The Good Mother

by Karen Osman

  They would have to address the situation soon. They couldn’t go on like this; it was starting to have an impact on the girls. Kate felt weary at the thought of it. Why should she have to take the initiative? Why did everything fall to her? She knew he hated his job, but in this economic climate he should be grateful to have one at all. For a moment, Kate imagined being able to leave the house for just one day and sit behind a desk in an office filled with other adults. She imagined the ringing of phones, the clicking of typewriter keyboards, people’s voices as they talked about different clients. And blissfully, the absence of children – no crying, no wailing, no ‘Mummy!’ twenty-four hours a day. No having to come up with exciting new games because she didn’t have the money to buy the latest My Little Pony figures and Care Bear cuddly toys. Kate could hardly imagine it: to have a whole day to yourself, where you could be absorbed in something other than childcare. On certain days, she would swap places with her husband in a heartbeat. She took a deep breath and made a mental note to try to find the time to talk to him. Along with the million other things she had to do, she thought grudgingly. Perhaps on Saturday night when the children were in bed, she could cook him a nice steak. If she caught him between his first and second beers, he should be relaxed enough to have a chat. A surge of frustration ran through her again that she had to plan ahead to try to get a conversation with him. How had things become so complicated? She remembered a time when she could have talked to him about anything. A time when he made her feel safe and that he would do anything to make her happy.

  Sighing, Kate dragged her thoughts back to the present. She didn’t have time to deal with her marriage now. Her to-do list was getting longer by the minute, and she also had to come up with something for dinner that didn’t involve frozen pizza. Grabbing a knife, she quickly buttered some bread and made cheese sandwiches for the children. She was chopping salad when she heard a scream, followed by the sound of crying in the children’s bedroom.

  ‘Mummy,’ one of them began to wail. ‘She hit me.’

  ‘Mummy! I didn’t! But she took my new pencil case!’

  Kate sighed and waited a few moments to see if they would sort it out themselves. When she had found out she was pregnant the second time, everyone had talked about having a boy so she had ‘one of each’. But for Kate, while she would be happy either way, she was particularly pleased when they found out they were having a second girl. She had thought same-sex siblings would get on better because they would have more in common. How wrong she had been. The girls fought all day long.

  Walking into the children’s bedroom, Kate took in the scene. Her younger daughter was lying on the floor with her head in her arms, holding on to the pencil case for dear life, sobbing so hard, it would seem the world was about to end. Her elder child, on the other hand, was parading about in an old curtain pretending she was a queen and demanding the sought-after pencil case back immediately. She had called the guards already, she grandly informed her mother. While the pencil case was rightly her elder daughter’s, Kate sympathised with the little one. She too just wanted to lie on the floor and sob because she wanted things she couldn’t have. But it wasn’t going to get lunch made or the washing done. She knew it was going to be a long day and not for the first time did she imagine what her life would have been like if she had heeded her mother’s words.

  Chapter 4

  Catherine

  Catherine woke up to silence, instantly alert. It was so unusual in her house that she immediately thought something was wrong. Normally, Helen would have her music blasting from her iPod or Richard would be talking loudly on his mobile phone. He liked to pace while holding the wretched thing to his ear. He told her it helped him think, but it put Catherine on edge watching him march around like that.

  She padded downstairs and was greeted with the smell of fresh coffee and bacon, and her husband and daughter chatting quietly, enjoying their breakfast. Pleasure – and another feeling she couldn’t quite put her finger on – welled up inside her as she took in the idyllic scene.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Morning, love, how did you sleep?’ Richard asked her this every day. Just one of the many mechanical things married couples do when they have been together for so long, Catherine thought.

  ‘Fine,’ she responded. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, good thanks – there’s coffee in the pot and bacon in the pan. You just need to pop a couple of slices of bread in if you want some toast.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Catherine kissed the top of his head, grateful that while they had been married a long time, not everything was perfunctory. He knew she didn’t operate well in the morning without a strong cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Helen hadn’t inherited her father’s ‘jump out of bed and be chipper’ personality either. Instead, she took after her mother and tended not to interact much until after breakfast. Both Catherine and Richard had learnt early on to give her the space she needed and even now, in her late twenties, she was more like a non-communicative, moody teenager in the mornings, only really coming to life around 10 a.m., which was why Catherine was so surprised to see her chatting happily to her father.

  Catherine moved to the kitchen, her only focus being the coffee pot, and poured herself a generous cup. When anyone asked why she refused to drink instant coffee, she told them it was because of the aroma. As she breathed it in deeply, Catherine thought to herself that there was nothing like the smell of freshly ground beans to turn something ordinary into something worth getting up for. And recently, she felt that she needed more and more incentive to be able to face each day. After a few grateful sips, the wheels of her brain started to turn and she began a mental list of the things she had to do that day. It was Thursday, which meant a committee meeting for one of the charities she volunteered for, and a quick shop for the weekend so she wouldn’t have to battle through the crowds on a Friday.

  As she helped herself to the bacon, the flap of the letterbox rattled, indicating the postman’s arrival. Catherine checked the clock on the microwave. He was early today – usually he arrived when Richard had already left the house and on his way to work. Hurriedly, she put her breakfast to one side, and went to the front door. She had been checking the post each day, wondering when, and even if, she would receive a letter from Michael. It had only been two weeks and the rehabilitation centre had warned her that in some cases, it took at least a couple of months to receive a response, and it could be a short one at that. Yet today, there it was, a light blue envelope, its Durham postmark just visible amongst the bills and circulars. Quickly snatching it up, she slipped it into her dressing gown pocket before scooping up the rest of the post. As she glanced through the letters, she could see most of them were for Richard.

  ‘I’m going to take a quick shower,’ she said as she handed him the bundle, the letter from Michael still safely hidden in her pocket. ‘I may be a while as I need to wash my hair,’ she added, grinning. It was a running joke between them about how much time she took in the shower. ‘You’ll probably have left by the time I’m finished. See you tonight.’

  ‘What about your breakfast?’

  ‘I’ll finish it later.’

  ‘Really? That’s a first! Normally, you can’t move until you’ve had something to eat! OK, love. I’ll drop Helen off to her interview on the way.’ Of course – Catherine had forgotten that Helen had an interview that day. So that was why her daughter was a little chattier this morning – the excitement and nerves of a job interview.

  ‘See you later, and good luck,’ she said, kissing Helen goodbye.

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  As she leaned over to Richard to kiss him goodbye, he put his arm round her waist and Catherine stiffened as she heard the letter in her pocket crumple under his embrace.

  Extracting herself, she turned, her hand in her pocket, feeling the thin paper between her fingers as she walked towards the bedroom. Conscious of his eyes on her back, she tried not to hurry. She went into their en-suite
bathroom, and locked the door behind her. Sitting on the covered toilet seat, she took a deep breath to calm herself. She hadn’t mentioned to her family that she had written to Michael. There didn’t seem much point if she wasn’t even sure he was going to respond. It wasn’t necessarily a lie, more of an omission, she told herself. Why shouldn’t she have a secret? Her family didn’t need to know everything about her, did they? But still, it was an unfamiliar feeling. Pushing the guilt aside, she slipped the envelope out of her pocket, and tried not to rip it open. Slowly slipping her finger under the flap, Catherine felt the anticipation increase in intensity as she unfolded and smoothed out the letter. No floral patterns here, but the handwriting was cursive, neat and legible, with some of the letters having a stylistic flick.

  September 2010

  Dear Catherine,

  Thanks for the letter – it was such a pleasure to receive something so personal and learn a little about your life. I can imagine it’s incredibly nerve-racking being in communication with a convicted murderer. As you can imagine, I don’t really get many visitors (apart from my solicitor and even those visits have stopped as I recently fired the last one) and rarely any post, so when your letter arrived last week it was a real treat.

  I have been inside since 1999 so yes, over ten years and it’s true what they say: you can get used to anything. The food’s not bad and they let us watch TV every week. You’re right about my upcoming parole – if my good behaviour continues for another year, my parole date is likely to come up sooner rather than later, so that’s something to work towards.

  I am originally from Durham – or rather from a small village just outside the city. I moved around various prisons and holding cells initially but I have been in Durham Prison for several years now.

  Saying that, it took me a long time to get used to being here and sometimes I don’t even recognise myself. I used to live a pretty normal life – I worked in education and enjoyed it. In my spare time, I used to play the guitar but that’s all a different life now.

  Michael

  Catherine swallowed down her disappointment. For some reason, she had expected more. Not even a page long, the letter was brief, to say the least, but she couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned. And she hadn’t had to wait long for a reply – that was a good sign surely, she thought. Slipping it back into her pocket, she reassured herself that it was only his first letter and, slowly, she would be able to get him to open up. What did she expect? She was a stranger to him – she would have to be patient. She would write back to him in the next few days.

  Having taken a shower, Catherine got dressed pulling on her favourite jeans, a white T-shirt and pale pink V-necked jumper. She didn’t bother to check herself in the full-length mirror: she knew what she looked like as this was her regular uniform for a Thursday. She had never had a problem with her weight – certainly not in the last ten years, anyway – and as a result, at almost fifty, her figure looked at least several years younger. Her philosophy of keeping as busy as possible and eating food to live rather than for pleasure was better than any diet. With her light blond bobbed hair and tall, slim elegance, she was saved from the full-blown envy of other women by her face. Her life was etched there, every line and wrinkle reflecting her history, but while it was ageing, it also gave character, making her somehow more likeable, more approachable. Peering into the handheld mirror, Catherine applied her expensive anti-ageing cream, which Ruth had talked her into buying. Catherine idly wondered if it did any good. A fine layer of foundation, a touch of mascara and blusher, a quick blow-dry of her hair and she considered herself ready to face the day.

  Catherine retrieved the letter from her dressing gown pocket and went into the kitchen. As she expected, it was empty, the hastily gathered plates and cups on the kitchen counter the only signs that Richard and Helen had been there. Having emptied and rinsed their dishes, Catherine placed them in the dishwasher before making a piece of toast. She sat down at the table, her breakfast in front of her, distractedly picking at her food as she read the letter once again. This time, she decided, she would use her best paper.

  Chapter 5

  Alison

  Despite spending endless hours in the library, as the end of the first term approached, Alison still felt she was floundering and out of her depth with the workload. With lecture-style teaching and a large number of students, the learning experience seemed alien and isolating. Their heads bent over their notepads, students wrote furiously as the lecturer droned on and on about the principles of law. It was all very theoretical. Alison had spent the previous summer imagining the course to be much more dynamic: outings to watch proceedings in courtrooms; role-playing; analysing high-profile cases in groups. She had envisaged waking up every day passionate and eager to learn more about how she could help and change people’s lives for the better. Now, she silently chastised herself for it, being such a cliché. Instead, each class just seemed to get harder and harder, no matter how much studying she did, and the boredom was, at times, excruciating. Perhaps her life-long dream of working in law wasn’t for her after all? In the last few weeks of the first term, with the pressure of course-work deadlines and tests, she was spending twelve hours or more a day studying. Sometimes she would wake up with her head on her desk around two in the morning, various notes stuck to her face, and when she went to review them, she found she had little recollection of making them the night before.

  While Alison still had breakfast with Laura, between lectures and study sessions, she just didn’t have as much time to see her friend, and their lazy coffee breaks and lunches in their free time slowly dwindled to once every few days. When they did catch up, Laura would chatter non-stop about all the activities she was involved in: rowing, dance classes, socials, and various events she attended. Alison could barely keep up. How did she find time for her work? Perhaps her course in history wasn’t as demanding, thought Alison, trying to reassure herself. But deep down, Alison knew the real reason. She was struggling because she wasn’t clever enough. She was struggling because she was used to being a big fish in a small pond at school, and now she was in a much more competitive environment and losing ground both academically and socially. She hadn’t really made any friends on the course and she knew she relied heavily on Laura for her social life, but the more time went on, the harder it seemed to make the effort. On her course, groups had already formed and Alison was either too shy, or too exhausted to try to involve herself. There didn’t seem to be room for anything else except making sure she got through the workload. Her fear of failing increased day by day and the only way she seemed to be able to conquer it was by spending more time in the library, note taking and re-reading up topics she’d failed to grasp in the fast-paced lectures. The endless hours began to take their toll and she would often catch herself drifting off. She knew she wasn’t being effective with her work but she couldn’t stop herself. The library became like a security blanket and she believed that as long as she was amongst the caverns of books, she would somehow get through the course.

  *

  One morning, having woken up late after studying till the early hours the night before, Alison found her favourite jeans were in the wash, so she grabbed another pair. However, the university diet of alcohol and cheap takeaway food had taken its toll, and as she struggled to do up the zip she realised just how much weight she had put on in less than a term. With no time to change, she secured a thick elastic hairband through the buttonhole and looped it over the button, giving her a much-needed extra few inches, then covered the gap with a long jumper. It wasn’t very comfortable but it would have to do. Typical, Alison thought as she grabbed her bag. Today was an important day and she had planned to dress carefully. During the last week of the first term, students were invited for review sessions with their lecturers. Alison was dreading the sessions. She had six appointments in total and had booked them all in one day, in order to get them over with quickly. Finally ready, she hurried to the law department, walking qu
ickly to reach the first meeting on time. She was only halfway there, when she felt the first splashes of rain on her face, then she realised she had forgotten her umbrella.

  *

  As each appointment drew to a close, the message was clear: she had a strong work ethic but was an average student and unlikely to be in the top tier of graduates. Of course, none of the lecturers put it in so many words, but she knew what they were saying and could infer the meaning behind their feedback. It started with the first meeting at 9 a.m. with Dr Asher. She was an astonishingly dry woman whose tone of voice never seemed to moderate. Many students dreaded her class, particularly after a big night out, as her monotonous voice induced a feeling of such sleepiness that students often dropped off. Alison had never seen so many people wearing sunglasses indoors as they did to Dr Asher’s classes.

  ‘Good morning, how very good of you to join me,’ said Dr Asher as Alison, late, with hair plastered to her scalp, entered her office. Ignoring her typical sarcastic disdain, Alison apologised. Outside, the drizzle threatened to turn into a torrential downpour.

  Alison sat opposite Dr Asher on a hard, uncomfortable chair, feeling the makeshift band of her jeans cut into her. As she raised her arms to smooth the frizz out of her damp hair, she felt the slight ping of the elastic holding her jeans together pop open. Alarmed and unable to move, Alison rested her bag on her lap.

  Dr Asher didn’t waste any time on small talk. On her desk, Alison recognised her submitted coursework, the black markings interspersed with splashes of red. Handing the document over, Dr Asher cleared her throat.

  ‘Here’s your coursework – just an average 65 out of 100, I’m afraid. While the arguments were solid, they could have been strengthened by additional details that you had missed out. Take this section for example…’