I think she was already dead. When I was sitting in traffic in Green Lanes, and pulled into a side road to answer my phone, Tom told me she was dead. I stopped to get some petrol on the North Circular. I asked the man at the garage if I could use their loo. ‘My mother’s died,’ I said, but he still told me to go to the pub across the road. Please help me, I wanted to say, because the person I have always loved most in the world is dead.
That night, my brother and I sat at the kitchen table, in what has always been our family home. We tested what it was like to talk about our mother in the past tense.
There have been moments when I think my heart will break. There was a moment at Starbucks, at the Sainsbury’s nearest to my mother’s home, when I saw a sign, next to cinnamon buns, saying ‘a taste of Scandinavia’ and thought I was going to break down. There was a moment at Euston when I saw a suitcase just like one of my mother’s, blue with pink flowers, and wanted to yank it off the escalator and hug it to my heart. There was a moment when I found a voicemail from her on my phone and thought I might go mad because I would never hear that voice again.
But really, I feel lucky. I started my mother’s eulogy by saying, ‘My mother always said she was lucky.’ And she did. In spite of it all, she did. I think I’m the lucky one to have had her as my mother. I’m lucky to have had such loving parents. I’m lucky to have had so many opportunities. I’m lucky to have been born in a peaceful nation in the Western world. I’ve been to a refugee camp in Jordan. I’ve met Syrian refugees who have lost everything. I really do know how lucky I am.
And I’m very, very lucky that when my mother wanted to go, she did. When she was in hospital, I brought her flasks of good coffee and china coffee cups and Swedish cakes. I brought her gin and tonic and crisps. I brought my laptop and subscribed to Netflix so my mother, who loved the Queen, could watch The Crown. But she couldn’t really eat and she couldn’t really swallow and she couldn’t really follow all that much of what was going on. And so I thank the sun, the moon and the stars that when my darling mother wanted to go, she did.
We had pink roses on her coffin, pink roses like the ones she had in her wedding bouquet. After the funeral, I placed them in a vase by my new French windows. It was very hard to throw them out.
On a sunny day I sit on the sofa opposite the French windows that my beloved has designed. I look out at the silver birches, which remind me of the silver birches my father planted. One, he said, for each member of the family. That house is going now, and those silver birches have already gone. But the ones in my garden, the garden I share with my neighbours, are still here and still strong. When I look at them, I think of my father, and my sister and my mother. And I think that Larkin was right. What will survive of us is love. Our love for the family members we have lost and also our love for the living family of our friends.
It’s spring now. The trees, as Larkin said, are coming into leaf. And I can almost hear them whisper: ‘Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.’
Acknowledgements
I had eight good years at The Independent and two that were a lot less fun. But we hacks know the power of regime change more than most. During my time on the paper I worked with many brilliant journalists who were also supportive bosses or colleagues. In particular, I would like to thank Simon Kelner, Katherine Butler, Adrian Hamilton, Arifa Akbar, Mary Dejevsky, Boyd Tonkin, Chris Schuler and Roger Alton for their kindness and the benefit of their experience and brains.
Since leaving the paper, I’ve had the opportunity to work for other brilliant editors on other papers. In particular, I would like to thank Andrew Holgate, Sarah Baxter and Eleanor Mills at the Sunday Times; Katherine Butler (again!), Hugh Muir, Joseph Harker and David Shariatmadari at The Guardian; Liz Hoggard and Celia Duncan at the Daily Mail. I’d like to thank Oli Foster at Sky News, Matthew Syed, my most regular sparring partner on the press preview, and Alison Hanning, Sue Black and the other women in make-up who wreak regular miracles with Touche Éclat.
I’d like to thank Peter Robinson for the conversation that sparked the book, and for nursing me through its gestation, Toby Mundy for the title and Karen Duffy at Atlantic for taking it on.
I would like to thank my friends, for coffee, cake, wine, crisps, critical feedback and life support.
I would like to thank my brother, for being a brick.
I would like to thank all the people who agreed to talk to me for the book: for opening up, cheering me up and offering a glimpse of their hearts.
And darling, I think the epilogue speaks for itself.
The Art of Not Falling Apart Page 30
