A Mother Like You

by Ruby Speechley

  Kate took down the lidded Pyrex dish from the middle shelf, leaving half a bottle of milk and a small rectangle of cheese wrapped in greaseproof paper. She rattled out the bottom drawer and took the last two carrots. In the one-door freezer section, a hole in the centre of the ice-encrusted space contained a small bag of mixed vegetables secured with a wooden peg.

  Elizabeth sat down, propping her stick against the table.

  ‘Shall I warm it in the microwave?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Use the stove.’

  She’d bought her mother a microwave a month ago, but Elizabeth never used it. Kate clattered about the kitchen pouring the stew into a saucepan and the mixed vegetables into a dish to go in the microwave.

  ‘Was that note who I think it was from?’ Elizabeth appeared colourless in the fading daylight.

  Kate scratched the new patch of eczema flaring up between her fingers.

  ‘You never said why you left him.’

  Kate switched the hob on high. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘We said he was no good for you.’ Elizabeth pushed a cigarette into her silver-plated holder and lit it.

  Kate swung round, a wooden spoon in her hand. ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to smoke?’

  ‘One won’t hurt.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Don’t think you can start telling me what to do.’ Elizabeth blew out a funnel of grey-blue smoke. ‘Do you know how difficult it’s been for me?’ Elizabeth’s voice became shrill. She pressed her fingers into her forehead. ‘All those years not knowing if you were dead or alive?’

  Kate bent over the sink. This was it: she was going to be sick. She held onto the edge of the worktop and shut her eyes, hoping the room would stop spinning.

  ‘We always celebrated your birthdays even though we didn’t know where you were.’ Elizabeth tapped the cigarette on the edge of a clean ashtray.

  ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ Kate sank into her dad’s high-backed chair. His filled pipe sat on the shelf in the little alcove as if he’d just stepped out of the room. She rubbed her palm up and down the smooth wooden arm, imagining all the times he’d rested his hand there. None of her memories would ever quite hold the same warmth; her mother had made sure of that.

  ‘If only we’d known where you were.’ Elizabeth gave the table a short sharp smack, jolting the cups, like she’d given Kate’s legs on many occasions, leaving red hand marks. ‘You broke our hearts. You’ve no idea.’ She wiped her nose on a screwed-up hanky.

  ‘I can’t believe this.’ Kate shook her head. ‘You’re the one who lied to me, remember?’ She should never have come back. She scratched her fingers, prickly and cracked, opaque like a snake shedding its skin. ‘Have you ever thought for one second how I felt?’ Kate slumped back in the chair and imagined herself as a little girl, her dad’s arms wrapped round her, shielding her.

  Her mother squashed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and laid the ebony holder on the side.

  ‘So why does he want money from you?’

  ‘Leave it, Mum.’

  Silence.

  Elizabeth made a clicking noise in the back of her throat. She reached down to her carpet bag, picked up her knitting and started counting a row of stitches. Then she placed the knitting on the table and tried to push another cigarette into the holder. Kate sighed. The end of the cigarette buckled, and tobacco spilled out. The holder slipped from her fingers and rolled across the table. The stew fizzed and spluttered in the pan. The cloying smell of slow-cooked beef made Kate’s stomach turn. She needed air.

  Outside, the darkness had turned the back garden into a padded room with tall hedges and a black ceiling studded with lights. The brick walls were lined with deadly nightshade and the lawn spread right back to the orchard at the bottom in a rug of daisies. As a child, Kate had often hidden from her mother among the gnarly trees. She would pretend to be a fairy, dancing round the trunks, treading barefoot on fallen blossom, pretending she had whispered a spell and turned it into snow.

  The crisp autumn air smelled of charred wood from a nearby bonfire. Closing her eyes, she imagined the sweet smell of melting marshmallows. She sat on the low wall by the side of the greenhouse where brambles had grown out of the jagged glass, smashed by red apples in a storm. All those summers when she’d played out here alone, never allowed beyond the garden gate, except the odd occasion when a friend was invited in. And here she was, a whole messed-up lifetime later.

  She wandered down to the orchard among the acid-smelling apples and allowed herself to weep a little. But wasn’t she just crying for herself, for what she’d lost?

  Her phone flashed its piercing light through her pocket. Another text message appeared on the screen.

  Pay up by the end of the week if you don’t want the truth to come out.

  She couldn’t ignore this one. If he told everyone what she did, her friends and colleagues would shun her, James would leave her, and everyone would know that her perfect life was built on lies.

  Chapter Eight

  Elizabeth switched off the main light and her bedroom fell into shadow. Shapes from the lamp formed on the walls and ceiling. She grimaced at the bones grating in her hip with each step she took towards her reflection in the black glass of the window. She shivered. In an instant she was back there: the rows of beds in the vast dormitory, children crying, muffled sobs into flat pillows, the strong smell of floor polish and starched sheets. Many nights she’d stared out of the tall curtainless windows at the lawn below and a whole world, she’d imagined, beyond the wall of cypress trees. What would she say now to the child she was then?

  She closed the curtains. It felt strange having her daughter back, sleeping next door in her old room. She’d wanted more than anything to be a good mother to her, to give her the love and stability she’d never had. But it wasn’t possible, she’d had no patience with her and no understanding of how to comfort a child. Instead, sharp words had sprung from her lips. Punishment and discipline were all she’d known and all she could pass on. Not one jot of love or understanding. Maybe she’d been too damaged to become a good mother to her. There’d been no one to show her how to care for someone else, how to love. She’d failed. She had to admit it. Her own daughter had left her, not wanted to be in her life. Not a word or a card until it was almost too late. She was only here tonight because she’d bullied her into sorting out her dad’s things. Every day she lived with this dragging feeling in her chest of not being good enough. It had made her so impatient and judgemental, just like they’d been with her. Perhaps her punishment was a lifetime of regret and failure.

  What about the note in Kate’s bag? Why was he contacting her after all these years? And why send it here? Was he having a dig at her too? She’d give him what for. From the moment she set eyes on him she knew he was trouble. Had a shifty look about him she’d come across before. Always full of himself. Was Kate in danger? Trouble was she didn’t confide in her about anything. But she had to get out of her what it was all about.

  She picked up the photos from the dressing table. The grand old building full of secrets whispering along its corridors. The echoes of children laughing and crying. Alison and Elsie giggling as they pulled her along the floor on an old blanket, when they were supposed to be buffing and polishing. The gurgling screams from the bathroom. Fleshy arms wobbling as they scrubbed her with carbolic soap before dunking and holding her head under cold water. Each time her head came up, she’d focus on the tiles lining the bath, one decorated with a baby lamb, her silent witness.

  Ray had taken her back there for a special tour after it became a school. It would help her move on, lay the ghosts and nightmares to rest, so he thought. No need to hide these photos, was there? Lately, she often found herself nattering to him out loud, as though he was still sitting in his reading chair in the corner. It helped to keep her going until reality hit her with a jolt. How was it possible that he was gone? Walking back in the house that first time without him, shutting the
door, she’d felt a little gust of air on her cheek like his last breath.

  She opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out a miniature Bible tucked away at the back. As the pages fell open, a small cutting from a newspaper floated out. John was only twenty-nine then, his face serious in his smart suit. Brown eyes and lashes as thick as a girl’s. Ray standing next to him, best pals before this happened. Recently, there were moments when she couldn’t help wondering what life would have been like with John if they’d married and grown old together. But that had been a fantasy because he wasn’t the person she thought he was. Didn’t she owe it to Kate to tell her about him? No. Enough damage had been done. She couldn’t risk her going off again. She for one wasn’t strong enough to bear it. She kissed her fingertips and pressed them to Ray’s face before tucking the cutting back in its place.

  She eased herself into bed and opened a folder of Ray’s bank papers and picked up where she’d left off, checking each month for the same amount of £350 going out. Something to do with his car, more than likely, but it seemed an awful lot. Hadn’t they finished paying that off a few years ago? Normally he’d have told her about something costing so much. Trouble was once the Alzheimer’s set in it must have gone clean out of his head. She wished Kate had come back sooner, had a chance to see him before he became so ill.

  She stuffed Ray’s papers back in the folder and picked up a battered copy of The Thorn Birds from the bedside table. She leaned back on the pillows and opened the book, but before she finished reading the first page, her eyes fluttered shut.

  Chapter Nine

  The single bed faced the door, just as when Kate had lived there. A bookcase stood where the wardrobe had been. Her mother never read bedtime stories to her. If her father were home in time, he would sit at the end of the bed and read her Aesop’s Fables or The Chronicles of Narnia. During the summer she hated being sent to bed when it wasn’t dark outside. She would peep out of the leaded light window at children playing in the street below. Time seemed to swell with the heat, and she’d wondered if she would ever grow up.

  A car turning in the street illuminated the room. She threw back the covers and sat up. Over the past couple of days the nausea had come on when she felt hungry or thirsty. She reached for a glass of water from the bedside table and drank a mouthful.

  She wished she could tell James about the letter, the photo and countless texts, but the lie was too big for him to forgive her. She needed to put a stop to it all, but thirty thousand. Jesus. It would wipe them out. All their hard work building the business. They’d have nothing to fall back on. Why should she give in? But what was worse: risking him telling everyone what she did? He knew too much. Her mind ran a conversation she might have with James, trying to explain to him what sort of person he’d really married. She buried her face in the duvet over her drawn-up knees. She was a different person now, a better one, wasn’t she? A sharp pain stabbed her groin. She pulled back from her knees, rested on the pillow, her hands to her tiny bump. The pain began to ease to the dull but familiar ache of her period. She sobbed into the pillow. She didn’t deserve a baby and even less so because she’d wished it away. Curling into a ball, her thumb slipped into her mouth and she gently rocked herself to sleep.

  When she jerked awake, the travel clock by the bed read three a.m. in green, luminous numbers. For a few moments she lay still as fragments of a dream pulled away from her. A baby in a pram rolling down a hill but no matter how hard she ran she couldn’t quite reach it. The aching longing to save it lingered.

  The pains appeared to have gone, but she became aware of a warm dampness at the top of her legs. She eased herself up and turned back the duvet. The sheets were soaked pink and smelt faintly metallic. Her hand shot to her mouth to catch the cry as it sprang from her lips. Cold air crept up her wet legs. She shivered as she dragged herself to the bathroom.

  After a shower, she changed the bedsheets and collapsed in one of her dad’s many reading chairs in the corner of her room. She pulled a blanket over herself. A small photo of her as a child stood on the dressing table next to the lamp. She must have been nine years old, grinning at the camera, showing her newly chipped front tooth. She could still remember falling from the swing and the sensation and taste of warm blood filling her mouth.

  From a shelf above the bed, rows of her old dolls seemed to be watching her. Higher still were two jars of polished stones, like boiled sweets, used as bookends for her much-loved Enid Blyton books. She’d often read under the bedclothes to block out her parents’ arguments.

  A sharp pain etched through her groin. She cupped her tiny belly and rocked back and forth. Tears stung her eyes. She needed some more pads. Would her mother have any?

  The smell of talc made Kate’s nose tingle as she crept into her mother’s bedroom. She called gently, but Elizabeth’s slack face continued to process the air in long laboured breaths. After a few more attempts, she began to stir. Kate patted her arm and called her again, so as not to startle her. She didn’t need to tell her what was wrong. It wasn’t like there was anything either of them could do.

  ‘Mum, sorry to wake you,’ she whispered, wiping her eyes on her pyjama sleeve.

  Gradually, Elizabeth appeared to understand. She gave a low groan and glanced up, but her eyes rolled and the lids fell shut.

  ‘Mum, please,’ Kate pulled at her arm, ‘I need a pad.’ She tried not to let the tears sound in her voice.

  Slowly, Elizabeth’s eyes opened again.

  ‘Do you have any pads, something I can use?’

  ‘Bottom drawer, a new pack.’

  Kate rummaged round until she found them. StayDry for bladder weakness. She cringed. They would have to do.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Elizabeth’s voice croaked with sleep.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Kate let a short breath escape. She silently sniffed back the tears.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve started unexpectedly.’

  ‘So why are you crying?’ Elizabeth heaved herself up, so she was higher on the pillow.

  ‘I’ll be okay, Mum, it’s just my hormones.’

  ‘But is something wrong?’

  ‘I… I think I’m miscarrying.’ Her mother had always been bald with the truth: like the day she told her that their dog was dead, run over outside the house.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you say?’ Elizabeth frowned.

  Kate took a deep breath. She wished she could explain how hard it was to speak to her. ‘I went for a scan because I keep bleeding. I’m nine weeks today.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want children?’ Elizabeth’s face softened.

  ‘It was a mistake; I was sick and…’ Kate rubbed her forehead.

  Elizabeth blinked slowly as if the information had triggered a memory and she was watching it play out.

  ‘Have you told James?’ Elizabeth sank back in the pillow, a hand to her chest.

  ‘Not yet, but he won’t want it.’

  Elizabeth breathed heavily.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Kate leaned forward.

  ‘And it’s his?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Then he has to take responsibility. You can’t erase a person just like that.’ She clicked her fingers. The rows of white pin curls held together with clips threatened to break loose.

  ‘But I’m losing it and, anyway, he won’t see it like that.’

  ‘Hmmf.’ Elizabeth’s face drew back as though she’d smelt something rotting.

  Just once she wished her mother would reach out and hug her, tell her that it didn’t matter because she’d be there to help her through it. How could she possibly be the kind of mother she wanted to be without one who could show her how to do it properly? In her head she reran for the thousandth time the moment on a train to Margate when she’d been sick all over mother’s patterned dress. Sorry mummy, sorry mummy, she’d pleaded a dozen times. Her mother hadn’t shouted at her for once. Instead, she’d pulled the same face she was p
ulling now as she silently removed Kate from her lap and ignored her for the rest of the journey.

  ‘You have to tell him, that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘What’s the point if I’m losing it?’

  ‘He should know what his wife is going through, be there to support you.’ She crossed her arms.

  There were so many reasons why she shouldn’t keep this baby but talking James into it wasn’t the only part she was concerned about; the problem was she didn’t know if she could trust herself.

  Chapter Ten

  Kate woke up early on Sunday morning. James was still asleep next to her, his calm rhythmic breathing more apparent with his mouth ajar. She pushed back the duvet, padded across the wooden floor and wrapped her silk gown round her body. In the bathroom, she pushed open the window as wide as it would go and inhaled the brittle icy air deep into her lungs.

  In the kitchen, she checked her phone, but there were no more threats, thank God. She called the surgery and left a message for the midwife to say she was bleeding a lot more, then she switched on the kettle and took out a pan, two eggs and the last of the bacon. It was becoming a daily habit to check out of the window for any sign she was being watched. Was she being paranoid? An empty plastic bag blowing about on the green snagged on a branch high up in a lime tree across the road and billowed helplessly in the wind. No sign of him, but with every message she could feel him closing in on her. It was almost worse when he was silent, wondering what he was planning next. She had a sick feeling that sending him any amount of money was not going to be enough to stop his need to punish her. But this was the first morning for weeks she hadn’t felt nauseous. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if it was anxiety or morning sickness. Could the pregnancy be over? Was it crazy to mourn something that had hardly existed?