. I stared at April: ‘No, I can’t . . .’
‘But dear, if not you, then who?’
I left the tin on the kitchen side when Jack and I left.
But the money, I took.
fifty-nine:
– now –
Stuck in the fog, it’s impossible to know how to go on. But still stuck for directions, I hear a car in the distance – by its speed, I realise it must be on the Cleasong road. From that, I know I can turn until it’s on my left. But I am still not completely sure, as I know if I’m only a few degrees out, I risk plunging right past my hill. Only a year ago, I wouldn’t believe I could be this lost in the dark, that the countryside could be so empty of light, but I can’t see anything, perhaps only a paler stone here and there, puncturing the sea of dark mud. Help me, Mum. My hand squeezing my gold coin necklace.
The ridges, my mum whispers. Lisa, remember the ridges.
Where the field has been ploughed, it rises and falls in orderly rows. I know that when I came into this field, I was going up-down with every step. I carefully ease my direction a few more degrees to the left. I am now going the right way. Now I might be able to find my way back home.
My feet are so cold, they are completely numb. I start half running again. ‘I am coming for you, Jack,’ I whisper into the night, ‘and now I can protect you.’
He doesn’t answer, but now it’s the drugs in the tin in the larder that whisper back to me; they use Mungo’s voice, as they say: Hurry, Mrs L, hurry. We miss you.
sixty:
– before –
After April Dale gave me the money, I only went back briefly to take a small framed photo of my mother and me when I was a baby, a packet of Amitriptyline my mother took for sciatica, and a jumper that smelt of her. I stood briefly above her body and before I left, I kissed her shoulder. I’d only returned to her flat for three minutes, but leaving was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
I shut the door, feeling the weight of regret. Regret for not arranging her funeral, for not staying for it, for not packing her things away. But I also knew I had no choice: I had saved Jack from a life of abuse – a cage! – and the job was not yet done.
The only comfort was that I knew she wouldn’t mind one bit; my mother was the most pragmatic person I ever met. And as I picked up Jack, it was almost like I could hear her whisper her blessing in my ear.
As we stepped out into the corridor, Jack put his arms around me and pressed his face against my neck. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help but jog towards the exit. My feet were quiet against the carpet tiles, my soundless stealth somehow disconcerting.
I gripped him hard, almost wanting him to speak. But he didn’t ask why we weren’t seeing Nana, and there was part of me that was worried about that. Sometimes, Jack didn’t ask the questions that other children would.
He must have asked April, I told myself as I pushed against the door, but if he had, what she said to him in return I still don’t know, because I never saw her again.
It occurred to me as I plunged out of the door into the now raining car park, aware that he could be anywhere – squatted between parked cars; crouched behind bushes; silent in shadows – that my mother was dead, but all I thought about was Jack’s silence. Perhaps it was the shock and cognitive overload; perhaps it was the early effects of the strong painkillers I’d just necked; perhaps it was because if I thought of my mum then I’d collapse in this car park and not get up again. But whatever the reason, as I ran from my mother’s, all I could think of is that I’d found Jack in a cage and he hadn’t mentioned it. I know his stutter really affected his confidence, but still . . . We’d run from his father’s where he was supposed to be, stayed in a hotel, driven to his Nana’s, arrived but left without him seeing her and run again – but he still doesn’t ask me a single question.
Not one.
He loved seeing my mum – perhaps even more than I did. While he was only seven he was intelligent enough – academically able, the school had said. But was he? Could I be sure when he didn’t seem to react in the way that I thought he should?
Wasn’t there something just a teeny bit wrong? More than his severe stutter?
We reached the car. I lowered Jack to the ground and searched my coat pockets for my keys. He clung around my waist as I did, like a sailor gripping the mast in a relentless storm.
I wanted to grasp him by the shoulders, to pull him away and stare into his sweet face to demand: Why don’t you ask me what’s going on? Or ask for sweets or moan for your own way or anything else tired seven-year-olds ask for?
I thought again about sallow-skinned Selena, staring dead-eyed at me.
‘See?’ my mother had said once after my Jack and Selena left, ‘you don’t give your son any credit. Jack’s only still a teenager, but as soon as he’s found out his girlfriend is pregnant, he’s done the right thing by the girl in a heartbeat. I’m proud of him and so should you be.’
I got what she was saying – she was saying that I was never satisfied. That everything my son did was wrong. Perhaps she had a point: now that his son was quiet and compliant, I still wasn’t happy.
Anxious to stop replaying old criticisms from my mother, I clicked the button on the fob – and then we were in the safety of the car. Jack scrabbled for his car seat and with a swift dexterity, he did up his own seat belt. Then, as if in response to my silent questions, he put Bunny over his face and seemed to fall instantly asleep.
I stared at him in the rear-view mirror longer than I should. He didn’t move. I think the wind must have gusted, because a Coke can clattered along the car park, bringing me back to what I should really be thinking about.
I flicked the car’s central-locking system, locking the outside out.
I felt sick. Unshed tears burnt in my eyes as I pulled out of the car park. I knew I needed to make a decision about what to do next quickly; I was going under with both grief and the medication I’d taken and I wanted to make a good decision whilst I still could. My gaze flicked up to the rear-view, not to look at Jack but at the road behind me. It was clear. Good; my driving could get a little hazy when I was on tablets.
I wanted to pull over. I wanted to scream and cry. My mother is dead! My mother is dead! My. Mother. Is. Dead.
I wanted to see her; I wanted to go home – back to when I was a child. I wanted to go back to her flat and hold her body close. I wanted to collapse into a chair, after taking some really good shit, before pulling a rug over me and thinking of nothing but my mother, and scream and cry until the bliss of the drugs had taken effect and I could finally pass out into nothingness.
But I couldn’t. I needed to take my life in a firm grip for Jack.
I realised I was never going home again. All my things! I have never been a material person, but . . . I loved my book collection . . . For a moment I glimpsed everything I’d lost: my son for good; my workplace and the people there I knew; my home and belongings; my mother and also my dearly-held sobriety. Even my safety.
All gone.
My mother the greatest loss of all. Shock felt strange, almost as if everything was happening through a television screen – I could see it but couldn’t touch it.
But I knew I didn’t, yet, understand the true weight of it.
I gripped the steering wheel: I had to use my shock whilst I could. Before I got buried under the landslide of grief coming my way, whilst it was still only a deep rumble, a vision I could see but not yet fully feel on me, I needed to concentrate on Jack. If we were caught, I’d lose him. I couldn’t lose him: Jack was my air. I’d suffocate without him.
But where could we go?
sixty-one:
– now –
I follow the ridges in the field, careful to step in the right place. I don’t care about my feet anymore – only that I don’t lose my way again. I am focused: Jack is the only thing that matters. He’s a magnet and I am the metal particle, drawn onwards, onwards.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been limping, running shoeless, in the dark Herefordshire countryside, because I’ve got no watch, no way of marking time. I think about my breathing; it keeps me calm. Managing my emotions has been something that has helped me over the years, and it helps me now.
This side of the hedge, the electric fences are clearer and both times are low enough for me to step over, before negotiating the hedge. Now I know they’re there, it’s all so much easier.
I push on.
Finally, I can see it, lights above ground – my cottage on its hill. The fog has lifted enough now for me to know that I’m home.
I hug the gun a little closer.
The journey to safety has been so long; I am ready to finish it.
I don’t waste time trying to find a gap in the hedge; instead I turn my back to it and press against it. At first it doesn’t yield . . . but then it does. The twigs drag against me. They pull at my hair. They scrape against my face. My feet struggle to find a way through over the ridge of earth. This no longer bothers me so I push harder.
And then I’m out the other side with a sudden thump and I stumble to regain my balance. I’m in my garden. I am back home.
I start the gentle climb up. I ask myself, as I fix my eyes on the cottage, if I’m ready for what I will have to do. I think of Jack – tender, innocent, in desperate need of safety.
I think of Selena too, again. She keeps returning to me now. Within eight months of Mungo’s death, Jack was born.
I was very fond of Mungo. For a little bit, just before he died, he’d started to come round and have a cup of tea with me when Jack was out; it made me think that he was just as pleased in my company as he was my son’s. When he used to chat to me, it’d started to feel like the mother-son relationship I’d never had, but Jack came home one day and it was so evident that he didn’t like it, Mungo never lingered again and then he was dead.
I think that after his death, I shut down a bit. I thought of him, his body hanging, alone in the woods and I couldn’t bear that he hadn’t talked to me about how he felt. He’d always seemed so bright, so sparky, I couldn’t assimilate the version I saw of him every day, and his bouncy: ‘How’s i
t going, Mrs L?’ to standing on a log and then kicking it away.
They found him full of barbiturates as well and I had a sneaking suspicion they might’ve been mine. I kept rigorous notes of what I had and when I took them, not just from the habit of being a nurse, but because it was the equivalent of drinking expensive wine out of a tasteful glass – it made my addiction feel just a little bit more classy, more measured and therefore just a little bit easier to live with. There were gaps in my records – times I assumed I’d just forgotten to note . . . but maybe not.
It seems those gaps could’ve been something else.
I adjust my path – I don’t want to keep going this way as I will hit the driveway at the front of the property. Instead I know that if I walk round the periphery a little, I will be able to approach the cottage from the back and will – if I hide my approach through the rhododendron bushes – be able to get really close to the back door.
And then what?
Then I think of him. Jack – my Jack. My son. He was once so beautiful. He too was once so tender and innocent.
Something in me twists. The pain is so raw that it’s not something I can carry. It bends me. I miss him more than I would miss breath if it were taken from me. I miss him so much – Nick always said I was too attached.
Becoming a mother was hard for me. Perhaps, because I hadn’t had one when I was growing up, perhaps I just didn’t know what to do well enough. Perhaps I’m not clever enough to work it out. I tried. I bought books and wrote down sleep cycles and hand-mashed food, but it was just too much. Even when he was growing inside me, I suspected I was just not up to being a mother. Someone once famously said: No man is an island. Well, for me that’s wrong. Since I was eight, I’ve always felt alone and adrift. And when an island that has always felt like an island gets joined to the main coast, it loses its identity forever. I guess that’s OK if you want that, I’m just not sure I knew how to change.