She temporarily gives up on the list, and goes to the fridge. She opens the door, sees that the quinoa and the carrot batons are still there, and grabs a half-full bottle of Blossom Hill from the door.
She looks around the kitchen, and there are no cups. No glasses. She is as shitty at keeping a house as she is at everything else. She pulls open the cupboards, and sees only an egg cup. Everything is either in the dishwasher, or festering somewhere in the science experiment that Joe calls a bedroom, buried under layers of mouldy pizza and rigid socks.
She pulls out the egg cup. It has an acid-house-style smiley face on it, and it’s just too small. She opens the next cupboard, and pulls out a plastic measuring jug. That’ll do.
The wine glugs in, splashing back up to sting already stinging eyes. She looks at the markings on the side of the jug, having a strange flashback to simpler days – days when a laboratory and strange liquids and carefully poured fluids were the centre of her world.
The wine bottle is empty. The jug shows her she has 600 millilitres of anaesthetic to play with, and she takes it back through to the lounge. She picks up the book, the pen, the paper. She tries to rub the ink mark off Yoda, but it’s gone too deep, like a weird eyeball tattoo.
Rose drinks, and she breathes, and she swipes snot from her inflamed nostrils with the corner of her already soggy cardigan, the long one that she fools herself covers her arse.
And she makes her list.
Chapter 15
Rose starts with shaky hands, calmer now but still barely able to hold the pen, eyes blurred by tears. As the wine goes down, and the tears dry up, and the words start to flow, it gets easier. And worse. It feels like the List That Will Never Die. The guilt pours out of her and into the pen and on to the tiny white pages. She underlines the title twice, freehand, so the line is a jagged doodle, and she even feels guilty about not using a ruler.
Things I Feel Guilty About
That I wasn’t there when my mum died
That I broke my mother’s heart
That I didn’t see her enough, or tell her I loved her enough
That last time she was supposed to come and stay, to keep me company when Joe was at his dad’s, I made an excuse about work and cancelled, when really I just felt too depressed to be bothered, and wanted to stay in and eat kebabs on my own
That I let my marriage get fucked up and didn’t work hard enough to save it
That Joe has grown up with me for a mum
That I am a crap mum
That I sometimes use Joe as my friend instead of having real friends and make him watch Grey’s Anatomy with me
That I eat too much and drink too much and do no exercise; that I don’t seem able to stop even for Joe
That I seem like a nice person on the outside but inside I am actually horrible
That I stole a box of Cadbury Roses from the village shop when I was 11 and told my mum I’d won them as a prize at school, and she was so proud of me she baked a Victoria sponge to celebrate
That I dumped Andy by text when I was drunk and accidentally sent it to his best mate instead
That I didn’t have enough sex with Gareth, because I was always so tired after I had the baby, and maybe if I hadn’t been so selfish Joe would still have his dad around
That I sometimes secretly wish that Gareth would get hit by a bus
That I don’t condition my hair or do my nails or take a pride in myself, like mum always did
That I messed up my career and gave up on everything
That I spend more money every week on junk food than I do on Joe
That when Joe was born I thought for a little while that I could never ever be happy again
That I was supposed to cure cancer and I ended up as a teaching assistant and that must have disappointed mum so much, not that she ever said anything
That I once reversed her car into a tree and blamed the dent on a hit-and-run in the supermarket car park
That I hate my job and everyone I work with, even though it’s not their fault I’m doing it
That I lost touch with all my university friends after I met Gareth, at first because of him and then after he left because I was too embarrassed to admit I’d made a mistake
That I once told my mum I hated her when I was 15 because she wouldn’t let me stay out any later than 10 p.m. even though Tasmin Hughes was allowed to stay out as long as she liked
That when Tasmin Hughes got pregnant and had a baby I never went to visit her, and I know now she must have been really lonely because that’s what it’s like when you have a baby
That I stabbed Yoda in the eye
That every year I buy Joe a nice Thornton’s Easter egg with his name on it, then eat it myself, and have to buy new ones, crap ones from the newsagent
That I once lay on the floor and pretended I wasn’t in when the Jehovah’s Witnesses called round instead of being polite about them trying to save my soul
That I used to pull faces whenever Mum started one of her show-biz war stories and now I’d love to hear some more
That I eat Extra Strong Mints before bed because I can’t be bothered brushing my teeth
That once when Joe was a toddler and Gareth had gone I left him alone in the house asleep while I went to the chippie, and he was crying and terrified when I got back
That I am really bad at keeping the house tidy and everything is always a mess
That I am now so fat I can barely cut my own toenails
That Joe once accidentally-on-purpose forgot to tell me about a Geography field trip to Iceland because he knew I didn’t have the money and didn’t want me to feel bad, even though all his friends were going
That I never bought him a puppy
That I have never met this man Lewis, which shows how much I know about my mother’s life
That I neglected her, and myself, and everything
That Joe makes his own packed lunches because I’m too disorganised and lazy
That I don’t change my duvet cover for months at a time because nobody ever sees it
That when the phone rang tonight and I thought it was my mum, I was annoyed because I had to drag my fat arse away from Poldark
That I have spoken to my mum twice in the last month and never noticed she was so ill because I am too wrapped up in myself – she’s a good actress but I should have noticed
That I didn’t remind Joe to call and thank her for that voucher she sent
After more than forty stop-off points on the guilt trip, Rose stops, and looks at what she has done. Her mother probably imagined a journal, or some neatly written-out pages of A4. Instead, it’s a tear-stained mess; an almost illegible scrawl with smudged ink and creases and incoherent punctuation. The memo-pad paper is small and square, and she has filled more than twenty sheets of it. She’ll need to go back and gather them all up.
She pauses, and finishes the wine; 600 millilitres down, a new bottle to go.
She knows she has to add one more to the guilt list. She doesn’t want to, though. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth she can feel tugging at her, prodding her, whispering her name like one of those Satanic blond-haired kids in old horror films.
She watched that video three times, and Mum had asked her to be honest. To tell the truth. So that’s what she has to do.
Rose wipes her eyes, and picks up the pen again. She winces because of the blister that is starting to throb on her finger, a dull ache compared to all the others. She picks up a fresh square of paper, covers Yoda’s mutilated face, and adds:
42. That I never gave Poppy a second chance, no matter how hard she begged
Chapter 16
Poppy isn’t sure what to do next. She’s watched the video, and called this man Lewis, who sent her straight to voicemail, and also phoned around various hospitals until she could confirm that it is all true. Unfortunately, it is.
She needs to do something, and decides to take a shower. She ends up sitting on the floor, the too-hot water sl
uicing over her head and shoulders, burning her skin bright red, steam cocooning her in a smeared glass box. She stays in there until her fingertips are so wrinkled and puckered up they look as if they belong to a witch, and her bottom is numb on the tiles.
When she finally climbs out, the whole bathroom is filled with steam, as though she’s in a Turkish sauna. She uses a fresh towel to wipe the mirror clean, and stares at herself.
Mascara is smudged beneath her eyes, and her hair is plastered to her skull, and her body is slightly too thin. Her collarbones are prominent, and the skin around her neck is just too taut to be attractive. There are lines around her mouth from years of smoking, and her long legs are so toned they’re almost hideous.
She hates what she sees, even though she has worked hard for it.
She hates it because that face, that body, belong to the kind of woman she never wanted to become. The kind of woman who lives alone and works in marketing and has meaningless friendships and is a complete bitch to everyone who works for her.
The kind of woman who could drown in her own shower and not be found for weeks on end, or until the flat below flooded. The kind of woman nobody really cares about, because the only person who did has abandoned her and selfishly died.
The kind of woman who could break her own mother’s heart, and not even notice she was doing it.
She picks up an aerosol can of shaving cream, and takes off the lid. She holds it in front of the mirror, and sprays it all over the glass, until everything is obscured and all she can see is the cream, slowly falling down in white dollops and plopping into the marble sink.
Satisfied at her minor act of vandalism, she puts on a black satin kimono, and goes back into the living room, where she briefly considers getting out her tobacco tin again.
She can still picture it in its original home on the polished shelf in Mum’s glass display cabinet. It sat alongside her other accumulated nick-nacks and almost-antique oddities: a giant conch shell she bought from a gift shop in Dorset; her own father’s pocket watch and chain; a beer mat autographed by John Lennon when she met him in a pub in Soho in the Seventies; a tiny dragon carved out of jade.
Her memories of that display cabinet are vivid, and it sums up their cottage – eclectic, unpredictable, full of clutter; every item laden with some significance.
There will be a lot to do, she thinks, as she sits down at her desk. A lot to sort through. Things to package up. Things to send to the charity shop, or keep for themselves. They might need to hire a skip for the junk, and call in an antiques expert to appraise the valuables, and it might not always be easy to tell the difference between the two.
She takes a pen, and starts to jot down a few points. Practical stuff. Things that she thinks are keeping her calm, until she realises that she is crying so hard her whole body is shaking in huge spasms, and her handwriting is unreadable.
Her hair is still soggy, and the kimono is getting soaked through as it drips over her shoulders and back, and it feels a bit like she is drowning in snot.
She snatches a tissue from the box on her desk, and angrily wipes her eyes and nose and face clear. She screws the tissue up, and throws it on the floor, to be dealt with later.
She’s been making the wrong list, she knows. This isn’t what her mother asked her to do in that awful video, looking so neat and tidy and thin.
Poppy picks up the pen again, and turns to a fresh page in her leather-bound notepad. She takes a deep breath, and starts. She’s going to be totally honest, just like her mother asked. She puts pen to paper, and it doesn’t take long at all.
There is only one item on Poppy’s guilt list:
EVERYTHING.
Job done, she slams the notepad shut, and wrings her soggy hair out in a damp ponytail. A small puddle of water builds up on the hardwood floor, and she dips her toe into it, for no good reason other than it’s there.
She’s made her list, and she’s had a shower, and she’s cried, and now her whole mood feels as empty as her grumbling stomach.
She doesn’t want to do the other thing that her mother asked her to do. She doesn’t want to think about it. She doesn’t want to even let Rose back into her mind, let alone her life. It’s too hard, too nasty, too brutal. She might not survive.
For years now, she’s closed that part of her life off. Walled it up, like a mad woman in a Gothic novel – left it to starve to death in the hope that it would rot and crumble like an ancient skeleton, and eventually be nothing but a pile of dust on the ground.
It’s allowed her to function. To have a life. To have a career. To have fake friends. But she knows that old crone is still walled up in there: wailing, insane, still so, so hungry. If she lets her out, she’ll be devoured. If she lets herself think about it, like her mother has asked, she will think of nothing else – and her whole life will fall to pieces, crumpled up like the soggy tissue on the floor.
It’s too much, and she can’t do it. She won’t do it – not right now.
Chapter 17
‘Wassup, mum?’ says Joe, his usual morning greeting. It is after 11 a.m., and he has just staggered downstairs, wearing stripy pyjama bottoms and sporting a supreme case of bed-head. He’s tall, her boy, and is taking after his dad in looks at least.
He towers over Rose as she putters around in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. She’s barely slept, and when she did, it wasn’t what you’d call restful.
When she woke up, she felt normal – until she remembered. She’d had about twenty seconds of peace before the world came crashing down around her, and she disappeared back under the duvet, too exhausted to cry, too wrecked to move.
Since then, she’s cleaned the house, hidden her Guilt List, and put the Star Wars book away in a cupboard where she hopes Joe will forget all about it. She’s still ashamed about going all Dark Side on Yoda.
Joe is reaching for the cereal box on autopilot when he stops, pauses, and looks around at the sparklingly tidy kitchen. He wipes his eyes, and then screws them up, like he’s not quite seeing properly. His hair is flopping over his forehead and, despite his height, he still looks impossibly young to Rose. Her little boy, but all stretched out and super-sized.
‘It’s really clean in here. Are you feeling all right?’ he says, giving her a lazy grin to let her know he’s joking. ‘Should I be calling 999?’
Rose says nothing, but pulls him in for a big, long hug. He lets her, but backs away after a few moments, looking borderline embarrassed. He might be a little boy to her, but he’s still 16 in the real world.
She realises she doesn’t know how to do this. She doesn’t have a clue what to say, or what to do. She doesn’t know how to break it to him gently, or how to do it in a way that won’t traumatise him, or freak him out for the rest of his life.
It’s the first time he’s had to deal with death, and truthfully, it’s the first time she has as well. Unless she counts the pets, which she doesn’t – Mum stage-managed those brilliantly, but this is far, far different.
Her own pain is still huge – a living, snarling beast inside her – but she knows she needs to set it aside, and do the right thing by her boy. Protect him from the kaleidoscope of hell that she’s going through, and help him deal with it.
‘Joe, come and sit down with me, will you?’ she says, gently pushing a lock of his too-long hair away from his face and tucking it behind his ear.
He looks confused, but follows her barefoot into the living room, plonking himself down on the armchair in that exhausted ‘I’m-so-busy-growing-I-don’t-have-any-energy-left’ way that teens have.
‘All right, Mum,’ he says, when she remains silent. ‘I’m sitting down. And I’ve seen too many TV shows to think this can mean anything good. What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Granny,’ replies Rose, staring off into space, her eyes fixating on the motes of dust that are floating in the bright sunlight filtering through the windows. ‘I got a phone call last night, and … well, she’s gone, Joe. Your granny died yest
erday.’
She doesn’t know what she has been expecting from him. Tears, maybe? Hysteria? The same kind of ridiculous drama she indulged in last night, during her Festival of Snot?
Instead, she simply sees his lower lip tremble slightly, and his frown deepen. She realises that – even at his age – he is trying to be macho.
‘It’s okay to be upset,’ she says quickly. ‘I know I was. You don’t have to be brave for my sake, sweetheart, honestly.’
He studies her face, as if he’s examining her for evidence of lies, and she feels so ashamed. Her beautiful, bonny baby is trying to protect her when, really, it should always have been the other way around.
All those times he stayed in with her when he should have been out with his mates; the way he’d sent her a friend request on Facebook even when it wasn’t cool to have your mum as a Facebook friend in anyone’s universe; all those occasions when she’d sensed him feeling guilty as he left to go and see his dad in London.
All of it was wrong, and all of it was her fault. She’d relied on him when she should have been relying on herself. That really has to change.
‘What happened, Mum?’ he says, eventually. ‘She seemed really great the last time we saw her, and it wasn’t that long ago, was it?’
The tears are there, now; she can see them shining in the blue of his eyes before he swipes them away, as though he’s angry with himself for allowing them to even exist.
‘I suppose it was just before her birthday, wasn’t it?’ Rose replies, even though she has absolutely no doubt about when she last saw her mum. She’s gone over it enough times. It was over four months ago, hard as that is to swallow – time flies when you’re not having fun. She was supposed to visit after that, while Joe was away, but that was when Rose had cancelled on her. Before she was ill, according to Lewis’s timing, but still. Unforgivable.
The A-Z of Everything Page 7