by Frances Vick
‘What was that, Ms Holloway?’ The elder policeman leaned towards her. ‘Did you say something?’
‘That’s her. That’s my mum.’
‘Would you like to ask us any questions?’
Jen kept her eyes closed. ‘What do I do next? The funeral?’
‘We’ll tell you when the body can be released,’ the elder one told her.
Jenny opened her eyes a little. ‘What? What does that mean?’
‘Well, there’ll be a post-mortem.’
‘Why?’
‘To ascertain the cause of death,’ said the younger officer sadly.
‘But, you said she fell. That’s what happened, right?’ Jenny’s voice rose, and she turned from the glass. ‘It was an accident. The policeman this morning told me so. You said that yourself!’
‘Ms Holloway, any unexplained death has to be investigated.’ The elder one looked at her kindly. ‘It’s routine. Please don’t let it upset you.’
Jenny laughed then, a short, sharp mirthless bark. ‘Oh my god, I couldn’t do your job,’ she muttered. ‘I really couldn’t.’ Then she closed her eyes, leaned against the glass again, and when she opened them, she seemed calmer. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be… horrible or anything; I don’t want to make your day even worse, you know?’
‘Can we give you a lift back home, Miss Holloway?’
‘No.’ She took some deep breaths. ‘No, I have to… what did they say? I have to pick up her personal effects. Her teeth – her bridgework – came out, they told me.’ She stopped suddenly, blinked. ‘Actually, maybe I should go home. Yes. Shouldn’t I?’
The younger officer took her by the elbow; the older one handed her a tissue.
As they walked back to the car park, she noticed that the cafe in the foyer was called The Spice of Life. Under other circumstances this would have made her laugh, but not today.
4
You Can’t Go Home Again
What does a person think about on the morning their mother dies? What will I remember? Some people get a call from a relative, or the hospital. Some people are there, at the deathbed, to hear, miss, hate or cherish those last moments. I didn’t get any of that.
Death happens, and to some it’s a shock, to others a release, but I haven’t found the word yet. Is there a word for it? Maybe there are a lot of words for it. Maybe I need to use all those words.
Writing helps. My therapist has taught me that. She used the analogy of trepanning. ‘Let the evil spirit out. It will be painful. It will be against your instincts.’ I made some lame joke about her boring holes into my skull, but she didn’t laugh. ‘You’re using humour to deflect attention,’ she said. ‘Release is against your instincts, feeling pain and acknowledging injury – it’s against your instincts. It’s not how you brought yourself up.’ I must have paled, because that line did bore right into me. I did Bring Myself Up. I am self-made. But, sometimes – often – especially now, I feel like a child’s first attempt at pottery – all misshapen and dented. The kind of thing only a mother would be proud of.
Let me tell you about my mum. Let me pull her out of this snarl, and set her upright in front of you. It’s important that she’s rescued from the mess her life became. She wasn’t just a mess. She wasn’t always a mess. She was wonderful. She was tall, like me, and lean. She looked like someone who ran, someone who worked out, even though she didn’t. I’ve inherited that from her. I’m very lucky.
When I was small we would dance together. She had all these old records, singles from the 80s and 90s, 12 inches and albums. She’d put them on her little turntable and we’d dance to them – even the things you couldn’t really dance to, like Nirvana and this other band called Chinaski. She was related to the singer somehow. I forget how. When she danced she’d shake her head and her hair – wavy pre-Raphaelite hair – would show all it’s different russety shades. The light would come in through the kitchen window and shine through her hair like a stained-glass window. I thought she was beautiful. She was beautiful.
She sometimes used to pick me up from primary school and, when she did, she always wore dresses or skirts and blouses, never trousers, and her lean legs were pretty as a fawn’s. Her skin was this beautiful matte golden colour, with little freckles, like a sprinkling of nutmeg, over her nose. I was so proud to be seen with her! Proud and loved and warm. Other kids’ mothers were dumpy, or angry, or just not there, but my mum was so vivid. She was someone you remembered. Just looking at her did you good.
We used to go to Scarborough on holidays with Auntie K and her daughters (my mum’s step-auntie, really, so my great aunt). K’s boyfriend then was a big man called Granville who managed a hotel – The Windsor Castle it was called – and we’d stay for free – all crammed into two adjoining rooms. Mum kept all her 2p’s aside so I could use them in the penny falls at the arcade. At night we’d stay up in the hotel bar, and Granville would make sure we had all the Pepsi we could drink. Mum and Auntie K might have a few drinks and sing. They both had lovely singing voices. The first time I heard Dusty Springfield, I thought, That’s my mum!
It was just me and Mum, and it was perfect that way. We were poor, but so was everyone we knew, and at least my mum had a job – she worked as a receptionist at a dentist’s surgery in town, and sometimes in a pub at night. She was very particular about her appearance – ironed hems, lacquered nails. Hair always washed and shiny. A little slick of lipstick.
Then she fell in love. She fell hard.
Right from the start I didn’t like him. I knew he was a Bad Man. And with him around, things changed. She stopped singing. She started drinking more. One day I came back from school and she’d cut her hair off. I know it sounds silly, but it was as if all her strength was in that hair, and when she had it cut into a nondescript mum-helmet she started fading, fading fast. I date her decline from the haircut. The long, passive slide, hastened by The Bad Man, into what was the rest of her life.
I was thinking about her hair when the policeman was talking to me through the bathroom door, those glossy waves with the little glints of copper and gold. It seemed to hang in front of my eyes, beautifully, impossibly bright, and I wanted to tell him all about her: about her laugh and how she danced, about Scarborough, and how, on the beach, she’d let me bury her in the sand and then lurch out like a monster to play-scare me. She would be younger than I am now. Just a kid herself really, trying her best to raise me right, working hard to make me happy. I wanted them to understand, you know? This was not just a dead woman with a stretched-out broken neck. This was my mum, with her long legs and her wide smile and her ability to raise one eyebrow, and her dirty laugh and her glorious, glorious hair. You can’t explain that to people though, can you? Not to the police anyway.
Someone can just... die. Someone can just cease to exist. Blink and they’re gone. The last time I saw my mum, she’d been firing on all cylinders, spitting gin and slinging barbs, and now what? She went for a walk and died. She was there, and now she’s not. Someone that vivid paled away to nothing? How can something natural feel so insane?
In the mortuary, I was alone with her one last time. But she didn’t look like my mum. I couldn’t even look at her for very long. It wasn’t her. It was a body.
And that’s when I began to cry, and just thought over and over Mum, Mum I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
XOXO Jay.
Jenny read the last line, mouthed the words silently to herself. Then she hit publish.
Freddie knocked on the study door, came in, and sat on the desk.
‘Can you eat?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Blog post?’
She nodded.
‘Is that a good idea though? You don’t have to share everything right away.’
‘Oh, well, you know. It helps me to write,’ she told him.
‘I know. I know it does.’ He squeezed her limp palm briefly. ‘What can I do?’
‘Just carry on being lovely.’ She smiled at hi
m.
‘I just hope you won’t get any crazies,’ he said.
‘Oh, I won’t,’ she told him firmly. ‘They’re good people.’
‘OK, but let me monitor it, OK? Go and have a bath. Relax, try to have a nap? I don’t want anyone to have a go at you.’
The first pings of response sounded within the hour. Regular readers rushing to Jenny’s virtual side. Freddie kept an eye on the messages as he filled the dishwasher, happy to see that people were being nice. Apparently the post had helped Christie from Pontefract cry for the first time since her own mother’s death two years before – ‘RELEASE of tension!’; Liz from Braintree sent LOVE, and Maya Jayasinghe wrote (or cut and pasted) a touching haiku. Lisa Pike-was-Shay sent a link on an article about grief from the Daily Mail; ilovemykids1982 was concerned that Jay was putting too much pressure on herself to keep up the blog: ‘You have enough on your plate with the counselling training, as well as work and the grieving process. TAKE TIME TO HEAL!!’ but Trish Cole from Dover felt that the busier she was, the better, and signed off: ‘From one neurotic to another, I appreciate your courage!’ All the messages were positive. All expressed their absolute belief that Jenny was a Strong, Remarkable Woman who would Get Through This.
But then it all seemed to go wrong.
Theehedgewitch: How did mum fall? Was she drunk? Drugs?
Ilovemykids1982: what? NOYB
Theehedgewitch: just asking unexplained death suicide?
Ilovemykids1982: Oh my god crawl back under your rock!
Theehedgewitch: All I can say is that at the end of the day you have one mother and that’s it, why weren’t she looking after her??? Why was she alone???
EmmajCrawford: awful news but @Theehedgewitch has a point. When my mother was sick I was there for her fair question imho
Theehedgewitch: THanku! Just sayin
Ilovemykids1982: ffs!! If you think she wasn’t! The whole blog is about that! Read dont troll :-(
Lilagracee: A quick archive search would have told you that Jay did everything she could to help her mum, she gave up her job and everything to look after her! Does that sound like someone who doesn’t care @Theehedgewitch??
Ilovemykids1982: Thanks @Lilagracee. For you newbies there Jay has been through a lot and weve all been on the journey with her so walk a mile in her shoes!
Lilagracee: Exactly. For example: I’m experimenting with pureed food. I’m like the mother of the world’s largest baby – even Mum has to laugh! Today it was pumpkin, broccoli and sweetcorn (I know, right? Delicious.) What delicacy can I prepare for tomorrow? Carrots peas and kale? *shudders* In other news I borrowed some power tools and put up the handles she needs beside the bath and at the top of the stairs. I’m becoming quite the renaissance woman! Joking aside, Mum is making improvements day by day. I’m so proud of her! The MRI shows that she has scarring from previous mini strokes, which is why we have to be very careful, but the physio is definitely getting easier for her to manage. I can’t thank you enough for all your messages of support! But, keep them coming! I need you guys!
ilovemykids1982: its just humbling
Theehedgewitch: you call me a troll but i’m entitled to my opinion there is such a thing as online bullying you know
ilovemykids1982: OMFG
Lilagracee: @Theehedgewitch Police always investigate an unexplained death UK law doesn’t mean anything suspicious
Laundryloony2: Disgusting that Jay is being cross examined in this way!
HollybFootitt: She’s just asking a question tho, no reason to jump on her imo
Laundryloony2: Oh really how would you feel if your mother just died and you were asked this???
HollybFootitt: My mother passed when I was a child, actually so don’t talk to me about it
Laundryloony2: Just goes to show!!!!
HollybFootitt: ????
Lilagracee: I really don’t think this is necessary, come on ladies
Ilovemykids1982: Theehedgewitch I hope your mum dies bitch
HollybFootitt: WTF??
A few years earlier, after she dropped out of university, Jenny often visited Freddie in London, where he was sharing a flat with five bisexual anthropology students and a bashful, bemused Greek. She wasn’t doing much at the time, just kicking her heels at Sal’s house and applying for temping jobs, but somewhere along the line she must have mentioned something vague about ‘maybe writing some stories or something’ and that’s where the ‘Jenny is a writer’ idea came from. Every time she visited, without fail (usually at last orders at the student union bar), Freddie would bring out his tub and start thumping; she was talented! Seriously, in school? She was so good. Inventive. Seriously! Tell her, will you? Then they’d have another drink, head to a club and all careers advice was put on hold until the next hungover morning. When he graduated and moved back home – well, not home, but the nearest city, where Jenny was working as a receptionist in a doctors’ surgery, his ambition for her coalesced into a firm objective. It wasn’t right that she was wasting herself on stupid menial jobs. You’re better than that.
‘This whole benign bully thing? You can stop that any time you want you know,’ she told him.
They were moving Freddie into his new flat. Very grown up. But then Freddie had done what you’re supposed to do and had finished university, and his parents, Ruth and Graham, had done what parents are supposed to do and helped him with a deposit to buy a flat.
‘You’ve got to be cruel to be kind.’ Freddie had aped the local accent.
‘You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.’ Jenny’s pale face had shone with sweat as she struggled with a box marked ‘Kitchen shit’.
‘Fortune favours the bold.’ Freddie took the box off her.
‘Good. Better. Best. Bested,’ she replied smugly.
‘Now, you see, I don’t even know what that means,’ Freddie told her. ‘So that proves you’re cleverer than me, and you shouldn’t be on minimum wage. So, in a very real sense, I’m brilliant.’
‘I like it there,’ she lied. ‘The people are nice.’
‘It’s between the magistrates’ court and the dole office. Literally nobody there is nice.’
‘You’re a snob,’ she told him, smiling, and passed him a beer.
‘I’m not though. I’m…’ She watched his expression descend from happy banter to serious pondering, and felt herself tense. ‘It’s not snobbery. It’s worry.’ He swigged his beer and turned to her. ‘Have you thought about talking to someone?’ This was the new tack he’d decided to take with her: her lack of ambition was a psychological issue that could be fixed. ‘Not finishing university. Jen, you broke down for a reason—’
‘I didn’t break down. I quit. That’s all. I couldn’t afford the debt.’ She frowned at a handful of knives. ‘We don’t all have to go to university.’
‘Put that down, will you?’ Freddie took the box from her, put it on the work surface. ‘We’ve never really talked about what happened.’
‘That’s because nothing happened.’ Jenny frowned. ‘I just got sick of it. I wanted to get a proper job—’
‘Living the dream, dishing out methadone scripts and scrubbing up tramp vomit?’
‘Someone’s got to do these jobs, Fred.’
‘You’re right. But that someone doesn’t have to be you. You’re better than that. It’s like you’re punishing yourself or something—’
‘You need to lay off the self-help books.’
‘Well, maybe you could do with reading a few,’ he told her. ‘Or maybe talking to a proper counsellor would help? Something’s holding you back. The refuge? That had to be tough; I mean you were only fourteen? Fifteen…?’
Her face hardened. ‘You see, that’s exactly what I don’t like about the whole counselling idea. Poking about in the past, looking for something to blame everything on. It’s-it’s childish.’
‘So, Marc, your mum drinking, the refuge… none of that hurt you in any way, is that what you’re saying?’ Freddie
asked her softly. ‘Nothing to see here, move on. Is that it?’
‘It’s just paying someone to whine at them,’ she muttered.
‘OK, would you say that if it was me that was going for counselling? Would you call it whining then?’
‘No. But—’
‘There you are then.’ Freddie’s face shone pink and smug. He drained his beer. ‘Look, I’m back now, I’m on your doorstep, and I’m not going to quit. I’m giving you fair warning. This is my thing now. It’s Project Jen from now on.’
‘It’s expensive though. I’d only get five sessions free,’ Jenny frowned, but she was wavering. Freddie pressed his advantage.
‘I’ll lend you the money.’
‘Well. There’s Cheryl, the woman who does counselling sessions at the surgery. She’s nice…’ began Jenny doubtfully. ‘I could see if she takes private clients—’
‘Do it,’ Freddie told her, took her empty bottle and replaced it with a full one. ‘Just give it a go?’
‘No. It’s stupid.’
Freddie shook his head gravely. ‘It’s not. Stupid is wasting your life. Stupid is giving up on yourself. And that’s what you’ve been doing for the last few years. Admit it.’
Later, when Jenny started training to become a counsellor herself, it was Freddie who brought up the idea of blogging. ‘“Counselling journey?”’ She winced.
‘OK, all right, it sounds cheesy but think about it. When you started this whole thing, navigating all the different training paths was so hard you nearly quit before you began, remember? If there’d been a blog or a site or whatever, where you could see someone else was having the same kind of experiences, it would’ve helped wouldn’t it? And blogging might, I don’t know, give you a creative outlet.’