73
Roisin was roused from deep sleep by caterwauling. She opened her eyes and gazed at the drum-shaped lampshade in the gloaming. She didn’t know if it had happened in her dream or in the waking world. By mutual agreement, this Sunday was her last night at The Mallory before she settled back in to West Didsbury and faced a new school term.
‘ROISIIIIIIIIN! Roisiiiiiiin?’
Roisin sat bolt upright, sweat forming at the nape of her neck. She grasped for the hair bobble she always kept on the bedside table.
‘ROISIN!’
She leaped out of bed and padded down the corridor, almost letting go of a scream at the sight of her mother, in her silk nightdress, slumped in a heap in the hallway.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m in quite a lot of pain,’ Lorraine said, clutching her abdomen, as Roisin pulled her hair into the band to get it out of her pale, half-slept face. ‘It’s my stomach.’
She took in her mother’s lemon-coloured, damp complexion and, to real fright, what looked like a pile of vomit nearby.
‘I’ll call an ambulance,’ Roisin said.
‘I don’t know if we need to go that far. I’ll be alright … Call the other number where they tell you what to do,’ Lorraine said.
She tried to move and involuntarily made a noise which tipped Roisin from ‘extremely agitated’ to ‘actually very scared’.
‘DON’T – stay there,’ Roisin said, running to her room, grabbing her mobile, yanking it from the charger and tapping the 999 which, at the age of thirty-two, felt surreal to finally use.
Someone else’s daughter had called the ambulance for her dad.
‘Operator. Which emergency service do you require?’
‘Ambulance – it’s for my mum – we’re at The Mallory pub in Webberley, just off the high street …’
She gabbled the address twice and things about stomach pain, confirming that her mum was conscious.
‘The ambulance is coming, stay still,’ Roisin said, running back down the hall.
‘Thank you,’ Lorraine said. That she didn’t object frightened Roisin out of her wits.
‘When did the pain start?’ she said.
A pause.
‘… You’re going to be angry with me.’
‘Angry with you? Why?’
‘I’ve been having pain in my guts for a while.’
‘How long?’
‘Months. I’ve gobbled ibuprofen like it’s going out of fashion and soldiered on. You know me. It’s like Liz Taylor said. “Pour yourself a drink, get your lipstick on and pull yourself together.”’
‘MUM! What?! So you didn’t go to the doctor?’
‘No.’
‘But your biopsy? The breast lump?’
‘I told a few white lies. I was feeling poorly.’
‘None of that happened? You invented a cancer scare?’
‘I knew you’d never come back here if you didn’t think I was ill! I wanted to see you. I told you it was clear; I didn’t worry you!’
Roisin was speechless.
Only Lorraine Walters could say, sorry I invented a possible cancer and an investigation that never happened, but please be appreciative I also invented an all clear that never happened. PS: I am seriously unwell anyway.
‘But you were ill! You just weren’t doing anything about it!’
‘I don’t want to be an old sick person or have a bald head, Roisin! I’d rather be me or not at all.’
Lorraine’s face contorted as a wave of pain rolled over her, and a wave of panic in Roisin’s stomach followed its trajectory.
‘Are you seriously saying you’d rather be dead than bald?!’ Roisin said.
Lorraine tried to adjust herself on the carpet and winced. ‘Like I say. I didn’t want fuss. I only wanted to see you.’
‘Wanted the bar shifts from me, more like,’ Roisin said, rolling her eyes and trying to lighten a mood that was hardly likely to be lightened.
‘I had calls to return to Amy and Ernest ages ago. I thought it’d be nice to spend some time together.’
‘Did you not think Ryan deserved to know?’ Roisin said.
Lorraine raised her shoulders a centimetre, all she could muster by way of a shrug. ‘Further to travel, isn’t it. Mothers want their daughters at times like this.’
What times they were remained to be seen.
Roisin tried to absorb this. Her mother had feared she might be dying, she was in so much agony, this whole time? She’d sought no treatment. She’d hoodwinked Roisin. An awful realisation dawned: her mum would rather do all this, risk all this, than tell Roisin she loved her, and she needed her. She’d rather do this than risk Roisin rejecting her.
There was the additional inhibition that Roisin would’ve forced her to the GP. But it was also obvious that Lorraine had no language to bridge this gap between them, and make believe had been used to fill it.
‘Now. I need you to put my lipstick on before the paramedics get here,’ Lorraine said. ‘The Charlotte Tilbury in the navy quilted bag with the flowers on the top of the cabinet in my bathroom. Walk Of No Shame or Lost Cherry, please.’
‘You HAVE to be kidding,’ Roisin said.
‘This might be my last request!’ Lorraine screeched and Roisin extravagantly tutted and huffed, as much to mask her terror as anything. Of course her mother wasn’t sparing her, in spelling out the threat. Lorraine gonna Lorraine.
She ran to her room and shuddered at the glass of water spilled on the floor. Her mum had crawled on hands and knees to her position in the hallway. Roisin raked through the contents of the toiletries bag, squinting at the base of each lipstick to see the name. She felt sure Lorraine would spot the wrong shade, even when crippled by a seven to nine on the official pain scale.
Walk Of No Shame hit her as gruesomely apt. The arc of history was long, and it bent towards sick humour. She went for Lost Cherry.
Don’t think about lying to Joe. Don’t think about what he made you swear your life upon. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
She returned to her side, kneeling down and twisting the lipstick out of its case.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. Pout your mouth out then.’
Lorraine, who was clearly conserving energy due to the unbearable agony, pushed her lips towards it as Roisin dabbed the colour on.
The process was utterly ridiculous and felt unbearably tender, at the same time. Roisin couldn’t think about anything that was happening too hard, or she’d lose it.
‘Can probably do without the lip liner,’ Lorraine said, smacking her lips together, and Roisin barked, ‘YA RECKON,’ to cover her emotion.
‘Listen. There’s something I want to talk to you about,’ Lorraine said as Roisin re-capped the Lost Cherry, as if they were having a natter over their passing trolleys in Sainsbury’s. ‘In case I don’t get the chance again.’
‘Mum, please don’t say things like that.’
‘I know how this works. They put a mask over your face and then that’s it.’
‘Mum!’
‘I watched Joe’s series. The one about the policeman having lots of how’s your father.’
Roisin’s blood temperature dropped to freezing.
‘Did Joe do that? Play away on you?’
Bloody hell. Her mother had got there faster than anyone. To catch a thief.
‘Yeah,’ Roisin said. ‘With the girlfriend before me. Turns out they were never really over.’
‘You were right to finish it. It’s what I should’ve done with your dad. I let him say what went, and I wish I hadn’t.’
She gave Roisin a look and Roisin perfectly understood what she was referring to. ‘Don’t worry, I know.’
‘I know you adored your dad and there was never a way to raise what … well, you know.’
Roisin didn’t know what to say.
‘Now, about Matthew. What’s the state of play there? You know he’s in love with you, don’t you?’
Roisin laughed weakly. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I have eyes and a brain, darling. For now.’
‘… Yes. We were together briefly, but I found out he knew about Joe’s cheating years ago and didn’t tell me. Which made me quite mad. So we are currently apart.’
‘That’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t, isn’t it. I suspect, Rosie, he might’ve got nothing but grief if …’ Her voice squeaked as she fought through her suffering. ‘… he’d told you.’
No one else in the whole world called her Rosie. Why do the tiny things become suddenly gigantic? Roisin checked her watch.
‘Where ARE they?!’ Roisin said, not wanting to panic her mum but not being able to contain it. It already felt like hours. Eighteen minutes. That was long enough, surely?
Roisin heard a hammering at the front door and got down the stairs and through the bar, faster than she’d ever moved in her life. People in green uniforms with flashes of high-vis were waiting on the other side and she garbled about her mum and her pain and she’s up here.
She had to stand behind them as they attended to Lorraine at the top of the stairs, asking questions in upbeat voices, grabbing equipment, moving with practised efficiency.
Roisin didn’t know what to do with herself, where to stand, what to do, other than crane her neck.
She’d hoped they’d tut and say this was nothing, not that a stretcher would emerge from the back of the vehicle with the flashing lights.
Then an oxygen mask appeared, and Roisin felt instantly frantic.
‘I don’t want you to go!’ she cried, looking at Lorraine, no longer a patient but her mother. She didn’t mean the hospital; she meant anywhere, ever. It was a childlike plea of pure terror at separation, at possibly permanent separation. Roisin burst into a flood of hot tears. Lorraine grabbed clumsily for Roisin’s arm and kissed the back of her hand, as she was pulled away.
The blue-lights journey to hospital was overwhelming, Roisin’s vision blurred by her partially suppressed crying. On the one hand, professional people had taken over and she could gratefully relinquish responsibility. On the other, the beeping machines, sirens and concentrated attention of third parties tore away any pretence that this wasn’t as bad as Roisin feared.
‘We’ll give you an update when we can – take a seat,’ said the paramedic, as her mum disappeared on a gurney through the doors of Macclesfield District, to pass into the hands of strangers. Roisin was left to wander A&E like a ghost.
She was awash with fight-or-flight. The concept of sitting still in one of those plastic bucket seats under this light, for an unspecified but protracted length of time, was like being told she should start Morris dancing.
She checked her phone. No bars of coverage, and it was just gone three a.m.
The time difference in Toronto was five hours: Ryan might pick up, but it seemed smarter to wait until she had something to tell him, rather than taking a night’s sleep from him when he might need those energy reserves.
Oh God.
She had to go outside to get reception. She scrolled her phone and rang the number. Selfish, unfair, outrageous, even. She couldn’t help it. His was the only voice she wanted to hear.
This experience was an emotional X-ray. The superfluous had disappeared; she was only essentials, bones and organs. She could see what mattered.
Hi, this is Matt! I can’t answer right now – leave a message, if you don’t hate leaving messages.
‘Matt,’ she choked into the receiver, after the beep. ‘It’s me. I’m at hospital. In Macclesfield. It’s Mum. They don’t know what’s wrong yet …’ She let out a sob and stifled it. ‘I found her on the floor, in extreme pain, about an hour ago. The doctors are with her now. I don’t know what the hell she’s been playing at, ’cos she told me she’d had a clear biopsy before I came back this summer. In true Lorraine fashion, that was bullshit. She’s been ignoring pain for ages, using over-the-counter meds to control it …’ Roisin realised she was spiralling. She paused and gulped.
‘… Remember you once said that thing about not having many people in your life? I’ve never missed my dad and my brother like I do now. Anyway. You don’t need to reply to this or call me back, or anything. You don’t owe me anything at all. I just needed to talk to someone. Not someone. I wanted to talk to you. Leaving this message has helped, stupid as it sounds. Anyway. OK. Thanks for listening, even though I didn’t give you much choice in the matter. Bye.’
When she walked back into the hospital, a consultant was craning his neck, looking for her.
‘Miss Walters? I need to speak to you about your mother.’
She looked at the back of her hand, which bore the smudged imprint of Lost Cherry.
Roisin listened to the soft hiss of medical machinery, the rustling of the ward beyond the thin curtain, as the day began.
Outside the window, the sky had started to lighten in a sickly tangerine-grey. It was the most beautiful sunrise Roisin had ever seen, because it was the first one she feared her mum would never see.
It turned out this emergency wasn’t anything more than a turbulent, yet brief and fully survivable, episode, one she could leave Lorraine to sit up in bed and recount to Ryan later on her mobile.
Roisin was still scrabbling to catch up, retrieving her imagination from the dark places it had roamed to during the crisis. Part of her was still travelling the alternative timeline.
What she’d discovered was that her mother needed her. And Roisin needed Lorraine, too. Not in trivial, mercenary ways, but profound ones that neither of them had articulated. Roisin had been so preoccupied with her mother’s indulgent tolerance of her father and brother that she’d absorbed a deep sense she didn’t matter. That wasn’t ever true, she realised.
Lorraine knew Roisin was angry with her, for things they could never discuss without it provoking scorn and disgust, more damage. It had created a barrier between them.
Roisin needed to stop punishing the people available to be punished, who might’ve made mistakes but sincerely loved her back.
She would be back later with a bag packed with her mother’s favourite perfume, her Kindle, her pyjamas. She leaned in and kissed her sleeping face.