‘Get me out of here. Get me out of here,’ she was chanting, hardly pausing for breath. ‘Get me out of here.’
‘Hello, Mum,’ I said, touching her lightly on the arm.
For a second or two, she opened her eyes, stopped talking and took me in. It looked for a moment as if she actually recognised me. I swear there was a spark in her eye, a spark I’d not seen in over a year. She grasped my hand tightly, catching me by surprise. It had been a long time since she’d let me touch her, let alone reciprocated with a touch of her own.
‘Please get me out of here,’ she implored, and a tear rolled down her face.
I was stunned speechless. I didn’t know what to say or do. I knew only too well there was no way Mum would ever be able to leave the Camellia Wing now. We’d tried everything to keep her in the villa with Dad, but the smashed fruit bowl had put an end to that.
I couldn’t tell her she was stuck here, though — it wasn’t fair to her, even though there was only a faint chance she’d understand me. (The last time she’d complained about her surroundings, she’d thought she was in a hotel with bad service.) And I didn’t want to move my hand to find a tissue and wipe away her tear. It was so long since she’d let me touchher, I wanted to treasure the moment, even if her hand felt like the grip of a vice.
But the look of recognition I thought I’d seen disappeared as suddenly as it had come. Mum shook my hand away and stared at the television, apparently deaf to its driving beat and blind to its gyrating singers. She didn’t utter another word, no matter how much I tried to engage her in conversation.
‘Ah, Mrs Rushmore, you have a visitor,’ a nurse called across the room. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ She crossed to the television and changed the channel, but didn’t turn down the sound. ‘I’m sorry if that’s a bit loud for you. They like it at that level, so they can hear it,’ she said.
I gave a wry smile. ‘I wasn’t so sure about the channel.’
‘Yes, I don’t know how it got onto that. Sometimes Mr Jamieson likes to see the music channel.’ She gave mea conspiratorial grin. ‘I think he likes the rock chicks.’ She glanced at Mum, who was still staring into space, then back at me. ‘Is your mother okay?’
‘Who knows?’ I shrugged. ‘She was asking to get out of here. Has she said that before?’
‘Oh yes, every other day. We’re keeping an eye on her — I hear she was quite a Houdini when it came to escaping from home.’
‘She gave us a few scares,’ I admitted.
‘Well, I wouldn’t worry about it now. She’s quite safe here. She’s not going anywhere.’
Chapter 4
Tigger the cocker spaniel did his usual squeaking, tail-wiggling dance to greet me when I arrived home, damp and exhausted and ready to collapse. There is always something unfailingly heart-warming about his doggy welcome, even if it’s only because he knows my arrival every night means his dinner is about to be served.
I negotiated my way around his leaping legs and dumped my bags on the kitchen bench. The radio was on in the kitchen, the television was blaring in the lounge and I could hear the sound of Adam’s stereo upstairs. Lots of noise; no people. A typical homecoming.
‘Hi there, I’m home,’ I called up the stairs. No reply. I crossed the hallway to what had once been the dining room and was now converted to Dad’s room. It was in semi-darkness, lit only by the flicker of his TV screen. He was sound asleep in his worn old La-Z-Boy, the blinds still up; he must have nodded off while it was still light.
His deeply lined, weather-worn face was less worried-looking than usual. A lick of brown hair streaked heavily with grey had escaped over his forehead and his glasses had slipped down his nose. I smiled fondly for a moment, tiptoed out again and left him to it.
After shucking off my coat and dropping it on the hall stand, I pulled off my wet boots and carried them upstairs, holding them away from Tigger, who was sniffing excitedly.
‘Stop it, you silly dog, I’ll feed you in a minute.’ He rushed ahead and pushed open Adam’s door, so I followed him.
Adam and his friend Darren were absorbed with thecomputer, playing a game that seemed to involve crashing a lot of speeding cars. It wasn’t until Tigger started pawing Adam that they noticed we were there.
‘Get off, Tigger,’ Adam said, pushing him down and acknowledging me with a grunt before going back to the game. Darren didn’t even glance at me.
I try not to get too anxious about Adam, but when I see him like that, I load up on guilt — guilt that I haven’t done enough to socialise him, guilt that I can’t seem to reach him any more. Despite my best efforts, he refuses to play sport orgo anywhere further than his computer or the telly — unless it’s Darren’s computer or telly.
Darren’s mother Louise says that’s what boys do these days and they’ll grow out of it. But Adam’s nearly six foot tall and he still hasn’t shown any signs of outgrowing his PC. In fact, I would swear he has an umbilical connection to it. And if Darren grew any more sideways, he’d be more rectangular than the computer screen and wouldn’t fit between the arms of the roller chair he parks himself on for hours on end. They make an odd couple, those boys — Fatty and Skinny, my daughter Charlotte calls them — both of them equallybesotted with chasing each other in virtual street races or through some cyber dungeon, waiting behind corners with crossbows to eliminate each other.
‘At least they’re not out getting drunk or driving round the streets in cars that are several sizes too big for them,’ Louise had said when I’d suggested we should try to get them moving.
Ever since his father’s sudden departure the previous year, Adam had steadily withdrawn from everything he once enjoyed. His teachers could see it, I could see it, but there didn’t seem to be anything we could do to bring him back to school and family participation. The once vibrant young man with the quirky sense of humour had turned into a grumpy, monosyllabic recluse.
Without sunlight and fresh air, his complexion had become pasty and spotty. Without exercise, he’d become flabby and stodgy. Without his father around to galvanise him into the garage, where the pair of them used to spend hours buried in the complexities of elderly internal combustion engines, his interests had dwindled to two small screens, each of them an escape from reality that had carried him far away from me. I blamed his father. I blamed his girlfriend, that conniving cow Jacinta. Since she always dressed to kill, I wished she’d take the hint and keel over.
With the sound of screeching tyres and crashing cars slowly diminishing, I padded slowly down the hall, sighing resignedly. Charlotte’s light was off, the jumble of her discarded clothes visible from the hall. I figured she must be at one of hermany friends’ places or at her father’s.
Tossing my wet boots into the corner of my room, I pulled on my woolly Ugg boots and made my way back downstairs, narrowly avoiding tripping over Tigger as he rushed past me, sensing his dinner might be appearing any second.
The long white kitchen bench was littered with things Adam had discarded — school notices, messy lunchboxes, one dirty sock (who knew where the other one was?), books and magazines, plus the remains of snacks — an empty Diet Coke can, a banana skin and, of course, the milk, its top sitting just millimetres away, its contents slowly gathering microbes.
I put it back in the fridge, chucked out the banana skin, turned off the radio and fed the dog. He wolfed it down in a nanosecond and looked hopefully for more. I fished the chops out of the freezer and, while they defrosted in the microwave, peeled the potatoes, put them on to boil, flopped in front of the TV weather forecast and poured myself a pinot gris, savouring my first sip. The great thing about alcohol is its instant gratification: you don’t have to hang about while you cook it.
More rain, the weather girl said. I shivered and turned on the heater, collapsing back in front of the TV, briefly remonstrating with myself about turning into a couch potato. But all that produced was a desire for potato chips. I heaved myself up, scrabbled around in the pantry until I foun
d the remnants of a packet of Kettle Fries and returned to the lounge to devour them.
Have you ever noticed how impossible it is to stop at just one chip? In no time the packet was empty and there were salty golden crumbs all over the carpet. For once, I didn’t care.
I sank back in the embroidered cushions and rested my glass on my tummy. It could be worse, I mused — I could have a beer belly, though I had to admit I did have a wine waist. But there was no way I was going to get into that dieting spiral again. The last one left me so hungry that even the dog had started to look delicious. I’d finally given the stupid diet away when I caught myself eating toothpaste.
Two more sips of wine later, the front door opened and Charlotte appeared, wet and pink-cheeked from her bike ride home from university. Several inches taller than me, my daughter is slim but only because she works hard at it. I expect there’s a lesson in that, but I have yet to learn it.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she called as she made her way through the lounge to the kitchen, shedding wet sneakers in front of the heater, wet jacket on the back of a chair and shaking drips from her dark blonde ponytail. ‘What’s for dinner?’
‘Chops,’ I said, getting up and retrieving them from the microwave. ‘Twenty minutes,’ I added before she asked how soon. ‘Have a good day?’
‘Vile,’ she said. ‘We had a really tough Spanish laboratory and I just couldn’t get it right. Then I got an assignment back and that evil woman gave me a C plus. Really, after all the work I’d done on it! And Becks got a B. It just wasn’t fair. And then, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, as soon as I started to bike home, it started to rain.’
‘Oh dear, that sounds like a real chapter of woes,’ I said, offering to give her a consoling hug. But she was off to thefridge before she even noticed.
‘Can I have a Diet Coke?’
‘Sure, I’ll get it. You go sit down, I’ll bring it over.’ That way, at least I knew the fridge door would be closed again.Charlotte had a terrible habit of confusing the refrigeratorwith an air conditioning unit — even in winter.
I turned the potatoes down, put the chops under the grill and opened a Diet Coke, carrying it over to her in the lounge. She was brimming with excitement. Clearly she had News.
‘You’ll never guess what.’ She put her can down and looked at me as if I might have a clue.
I shook my head. ‘No idea. You tell me.’
‘Jacinta’s going to have a baby!’
‘Oh,’ I said automatically. Then I realised what she’d just said.
‘Jacinta? Having a baby?’
‘Yes, isn’t it amazing? Dad and Jacks are just head over heels with each other, and now with the baby …’
I didn’t know what to say. Feeling winded, I put my glass down on the coffee table with a thud and struggled to breathe deeply. Then, with no warning, my eyes started prickling and I could feel my cheeks beginning to burn. I looked away at the television to hide my confusion. I needed to get a grip.
‘Mmmm, amazing,’ I mumbled, still at a loss.
‘It’s due in January,’ she burbled, thankfully oblivious to my reaction. ‘Jacinta says she’s hoping for a girl and that she’llgrow up to be as nice as me.’ I wasn’t looking in her direction, but I could sense Charlotte preening. ‘And she says I can begodmother if I want. Isn’t that great?’
‘Mmmm, yes.’ The sound of the chops spitting under the grill gave me a welcome escape. ‘I’ll just fix the dinner,’ I said, fleeing from the couch to the kitchen without looking her way. I pulled the tray out from under the grill so savagely the oven mitt slipped and I burned my thumb.
‘Ow,’ I cried involuntarily.
‘You all right, Mum?’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I lied, quickly turning the chops and shoving the tray back in the oven. I checked the spuds and put on another pot of water for the peas, leaving the cold tap running so I could bathe my burning thumb. It was as if all the pain I’d felt at Charlotte’s announcement was now concentrated in one small area of my body, but no amount of water was going to make it go away. And no amount of wishing would make the tiny life inside Jacinta’s stomach disappear. I fought to bring myself under control, to stop myself crying out some of the nasty thoughts that kept flashing across my mind.
‘What did your father say?’ I called out eventually, when I’d managed to stop my voice quavering.
‘Oh, he wants it to be a boy. He says he’s going to call him Tiger after Tiger Woods.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said, biting back a bitchy reply and turning my energies instead to pulling the peas out of the freezer, pausing for a moment for the icy blast of air to chill my flushed cheeks before shutting the door again.
A few moments later Charlotte arrived in the kitchen. She gave me a hug and said, ‘It’s okay, Mum, you’ll always be the best mum to me.’
That did it. I burst into tears, frozen peas spilling onto the floor. In a trice, Tigger hoovered them up, oblivious to the effect a pile of cold, hard bullets would have on his stomach.
Charlotte steered me back into the lounge and sat me down on the couch, where I embarrassed myself by sobbing loudly, emitting great gasping cries that must have woken Dad, because he soon arrived, blinking himself awake.
‘What is it, lassie? What’s the matter? It’s not Colleen, is it?’
I couldn’t catch enough air between sobs to answer him.
‘It’s Dad,’ Charlotte said. ‘He and Jacinta are going to have a baby.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Dad came over and sat on the other side of me, which only added more impetus to my weeping. ‘There, there, lassie, you’re overwrought, and understandably so. But don’t let this get you down. He’s not your problem any more.’
‘But … that’s … just … it,’ I wailed.
‘You still love Dad, don’t you?’ Charlotte said quietly.
‘No, I don’t,’ I protested vehemently. ‘I’m absolutely furious with him. It’s just — how dare he do this to me? On top of everything else! He makes me so mad!’
‘But why …?’
‘Because he’s already got a family, that’s why. Because he’s already got you and Josh and Adam. He doesn’t need to start another family. He’s too old, for one thing.’ I petered out and took the proffered tissues that Charlotte had fetched from the breakfast bar.
‘Jacinta isn’t old,’ she said, somewhat tactlessly. ‘She’s only thirty-something, and she’s very fit.’
‘Thanks,’ I said sarcastically, then blew my nose to emphasise the point.
‘Ah, lassie, I know you’re angry,’ Dad said, taking my hand, ‘but Steve was a good father to your three. Try not to resent him for wanting to do it all over again.’
I swallowed another bitter retort. Dad was right: Steve had been a good father — when he’d been there. I could recall many a lonely night with three squalling children while he was out with his mates. And he’d never been around when nappies needed changing, housework needed doing or someone needed to stay home from work because one of the kids was sick.
‘What’s burning?’ Adam called from the top of the stairs. I looked up and saw a haze of blue smoke forming above the oven. Seconds later, the smoke alarm went off, emitting a piercing shriek which set Tigger off howling.
‘Oh God, the chops!’ I cried, abandoning the tissues and running to turn the oven off and shut its door. ‘They’ll be ruined.’ I opened the kitchen window and Charlotte opened the front door to create a draught, while I waved a tea towel under the smoke alarm to clear the air. But to no avail — it kept wailing and Tigger kept howling. In no time, the icy blast plummeted the indoor temperature to Arctic.
‘Has Charlotte burned the dinner again?’ Adam cried, arriving in the kitchen with Darren right behind him. ‘You’d think she’d know by now that the smoke alarm is not an oven timer.’
‘Don’t be so rude,’ Charlotte retorted. ‘You should try cooking occasionally and see how you go.’
‘Come on, Adam, it’s time you help
ed your mother,’ Dad said, entering the fray. ‘You can set the table and Darren, it’s time you were on your way. I’m sure your mother will have dinner for you by now.’
‘Yes, Mr Rushmore, I’d better go.’ Darren picked up his bag and jacket from the laundry floor and disappeared out the front door.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I said, then turned my attention to the burnt offering inside the oven. I peered through the glass door to see the chops smouldering. But at least there were no flames. Donning the oven mitt, I fought my way through the small black cloud from the oven, pulled out the tray and inspected the meat — not nearly as charred as I’d feared and hopefully still edible.
‘It’ll be okay,’ Charlotte said kindly, coming up behind me and peering over my shoulder. ‘I like it better well cooked. You can’t see the blood.’
She’d only given up being vegetarian a few months earlier, so that could have been true. But I suspected she was making up for being the bearer of bad news.
Adam dragged over a stool from the breakfast bar and reached up to the smoke alarm, shutting off the awful din by disconnecting the battery. On cue, the dog stopped howling.
‘Thank God for that,’ Dad chuckled, putting his arms around me. ‘Ach, lassie, y’have to see the funny side.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, pulling a wry face as I scraped the worst of the burnt bits off the meat.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Charlotte said. ‘Adam’s idea of cooking lamb chops is to put them in the toaster.’ My jaw dropped. ‘Only joking,’ she added, before Adam could protest. ‘But I have seen him try to cook fish fingers and chips that way.’
‘It worked, too,’ Adam said proudly.
I silently thanked the Lord Adam hadn’t set fire to the house and served up the dinner, such as it was.
Head Over Heels Page 3
