Bloody hell.
‘When Gemma disappeared that day I knew it was my fault. My punishment for the time when I’d thought about killing her myself, for the way I’d behaved. My fault, my guilt, if I’d been a better mother I would have kept her safe, but I hadn’t. I did something terrible, unforgiveable. She didn’t want to come home because of me. Or maybe someone took her because I hadn’t been there to protect her. Either way, my fault.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘you don’t know that, like you said earlier we don’t know what happened to her. It wasn’t your fault.’
Tears are running down her face now, pent up tears I’ve never seen her cry before. ‘A tissue?’ I offer.
‘I’ve failed you too, Annie. I pushed you out and you didn’t come back for fourteen years. I’m so sorry.’ I realise I’ve been grasping her hand so hard, pressing her finger bones so tightly together that her wedding ring has left a red indentation on my palm. I take a deep breath in to calm myself and with its release feel a weight lift from my mind, from my past, and from my future.
Una walks over to take routine observations. From the look on her face I can tell she’s noticed the tears. ‘Is everything alright?’ In this ward she must come across a lot of emotion and see the whole gamut of human experience.
‘We’re fine,’ I smile and thank her.
‘Your mum’s doing well, five more minutes then we’ll take her off the IV.’
‘Thanks. Oh by the way I got the HCA bank job. I had my induction and am waiting for the phone to ring for my first shift,’ I tell her.
‘Well done you!’ she smiles. ‘We’ll make a nurse of you yet. I’ve got a brochure in the office for that access to healthcare college course I told you about that you need to take to get a place on a nursing degree.’
‘Are you on commission?’ I ask, lightening the mood. People like me don’t do a degree. Mother is dabbing at her tears with a tissue.
‘Getting extra money out of the NHS? Fat chance.’ Una checks Mother’s IV. ‘I suppose I’m quite evangelical about nursing. There aren’t enough – we need as many trainees as we can get. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get a shift on this ward.’
‘It’d be nice working with you.’
‘And you. Give it another five minutes and Mrs Towcester will be ready to come off the drip. I’ll bring the brochure over to you in a bit.’ She takes her leave and bustles over to another service user.
Before the moment passes I grasp the mettle once again and ask my mother, ‘Why leave Gemma’s bedroom as it is? Why the presents?’
Mother stuffs the tissue up the sleeve of her cardigan on the arm that isn’t hooked up to the IV.
‘I suppose it must seem a little eccentric.’ She smiles wanly.
‘Well, that’s one word for it. I’m not sure it’s healthy to have them there and keep her room as it was.’
Mother nods then pauses before speaking, taking her time over her next words. ‘I know. But in my head if Gemma’s room isn’t there, then she can’t come back to it. There was still hope when I bought the first present, still the possibility that she’d run away but might come home. It was a ritual. I didn’t want to stop doing it, to jinx her, to forget her.’
I steel myself. ‘She’s not coming back Mother,’ I say with a hint of tenderness, as if I were talking to a small child. ‘It has been too long. Gemma’s not coming home.’
‘Yes, I realise that now. But for a long, long time I didn’t want to.’
And with this the conversation ends. Someone switches on the TV, jolting the room with the theme tune of an afternoon soap opera. Across the ward the husband is discussing with his wife what he will cook for tea. A well turned-out middle-aged couple arrives to take home the younger woman with the book. Only the older woman with short, cropped white hair sleeps through the noise.
Una returns. ‘Here’s the brochure, Annie. Just give us a few minutes now to sort Mum out and disconnect her from the IV then you’re free to take her home.’
‘Thanks Una. When will we know if the treatment is doing its job?’
‘Well that’s something to ask the consultant at your mum’s next appointment, I think she’s due one soon. There will be another scan and blood tests to monitor the tumour. Meanwhile, as usual, make sure your mum drinks lots of water over the next forty-eight hours and watch out for her feeling nauseous as a side effect of the chemo. She needs to rest and take it easy. You need some rest too. It’s not easy being a carer, particularly when you’re about to start a new job. She’s doing a grand job, though, isn’t she Mrs Towcester? How are you feeling? Let’s get that IV out. You’ve done brilliantly as always.’ Una has the nursing patter down to a tee.
With the brochure stuffed in my bag to think about another time, I smile at Mother and walk out of the ward, taking my cue to visit the loo and freshen up before the drive home. This time Mother feels too weak to walk all the way to the car park so I borrow a wheelchair that swallows my mother’s small frame whole and push her through the automatic doors, out of the building and into a slight rain shower. So as not to get either of us wet I push the chair to the car as fast as I can without jolting her.
After I’ve helped her into the front seat and returned the wheelchair to the hospital entrance, once again running the gauntlet of the rain, Mother speaks up. ‘I wonder if you can spare a few hours tomorrow, Annie? I think it’s time to start clearing out Gemma’s room and perhaps you’d like to help? The charity shop will be glad of some of the things and perhaps the presents can go to the Salvation Army.’
I briefly cover Mother’s hand with mine. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I think I can find a window in my hectic work schedule. I’ll go to the supermarket first thing and buy some bin bags.’ She smiles.
With that I turn the windscreen wipers on and drive off back home into the setting sun of an English evening.
20
True to form, Mother goes to bed when we arrive home, taking what feels like an eternity to propel herself up the stairs, and I tell her I have to nip out for half an hour or so to run an errand. In an old jiffy bag, I enclose a photocopy of the photo of Gemma and her friends along with this morning’s letter in a plastic bag as instructed, seal it and address it to the police. DI Glass isn’t at the station when I arrive but one of his colleagues comes to greet me, and takes the evidence and my fingerprints. I’m back home, despite the rush hour traffic, within the hour.
I take the portable radio from the kitchen and a jug of squash to Mother’s room, only to hear retching noises from the bathroom that she unsuccessfully tries to drown out with the running of tap water. I lift my fist to knock gently on the door but stop as it reaches a centimetre away: if she wants me she will ask. I personally wouldn’t want anyone to see me throwing up. Instead I say loudly, ‘I’ve put the radio and squash in your room, Mother. Give us a shout if you want anything else.’ A heartbeat, then two, then three, followed by a ‘thank you’.
I wonder if it’s the chemo that’s making her sick or if it’s also the case that she’s purging herself of years of regret and remorse, ridding her wracked body of the tension and stress released by her confession? I’m still discombobulated (that’s a word I remember learning at school, loving the shape of my lips as I broke the word down into syllables to learn for a spelling test) by what she’d told me, and the anger I held at her for making me think that I couldn’t be a mother because I had never learned what a good one should do. Yet, deep down, was she an easy excuse? I hadn’t understood as a child what she was going through mentally and as an adult it had never occurred to me to try. I chose to abort Shaun’s baby. It was nothing to do with Mother. I hadn’t seen her for fourteen years. I’m an adult and this was my decision alone. If I’d really wanted the baby, wouldn’t I have kept it, fought for it, loved it even though it was only just a collection of cells multiplying inside me? Does that make me depressed too, like her? Is it genetic? I know instinctively I don’t want to be a mother, not yet anyway, and that’s about me, not her
or Shaun. Intellectually, I may feel a pang of ‘what if?’ but emotionally, instinctively I know I made the right decision, one supported by the doctor and counsellor at the clinic. Somehow I know it’s going to be alright, I’m going to be OK. But is Mother?
At least I didn’t leave my baby in a pram in the back garden and walk off! If someone else had told me Mother did that I’d have been certain they were lying. Baby abandonment and attempted suicide in Greville Road. Who’d have thought it, imagine how the tongues would have wagged if they’d have known and had something better to gossip about other than a neighbour’s caravan permanently parked outside another person’s house.
All those years I thought she was a bad mother and used a vague illness as an excuse, but if I believe what she says, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend time with me or give me attention; it was that she was zonked up to the eyeballs on not-so-happy pills. How I wish she’d told me this much, much earlier.
She’d thought about killing Gemma! Gemma had been a difficult child! Did Gemma know? Did she ever find out what Mother had done, and if so, what must she have thought and felt? Was that why she walked out – if indeed that’s what she did? I’d always assumed her life, up until the day it froze in time, was golden. Charmed. Had Gemma in fact felt neglected and unloved? Perhaps she did, despite my father’s protestations, want to run away. Could she have done it? Was it practically possible to walk out of the front door and step into a new life, with no money, no passport, no ID, just the clothes on your back and a school bag? For the first time in my life I think, however improbably, it could, for a while at least, until her youth and circumstances led someone to prey on her and end her life. Now I understand why Mother had held the running away theory so close when others thought it was obvious that something fatal had tragically happened to Gemma. Mother thought she’d pushed her away, that Gemma had fled from her, that there was no murderous stranger lurking in the bushes and it was all her fault.
I decide to keep this information private and not tell Priti, Gareth or DI Glass. It’s not relevant to the investigation and I want to hold precious the first time Mother has confided in me. When I speak to Priti and Gareth on the phone before I go to bed I tell them about the newspaper article – Gareth has already seen it but Priti, living in Leeds, has not – and my conversation with DI Glass. I don’t mention the threatening letter because that’s something best to discuss face to face rather than on the phone.
Late the next morning, Mother, who has changed out of her fleecy pyjamas in to what I presume is her gardening and DIY outfit, a pair of worn-looking black trousers and a paint-flecked jumper, surprises me by declaring it’s time to sort out Gemma’s room. She’s babbling slightly, skirting round the issue with ideas about colour schemes and potential future uses.
‘Your room is rather small, I started using it as my sewing room when I enrolled on the evening class. This room is bigger, perhaps you’d like it? You could decorate it how you want to. Lemon might be nice, but it doesn’t have to be, you choose, Annie.’
There’s no way in hell I’m sleeping in Gemma’s shrine, even if it’s emptied out and the walls are painted yellow. The heavy atmosphere would still be there, clinging on to the plaster and bricks it insinuated itself into long ago.
We’re standing at the threshold of the room. Mother takes the pottery ‘Gemma’ sign off the door. I wonder how long I will be staying in this house and how long it will be until Mother gets the all clear – or the opposite. I realise that I hope it won’t be the opposite.
‘I’m fine where I am in the spare room. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here for.’ For obvious reasons I don’t state why. Mother makes a quip about maybe I’ll move in with a fella. It’s far, far too soon for me to contemplate that again, however much more cheaply I could live as opposed to renting my own flat.
‘Or a pale green?’ Mother goes on. ‘Perhaps I can pick up a paint chart? Get a book on colour schemes out of the library?’
She’s clearly set on the idea of redecorating the room so I encourage her wholeheartedly. I’m not the only one who needs to move on. ‘Yes, good idea. The sun hits this room at the end of the day, not in the morning. There must be a colour that’s best suited to that.’
We’re still standing at the threshold. I look at Mother and she looks back at me with a slight look of panic in her eyes.
I take the lead and go to the window, flinging it and the curtains wide open to let the morning light in, sensing it’s now or never.
‘Right, let’s get started, shall we?’ I say. ‘I’ve got black bin bags for rubbish, white ones for things fit for a charity shop and anything else you want to keep goes in this cardboard box.’ I’ve deliberately only brought up a small box. The idea is to throw things out, not just move them to a different place. To start I kneel down besides the pile of wrapped presents.
‘Shall we open these and decide if they’re fit to give to a charity shop?’ When I tear a corner of the garish red paper emblazoned with silver bells I see Mother flinch, then take a deep breath.
‘Yes, dear. Good idea.’
She perches on the side of the bed and I realise that she physically can’t get down on the floor.
‘I’ll open them then pass them to you to decide. And next perhaps make a start on the clothes?’
‘I didn’t wash what’s hanging up in the wardrobe. I hope moths haven’t got to them.’ They’re destined straight for the black bin bags.
I pass her the first present. When the wrapping is torn off it is revealed as a 1990 Smash Hits pop annual. I remember Father mentioning that Gemma regularly bought the magazine and pulled out the song lyric pages. ‘Charity shop or rubbish?’
‘Oh, well I don’t know…’
‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘No rush, we can put that to one side. We’ve got all the time in the world.’
Once all the presents are unwrapped and the paper stuffed into a bin bag we begin to clear the more personal items hidden away in a chest of drawers and the wardrobe. I’d have to have the hide of a rhino not to be touched by seeing the detritus of a life sadly now dated and faintly musty smelling. We throw the clothes and underwear straight out. In one of the drawers there’s a jewellery box with a few cheap trinkets in that Gemma probably bought from the market. There are also necklaces with plastic beads and thin bangles the same colour. The jewellery that hasn’t turned grey with age goes in the charity shop pile.
‘Do you know if Gemma kept a diary?’ I ask.
‘I think the police found one when they searched the room along with some letters and notebooks,’ she replies. ‘I don’t think they held any useful information.’
‘Was it in one of the dressing table drawers? Where is it now?’
‘I assume they’ve still got it as evidence. Why?’
That’ll be why I found the drawers empty in the dressing table. ‘I’d just like to know more about her, that’s all. What she was like, who her friends were, that sort of thing.’ I point to the photograph on the pinboard we’ve yet to clear out. It’s the photograph of Gemma in the park with her three friends that I took photocopies of.
‘Do you know who the girl is on the right? The one with the curly hair and long black skirt?’ I unpin the photo from the board so I can pass it to Mother. She slides her tortoiseshell glasses from her head to her nose so she can look more closely at it.
‘She does look a little familiar. I didn’t know many of Gemma’s friends, though. She rarely brought them home. Occasionally one of them would ring the doorbell to call for her.’
I press her further. ‘What about the other two? The boy with the blonde hair on the left is Toby Smith.’ I hold my breath in case the mention of his name unsettles her.
‘Yes, I think I remember him. A boy wearing eyeliner isn’t right. I wondered whether he was, you know…’ Mother raises her eyebrows and tips her head to the side to make her point, as if saying the word would burn her lips.
‘Gay? Would it matter if he wa
s?’
That shuts her up for a few seconds.
‘No, of course not,’ she mumbles.
‘Well, he isn’t. He’s straight, unfortunately for his wife, whom he attempted to murder.’
Mother hastily changes the subject. ‘The other boy, the one with the dark, curly hair, now I do remember him. Mark, is it?’
‘Mike,’ I correct her. ‘Mike Braithwaite.’
She squints and peers even more closely at the photo. ‘Ah, Mike, that’s it. He often walked to school and back with Gemma and they were in the orchestra together. I thought he was rather sweet on her but Gemma never talked to me about boyfriends. He called round for her quite a few times at the weekends. She said they studied together. A polite boy, he was.’
I deliberately choose not to tell her about my recent abrupt phone call with Mike. ‘Can you remember anything else about him? What made you think he fancied Gemma?’ By now I’ve sat down on the bed bedside Mother to look at the photograph as well.
Mother thinks back. ‘Erm, it was the way he looked at her – like a puppy dog. He seemed eager to see Gemma and disappointed if she wasn’t in or said she didn’t want to go out. I’m not so old that I can’t remember what a man who finds me attractive looks like.’
‘Bully for you!’ I jest whilst finding the idea of someone other than my father fancying my mum rather improbable.
We carry on clearing out until the last thing left is the pinboard resting on top of the dressing table. Mother asks me to unpin the photos and put them in the cardboard box. There’s very little else in there. I fold the corners of the top flaps to keep them shut. The box is dwarfed by the bags destined for the charity shop and rubbish tip. With everything out the room looks bare, faded and dirty. I think that if I have time I can make a start on whitewashing the walls and painting the skirting boards. Perhaps Gareth will help, or maybe it’s too soon to ask as we’ve only been out a few times. Mother has decided she wants rid of all the furniture too. I can take the bags to the tip and charity shop in my car, although it’ll take a few trips, but will need the help of someone with a van to dispose of the wardrobe, bed, chest of drawers, chair and dressing table.
My Perfect Sister Page 14