After intermission, the watchers returned to their game. Tilly was not pleased, but she was too exhausted now to complain.
‘Ah, Princess’, said the Queen. ‘So pretty, I fear I shall die a little death.’
It was nonsense. It meant nothing. And if it was just a normal book, it was the worst she’d ever done. She berated herself. The thing she loved about being a writer was never having to retire. She knew writers who were still at it at ninety-five. She should be able to produce better work than this.
Unless this wasn’t a book, unless she’d drawn these pictures for other reasons. Had she? Is that what this was?
Stay Rose stay Rose stay Rose stay.
She was not staying. She was going fast. She had to hurry. She put on the new Fly boots Chris had brought in for her and walked to the back of the house. No one noticed her going. They were all gathered in Room 4. Someone new had moved in, lucky thing, moving in to death. She opened the back door, went outside, and tried to open the window to Room 7. Painted shut, or locked, and the blinds were down. She gazed through a crack in the venetian. The room was bare. No camera. No people. Just a trolley bed, a bedside cabinet, a picture, wall rails, alarms, the usual. Perhaps if she got inside it she would find something that helped her understand her drawings.
*
AGE 10
Rose found a large stone, and tossed it through the window.
*
AGE 82
Things were swirly when she woke.
‘How you feeling, Rose?’ Marcus Baird, that’s what the name tag said. Must be Marcus Baird standing over her now.
‘What did you give me?’
‘Just something to calm you down. You feeling calm?’
‘I feel pissed is what I feel. Pissed off, that is.’ She tried to sit up. ‘What drug did you give me? Where’s Natalie? Get Natalie!’
‘Natalie left her job, remember? The doctor took a look at you and prescribed something to make you feel nice and happy.’
‘Well it’s not working.’
‘Nice and happy, Rose.’ Marcus Baird nodded to the nurse with the bright red lipstick. This place, these people, that’s right!
The Queen, bright red lips.
Rose must have said or done something to make Marcus hold her down. She must have lashed out in some way perhaps, because he placed his hands on hers, while Nurse Gabriella prised her mouth open and put something in it. ‘Drink it down, Rose, that’s it, take a sip now, nice and calm.’
Chapter Nine
I was all out of screams by the time Marcus found me. He sat on the rocks beside me and stared where I was staring, at the field across the river. Several cows were in it. They looked relaxed. Stupid cows. They weren’t for milking, they were for eating. That field was their hospice.
‘So are you even paying my wage?’
He let out a short breath. ‘No.’
I couldn’t take my eyes off the cows. ‘Isn’t it against the rules, a relative of a patient working here?’
‘No.’
‘McDonald’s has more rules than this place.’
‘Your mum booked in nine weeks ago. She didn’t want you to make the decision. Even big families find it an impossible thing to do, and you’re on your own.’
‘Why did she choose here?’
‘Because it has an excellent reputation, and it’s close to home.’ Marcus had a file with him. ‘Let me read you an email.’ He opened the file and read from a piece of paper.
‘Dear Mr Baird,
‘Yesterday, Mr Hilary at Beatson Oncolocgy Centre diagnosed me with a brain tumour. As per notes attached, the type and position of the tumour make surgery impossible and treatment purely palliative. While radiotherapy may prolong the process for a few weeks, I have decided against it.
‘I am a single mother. My daughter, Catherine, is twenty-three. She has no other family. I am writing for two reasons.
‘One—’
I snorted. Even this email included a list.
‘One,’ Marcus continued. ‘Dear Green comes highly recommended and if I am comfortable after having a thorough inspection of your resource, I would like to spend my final days there. If there is a place available, can you please email me immediately so I can visit as soon as possible? I would like to move in before my decreased mental capacities and mobility are obvious to Catherine.
‘Two. I noticed online that you are looking for a care assistant. This may seem unusual, but my daughter is looking for a job and if you are happy with her CV and interview, I would like you to consider offering her a position. She doesn’t realise this about herself, but she is very kind. She has always looked after me and I know she’ll be an asset. I believe caring for me would be a much easier thing for her to do in a residential setting with the support of trained staff. I would, of course, cover the costs of her employment.’
‘You should have told me.’
Marcus bit his lip. ‘Should I? I was torn, believe me. But I could understand where she was coming from. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is for families to make the hospice decision. You would have battled along to the point of collapse. You’d have wasted the time you have with her. You’d have been no good to anyone. This way is easier; I agree with her. Your mother’s amazing, Catherine.’
The desire to cry gave way to anger again. ‘She’s a control freak.’
‘Here, read through her file. Maybe it’ll help.’
Marcus put his hand on mine. ‘I have to get back. Rose just tossed a rock through a window.’
‘A rock?’
‘Yeah, Room 7.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘She’s sedated, sleeping now.’
He smiled sadly and left.
*
I don’t know how long I’d been walking before I found the tree on the river-bend that Rose always ran away to. I sat with my back against it, like wee Margie, and the tears came. Eventually, I opened the file Marcus gave me. There were emails. Yes, she could visit. Yes, she was impressed. Yes, there was a place. Yes, she wanted it. Yes, she had filled in all the forms, paid all the money. Yes, the interview went well, the job mine. Yes, they wouldn’t tell me, or press me too hard. Yes, yes, yes.
There was a document titled ‘Advanced Care Planning’. It was signed at the bottom by someone called Adrienne Malloy and also by my mother. She had given medical and financial power of attorney to me. For most of the other questions on the form, Adrienne Malloy had written: ‘See patient statement attached.’
This is what my mother wrote:
1. I don’t want counselling, I know how I feel and exactly what I want.
2. I don’t want to be resuscitated if I stop breathing from this moment on.
3. I don’t want to be force fed or hydrated. If I stop eating and drinking, so be it.
4. I want to die at Dear Green Care Home, not at home.
5. I do not want to go home at all once I have moved in. My home should remain a happy place, with happy memories.
6. I don’t want my daughter to be with me when I’m in the final forty-eight hours because it can be noisy and ugly and she does not need to hear or see that.
7. I don’t want or need to go to hospital. Whatever happens, happens in my room in Dear Green.
8. I don’t care about having music or any particular people or anything sentimental around me when I am nearing death. I’ll most likely be in a coma, it won’t matter to me.
9. I’m not religious and I don’t want the last rites, but if my daughter suddenly feels strongly about it then I don’t mind.
10. I’d like as much pain relief as I need to be as comfortable as possible.
11. I do not want my daughter to see my dead body. I saw my mother’s and it’s the image of her that I remember most to this day. I wish I could un-see it. My daughter may want to see it. Say no.
12. In terms of the funeral, I don’t care whether I’m cremated, buried or tossed in the sea. I have bought an eco-friendly coffin and organised
what I think would be suitable and manageable, but if my daughter would like to change anything, she can. I want her to do what she feels is right for her.
There were several envelopes – Mortgage (recently paid off). House (now in my name). Car (paid off, in my name). Savings (£32k, transferred to a new account in my name). Household Bills (direct debits set up to my new account). Will and lawyer’s details (everything to me). Coffin (paid for, to be collected from a man called Eddie, who’d been very helpful indeed). Funeral Director (contact details). And there was the name and address of my father’s parents (in case Catherine ever decides she wants to meet them).
I remember asking Mum about my birth once. Think I was around nineteen. Truth be told, contraceptive failures had occurred and I thought I was pregnant at the time and while I’d decided not to keep it if I was, my head was buzzing with millions of questions.
I should have known she wouldn’t be one of those women who lie about it. It was lovely! It was over in a day! As soon as you came out, I forgot the pain! Instead: ‘It was the most excruciating experience of my life. Like someone stabbing you in the stomach with a very sharp knife and twisting it for a minute, then doing it again two minutes later. For twenty-six hours. Can you imagine? I had a birth plan. I’d been to all the classes on offer and decided I wanted a water birth and no pain relief. So I sat in the bath for twenty-six hours, screaming. I think I was waiting for them to take control and inject me with something, I’d lost the thinking power to ask for drugs, and they never offered. Turned out it was because of that bloody birth plan.’
I can just imagine how detailed it was. A list of exactly how she wanted it to go, just like this. But then, like now, she hadn’t factored in that time can change you, circumstances can change you, pain and fear can change you.
Whenever I think of myself in a past event – I dunno, snogging some guy at a bar, cramming for Higher Maths at the last minute, breaking my arm falling off the climbing frame in Maxwell Park – I see someone else entirely. That person wasn’t me. I don’t even recognise her. This idea has comforted me through the years, because I know that whatever’s in store for me (like childbirth, for example) will be dealt with by another-me altogether. So how can present-me know what’s best for future-me?
Mum hadn’t factored me into her birth plan. I did not want to come out. It took an emergency Caesarean section in the end, so she wound up having twenty-six hours of excruciating pain in a revolting plastic tepid bath, followed by the highest level of pain relief and medical intervention that is possible.
You think she’d have learned by now that some things are not within your control. Some things can’t be planned. That the person she is now is not necessarily the person she will be tomorrow.
After talking to Mum about childbirth I decided to keep the baby if I was pregnant.
I started my period the following morning.
*
I s’pose a daughter shouldn’t run away from her mother at a time like this, shouldn’t scream with rage by a river, shouldn’t want to go as far away as possible and never face her again. But most daughters wouldn’t be lied to. She should have let me see her symptoms, not hidden them behind fake menopause, fake pins and needles. She should have taken me along with her to the doctor. I would have argued with him or her, insisted on second and third opinions, Googled and phoned and emailed and written and fought. I would have forced the radiotherapy on her, researched homeopathic solutions and foods and I dunno what else, but I’d have tried. And she didn’t trust me, didn’t even let me. Now it was too late and she was going to die and that was going to ruin my life. My life. That was what I was thinking about. Mine, not hers. I was shaking. I was thinking of ways to make this go away. I could run. I was a fast runner in emergencies – when getting the last bus back from town, for example. Perhaps if I ran, this would pour out of my armpits and pound into the ground. That’s what I’d do, run. I took off across the field and lasted about a minute. No sweat, no pounding, just the realisation that fear was driving me away more than anger, and that I should stop. I lay on the grass. Two cows were within feet of me, and I wasn’t scared of them, just her, of seeing her and talking to her. She was no longer the person I’d always known. The person who was in control, annoying, bossy, not dying. Now, she was someone entirely different.
But I couldn’t face her yet. I didn’t want to go inside that death building. I didn’t want to go home. I needed to talk to someone. Rebecca was online on Facebook chat, so I sat up on my muddy mound and messaged:
You around? Need to talk.
Doing a facial. In 15?
My friendships and my crises had all been played out and managed on Facebook. I didn’t think for a moment before typing:
My fucking mum’s dying. Brain tumour.
The reply:
Geez, so sorry ☹
Perhaps Facebook was the wrong forum for this. I dialled Gina’s mobile. ‘Can you talk?’
‘Aye. Just – Will, turn that off! TURN IT OFF! Sorry, can’t hear. Turn it off, you wanker!’
In the background: ‘Just go to the other room!’
‘Why should I?’
A scuffle, a door shutting. ‘That arsehole. You know he fraped me last night – said I love . . .’
‘Gina, I just found out my mum’s got a brain tumour.’
Silence for a moment. ‘Oh my God, no.’
‘I know, I can’t believe it.’
‘God, I’m in shock . . .’ A long pause. Gina was not good at this. I didn’t fill it. ‘Will she lose her hair?’
I hung up, dialled a taxi, walked to the main road, and went to Paul’s house.
Of course he wasn’t in. ‘He’s at the library till five today,’ his grandfather said. ‘You want to play cards till he’s back?’
Halfway back to Dear Green, I changed my mind and asked the driver to take me to Gartmore.
*
‘Mum’s dying.’ I blurted it out to an almost complete stranger, just like that. Unlike a stranger, Chris hugged me, helped me inside.
‘She moved in next to Rose today and I didn’t even know she was sick. That’s why she made me get the job. She should have told me.’ I couldn’t get any more words out, just tears. Inside, all I could think was: She’s going to die. My mum’s going to die.
A few tissues later, I calmed down a bit. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here like this. I don’t know you at all.’
He filled the kettle. ‘Don’t be daft. People who haven’t been through it don’t understand, they say all the wrong things. My best friend in the world, you know what he said when Gran went in? When I’d phoned him, crying?’
I shook my head.
‘“Well, she’s had a good life.” I wanted to kill him. I’ve had a good life, but I don’t want to be in a hospice with advanced dementia, reliving a real-life nightmare over and over, only waking from it to find yourself in another one!’
‘My friends are all idiots.’
He smiled. We were friends. ‘So, you found out, then ran off?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You need to go and talk to her.’
I nodded. I would. But not while I was feeling angry. I had to calm down.
‘You don’t need to keep working there if you don’t want to.’
That hadn’t even crossed my mind. ‘Don’t know how I feel about anything. I’ve spent my life trying to rebel against her organisation of me, and it’s like that’s all I know how to do. I can’t believe she hid it from me. What kind of person hides that from her child, her only family!’
But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Mum always planned and controlled things, and the basis for every decision she made was my happiness. She did this for me.
Chris sat on the sofa, patted the seat beside him for me to sit.
‘Margie’s death changed my gran’s life. She could never let it go. I think it defined her as a person. She’d let her down. She’d left her alone. She’d broken a promise. She’d faile
d.’
I knew what he was trying to tell me: square things up now, before it’s too late. Don’t have any unfinished business. Say a loving goodbye, make it perfect, make it one you can live with. Do what Rose hadn’t managed to do with Margie.
‘It’s important to get this right. This time with your mum will stay with you for ever.’
When I look back over everything that happened at Dear Green, almost every day seemed like a major turning point for me. But the moment I’m most thankful for is when I realised Chris was right. There was no time for me to mature, no time to work through my resentment and my selfishness, no time for Mum and me to journey towards an understanding and acceptance of each other and of the past. If I didn’t get on with it now, make the most of her, put my anger at how she’d approached this behind me, then I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I grew up in Chris’s living room that day. I only had my mum. I loved her. And she only had me. She was going to die, and soon. She wouldn’t get the chance to annoy me by boycotting my wedding or by forcing me to compromise by organising a humanist, feminist one. I wouldn’t get to see her turn all earth-mothery as a grandmother, donning an apron, sewing buttons, baking scones, doing stuff she never did with me. No, our story had come to an end.
Chris’s phone rang and I knew immediately that something was wrong. He hung up and grabbed his car keys. ‘I’ve got to go. Gran ran away again.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Maryhill Police Station. I’ll drop you off.’
I wasn’t in awe of Chris any more. He made me feel safe and calm. Lucky Rose, having a grandson like him. As we drove towards Glasgow, I wondered if I could be as good at caring as he was. What would be required of me? What would Mum expect? Would she cry all the time, get angry at me, angry at the tumour, angry at death? I felt sick with terror. I was about to enter a terrible time. It could last days, weeks, months. Worse than terrible. And after that . . . what, after that? I tried a technique Mum had taught me in the early secondary years, when low moods had started arriving at least once a month. ‘If something’s worrying or upsetting you, just don’t think about it. Say this to yourself: “I’m not going to think about that.”’
The Exit Page 8
