The Family Gift

by Cathy Kelly

  ‘I can’t get it out of my head,’ says distraught Freya, forty-two, one-time winner of the Sexiest Chef of the Year award. Leggy, blonde Freya, whose cool good looks mean she’s known as ‘Viking’, was knocked to the ground and had several bones broken and insists that if it wasn’t for a victim support group, she’d be living in terror.

  For the first few days after ‘My Secret Horror: Viking Freya Mugged’, Lorraine is on the phone all the time. Crisis management, she calls it.

  ‘I’m fed up of crisis management, Lorraine,’ I say. ‘I want non-crisis management, what’s that?’

  ‘I think that’s what happens when you go out on a Friday night and get scuttered,’ says Lorraine, straightforward as ever.

  Uber-agent Paddy Ashmore in the UK has put us on to a fabulous publicity team who work with Lorraine because I am not discussing anything again until I want to. Saying no to people is a full-time job.

  Dan hugs me a lot and says: ‘I don’t know why we trusted Nina in the first place.’

  I always thought there was something wrong with her, says Mildred.

  No, you didn’t, I tell Mildred. You thought she was fabulous. You were entirely taken in by her and wished you were her when you grew up, even though she’s at least, I don’t know, fifteen years younger than we are, or a hundred years older if she’s made a Faustian pact, which is a possibility.

  OK, Mildred agrees. She dazzled me a little bit with all the ‘you can have the universe if you just learn how to do social media’ stuff. I was taken in by her.

  We both were, I say. Actually, you and me are really the same thing. You do realise that? You are my inner voice.

  Mildred says nothing. She knows she’s my inner voice. She just does this to amuse us both.

  I think the crisis management is just about managed.

  But what’s amazing to me are the emails and messages and tweets of support from real people who say they understand how I feel.

  I was attacked and I didn’t leave the house for a year. You made me feel normal, Freya, thank you.

  My daughter was mugged and she has never been the same again. She’s terrified. I showed her your story and she wants to write to you. If you can get through it, she can.

  Tell us the real story because that’s what we need, Freya, not the pretend stuff on social media.

  I’ve had body issues my whole life and it got much worse two years ago when I became obsessed with having lovely Instagram pictures. I pretend I eat loads but I don’t. I weigh six stone. My doctor says I’m anorexic and I need to go into hospital.

  There were hundreds of them and once the story began to move on social media, it grew and grew. I was sent stories of pain and suffering; stories that people hid because who wants to hear about the pain of real life in the ‘happy insta-world’? And all of these people said that my story helped because it was a real story in the celebrity world where everything was supposed to be perfect.

  I wanted to answer them all and could see a whole new job for me opening up: one where I allowed myself to be who I really was, because that seemed to help people.

  I wrote to everyone, posted, Instagrammed and then one day, I told my growing number of fans about my new recipe book and my Fear of the Dark Chocolate Cake, and everything went crazy.

  23

  Do one thing every day to make yourself happy

  My mother isn’t one of life’s texters – when she needs to talk, she phones, but today, when I’m doing the final checking of book lists for the children for going back to school in September, just two weeks away, she texts.

  Freya, can you come round later today, this evening perhaps, when Dan’s home. I need to talk to you.

  Of course, I reply instantly and follow it up with What’s wrong?

  Nothing is wrong, my mother texts back quickly.

  And that’s it, radio silence.

  Dan is home late. Teddy is in bed or in other words, Teddy is getting up and out of bed every five minutes demanding stories, glasses of water, glasses of milk, that she needs to go to the toilet and would somebody please come and tell her another story. Liam is drawing and Lexi is reading. She does a lot more reading these days and it’s been helpful in the light of my ‘terrible trauma’, as she didn’t read all the rubbish, and we were able to tell her that I was fine and that making things sound much worse is a lot like making things sound fabulous when they’re not. Fake.

  ‘I might be late,’ I say, kissing him goodbye. ‘It’s the tone of her text. She’s the only person I know who manages to get tone in her text and she just sounded off.’

  I drive quickly to Summer Street and let myself in. I call quietly to Mum because I don’t want to frighten her. There’s no sound of Eddie stomping around, thank goodness, so he might be watching one of his military TV programmes. Scarlett, who hasn’t gone home since she moved here, is at her dance class, so the person sitting in the kitchen must be my mother.

  I listen and hear loud battle noises emanating from the tiny sitting room. Eddie’s watching something about the Second World War and the taking of a bridge or something that requires lots of blowing up things. Granny’s probably still reading. She loves novels, although she’s on to the big print novels these days and she has a special stand for the books so she doesn’t exhaust her poor hands holding them up.

  ‘She’s very gone on those romantic ones,’ Maura once said to me. ‘I don’t understand it, how can you be her age and still think the prince is going to whisk you away?’

  Mum had smiled. ‘Aren’t we all twenty-five somewhere in our hearts,’ she says.

  ‘Mum,’ I say now.

  ‘Here, darling,’ she says, appearing at the door of the kitchen. ‘Come in.’

  I go into the kitchen and for once it feels cold and unloved. It’s a little untidy, which is quite unlike my mother who tidies up as she goes, and is a great fan of lighting the odd candle in the kitchen in the evening.

  Mum looks, I realise, absolutely shattered. I can see the hollows of her eye sockets as if she is about to paint herself for a fancy dress Dia de Muertos.

  Her hair, once a beautiful white blonde, just looks white now, and with her pale face, she’s beginning to look old. Old before her time.

  I want to cry and that’s before I notice she’s not wearing any of her lovely jewellery. Mum loves jewellery – she’d go to hell and back for some old turquoise bit of a necklace with a feather attached to it and a few little bits of crystals dangling off it. Tonight, there is not so much as an earring on her person.

  ‘Do you want herbal tea?’ she says.

  ‘You sit down,’ I say. ‘I’ll make tea.’

  She sinks into the big chair at the head of the table with a sigh so big it sounds as if she might never get up. I wait until I have made the tea and sit down beside her, taking one of her hands in mine.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I say.

  ‘I hate laying this on you, Freya,’ she says, ‘it’s not fair because there is Scarlett, Maura and Con, but you are the person I go to first. It’s not really right, is it? But parents sometimes do that and you have always been the person I went to, I’m sorry. That was wrong of me.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t wrong of you,’ I say. ‘You’d be talking to Scarlett if she wasn’t just getting back on her feet and Maura is very focused on the solution, so if you have a problem, she’s determined to have it fixed about four seconds after you tell her about it. It’s a very masculine energy, I always think.’

  Mum nods, her lips shaking a bit as if she might just cry.

  ‘And Con,’ I say. ‘Con’s too busy trying to find the perfect woman.’

  This elicits a laugh.

  ‘Don’t think there is a perfect woman for Con. I think he found the perfect woman years ago, but he just couldn’t recognise her, what with all the imperfect women he keeps finding,’ I joke.


  I pour her tea, hand it over to her and our fingers touch. I think it’s the touch that does it because suddenly she lets go of the cup, puts her hands on the table, rests her head on them and begins to sob.

  ‘Oh Freya, I can’t do this. I, I thought I could look after your father but I’m the wrong person to do it, because I am going to hurt him. He is going to get a pressure sore or he’s going to choke on some food because his ability to swallow is going, or something is going to happen that I’m not going to be able to sort out. I was so stupid,’ she says.

  ‘You’re never stupid, Mum,’ I say gently. ‘You love him.’

  ‘I thought love could fix everything, but he has medical needs and I can’t fulfil them. I’ve been putting it off but I know there is no other way: he has to go back to full-time care, where they can look after him properly.’

  She can’t speak for a few moments as the sobs come.

  I say nothing but just keep hugging, knowing the story will come out when she’s able to go on.

  ‘The occupational therapist was in yesterday and we had a talk,’ she says. ‘We need so much more equipment to keep him safe here and it would be like turning the house into a hospital and having medical staff on all the time and I could still mess up. He could have another stroke, probably will, and what would we do? The list of things that could go wrong is endless and I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You’re going to do what’s right for Dad,’ I say, holding on to my calm.

  ‘But I thought this was the right thing for him, being with him, loving him.’

  ‘And it was for a while but not anymore,’ I point out. ‘That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. You have given him everything and you can still continue to give him so much love, but it just won’t be here.’

  ‘But I want it to be in our home.’

  ‘And yet it can’t be, Mum,’ I say. I know my job here – I have to help her through this pain.

  ‘I’ve tried so hard, I’ve tried to keep up a happy face and make it look as though I was handling it all but . . .’

  I smile at her gently.

  ‘Mum, I was doing that for months after being mugged, pretending it was all fine. I know there’s no comparison between that and poor Dad, but the truth is the same: sometimes putting on the happy face isn’t the answer.’

  Even as I say it, I know this is startlingly true.

  ‘Sometimes, we are powerless and we just have to let go of this false sense of control and say, no, I’m not coping. I don’t feel great today, I can’t do this . . . What helped me was my support group and you don’t even have time for that.’

  I think of all the people like my mother who are carers, who truly go through tragedy day after day and do it with such courage no matter how exhausted they are. And what helps them most is to be honest and to say when they cannot cope.

  ‘Mum, we have to protect Dad and if that means he cannot be cared for here, then he cannot be cared for here, OK?’

  ‘I thought you’d hate me for saying that,’ she says, ‘because I told everyone for so long that I would look after him and it would be fine.’

  ‘Mum, you’re one person,’ I say. ‘You can’t do everything. Eddie and Granny Bridget were quite enough. But add someone as neurologically and physically disabled as Dad, and you can’t manage. Let’s all sit down, put our heads together and find out the best place for Dad.

  ‘You gave him time at home in his own home where he’s been loved and now he will be somewhere else where he will be loved, but where he will be safe, medically speaking. Because that’s something you can’t give him anymore, no matter how much you love him.’

  ‘OK,’ she’s nodding now and I grab some tissues from the table and hand them to her. ‘I was afraid you’d think I was a coward.’

  ‘You’re far from a coward, Mum,’ I say. ‘Now, how about tomorrow we talk to Scarlett, Con and Maura.’

  ‘I think Con is going away for a long weekend.’

  And suddenly we both laugh in the way you laugh in the middle of great pain.

  ‘Is he ever going to settle down?’ I say.

  ‘Probably,’ says Mum, ‘some day. He has to do his own thing, find his own way.’

  ‘Maybe we all frightened him off relationships with women for life,’ I say. And now Mum really laughs.

  ‘He loves the very bones of you all,’ she says. ‘He’s not frightened of marriage for life, he’s just being a complete brat, thinking he’s the eternal bachelor.’

  ‘I think you should tell him that, Mum,’ I say. ‘Tell him you expect grandchildren and a proper relationship and none of this messing around anymore. That’s your next mission, sorting him out.’

  ‘Freya, I don’t do interfering in my children’s lives.’

  ‘The three of us managed all right without you, but I think Con is a hopeless case. Now, I’m going to text the other three and we’ll set up something for tomorrow night.’

  ‘Fine,’ she says.

  I text everyone and added for them not to ring, just said briefly what it was about. Mum can talk to Scarlett when she gets home.

  ‘There,’ I say to her, ‘it’s done.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you Freya,’ she says.

  There’s a rattle of keys in the front door and Scarlett appears.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, breathless. Her dance class is pure exercise and she says it helps her to sleep. In her tiny T-shirt and footless dance tights, she looks like a blonde Lexi.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just having tea,’ I say. ‘You look great, lovie. If I get time some night, will you take me dancing or is it such an intense workout, I’d pass out?’

  ‘You’d pass out,’ she says, hugging me. ‘It’s taken me ages to be able to stand the pace but do please come. I’ll take care of you if you need a rest.’

  ‘The three of us can go, then,’ I said, grabbing Mum’s hand. ‘You to show us how it’s done, me to pass out and Mum to watch and laugh.’

  Scarlett sits down and I look at her glowing face and think that her glow comes from more than dancing.

  ‘Tell me?’ I say.

  She beams at us both.

  ‘He didn’t want to come in because he’s afraid he wouldn’t be welcome but I met Jack tonight.’

  Mum reaches out and grabs Scarlett’s hand.

  ‘If he still loves you, phone him this second and get him back here,’ says Mum.

  Scarlett reaches into her pocket for her phone and sends a text.

  ‘He says he left because we weren’t people anymore – we were this baby-making unit. Us both swallowing vitamin pills and we were lost. That’s why he left. But he loves me.’

  Mum is calm.

  ‘Of course he loves you, Scarlett. Doesn’t mean it’s easy though.’

  ‘No,’ I agree, ‘doesn’t mean it’s easy.’

  *

  September always seems like the beginning of the year to me – it’s the beginning of the school year, and once the leaves begin to turn gold, I feel an excitement at the newness of everything.

  Lexi’s doing important exams this year, so I think she needs a boost with her new family to help her start the year.

  Which is code for her not going back into school with no mention of Elisa, who has been off the radar since news broke of her pregnancy.

  I phone Adele.

  ‘I gave Adele your number a while ago,’ Dan admits. ‘I think she’s too nervous to use it.’

  I laugh so loud I feel an unused stomach muscle ache.

  You must put ‘do sit-ups’ on your ‘to do’ list, Mildred intones.

  I ignore her.

  ‘How about we have dinner in our house on Friday and Elisa and possibly the new boyfriend come along?’

  ‘We haven’t met him,’ says Adele faintly, as if
she’d met too many of Elisa’s men already. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

  ‘You could bring your sons and their wives, and their sons . . .’

  I let the idea percolate.

  ‘Lexi would have more of your family there. People who want to see her. Let her feel loved, wanted.’

  ‘They’d love that. There’s Tony and his wife, Jo, and their twin sons, Michael and Cooper. They’re eleven, great boys, high energy. Marcus is the eldest and his wife is Lois, who’s pregnant, and she has Joshua, who’s fifteen and studies night and day. He’s quiet, very gentle. They’ll all be at your door happily. Tony and Marcus hated that they weren’t allowed to meet Lexi and you all that time in our house. But,’ she adds, ‘I don’t know what Elisa has organised for the week. She’s back and is going to parties all the time and meeting up with friends and . . .’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say calmly and in the background, Mildred giggles. Mildred recognises the steel inside me. ‘I’ll invite her and if she can come, she can come. Friday night our house, it will be very casual, very relaxed.’

  ‘I can do casual,’ says Adele.

  I laugh. ‘Promise,’ I said, ‘because I will be wearing jeans.’

  ‘I have jeans.’

  ‘Good, you could even bring over the dog, that would help. Lexi wants her own dog.’

  ‘Oh, we can get her a dog,’ Adele says eagerly.

  ‘No!’ I say. ‘That has to be a family decision and we are working on it . . .’

  ‘Of course. I’m not trying to interfere,’ replies Adele quickly.

  ‘I know you’re not. Just leave it all up to me. I’m hoping half six, a quarter to seven. I know that’s early for you guys but Teddy is only four, although she behaves as though she’s twenty-six and she does need to go to bed earlier or she gets very grisly.’

  ‘No problem, we’ll be there,’ says Adele.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ I say. I hang up. Another thing ticked off my list.

  On Friday, the menu planned, food purchased and ready to be cooked, my hair has been blow-dried into enviable and unusual straightness and I’ve had an actual manicure.