by C. L. Taylor
Now, my shoulders loosen and my grip on the steering wheel relaxes as I pull into the lane that runs behind Mum and Dad’s house on the outskirts of Chester. Elise is asleep in the back of the car, her dark blonde head lolling against her chest, her fingers unfurled and relaxed, Effie Elephant resting on her lap.
Mum appears at the garden gate as I pull on the handbrake and turn off the engine. Her dark, dyed hair looks longer than I remember. It curls over her ears and hangs over her eyebrows. She brushes it out of her face as she approaches the car and taps on the window. I’m shocked by how tired she looks.
‘Jo?’ she says as I unwind the window. ‘What are you doing here? I said to Andy that I could hear a car pulling up.’
Mum’s been living in the UK for over thirty years, we both have, but while my Irish accent disappeared within a year of me starting school, hers is as strong as it was the day we left.
‘Didn’t you get my text?’
‘Phone’s off. You know I don’t like to waste the battery.’
I can’t help but smile. ‘It might have been urgent, Mum.’
‘Wasn’t though, was it? You’d have rung the house phone if it was.’ She glances into the back of the car as Elise stirs in her sleep. ‘Babby all right?’
I want to tell her what happened yesterday. She’d understand why I was so scared for Elise’s safety, why I still am. But she’s got enough on her plate looking after Dad. I can’t put this on her too. Just being here and seeing her face makes me feel like I can breathe again.
‘She’s fine.’ I gesture for Mum to move away from the door so I can open it. ‘We just fancied seeing you and Dad. How is he?’
Mum gives me a long look. ‘He’s not great, love.’
It’s the beginning of February but it’s so hot in Mum’s house that I have to strip both me and Elise down to our T-shirts within minutes of walking through the front door.
‘I keep it warm for Dad,’ Mum says as I hang our discarded clothes over the back of a chair. ‘He really feels the cold now.’
‘Can we see him?’
‘Let me go and see how he is.’
She disappears through the living-room door and into the hallway. A year ago I’d hear the sound of the stairs creaking as she made her way up to the master bedroom but Dad’s been sleeping in the dining room for a while now. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease three years ago. He’d been unusually clumsy for a few weeks – dropping the coffee jar in the kitchen, spilling tea on himself and tripping over the rug in the living room – and Mum complained to me on the phone that she couldn’t get him to see a doctor. When he started having trouble with his speech he finally agreed to see someone. The diagnosis was made scarily quickly and within six months he was walking with a stick. Two years later he was in a wheelchair. Now he’s unable to leave his bed.
‘What’s this?’ Elise asks and I dart towards her, intercepting her grabby little hand before she can snatch one of Mum’s porcelain figurines from the windowsill.
‘It’s a ballerina,’ I say, guiding her fingers away. ‘Isn’t she pretty?’
She nods enthusiastically, her gaze still fixed on the statuette. ‘Yes.’
I walk my daughter around Mum and Dad’s compact living room, pointing out all the other ornaments: the life-sized china robin, the small crystal vase, the little boy reading a book under a windmill, the fairy plates hanging on the wall and a brown and white cow. Every single thing in this room was bought in the UK. Other than Mum’s accent, this house is devoid of any trace of our Irish heritage. I gave up trying to talk to her about Ireland years ago. She shuts down whenever anyone questions her about where she’s from or why she left. I only know that her best friend was called Mary because Mum got uncharacteristically drunk at my wedding and confided in my friend Helen. She told her that she’d wanted Mary to be her bridesmaid at her own wedding, nearly forty years earlier, but it hadn’t been possible. That she missed Mary and hadn’t seen her for over thirty years. When Helen suggested that it’s never too late to reconnect yourself with someone you love, Mum had replied, ‘It is if they hate you.’ When Helen probed for more information, Mum disappeared off in search of another glass of champagne.
Mum may have briefly opened up about her old best friend but there’s one person she’s never talked about – my real dad. He vanished three weeks before my eighth birthday.
She told me that he’d gone away for work but I didn’t believe her. I’d seen her friends cross the street when she waved hello. I’d noticed the way voices would drop and our neighbours would stare when I popped into the shop to grab a pint of milk. Kids in the playground started telling me that my dad was a bad man and their parents had told them not to talk to me any more. I didn’t understand. I was sad that my dad wasn’t at home any more and I knew my mum was upset too. But no one would tell me when he was coming back.
I was excited when I got back from school on the afternoon of my birthday and found Mum waiting at the front door with two packed suitcases. I thought we were going to visit Dad, wherever he was. I thought it was a birthday surprise. I was still excited when, ten minutes later, Uncle Carey turned up in his battered car and drove us to the train station. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise but I couldn’t stop myself from asking Mum where we were going. She unpursed her thin lips and said, ‘Away. That’s all you need to know.’ Twelve hours later we were in England. And I never saw my dad again.
It was just me and Mum for two years. And then she met Andy. It can’t have been easy for him, taking on someone else’s child – especially one on the cusp of puberty – but he took it all in his stride. He gave me space when I needed it, he played board games with me when I was fed up and let me walk his cocker spaniel Jessie when we all went out. He told me knock knock jokes that were so rubbish they made me laugh and he tried, and failed, to introduce me to sci-fi. He was kind, funny and awkward and I couldn’t help but warm to him. When he asked me if I would mind if he asked my mum to marry him I burst into tears. If he married Mum that would make us a family and he’d be my dad. There wasn’t anything I wanted more.
‘Dad’s asleep,’ Mum says now as she steps back into the living room and lowers herself into an armchair. ‘I’ll need your help turning him in a bit if that’s OK. The carer’s due this afternoon but I don’t want to leave him that long. He’ll get bedsores.’
‘Of course.’
‘CBeebies,’ Elise says, pointing at the blank television in the corner of the room.
Mum moves to get up but I tell her that I’ll do it. I settle Elise on the other side of the sofa with Effie and, as the Mr Tumble theme tune fills the room, I take the seat nearest to Mum.
‘How is he?’ I ask, keeping my voice low so Elise can’t hear. ‘How’s Dad?’
Mum twists the gold band on the third finger of her left hand. ‘He’s not good, Joanne. The consultant has him on Riluzole but it’s making him very tired. And he’s got a mask now, to help with his breathing. There’s been talk of a feeding tube but he won’t have it.’
Dad hasn’t been able to talk for at least a year but he lets you know if he disagrees with something. I saw the look in his eyes and the way his face twisted when Dr Valentine gently suggested that he might want to consider hospice care. Mum was vociferous in her response to the idea, her soft voice unusually loud as though she was literally speaking for both of them. No hospitals and no hospices. Dad wants to die at home. The disease has robbed him of so much – of his freedom, his voice, his body, his dignity – but deciding how and where he dies is his last vestige of control.
‘Oh, Mum.’ I reach for her hand but she’s too far away and my fingers graze the soft wool of her cardigan instead. ‘I wish we were closer. I wish there was more I could do. I hate it, being so far away. I feel so guilty.’
‘No.’ She sits up a little straighter in her seat. ‘Don’t you be saying things like that. You have your own life, Joanne. A house, a job, a husband and a babby. She needs to be your priority
, not us.’
‘But what if we moved closer? I hate the idea of you coping all alone. I know you’ve got the carer but—’
‘I’ve Elaine Fairchild next door. And my friends from the church. I’m being looked after. Don’t you worry.’
But no family. No brothers or sisters or nieces or nephews. I know Mum still keeps in touch with her sisters Sinead and Celeste and her brother Carey – I’ve seen the Christmas cards on the mantelpiece – but she’s too proud to ask for help. She’s independent and strong-willed. She had to be, upping and leaving her friends and family and starting a new life with me as a single mum in England, a country she’d never even visited before.
‘I’m serious, Mum. I’ve been looking at jobs. There’s one here at the university. I could do it standing on my head. There are loads of good nurseries nearby and I’ve seen a lovely little bungalow in Malpas. We’d be just down the road.’
She gives me a sideways look. ‘And what does Max think of this plan?’
I glance at Elise, sucking her thumb and staring intently at Grandad Tumble. ‘I haven’t talked to him about it yet.’
‘Jo …’ Mum narrows her eyes. ‘What is it that you’re not telling me?’
I want to explain how much I’ve been struggling and how the move could help me as well as her and Dad. I thought that life would get better after Elise was born. I thought that, as soon as I held her warm, wriggling body in my arms, all the hurt and pain of losing Henry in the second trimester of my pregnancy would lessen. I thought my breath would stop catching in my throat, that the panic in my chest every time I left the house would subside. That the terrible, all-encompassing dread that something awful was just about to happen would disappear. But it didn’t. It got worse. We had lost Henry and I was terrified that we’d lose Elise too. I couldn’t sleep because I was convinced that she’d stop breathing the moment I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t let her out of my sight for fear that someone would snatch her. For months I refused to let Max take her out of the house in her pram because I was certain that, if he did, I’d never see either of them again. I had several panic attacks – once after Max went back to work and I tried to go to a local mother-and-baby group in the church hall, another time in the pharmacy when I went to buy Calpol for Elise – but I kept trying, I kept working out in front of the TV, I kept doing my mindfulness exercises. I refused to let it beat me. And then two months ago Mum told me that the consultant had given Dad less than three months to live and the walls began closing in on me again.
When I started thinking about jobs and houses in Cheshire I never truly believed that it could happen. How could I ever move to a different part of the country when I couldn’t even go to Tesco alone? It was wishful thinking. A pipe dream. But when Paula got into my car yesterday and threatened my daughter, something changed. I didn’t turn to jelly. I didn’t faint or cry or curl up in a ball. I told her to get out and I went in search of my little girl. Elise’s safety and well-being are more important to me than anything else. I know it’s not right, the way she’s living now, cooped up in the house with me, and I want to change that. I want her life to be an adventure and not a prison.
‘I’m not happy, Mum,’ I say. ‘Max and me … it’s not been good for a while and it’s been getting worse. I want a divorce.’
‘A divorce. Are you quite, quite sure? Perhaps couples counselling might help? Or your local priest?’
My heart sinks as she continues to offer suggestions. Elise is totally, blissfully oblivious to what’s going on. Her whole world is going to fall apart over the next few weeks and months and it’s up to me to protect her as best I can. I can only hope that Max will agree to an amicable separation but, deep down, I know that’s not going to happen. Despite his threats to leave in the past, he would never abandon me and Elise. He’s an only child and both of his parents are dead – we’re all he’s got. When I tell him that I want to move to Chester with Elise he’s going to be devastated.
Chapter 6
Chester? CHESTER? Max stalks from room to room, his hands balled into fists and tucked under his armpits. Jo’s been planning a move to Chester and she didn’t think to mention it to him? He’d logged on to her laptop while his was updating and discovered that she’d left three tabs open in Firefox – one for a student-support job at the University of Chester, one for Rightmove and one for a primary school in Malpas. Was that the real reason she’d gone up to Chester? To go to an interview or attend a viewing before she visited her parents? He nearly called her yesterday, when he found the laptop, then changed his mind. This is a conversation they need to have face-to-face. He’s been quietly seething for nearly 48 hours.
He glances at his watch as he moves from the master bedroom to Elise’s room. 5.17 p.m. Jo texted him earlier to say they’d be home around fiveish.
He squats down to pick up some building blocks and a fluffy bear that have been abandoned in the middle of the room and transfers them to a pink plastic toy bucket beside his daughter’s cot. He pulls the curtains closed and straightens Elise’s duvet. Then, with nothing else to occupy himself, he sits on the floor beside her cot. He runs a hand over the multi-coloured Peppa Pig duvet cover then reaches for a book from the shelves set into the alcove: Snug as a Bug, his daughter’s favourite book. He’s read it hundreds of times, Jo has too. It’s part of Elise’s bedtime routine: teeth, pyjamas, milk, book. He’s surprised Jo didn’t take it with her.
Anxiety twists at his stomach as he gazes around his daughter’s bedroom, at the white clouds floating on grey wallpaper on the opposite wall, at the framed picture of a penguin gripping a bouquet of balloons, at the tent-shaped den Elise fills with teddies and rarely enters. It’s so quiet without his daughter bouncing around the room, singing gobbledegook songs in her breathy high-pitched voice. So empty. This is what it would be like if Jo took her away. He closes his eyes to block out the thought, but it’s not fear he’s feeling any more. It’s anger. Here he is, tearing himself apart at the thought of losing his daughter when his own father didn’t give two shits about him and his brother. You wouldn’t have caught Jeff Blackmore moping about in the bedroom, cooing and sighing over a duvet cover and a favourite book. He didn’t even know who his kids were half the time.
Max holds it together when his family returns just after 6 p.m. He welcomes Jo back into the house with a kiss on the cheek and then scoops Elise up and into his arms and hugs her tightly before setting her back on her feet. She speeds off into the living room, demanding that he play bricks with her. It takes him a couple of seconds to realise that Jo hasn’t followed them. She’s still standing in the hallway, one hand pressed to her lower back, the other to the wall. She tells him that she put her back out when she helped her mother turn Andy and she’s been in the most terrible pain ever since. The three-hour car journey was unbearable, she says, and now she can barely move. He helps her into the living room and takes some of the weight as she lowers herself to the floor so she can lie on her back, then he retrieves the suitcases from the car and carries them up to the bedroom.
Two hours flash by as he feeds Elise, doles out ibuprofen and a glass of water to Jo, and then does the bedtime routine single-handedly as his wife lies on the living-room rug barking out orders. ‘Don’t forget to brush her teeth.’ ‘Make sure you plug the Gro-Clock back in’. ‘Have you got her milk?’ His irritation increases each time he hears her voice.
When he finally returns to the living room, with Elise safely tucked up in her cot, Jo has managed to drag herself into a sitting position, her back pressed up against the base of the sofa. For five minutes they have been sitting in silence, staring at the ‘Night, night. See you tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.’ image on the television screen. Jo’s semi-crippled condition has unnerved him. He knows that now is not the time to have a conversation about what he discovered on the laptop but he can’t push it out of his mind. There’s no way he can go to work tomorrow with the matter left unresolved. It will eat away at him all day.
�
��So.’ He coughs lightly. ‘When were you planning on telling me that you want to move to Chester?’
Jo tenses but she doesn’t turn to look at him. ‘Sorry?’
‘I saw the sites you’d been looking at on your laptop. The house, the job, the school.’
‘Can we talk about it tomorrow, please?’ Her voice is as stiff as her body.
‘No, I want to talk about it now.’
Jo continues to stare at the green glow of the television. ‘Please, Max. I’m in pain.’
Max takes a steadying breath in through his nose. If there was nothing to it she’d tell him as much, but her silence is scaring him. What’s she playing at? Why won’t she just talk to him? ‘And you think I’m not?’
‘Don’t do this, please.’ She turns her head slowly to look at him. ‘I’ve had an awful day. Dad’s got so much worse and I really don’t want to fight with you tonight.’
How can he argue with that? He can’t and he shouldn’t. But there’s always something with Jo. Something that means he has to bite his tongue rather than talk to her about the things that are worrying him. First it was the panic attacks, then the agoraphobia. Now her dad’s dying. Andy’s been touch-and-go for the last couple of years. They’ve lived their lives on a knife edge since before Elise was born, exchanging worried glances each time Brigid rings in case it’s bad news. And now, on top of everything, Jo has put her back out. Another reason to block him out.
‘Is this to do with what happened before you left?’ he asks. ‘Are you pissed off with me because I didn’t call the police?’