by Julie Shaw
June sighed again. ‘She’s not, love, no.’
‘There’s no easy way to say it, Chrissy,’ Josie said. ‘But I’m afraid your mam’s got cancer. It’s called acute myeloid leukaemia,’ she added, enunciating the now familiar words slowly. ‘It’s a kind of blood cancer. And, Christine, lovey, I’m sorry, but you might as well know this as well. They’re not going to be able to cure her. It’s too advanced.’
Christine couldn’t look any paler than she already was, but now she started trembling, violently. Josie cursed her mam again – and herself. They should have got some food inside her before landing her with a bombshell like this. She put her other arm around her and gripped her tight.
But June, for all her faults, had the sort of way about her that Christine, right now, badly needed. She took over. Pushed her sleeves up and took control of the situation. Indicating that Josie should let go of her, she took Christine’s hands in her own. ‘Look at me, love,’ she told her. ‘Look straight at me, okay? You’re going to be fine. You’re just in shock. But you’re going to be fine. And you’re going to be strong. You’re going to be strong for your mam, okay?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you, love. Now, I’m a good mate of your mam’s, but I can’t pretend I was happy at her keeping this from her kids. But, well, the truth’s out now, isn’t it? So why don’t we all go round to see her, eh? So you can ask her why the bleeding hell she didn’t tell you. Because falling out over something stupid is one thing, but the big bleeding C, well, that’s another thing.’
‘But she’s dying? My mam’s dying? Oh, God. Does our Nicky know?’
June shook her head. ‘No, mate, he doesn’t. Not as far as I know. She didn’t want either of you to know, because she’s that bleeding proud and pig-headed. Thought it’d be easier on the pair of you if she just left things as they were. And she’s adamant she doesn’t want your sympathy. Is not deserving of your sympathy, like it ever works like that, eh? She’s your mam and you love her, don’t you? Anyway, how the fuck she’s worked all that out I doubt I’ll ever know, but there you go. She was always a stubborn mare. And now she’s feeling sorry for herself as well, so she’s a right bloody princess.’
June smiled – trying to inject some levity, and Josie loved her for that. Loved her loyalty. She too would grieve when Lizzie went. They were like sisters.
But tears were rolling down Christine’s face now. ‘She hates me that much?’
‘What?’ June said. ‘Course she doesn’t! Downright bloody mad at you for a bit there. But then she was under the spell of that monster then, wasn’t she?’
‘But she must do – she’d even die without making up with me?’
‘No!’ June said sharply. ‘No, love. She doesn’t hate you. She loves the bleeding bones of you.’
Christine pulled her hands from June’s. ‘No, she doesn’t. If she loved me she’d have told me. She’d have shown me she loved me. She hates me. Hates both of us. We’ve never been anything but a nuisance to her – she’s always wished she’d never had us. She’s said so often enough!’
‘You’re wrong, love, believe me. She’s stupid, pig-headed, and she’s a pain in the bloody proverbials. But she loves you. She just doesn’t have a clue how to begin to sort things. She feels so bad. So guilty. As she might well do, too. But you’ve got to remember, mate, she’s never had any kind of a childhood herself, has she? And she knows exactly how she feels about her own so-called parents. Why wouldn’t she expect you and Nick …’ June stopped and tutted. Then she grabbed Christine’s arms again, and hauled her to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said, and Josie quelled an urge to hug her mother. ‘Enough talking. Let’s go and see her, okay? And you can tell her how much you love her. How about that?’ She stroked Christine’s hair back from her forehead and kissed it. ‘And we’ll get some bleeding soup in you as well.’
Chapter 26
June held her hand all the way from Josie’s house to Quaker Lane. Held it firmly within her own, with its manicured fingers, occasionally squeezing it, turning her head, and going ‘Okay?’
She had a key. Which was the first shock. Had it already come to this? She became scared, then, wondering quite what she was going to see.
It felt strange entering her own home, with June and Josie, as a visitor, and for a moment she had to fight an urge to run away. She wasn’t sure where it had come from – or even why, since she’d been so desperate to make things up with her mother. But it was powerful enough, with the memories of her last visit clamouring, to stop her in the hallway, frozen in the coloured light of her mam’s Tiffany-style lampshade, wondering, while June went ‘cooey’ and Josie strode purposely towards the back living room, if it was altogether too much of an emotional meltdown to even contemplate.
She shook it off. She felt the pull now, smelling the familiar polish, the familiar air freshener, though noticing straight away that her mam’s rabid cleaning schedule had fallen a bit by the wayside. The house wasn’t dirty, or even particularly messy. There were just little indicators that she had slightly different things on her mind. A pile of post on the hall table. A couple of pairs of shoes on the stairs. One of the photos on the wall – the one of her great grandmother – slightly askew.
She swallowed and followed June into the back room.
‘Look what the cat’s dragged in!’ she quipped gaily as they entered.
Josie, on a different mission – or perhaps keen to duck out of anything too emotional – went straight across to Lizzie and asked her what she fancied to eat.
Christine could only stand in the doorway and stare. Even in the gentle light from the couple of lamps and the telly, her mam looked ravaged. She felt a tightness in her throat.
But that was what you mustn’t do, she knew – snivel and whine on self-indulgently – so she sniffed hard and told herself to pack it in.
‘Right,’ said June, as she and her mother’s eyes met. ‘Get the kettle on, Jose, love. I think we all need a brew.’ Then, glancing back and forth to the pair of them, ‘So am I going to need to bang your bleeding heads together or are we going to do this nicely?’
She followed Josie then, throwing ‘I’ll warm up the oxtail’ over her shoulder, and, left alone with the woman who had caused her so much pain, Christine couldn’t find a single thing to say. And the same was true, evidently, of her mam. Which was no surprise, given that Christine was probably the last person she’d been expecting, but she flapped a hand beckoning her over.
She was sitting on the little sofa, her feet up on an embroidered footstool that had never not been there, and, not knowing quite what else to do, Christine sat down beside her. They had not touched each other in so long. It felt weird to be so close.
‘Oh, Mam,’ she began.
‘No,’ her mam said. ‘Enough of that.’
‘Enough of what?’
‘Enough about this.’ Her mam raised an arm which had a plaster across the inner elbow, and Christine realised she must have some sort of permanent line in, presumably in order to give her her chemotherapy. ‘I don’t always look this shit, so you don’t need to look like you’ve just seen Methuselah’s fucking auntie. It’s just the drugs. They go in cycles and when it’s a drug week it’s bloody shitty. Couple of days, though, and I’ll be good again. It’s just temporary.’
‘I thought you’d come to see me,’ Christine said. She had this urge take her mam’s hand. ‘Back at New Year. I had no idea.’
‘So I heard,’ Lizzie said. ‘And I’m sorry about that.’ She looked into her lap. ‘If I’d known …’
She fell silent then and it took a few moments for Christine to realise that she wasn’t speaking because she couldn’t speak. Because she was trying very hard not to cry.
It struck Christine that she’d been doing that half her life, one way or another. Setting things up so she wouldn’t cry. Never letting the mask slip. Like crying was the worst fucking thing you could ever do. Like you could help it. You could not. She could not,
anyway. Since losing Joey she’d cried enough for the whole fucking world.
She took her mother’s hand. ‘Mam, it’s okay.’
‘No, it’s fucking not!’ her mam snapped. But she didn’t snatch her hand away. She gripped Christine’s tighter. Like she’d never let it go again. ‘Where’s that bloody soup?’ she said then. ‘God, you can’t get the bloody staff.’
Hate was a strong word. One with which Christine had always had a very clear relationship. It was a word she used, just as everyone did – I hate this, I hate people who, I hate when, and so on. But had never felt, not in the sense she understood the emotion. She had never been sure she was capable of it. Hate was for other people; people who had a reason for such a handicap – people much more done wrong by than her.
She wondered if Josie hated Mucky Melvin, who’d raped her, which was surely good reason. But, knowing Josie, and how strong she was, she wasn’t sure even then. Why waste time hating someone who was dead?
But walking back to Josie’s, there was hate burning in her. For Mo, and what he’d said in the Listers, which she had only just fully processed. The way he’d stood there and told her that her mam was past her sell-by date – how Christine had been misinformed. That, far from being dumped by Lizzie, he’d cast her off like a fleck of dirt. Like she’d never, ever mattered. And how, to her shame, Christine had completely believed him. Believed, at a stroke, that her mother had lied to June. That she’d not kicked him out as a result of what he’d done to them all, but had clung on, pathetically, disowning her own daughter, rather than believe he had pursued, seduced and, finally, taken her.
No, it hadn’t changed anything at the time – she’d still been almost hysterical with rage and grief about it. And the last time she’d rejected Christine – and Joey – still stung.
But the hate she felt for Mo now was a positive thing. Like a runaway steamroller, it ploughed over everything, and made her strong. He would not prevail. He could no longer hurt them.
Chapter 27
It came back to her in the small hours of Sunday night, once she was back at the flat. ‘Home’ again, despite how much the concept had been skewed now. It came back properly, and in detail. In so much technicoloured, ghoulish, grisly detail, that she woke up sobbing and sweating and terrified. The stupid ribbons. Mally grabbing the knife. Shouting at her. Pulling her. Then the sound of him falling. Like a tree that had been felled – the memory of her thinking that had even come flooding back to her. She could not let Nicky take the blame for it. She just couldn’t.
She lay awake for an hour, constantly wondering if she should go and wake Brian. Not so much for comfort – though, strangely, she knew that Brian would be able to do that; just him being home again was an unexpected comfort. But more to ask him what the hell she should do. Should she just take herself to the police station and confess to them? Phone them? What? And if she did so would she get Nicky into even more trouble for lying to them? And what if they didn’t believe her? What then?
She was still in shock about her mam, too. Not quite able to take it in. That she’d even been inside her home again – oh, the ache of that, now all this horrible shit had happened. No, she corrected herself. Not happened. That she’d done.
And she knew she had. Didn’t matter how much anyone banged on about her keeping her trap shut. How could she live with herself if she didn’t tell the truth about what she’d done?
‘You’ve done fuck all,’ her Auntie June had told her, as they’d all walked back from her mam’s, and she’d confessed she thought it might have been her who’d used the knife. ‘You’re a victim in all this and don’t you forget it. That fucking cretin attacked you with that bread knife – what the bleeding else were you supposed to have done? Anyway, it’s done now. And if you were off your head, how can you remember what the fuck happened anyway? Trust me, do as Nicky says. This is the best way, Christine. Especially with everything that’s going on with your mam.’
But they didn’t get it. Any of them. It was because of her mam that she felt so driven to tell the truth. Even if it was only the truth as she remembered it. Because telling the truth felt like the most important thing in the world now. She was a mum herself now. It didn’t matter that she’d lost Joey. For his sake, she had to do the right thing.
But she’d been beaten to it and, being her brother, Nick obviously knew what she was up to. She could see from his expression. He just knew.
‘Off out, sis?’ he’d said when he’d appeared as if from nowhere, just as she was putting on her coat. She cursed inwardly, despite being so relieved and pleased to see him – she’d lain awake so long that it had been light before she’d drifted off to sleep again. She should have just got up and gone – camped out on the station steps, if need be. Now she was trapped.
‘I was popping round mam’s,’ she improvised, without even quite meaning to. She’d agonised over that, too – whether she should tell Nick about the cancer. He had so much on his plate now, because of her – because of what she’d done. But would he even care that much? She realised she had no idea.
Apparently not. She gave him a quick summary of the events since he’d been arrested and his response was to simply shrug and shake his head.
‘Well, that’s obviously a bummer for her,’ he said. ‘But such is life, eh?’
‘You don’t want to even come round and see her? She really wants to see you, Nick. To say how sorry she is …’
He raised his eyebrows, perhaps knowing intuitively that she was over-egging it somewhat. Which she was. Her mam had said no such thing. But she did want to see him, and she knew she was sorry. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she does.’
‘No, really, Nick – I mean it.’
‘Well, it’s only to be expected, I suppose. That’s the kind of thing people do when they’re dying, isn’t it? Repent and that. How long has she got anyway?’
‘She’s not sure. Matter of months, they reckon. Nick, seriously, she’s’ – she struggled for the right word – ‘broken.’
‘Yeah, well, so she should be – the way she’s treated you.’ There was a flash of real anger in his eyes then. ‘And Joey. Don’t forget Joey. Because I haven’t. If she hadn’t –’
‘Oh, Nick, please don’t say stuff like that.’
‘But, Chris, it’s true. Anyway,’ he said, changing his expression, ‘where’s Bri?’
So that was that, then. At least for now. She began taking her coat off. ‘In bed. Least, I suppose so. I’ll go and see Mam later, since you’re here now. D’you want a cup of tea?’
Tea. It was always tea that made everything all right, wasn’t it? But even as she drained hers, sitting next to Nicky on the futon and watching the clouds scud past the window, she felt nothing would ever be right ever again. Not now she’d remembered. Not now she understood what he’d done.
‘I can’t let you,’ she said. How many times had she said it now? ‘I just can’t.’
He was beginning to get cross with her. First over their mam, and now about this. ‘Listen to me, Chrissy, because we’re not discussing it again. The statements have been made and are signed and with the police. Yours, mine and Brian’s. All three of them. Now, what do you think would happen if it came out that, actually, there was another version of events that night, eh? What do you think?’ He paused to let her answer but she knew he wasn’t anticipating one. ‘I tell you what would happen, mate,’ he went on. ‘All three of us would be banged up, and you would never, ever stand a chance of getting our Joey back, that’s what would happen.’
‘Nick, I’m never going to get him back anyway, so it makes no difference!’
He looked at her just as he often had when they were little. Sternly. As if exasperated. As if she knew nothing about anything. And perhaps she didn’t. Not in things like this. ‘Why are you getting your knickers in such a fucking twist about this, Chris? It’s dealt with. It’s nothing, okay? The man is an out-and-out nonce, Chrissy – a beast of the highest order. The
police know that. This’ll be just box ticking for them. Trust me, he got exactly what he deserved, however it was he got it. And will probably get it again when the neighbourhood finds out. So can we just leave this?’
Brian shuffled in then, and it hit Christine very hard that the dapper version of him that had turned up at the Listers not much more than forty-eight hours previously was already being eroded away. And not just from the shadow of stubble now becoming evident on his lower face. No, it was the look in his eyes – as if he were thinking ‘What the fuck happened here?’ And it was all her fault. All of it. It felt like she was walking around with a house brick in her gut. Why couldn’t Nicky see that?
He must have heard them arguing. At least some of it. ‘Mate, you know, you are so wrong about all that, okay?’ he said to Nicky. ‘That stuff that goes round about him – it’s all bollocks.’
‘How the fuck would you know?’ Nicky countered. ‘You bum chums now or something? Oh, and nice to see you too mate, after my spell in clink. Cheers.’
‘Don’t be a div, man,’ Brian said mildly. ‘And leave it out, okay? He’s just a friend.’
Nicky snorted. ‘Friend? Seems to me he’s only your “friend” in the sense that you never waste an opportunity to be in the company of his trouser pockets.’
‘No, mate – really.’ Brian’s face expressed rare irritation. Here they were again, the three of them. Happy days. She felt she could scream. ‘They’re his own toys,’ Brian was saying. ‘He’s just a big kid. He’s not into fucking kids or anything. He wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly.’
‘How’d you get to be so sure, mate?’ Nicky persisted.
‘Because that’s what they’re like. My mam’s mate had an older brother who was retarded and I knew him well. We used to go round there for tea and that, and that was the thing that always struck me. That he lived at home with their mam and he was, like, pushing thirty. And he had a bedroom like a kid’s room and I used to be allowed to go and play with him. You know, proper train set, and this enormous Scalextric. An’ he had teddies on his bed an’ all. It was just like he’d never grown up. Seriously, mate, you’re wrong, okay.’
