‘Good morning Annie. I hope you slept well.’
‘Not too bad. Can I get you anything?’
‘I shall make myself some toast, thank you, now you’re out of the kitchen. And – I just wanted to ask – are you alright? You seemed a little upset earlier.’
A little?
‘Annie, the cancer treatment has a good chance of working you know.’ She gives me a little smile.
She thinks I was crying about her.
‘Right. That’s good. There’s not much food in, I was thinking of popping out to stock up and buy something for dinner.’
‘Thank you, Annie.’
I pause, feeling like a naughty teenager. ‘It’s just that I haven’t got much cash on me…’
She stares at me with the same old disapproving eyes. ‘You can take a twenty-pound note from my purse. It’s in my handbag hanging on the bannister.’
Talk about feeling like a fourteen-year-old again asking for dinner money.
‘Thanks.’
She sits back in her chair.
‘I’ll be back before Aunty Lena comes.’
I walk upstairs to put my trainers on and grab my handbag. On the landing I push the door of Gemma’s room open slightly and peer in, wondering if that place does, as Priti says, hold any secrets.
My phone interrupts my reverie. Shaun’s name is on the screen.
I immediately press the ‘call reject’ button.
4
Aunty Lena, or Elaine as she bids me to call her now I’m no longer a child bound by social etiquette or the inability to pronounce the word Elaine properly, sweeps me into her arms and holds me so tight as if she thinks I’m really a mirage that will slip through her fingers. Her bosom is bigger, her hair greyer, the twinkle lines around her mouth more pronounced and she walks with a conspicuous drag on her right hip, but she still has the same huge heart, infectious kindness and marked enthusiasm for other people’s business. I feel my breath release and my spine relax as she kisses me on my cheek and I see the delight in her face. How long has it been since someone was so pleased to see me? Surely not as long as I suddenly think. Since our second or third date Shaun never seemed that pleased to see me, not even post-coitally when he would get out of bed to go to the bathroom or, more usually, turn over and commence snoring within sixty seconds. Perhaps he knew he’d hooked me, so he didn’t feel he had to try like the first time he came over to me at the party and offered to make me one of his own-recipe cocktails. Then his eyes shone when I said yes – I didn’t like the vodka, coke and orange concoction he handed me in a cracked plastic cup but I drank it to keep talking to him, enjoying his patter and the slight hint of nervousness emanating from his stubbly good looks. I felt power, the delight that this stranger wanted me and the heady anticipation that the feeling was mutual.
‘Look at you!’ Elaine cries, putting one arm round my shoulder and steering me towards my mother’s sofa, urging me to sit down then grasping my hands within hers.
‘How beautiful you are. You hardly look any older than when you were a teenager.’
Perhaps she is developing cataracts.
‘Now I want to know everything, what have you been doing, what do you do for a living, do you have, oh what do they say, a “significant other”?’
Elaine winks at me and my heart warms at her exuberance whilst I chuckle at her attempt at political correctness and openness to the possibility of my being gay. Mother is perched on the end of the well-worn leather armchair, which was always Father’s seat. She looks so small in it and is eyeing me beadily; the homosexual reference having gone way over her head.
‘My boyfriend and I broke up not long ago,’ I reply. ‘I was working in a call centre but was made redundant… no, I’m joking, I’m really an international supermodel. You won’t have seen pictures of me because I mainly work in Brazil.’ Elaine always brings out the mischievousness side in me and she throws her head back and laughs, but Mother looks confused, her expression as if to say ‘what you, a model? You’re five foot three! What is the world coming to?’
‘Oh Annie, how I’ve missed you.’ Elaine beams and I smile back. Then it hits me – this is what a mother should be like. Someone who enjoys your company and wants to be with you. The smile I give her comes from the heart and not the teeth.
‘Cup of tea, Elaine?’ Mother says, ending the moment.
‘You rest, I’ll go and make a pot,’ Elaine replies. I follow her into the kitchen to help.
Elaine scoops me into her arms again and I linger, enjoying the moment of being held and her delight at seeing me.
‘You’re all grown up. A bit on the thin side though, have you been eating properly?’
‘Of course, chips, pizza… takeaways…’ I reply with a chuckle.
Elaine fakes a look of horror as she fills the kettle with water from the tap and switches it on.
‘How long are you back for? I hope you’re going to stay for a while. For your mum’s sake, for my sake, maybe for your sake too.’
‘What do you mean?’ I take a teaspoon out of the top drawer and take the milk carton out of the fridge.
‘Sometimes it’s good to come home. To make peace with the past.’
The kettle boils and I put a teabag into each of the three mugs.
‘Not using the teapot?’
I start to sigh until I see the twinkle in Elaine’s eyes and realise she’s teasing me. I laugh back.
‘You better make sure your mum doesn’t catch you – you and these new-fangled city ways of making a cuppa!’
‘In the city you don’t have a cuppa, you order a flat white to go,’ I replied with a knowing nod of the head.
‘Well you’re not in Leeds now. Mine’s milk no sugar. I gave up because of the diabetes risk.’
‘Very sensible.’
‘So how long are you back for?’
‘I don’t know. For a while. I guess I’ll see how Mother’s treatment pans out.’ I don’t say “until she dies”, although the way Mother looks now I do think it and also that it may not be too long.
‘It’s so good of you to come back, Annie,’ says Elaine. ‘Your mum didn’t think you would when I suggested it. I’m proud of you. I know it can’t be easy for you coming back here what with everything that went on.’
I don’t know why but my stomach and maybe something internal near my heart lurched. ‘You suggested it? So it wasn’t her idea?’
Elaine put her palm on my shoulder. ‘She thought it was a brilliant idea. It’s just that she’s still holding on to the past…’
‘I know,’ I cut in. ‘I’ve noticed.’ I roll my eyes and Elaine raises her eyebrows in agreement.
‘It was hard for you as a child. Hard for your mum as well. She’s not a well woman, Annie. Thank you so much for coming home.’
I feel a slight sense of guilt at not telling Elaine the real reason I’m here, which I quickly trample down with my new-found knowledge that it wasn’t even my mother’s idea to contact me in the first place.
‘I can take her to the hospital appointments in my car.’
‘She’ll really appreciate that. Are there any old friends you can get in touch with whilst you’re here? I want to see lots of you, obviously, but you don’t want to be stuck with a couple of old women the whole time.’
‘You’re not old!’ I laugh.
‘I’m not young either!’
I pour the boiling water into the mugs and stir them one at a time.
‘Actually a friend from the city is coming to visit at the weekend. Priti. You’ll like her, she’s lots of fun.’
‘You’re pretty too. Don’t put yourself down!’
I chuckle at the semantic mix-up. ‘No, her name is Priti with two Is – she’s of Indian heritage.’
‘Ah. Lovely name. I look forward to meeting her.’ Elaine takes the teabag out of her mug and adds a splash of milk. I put one sugar in Mother’s and leave mine black then spoon the teabags into the bin.
‘When
’s she arriving?’
‘Sometime after lunch I think.’
‘Your mum and I often go to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon. I’ll ask her to stay over at mine, then you and Priti can have some space when she visits.’
‘Thanks, Aunty Lena,’ I say, and I mean it, I really do. Elaine just seems to know what is right without being asked.
‘Can’t see Mother allowing Priti to stay in the spare room though.’ I raise my eyebrows to emphasise my deadpan humour. Instead of laughing, Elaine just looks sad, her eyes misting over with the weight of the past.
‘Yours has been the spare room,’ she replied. ‘Granted, the other bedroom could have done with clearing out years ago but it’s difficult, it’s a delicate situation with your mum.’ She pauses, seemingly to choose her words carefully, and takes my cold left hand in her warm right one.
‘Annie, I do worry about you, you know, having had to grow up with all this. Please try and understand, though, that your mum is doing the best she can. It might not seem enough but she is trying. She’s never been strong… I mean you coming back is a godsend. She thought she’d lost you too.’
With this Elaine pulls me into a hug, but instead of greedily relaxing into it as before I tense slightly, pushing her away.
‘Tell me she wouldn’t prefer Gemma coming back instead of me,’ I say with a touch of petulance, pushing my chin-length bob back behind my ears defiantly.
‘No Annie, no, get that thought straight out of your head. We don’t know what happened to Gemma but she’s not coming back. You’re here, flesh and blood, your mum loves you very much, as do I. You and Gemma are two completely different people. She looked out for you, you know. Please don’t be bitter, don’t let the past spoil your future. You were too young to have to go through the loss of your sister and too young when you left home…’
Am I bitter? Am I competing with a ghost? Something inside of me snaps and I feel my eyes go hot, my throat constrict and tears threaten to appear. But I won’t cry. I’ve done far too much of that recently. Instead I question Elaine. ‘Gemma looked out for me?’ That’s not something I remember.
‘She did. When you were a young child it wasn’t easy for your mum. If you ever have children you’ll find out what it’s like.’
I blanche at the word ‘if’ and give a brief thought to a baby that could have been but never will be.
‘I’m back because she has cancer, not for some sort of emotional reunion.’
‘Like I said, I’m so glad you’re here. And your mum is too. Give it time.’ Elaine squeezes my arm in solidarity.
We carry the mugs through to the lounge and the three of us make small talk, or rather Aunt Lena and Mother do: who has got married, had a child (or three), got divorced or moved away since I was last here.
Quite frankly, I couldn’t care less.
5
Mother’s first hospital appointment is two days later. I spend my time until then keeping busy with my mobile switched off. For someone who has always had a distinct aversion to rubber gloves and a bottle of bleach I find a strange sort of bodily and mental comfort in cleaning the house, removing months’ old grime and seeing the place look as clean as it ever can be considering its age. With each scrub I wipe my mind and obliterate the thoughts that want to wage war in my psyche.
In the corner of the kitchen I free a wasp from a spider’s web although it’s obviously dead already. I throw the wasp out of the window and scour the tiles until no trace of the death trap is left. I bleach, wash, mop and vacuum throughout the day until hunger and a need for the loo make me stop.
In the evening, keen to avoid yet another soap opera, I pace the streets of my childhood. The television blares from Reg’s house through the rotting open window. The outside of his house can’t have been painted for well over a decade, nor has the front garden been tended. Weeds snake into the holes between the cement and bricks; the recycling box left out for the council overflows with glass: wine, vodka and beer bottles, and a slit in a black sack of rubbish spills its fetid contents onto what was once the front lawn.
A bang from up above causes me to stop and see where it came from. I think it was the shutting of the upstairs window. A man, almost ghost-like, as thin as Mother, with haggard eyes and a bulbous nose looks out at me, keeping eye contact for longer than is usually polite. He’s staring, not observing. I assume this is Reg, although he no longer looks like the youngish man he was. With a shiver I turn to walk on and increase my pace. It’s times like these I wish I had a dog with me – a companion, a bodyguard, a reason to be walking the streets after working hours.
The neighbourhood and parade of shops have at the same time changed a lot since my youth yet also not at all. Kids still hang out around the chip shop, although the bank branch and phone box have gone and the video rental store is now a beauty salon offering lasers and fillers. The pub on the crossroads at the end of our road is still called The Phoenix but now boasts a food menu outside and a kerfuffle of smokers crowding at the doorway having a cheeky cigarette. The small park nearby is practically the same, although the creaky swings and slides have been replaced with brightly-painted new ones and have some sort of rubber matting underneath to stop children falling on their backsides onto the concrete like I used to do. Huddled on the bench are some young teenagers passing round what looks to be a plastic bottle of beer or cider. Only their haircuts and coat designs contradict the feeling that I’ve gone back in time to the 1990s. It’s a cool, brisk evening, one that has seen the death throes of summer and is welcoming autumn’s chillier grip.
Walking back, I quicken my pace past Reg’s house. There’s no light on in his windows anymore but I still feel distinctly uncomfortable, as if he’s peering through his filthy curtains watching me go by. Holding my keys firmly in my fist I run the last few metres to the front door of Mother’s house and quickly let myself in.
The hospital appointment doesn’t get off to the best start. There’s nowhere to park near the entrance – I make a mental note to get hold of the forms to apply for a blue disabled parking badge for Mother – so I drop her off and, after a couple of circuits followed by numerous other tired-looking drivers in the same boat, I finally find a space in the car park’s back of beyond next to a clamped, rusty old banger. When I run to the entrance Mother is not there so I follow the signs and make my way to the chemotherapy day unit, which, I instantly notice, has a pleasant floral scent different from the antiseptic stench of the corridors. Mother’s there in the waiting room, chatting to a smartly-dressed woman wearing a brightly-patterned headscarf. She’s probably in her forties, although with her drawn, washed-out features it’s hard to tell.
‘Annie, this is Mel,’ says Mother. The woman, Mel, smiles a radiant smile that changes all of her features and I catch a glimpse of the person behind the cancer.
‘Hi,’ I say, giving a small wave.
‘Mel and I have had our chemo at the same time before. She’s gets through a novel every time and then passes them on to me if they’re any good.
‘What are you reading today?’ I ask.
‘P.G. Wodehouse. Thank you, Jeeves. I’m working through his back catalogue.’
‘I hear her laughing away and always want to know what the funny parts are,’ says Mother. She’s smiling with her friend.
A nurse comes out and greets us all. ‘You ready to get this party started?’
I’m quite taken aback by the jocularity of it all, as if we were all about to go on a pub crawl. Not that my mother has probably ever been on one.
‘This is my daughter, Annie. Annie, this is Una, the nurse here.’
I had rather gathered that – the unflattering dress and black lace up shoes had given the game away.
‘Annie, hi, your mum has told me a lot about you.’ Una shakes my hand then smooths a loose stray of her tied up afro hair back into place with a kirby-grip.
‘I’ll take these two lovely ladies through to the ward and then would you like me to ta
lk you through what we do here?’
Good point, I didn’t have a clue what to expect. I hadn’t directly asked Mother and when it did once come up in conversation, a discussion about how many hours I needed to pay for in the car park, she’d muttered something about sitting in a chair for a few hours and it not being too much trouble.
Mother and Mel have their blood tested first to check that it’s safe for them to have the chemo. They choose armchairs next to each other to sit in for the treatment. Rather than looking away when the cannula is inserted in Mother’s hand I’m fascinated by the skill with which Una does it, although I do let out a childish snort when she says, ‘you may feel a small prick’.
I’ve felt one a few times myself.
When the drip begins to transfer its bagged contents into the two women’s veins I start to feel awkward and out of place. Other patients have relatives there to chat or hold their hands but Mel and Mother seem perfectly content discussing the punchlines from Jeeves and Wooster.
‘Do either of you need anything?’ I ask, hovering in the background. They already have a jug of water and a hot drink each on a table next to their chairs. Mel has brought in some rice crackers to nibble on to quell any nausea she says, in case the anti-sickness medication they’ve already taken doesn’t work.
‘They’re fine, aren’t you?’ says Una, bustling up behind and checking the IVs.
Mother and Mel are hooked up to chemotherapy drips. They certainly don’t look fine to me.
‘I’ve got time for a quick break, do you want a stroll with me to the vending machine? It’s chocolate time already,’ Una asks me.
‘Yes, you go Annie. Nothing to do here. I’m not going anywhere!’ Mother jokes. She jokes! What has Una put in that drip? Vodka? Nitrous oxide?!
I follow Una through the double doors out of the ward, along the corridor, up a flight of stairs and then along to the vending machine replete with every kind of chocolate bar and crisp packet you could ever want. I plump for ready salted whilst Una gets her cocoa fix, slapping the machine to ensure it stumps up her change. She says nice things about Mother: what a lovely lady she is and how she appears to be coping well with the treatment. She probably says she same thing about every patient.
My Perfect Sister Page 3