Are We Nearly There Yet

by Lucy Vine

  All right Janet Janet, no need to get personal.

  ‘And sure, it can be loads of fun, and a great time away from real life,’ she continues, unaware of how close to the bone she’s getting. ‘But when you get home, you’re still going to be you, aren’t you? You’re still going to be the same person, with the same obsessions and worries and insecurities. You can change the setting around you for a while, but if you’re sad, you’ll still be sad lying under a palm tree, won’t you? Things aren’t going to be magically solved. Life is so much more complicated than we think, isn’t it? And so am I. I want to be multi-faceted, Alice. I want to be a whole person, not just a travel automaton with dewy skin.’

  ‘Well that’s fair enough, Janet!’ I say, defiantly. ‘And I promise you, I’ll still follow you on Instagram if you post cat pictures. I’ll even stick it out if you post ones with your real eye colour.’

  She laughs again, gratefully. ‘You noticed that, huh?’ She sighs. ‘Thank you. I know you’re right. It’s just hard. I know I need to change things and I think I might sack my management. They’re kind of shitty to me. I reckon they just see me as a money-making product on their books. They don’t want to risk me changing and chance losing that fifteen per cent. But damn them! I want to be the real me! And maybe I could use a pen name or something for the sci-fi writing?’

  ‘That’s a great idea!’ I say enthusiastically.

  There is a pause while we look at each other, smiling. Two strangers. Two idiots just trying to get through this weird, messy life.

  She stands up.

  ‘So,’ she says, and she sounds like she has something important left to say. ‘Do you, like, want a selfie or something?’

  29

  AWOL.COM/Alice Edwards’ Travel Blog

  5 July – 2.13 p.m.

  HELLO.

  I think it’s time I blocked some dickheads on here. This is your last chance to get in some insults before I say goodbye to you for ever. I really don’t know why I’ve ignored it for so long, it’s like I enjoy being punished by awful people. But I’m done with that now.

  Bye,

  Axx

  18 Comments · 157 AWOLs · 140 Super Likes

  Seamus NaughtyLad678

  | it’s cos you love the attention stupid ho

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Seamus NaughtyLad678

  | Nice knowing you Seamus NaughtyLad678, BLOCKED.

  Eva Slate

  | Yay! Good for you. Life is too short to let these idiots go unblocked.

  Danny Boy

  | U CAN BLOK US BUT UR STILL FAT

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Danny Boy

  | Great point, well made, Danny Boy! BLOCKED.

  Hannah Edwards

  | good girl

  Piers Ned

  | Whore slut.

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Piers Ned

  | That is sex worker aspiring slut to you, Piers! BLOCKED.

  Ryan T

  | lol lol lol, u think ur better than us? C u on 4chan bitch

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Ryan T

  | No you won’t, Ryan T! BLOCKED.

  Paul ProudDadtoDaughters

  | rabid feminists are wat is wrong wiv this country

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Paul ProudDadtoDaughters

  | I’m sad you feel that way Paul, because feminism is about helping men, too. I hope you understand that one day, and that your daughters grow up to be proud feminists. BLOCKED.

  Randy Howels

  | pathetic. can’t even take a bit of banta

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Randy Howels

  | I don’t think the word banter should be used as an excuse for being cruel to each other, Randy. BLOCKED.

  Hollie Baker

  | I am afraid to block people on here, what if they get angry?

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to Hollie Baker

  | Ah, Hollie, we don’t know each other but I want you to be brave. I want you to not care if strange men are angry with you for standing up for yourself. It’s not easy I know. I know that as women we are conditioned to be nice at any cost, to run around making sure we are not upsetting the men we meet, for fear of retaliation. But you are worth more than being called a bitch on the internet for no reason. Block block block!

  AWOL MODERATOR

  | Hi Alice, thank you for doing this, and I’m sorry I haven’t been able to stem the tide of trolls. It’s too much – too hard. My bosses won’t let me block them, I’m just supposed to encourage trolls to be nicer using pally corporate speak. I have never said ‘bantz’ or ‘chill pill’ in my life, but there is a script. I can’t keep it up though. How is this a life? Trawling a website for badly spelled abuse and begging people to stop being pricks? I hate myself. Luke

  Alice Edwards

  Replying to AWOL MODERATOR

  | You deserve better than this, Luke.

  Looking around, my insides hurt from longing for this place. Not the house itself – but everything it represents. A family home. A safe space. The things themselves, too, so old and familiar. So full of my childhood. So full of memories I’d forgotten.

  The picture on the wall of me smiling widely at school sports day, and how I cried forever after it was taken because I dropped my egg minutes before the egg and spoon race.

  Those chairs over there, which Mum used to build a den for us, draping sheets across them, and jumping out to surprise us when we got home from school. And then Hannah saying she was too old to play, but caving ten minutes later when she saw KitKats being brought in.

  That clock in the corner that belonged to my grandma. We were all convinced it was haunted so Mark and I did a ouija board underneath it once, and ran out screaming when a ‘demon’ came through called – with hindsight fairly suspiciously – ‘Mark’.

  The ancient computer in the corner – the ‘family computer’ – that I would bet good money still operates on a dial-up modem. Just looking at it, I can hear the sounds it would make. That awful, shrieking, whirring noise it made as it climbed slowly, tortured, online. I can still feel the excitement of waiting for it, waiting to visit chat rooms to flirt with teenage boys, who were definitely actually predatory fifty-year-old men living in studio flats.

  Even the crisps Mum has just brought in – emptied out into the ‘special visitor bowls’ – are making me emotional. I blink hard as I remember Mum shouting at the three of us that time for raiding the pantry a week before Christmas. We had opened the ‘Christmas crisps’, bought to be consumed only in that vacuum time period between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Even though we never once got through all the food she’d bought for the festive period.

  And yes, there are the bad memories here, too. The ones I don’t want to remember. But I’m realising now that I have blocked out all the good memories along with the bad. I have blocked out how much my mum loved us.

  I came straight here after my encounter with Constance/Janet Janet and standing on the doorstep again, I found that the fear was gone. I was suddenly way more afraid of staying in my safe space. Afraid of never moving forward or changing things. We all get so stuck – trapped – in fear-glue. It’s such a human thing to stay forever in a miserable position rather than chance changing things.

  I felt sorry for Janet Janet back there, but it also hit me so hard that she could change her life if she wanted. She’s put up all these barriers in her mind. She’s convinced herself there is no escape from her lovely prison, but of course there is. She has so many choices and options if she took a step back and actually looked at her life, instead of just focusing on feeling sorry for herself. And maybe she will change things, but I suspect not.

  It’s like me. For years I’ve been so
sure ignoring my mum – pretending she didn’t exist – was the only right way, the only answer. I’ve felt so very sorry for myself. I have comforted myself by pretending I am the only sad one in this situation. I told myself that I was the only one brave enough to take the right and only path. But of course there are so many answers – so many right and wrong paths. Everything is right and everything is wrong.

  And now I want to try making things better. Which also might be the wrong thing! Maybe I won’t ever be able to truly forgive my mum – maybe she won’t ever be able to truly forgive me – but I want to try.

  It was Hannah who answered the door when I finally knocked, and I have never seen her so slack-jawed.

  ‘Alice . . .’ she said, utterly bewildered. ‘What are you . . . are you really here?’

  I smiled, tight-lipped, trying not to cry. ‘I’m really here, Hannah.’

  Still she didn’t move. ‘But how . . . when . . .?’ she trailed off and then she suddenly leaned forward out of the door, looking around me suspiciously. ‘Are they forcing you to come here?’ she said in an urgent whisper. ‘Are you being held hostage, Alice? Blink twice if you need help.’

  I blinked once, in slow-motion, before I burst out laughing, pushing past her. ‘Hannah you dick, stop reading Reddit.’

  Mum looked up as I came through the living-room door, and promptly dropped her full cup of tea all over the carpet. The ensuing running about for a ‘blue cloth’ rather distracted from the moment, but Hannah – who had followed me in – quickly took control of the situation.

  ‘Mum, stop,’ Hannah said simply, and she did. Freezing in place on her knees, mid-mopping at the huge stain across the thick beige carpeting, Mum sat back on her heels, down there on the floor, and looked at me, properly this time.

  And then she doubled over and cried.

  For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. And then of course I knew what to do. I took three steps across the carpet to my mum, knelt on the floor beside her – next to the giant tea stain – and I cried too.

  We knelt there for ages, side by side, holding each other, clinging on, and crying so hard. We didn’t say anything, because what do you say in situations like that? Sorry? That’s not the right word. Of course I know we are both sorry, but we are also both not sorry. We both did what we needed to do, what we had to do, and it tore us apart. But we still love each other. That wasn’t in doubt.

  After a few minutes I was vaguely aware of Hannah near us, silently clearing up the mess, while Mum and I cried it all out. The years of sadness and distance took a while to drain away.

  I was the first to stop, my head aching fiercely. I was already dehydrated from the flight’s air-con and, after crying harder than I had in years, I’m pretty sure there was no liquid left in me.

  Mum reached for my hand, simultaneously wiping her face with her blouse. We studied each other intensely then, for the first time in years.

  She looked the same, but also different. A little older, of course, but also plumper. It suits her. She was always so thin – so thin with the stress of Steven. I don’t know what has gone on these last few months – or last few years – but she has found a way to eat. Maybe him being incapacitated has freed her at last. Maybe she has finally felt able to eat more Christmas crisps.

  ‘Hello,’ I said shakily, half laughing with the strangeness of the word.

  ‘Hello Alice,’ she said, and her eyes welled up again.

  ‘Don’t,’ I said with a wobble. ‘You’ll set me off again.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ she breathed and squeezed my hand so hard.

  We stared at each other for another long second and then I looked down.

  ‘I’m sorry about Steven,’ I said at last, and I meant it.

  Because Steven wasn’t – isn’t – a bad man. Not really. That’s what I have realised in the last couple of months. People aren’t bad or good, everyone is both, and everyone is trying to do what they think is right in their own small, selfish way. Steven didn’t want his life to go the way it did, of course he didn’t. Nobody would want that. He was powerless, just like the rest of us.

  I’ve spent a long time sneering at the idea that alcoholics have an ‘illness’. When you’re up close and personal with something like that for a long time, it feels so much like that person is choosing the bottle over you, but it’s never that simple. I know Steven didn’t want this to happen, just like I didn’t want it to happen. Sure, he was weak, and so was Mum, but weakness is something I understand. I understand it all too well. It is so hard, so tiring, to be strong. We have to be strong through so much of our lives. Being strong all the time is so much, too much, to ask of human beings.

  She nodded. ‘I’m sorry about Steven, too,’ she said in a quiet voice and she didn’t mean his stroke.

  I helped her up on her feet, and we laughed as we shook off the pins and needles in our legs.

  ‘Let me get some snacks,’ she said, dabbing her eyes again and shaking off the hysteria that had threatened to overwhelm the both of us. ‘You must be hungry.’

  That’s when she went to get the crisps because she is a mum, and mums know snacks can heal everything.

  ‘How is he?’ I say slowly, munching on a ready-salted own brand as we finally sit down together on the sofa a few minutes later. It still has the same old familiar blanket thrown over the back, and it still smells the same.

  Mum clears her throat. ‘We don’t have to talk about Steven, if you’d rather not?’ she says kindly.

  I consider it. ‘No,’ I shake my head. ‘I want to. I’ve spent too long pretending he isn’t a part of my life – a part of my family – but he is. I’m not saying I want to forgive and forget everything, but I do really want to know how he’s doing.’

  She nods, smiling carefully. ‘I understand, my love.’ She pauses. ‘He is awake,’ she says and I breathe in, unsure how to feel. ‘He woke up a couple of weeks ago, but he’s still at the hospice. He can’t talk or move much yet. It’s going to be a long road to recovery, and we won’t know for a while just how bad it’ll be. But the doctors say he’s out of danger of . . . passing away now.’

  I bite my nail. I don’t know if this constitutes good news or not, really.

  ‘Are you doing OK?’ I say and Mum takes my hand again, giving a quick nod.

  ‘It’s been very difficult,’ she says, her voice breaking a little. ‘Emotionally difficult, I mean.’ She pauses. ‘Actually, to be honest, in a lot of ways, it’s been easier without him here because . . .’ she falters. ‘Well, you know.’

  I do know. I can imagine very well the difference between being a full-time carer to a life-long alcoholic and the full-time carer of a life-long alcoholic who is in hospital, barely conscious.

  Mum lifts her head up and continues. ‘At the moment, Steven can’t do much, but the doctors say it is possible he’ll get better. It’s a long process, waiting to see how much his brain can repair itself and make new pathways. But I’m hoping to be able to bring him home soon. I want to have him here if I can, I want to be able to look after him.’

  ‘Like always,’ I say simply, but there isn’t any resentment in my voice. I know that Mum will always do that for him. I can’t punish her for that.

  She looks at me. ‘What happened?’ she asks, sounding so sad. ‘You were there one minute and gone the next. I lost you. What happened?’

  I stare at the floor, at the wet patch from the tea.

  ‘It was everything,’ I say at last. ‘The years of watching you suffer . . . I couldn’t do that forever. But the final straw was the day I broke up with Kit and you wouldn’t come. I needed you and you wouldn’t come. You chose Steven, when I was more heartbroken than I’d ever been before. I’ve never needed my mum more than that day and you wouldn’t come. I knew then that you’d never be there for me like I needed. I don’t blame you any more, but it f
elt impossible to keep going on that road.’

  She frowns. ‘But I didn’t know you needed me,’ she says, sounding perplexed. ‘You didn’t tell me. You sent me that one text saying you’d split up, but I didn’t even know you loved him. Why didn’t you tell me how upset you were? I tried to call you, I emailed, I texted . . .’

  I shake my head, trying not to get angry. ‘I did call you!’ I raise my voice, upset at the memory. ‘I called and messaged you so many times. I was a mess. It was humiliating.’

  She takes my hands in hers, and she is shaking.

  ‘Alice,’ she says carefully, her white face close to mine. ‘You listen to me.’ She breathes in deeply, shakily. ‘You didn’t. You texted me once, saying you’d broken up with Kit, and that you were OK – that I shouldn’t worry. I would’ve come, of course I would have. I would always be there for you. If I’d known you needed me. You didn’t give me the chance to choose you. You are remembering this wrong, my darling. I didn’t even know you were serious with that boy until Mark told me, weeks later. And by then, you wouldn’t answer my messages.’

  We fall silent. Is that right? Have I really built this up in my head over the years into something it wasn’t? I was such a mess in those weeks after I broke up with Kit. My head was all over the place. I remember sending that first text to Mum and then . . .? But I must’ve . . . I was so used to protecting her by then, maybe I did tell her not to worry. I was sure she had failed me but what if I didn’t give her the chance? How could I be so stupid.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Mum says, watching my face. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Alice. I can’t . . . I had no idea. I would’ve been there, I swear I would’ve . . . Oh, my darling girl, I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. I can’t believe . . .’ Her voice breaks and I squeeze her hand.