by Tammy Cohen
After Frances had finally gone, popping up to see Em quickly on the way out, as she’d said, I dashed off a text to Kath.
Just chucked Frances. Feel like a cow!
Then I also made my way upstairs to see Emma. She was on her bed, her laptop on her thighs, a pair of outsize headphones covering her ears.
I perched on the mattress next to her and stroked her head, my fingers seeking out that soft fuzz of new growth in the circular patches where the hair had fallen out.
‘You know, darling, it’s lovely you and Frances have got so close, but I’d have preferred to keep Rosie’s love life between us.’
Em’s eyes grew wide and I rushed to reassure her.
‘It’s okay, really. I understand that you have a connection with Frances. And I know we owe her so much. I’m just saying we could maybe do with creating a little bit of distance, just while we focus on repairing our little family.’
‘I think she’s lonely,’ Em said then, looking miserable. ‘That’s why she likes coming here.’
I leaned forward and gave her a squeeze, becoming tangled up in the cord of the headphones.
‘You’re such a softie,’ I said, into her hair. ‘Don’t ever lose that.’
The conversation with Em discomfited me. Frances was probably a bit lonely. She had to spend long periods of time looking after her mum, and her best friend had moved away. I remembered the glib text I’d sent to Kath and wished I hadn’t written it.
My guilt was compounded when, an hour or so later, I saw Frances had posted a new photograph to her Instagram page, a selfie with Em she must have taken when she nipped up to see her on her way out.
Funny how the world works in such a random way, she’d written. This is E, and I can’t say how we were thrown together, as it’s not my story to tell. But I know we’ll always be an important part of each other’s lives. #SoulSistas #UnbreakableBond
36
When people talk about the menopause, it’s about the hot flushes and the mood swings. What no one tells you about are the pains that shoot up your legs suddenly in the night, like electric shocks. What no one tells you about is how long a night can seem when every second that passes is a different regret dredged from the mud of the past. They don’t mention the mornings when you feel at once both heavy but also hollowed out, as if you’ve spent the night pushing a boulder up a hill, only for it to slip right back down to where you started.
I was still worried about Em and worried about me and what it said about my state of mind that I’d been so ready to believe Stephens had targeted Rosie. That message I’d sent him, Please don’t hurt my daughter, was like a bad taste in my mouth I couldn’t get rid of. I agonized that I might have upset Frances, but also, conversely, that I hadn’t made myself clear enough.
‘I’m a horrible human being,’ I told Nick as I put the hummus back in the fridge. We had fallen into a habit of talking on the phone in the early afternoons when he was on lunch break at the university and Emma was still at school. Since my weird late-night email earlier that week I’d questioned whether a note of wariness had crept into his voice that wasn’t there before, but I told myself I was just being paranoid.
‘You’re not horrible. It’s only natural you should want to ringfence your family, after everything that’s happened.’
‘Yes, but we owe everything to Frances. If she hadn’t come along …’
‘Then maybe someone else would have.’
He was right, but then Nick hadn’t been here that night Frances appeared on the doorstep, with her arm around my sobbing daughter. He hadn’t felt that gut-tearing wave of gratitude that swept over me as I realized what had happened, and what worse things might have happened if she hadn’t come along. In that moment, I would have given that woman anything. No reward could possibly be enough for what she’d done.
And now here I was, trying to pull away from her, just because I had failed to set any boundaries.
After Nick had rung off, I made myself a cup of tea and sat down in front of my computer, scrolling idly through my social media timelines. Emma was going out after school and for some reason having an unbroken stretch of time to work always made me less productive rather than more. Twitter was full of outrage. Another male celebrity had just fallen foul of the #metoo movement, and Piers Morgan was embroiled in a new controversy. I clicked on my Facebook page with trepidation, still half expecting some vitriolic message from Stephens, but all was calm – just the usual posts about cute pets and endless pictures of other people’s holidays. The faces we paint on to our real ones to show to the world.
I finally got down to work but struggled to write. Frances was still very much on my mind. Had I upset her? Had I got my message across? Worry for my parents was also a constant distraction, throbbing like toothache under the surface of my thoughts. Finally, late afternoon, when the sun was low and, through the window, our concrete yard was entirely in shadow, I gave up and logged on to the webcam in my parents’ house, my heart sinking as I found my mother in mid-rant at my father. Hard to believe now that they’d rarely said a cross word to each other all the time I was growing up.
‘You’re lazy. You’ve always been lazy. Lazy lump of lard. Sack of potatoes. Nincompoop!’
I smiled at that one. When was the last time anyone even used that word?
My dad was in his usual chair, legs stretched out, fast asleep.
Amazing how he could sleep through that racket.
Now Mum picked up her stick from next to her chair and started prodding him with it.
‘Wake up, mister. I’m hungry. Mister, wake up.’
Her voice was completely different now, wheedling, like a young child’s. And I realized she’d completely forgotten who he was. Who she was too. How did he bear it?
Prod, went the stick into his thigh. Prod, into his arm.
Unease stirred inside me like a waking cat.
‘WAKE UP!’ my mother screamed, leaning over to jam the stick into his stomach.
Nothing.
Oh no.
Oh no oh no oh no oh no.
I ran for my phone, which I’d left in the living room, praying that when I got back I’d see my dad stretching and coming blearily back to consciousness. But when I glanced next at the screen he hadn’t moved.
Scrolling frenziedly through my contacts, I found the entry for Sandra, my parents’ key-holding neighbour.
‘I think something’s happened to my dad!’
Sandra stayed on the phone while she dug out the key to my parents’ house. Meanwhile, I watched the screen with my stomach knotted. My eyes were fixed on my dad’s chest. Was it moving?
My mother had given up her onslaught on my father and was engrossed in whatever was on the television.
‘I’m just going in now,’ Sandra told me, and a second or two later I saw her ash-blonde bob onscreen entering my parents’ living room from the hallway.
She hurried over to the armchair where my dad was and knelt down beside him, holding his hand. As soon as I saw her face, I knew. I just knew.
‘Oh, Tessa.’ Sandra’s face as she looked up at the camera was already shiny with tears. ‘I’m so sorry.’
My mother, who up until now had been oblivious to what was going on, now turned to Sandra.
‘Have you come to make my tea, dear? I’m starving. They don’t feed me here.’
I didn’t look at her. My eyes were still glued to the unmoving figure in the chair.
‘Tessa, I’m going to ring off now,’ said Sandra in a low, unsteady voice. ‘I need to call the doctor. Get things sorted. I assume you’ll be coming straight over?’
I nodded numbly. Then remembered she couldn’t see me.
‘Yes. But Sandra …’
‘Yes?’
‘I can’t see his face. Is he peaceful? Did he suffer?’
‘No, Tess. He looks grand.’
She rang off then. But I carried on watching without sound as Sandra, still on her knees, jabbed numbers on her phone keypad and my
mother, agitated now, continued to berate her from her chair.
I put out a fingertip and traced the length of my father’s leg that stretched out from the chair.
A hole opened up in my chest and I felt myself falling through it.
37
‘Thank goodness you’re here, Tessa. They won’t let me see your father. They’re keeping him from me.’
It was one of the great ironies that, at the very time when the detachment from reality that dementia brings would have been of most benefit to my mother, it decided to temporarily loosen its grip.
‘I’m so sorry, Mum. He’s dead. He’s gone.’
‘But gone where? He wouldn’t leave me without saying anything.’
It was the day after Dad’s death and we had spent the whole morning going around in the same heartbreaking circle.
At least Mum was spared the worst of it, unaware that my parents’ GP, Dr Ali, believed Dad had deliberately overdosed. The dial on his insulin pen had been turned up to ten times its normal level.
‘I’m afraid rates of depression in patients with diabetes are twice as high as in the normal population,’ Dr Ali had told me the previous evening. He’d been at the house when I arrived, overseeing what needed to be done. ‘And add to that the circumstances of your father’s life – a full-time carer to a woman who, let’s be honest, wasn’t always as kind as she could be.’
He’d seen my face.
‘Not through any fault of hers, of course. What I’m saying is that your poor father had a lot on his plate and perhaps it all just got too much for him. Even the strongest of us have moments where everything seems overwhelming.’
Guilt had flooded through my veins, until I thought it might drown me. I knew I hadn’t seen as much of my parents as I should have done over the last two tumultuous years. I had thought I was doing them a favour, wanting to shield them as much as possible from the mess of my life. Because I kept watch on them from afar through my computer I’d fooled myself into thinking I was in constant touch and yet, for them, it was as if I wasn’t there at all. Completely absent during those long stretches between visits.
And all the time, my father had been battling demons of his own, unsupported. How selfish I’d been. Too caught up in my own misery to notice anyone else’s.
Something occurred to me then.
‘Did you know my father had depression?’
Dr Ali had looked uncomfortable. ‘It was something we had talked about. He was taking a low-dose anti-depressant to manage his moods.’
I’d stared at him then, too shocked to speak. My father, the man who’d refused paracetamol even when his appendix was about to burst, had felt unhappy enough to willingly take pills every single day, above and beyond the insulin he was obliged to take for his diabetes. And I’d known nothing about it.
There would be a post-mortem to determine the exact cause of death, but Dr Ali wanted to prepare me in advance.
‘He would have slipped into a coma without knowing what was happening,’ Dr Ali told me, trying to give what reassurance he could.
My one crumb of comfort as I’d lain in bed last night in what had once been my bedroom was that at least Mum’s dementia cushioned her from the grief I was going through.
And yet, when I’d woken blearily after just a couple of hours’ sleep and heard her in the kitchen and rushed downstairs, I’d found her, for once, heartbreakingly alert.
‘Tessa, love,’ she’d said, trying to mask her consternation with a smile, as she’d done at times of crisis throughout my childhood. ‘I was just looking for your dad. He seems to have disappeared.’
Throughout the day she’d become increasingly querulous, barely hiding her fear, but still frustratingly compos mentis. True, she thought I was the younger version of me, still living at home and subject to parental rule. And she refused to hear that my father was dead.
‘What do you think has happened to him?’ she asked me now, seemingly for the hundredth time. I looked over at her pale blue eyes, which were watery with worry, and something inside me caved in like a mountain of flour.
‘Perhaps he’s been held up at work,’ I said.
The change was instantaneous, the tight lines around her eyes relaxing and her entire face lifting so that she looked ten years younger.
‘Oh yes. That will be it. Silly me.’
On impulse, I got up and threw my arms around her. She was sitting in her usual chair in the living room, so I had to crouch down. Her narrow, wasted frame felt like a bunch of old twigs in my arms.
‘Well. My goodness. What have I done to deserve this?’
We weren’t normally a physically demonstrative household, but I could tell she was pleased.
‘I love you, Mum.’
She blinked at me, a pink flush of pleasure spreading over her soft cheeks.
‘And, naturally, I love you too. But if you’re just being nice to me so I’ll excuse you from homework, you can think again, young lady. Now, off upstairs with you.’
I went upstairs and called Phil.
‘How are the girls taking it?’
I’d spoken to both Em and Rosie the previous evening, assuring them their grandad didn’t suffer, listening to their gulps and sniffles while trying to hold it together for their sakes.
‘Oh, you know. They’re pretty cut up. You know how much they loved your dad. And don’t forget, this is their first experience of death. It’ll take a while to sink in. More to the point, how are you, Tess?’
I told him then about what Dr Ali had said. Speaking the words aloud made them suddenly, horribly real.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Phil finally. ‘Poor Ian.’
‘I feel so guilty. I had no idea he was so low.’
‘Oh, come on, Tess. You’ve had battles of your own to fight. Don’t give yourself a hard time. It’s weird, though …’
He tailed off.
‘What’s weird?’
‘I just would never have thought your dad capable of it. I mean, he was always so responsible. He had such clearly defined notions of duty, didn’t he? Remember how he took two months off work to look after his own father when he was dying all those years ago, not long after we first met? And I know from the girls that you tried to persuade him to get some kind of respite care so he could come and visit you in London, and he always refused. I find it so hard to believe he’d have abandoned your mum like that. Sorry. That sounds like I’m blaming him.’
‘No. I know what you mean. I can’t believe it either. I wouldn’t have imagined in a million years my dad would ever have left Mum on her own, or left me to shoulder the burden of looking after her. But I guess he just wasn’t himself. Depression does that, doesn’t it? Alters your personality?’
‘What will you do now?’
I tried to sigh, but grief was a weight crushing the air out of my chest.
‘I don’t know. Prepare for the funeral. Start looking at care homes for Mum.’
‘You’ve decided, then.’
‘I can’t look after her at home, Phil. You know that.’
His voice was soft when he replied.
‘Yeah. I know.’
I went downstairs, where Mum was engrossed in watching Mrs Brown’s Boys. As I sat down in the seat that used to be my father’s, she let out a volley of laughter, echoing the laughter of the studio audience. I wondered if she even knew what she was laughing at.
I sent a message to Nick. For once, not trying to be witty or smart. I’d already spoken to him that morning to tell him what had happened, my voice straining to get past the lump in my throat. Now I sent him just five words.
I wish you were here.
Kath had called and left a voicemail. She was crying, I could tell. She and Mari had both loved my dad. ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do,’ she said. ‘Oh, and Tess—’ Then she’d paused and I could hear her ragged breathing down the phone line. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you when I see you. I’m so sorry.’
&
nbsp; I typed her a quick reply saying I couldn’t face talking at the moment but giving her the details of the funeral. I’d need all my friends around me.
The following day was Sunday, and I felt disconnected from myself, as if I was an actor in my own life and everything that happened was some sort of play or performance, one step removed from reality. Phil drove Emma and Rosie over for a few hours and I was glad of the company. Their warm, fierce hugs were a physical reminder of the life I felt so distanced from.
The girls were red-eyed and sombre. It was the first time they’d come up against the awful irrevocability of death. In a world where everything was re-doable – marriages, GCSEs, career paths – the finality of their grandfather simply ceasing to exist had come as a devastating shock.
Mum showed little interest in their arrival, submitting to their hugs with bad grace, impatient to get back to Countryfile.
‘Where’s Grandad?’ Em whispered to me, wanting to know where the body was being held.
‘Oh, we won’t be hearing from that one. He’s dead,’ said my mum conversationally, without turning her attention from the television screen.
How much did she know, really? I wondered. And how much did she simply choose not to know?
After they all drove back to London, I went to bed early, not long after Mum. Exhaustion encased every bone in my body in lead. But still, sleep eluded me. Every time I closed my eyes I saw my dad as he had been when I was a child. Fit and vigorous with fair, curly hair that, to his frustration, sprung straight up from one side of his parting while lying perfectly flat on the other. I saw him squeezed into the tiny pink chair in my bedroom after I’d woken up from a nightmare and had refused to sleep unless he was there, I saw the back of his head over the top of the car seat in front as he drove, his big, soft hand snaking back to hold mine when we stopped at traffic lights.
When, finally, I fell asleep, long after it had got light, I dreamed I saw him sitting on a rooftop, but a far younger version of him than I had ever known, a version that came from an old photograph. He was wearing shorts and a loose, white short-sleeved shirt, his long limbs nut brown from a long-forgotten holiday, just perched on a rooftop across a whole span of rooftops.