The Things That Matter

by Andrea Michael

  I, on the other hand, felt this overwhelming panic that my mother was suddenly going to walk down the stairs and laugh at me.

  Here goes nothing.

  ‘So where the hell have you been all my life, then?’ I had to stop myself from crossing my arms like a teenager, feeling ridiculous even as I said it. Kit guffawed, a brief flash of amusement on her face.

  When Kit smiled the lines around her mouth became prominent. It was refreshing, to see someone touched by age and seeming not to care about it at all. The dark hair scraped back in a plait was streaked with grey and she wore muted colours, practical trousers and a thin, padded gilet. This was a woman who didn’t care what you thought of her – she had a job to do.

  ‘Honestly? I was hiding from your mother. Woman was a bloody banshee,’ she crossed and uncrossed her legs, ‘had to escape to the middle of nowhere, and she still found me. She’s like a plague – she’ll always get to you in the end.’

  I laughed at that, an unexpected hiccup that seemed foreign to me. It was true. Mum always got what she wanted. Even now – I was here, wasn’t I? She’d called and I’d come running.

  ‘Why didn’t she ever talk about you? I didn’t even know she had a sister.’

  Kit raised her hands, shrugging. ‘We didn’t always get on. I was the one from the previous marriage. Your ma was the golden child. She made my life a living hell growing up. It might sound awful but when she went off and got knocked up, I was relieved that she was somebody else’s problem.’

  I blinked. God, I couldn’t remember the last time someone spoke so forthrightly. Kit grinned at me. ‘Well, you’re here for honesty, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am,’ I laughed, ‘I just never expect it. It’s refreshing.’

  ‘Ha!’ she exclaimed, so loudly that I thought she’d hurt something. ‘Refreshing! That’s what they say when they think you’re a barmy bobbin, but want to be polite. Refreshing! A breath of fresh air. What they mean is you’re a mad old bag, but you’ve done them no harm and you give them a laugh every now and then.’

  She twitched her lips at me.

  ‘And you enjoy that?’

  ‘Of course I do! If they’re gonna talk, hen, I’d like them to have something interesting to say. So I’m that Mad Old Gal up at the farm, and I’ll take that any day, please and thank you.’

  I inhaled the scent of the cinnamon in the tea, it took me back in a way that wasn’t completely unpleasant. Perhaps there had been good times. Happy times. So that the smell of my childhood wasn’t some toxic scent that made me sick.

  The reality of the situation suddenly hit me. I wasn’t just having a snarky conversation with a funny older lady. I was speaking to a family member. Finally, there was someone else. I thought I’d had no one. Growing up, there’d been Mum and Dad, and that was it. No aunties or uncles or cousins. No siblings to play with, or fight with. No one to run to when life was a bit hard to understand.

  Now I had kin. Another person who knew my mother. It was almost impossible to comprehend.

  ‘So, why Taz?’ Kit asked me, as if expecting some sort of story.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why not Tasha?’

  I shrugged, ‘It’s my name. I dunno.’

  She nodded, watching me with a wariness I found appealing. Maybe she was looking for signs I was like Nina, liable to go off on something for no reason, to be crying one moment and laughing the next. To say what she needed to get what she wanted.

  ‘Our mother’s name was Natasha,’ Kit cleared her throat and added an extra spoonful of sugar to her tea, stirring thoughtfully. ‘I suppose she never told you about your granny?’

  I shook my head, ‘She didn’t tell me much, to be honest. I wasn’t high on her list of priorities.’

  ‘When has anything been a priority to your mother, beyond getting what she wants?’

  It was good to know she wasn’t going to defend her. That she didn’t even particularly like her very much. That was comforting. That someone else knew how she discarded people when they didn’t sparkle the way she wanted. But… if she lived here, they must have made amends. I waited for some sort of explanation, some addendum to the story. We didn’t get along, but things are better now. She still drives me nuts, but we’ve grown up. But there was nothing.

  I wanted to ask where she was, but I was scared of the answer.

  ‘Was my granny a nice woman?’

  Kit paused, staring at the space on the wall behind me. ‘Nice… is a difficult word.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘Of course I loved her, she was my ma!’ Kit sounded surprised, but halfway through seemed to realise that wasn’t a given. She bowed her head, as if embarrassed. ‘Our mother was tough as nails. She was a survivor, but more than that, she was selfless. We had people visiting every hour, and there’d always be enough food for them. It’s only when I look back now, I realise she went without. She ran her house like clockwork – cleaning, cooking, fixing. It was all about making sure we had everything we needed. Our school uniforms were always clean and pressed, our hair always neatly plaited. It mattered what other people thought.’

  I didn’t really know what to say, except that I felt an intense jealousy towards anyone whose mother bothered to iron their uniform or brush their hair before school. There was a time when I would have done anything for that attention.

  I bet they were never bullied for having holey jumpers or greasy hair at school.

  ‘Sounds like she looked after you.’

  Kit nodded, ‘Oh yes. All she wanted was for us to get an education and do better than she did. Every generation should have more opportunity than the last, that was what she thought.’

  This made me feel such an abject sense of loss that I scratched my legs through my jeans in irritation.

  ‘Her husband, my stepdad, he thought she was a soft touch. Always bringing strays home for dinner, looking out for everyone…’ Kit trailed off, and I thought about how even speaking about this woman I didn’t know felt like I’d lost the opportunity for something wonderful.

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  Kit shook her head, ‘It’s been a while without her now, although you never quite get over it.’

  I thought about my dad. About having no one to walk me down the aisle, or anyone to give a shit about seeing me at Christmas. I conjured those good times, his hand around mine when I was a child, how he’d take me on the carousel at Christmas. There weren’t many memories but I held them close. He was better before. After she left, he fell apart. I don’t like to think about how he was after.

  She did that to him.

  ‘So… was my mum swapped at birth, or did something else go wrong? Because she certainly doesn’t sound like your mother.’ I snorted, then worried I’d gone too far. ‘I mean, apart from the survival instinct, I guess.’

  Kit smiled. ‘Nina was a spoiled little girl, that was all. And when she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention, she knew she could get into trouble to get it instead. She felt like the world owed her something.’

  I could think of a few people like that. But usually they managed to make the world give them what they wanted. Dan’s colleagues came to mind. They wanted it, they got it. Them’s the rules, that’s the world. Why so glum, Taz babe, we’re just making it happen. Everyone else could too if they tried hard enough.

  God, I hated them.

  ‘Her da was just the same, always moaning about what everyone else had. Hateful little man, always concerned that someone got for free what he’d had to pay for.’

  ‘So, why are you different?’

  Kit laughed, ‘I dunno, hen, different stock? We didn’t have much before Ma married again. We were used to a life of hard work and getting by. A simple life. I never really felt comfortable with anything else.’

  Something about that felt familiar, as I considered how awkward my expensive flat made me feel, with a thousand-pound sofa and the bottles of top-quality Champagne in the wine rack. I’d preferred o
ur little rented flat with the condensation in the windows and the five-pound bottles of wine from the offie.

  Kit looked around her at her home, and I could see her taking in how it must look to me. It was bare and simple, but there was warmth in unexpected places. The blue and white stripes of the mugs, the woven (and slightly wonky) table runner. The mustard cushion in the armchair and the irritable little ginger cat that pushed up against Kit’s leg. It was simple, like she said, but it was beautiful in its own way.

  ‘So, I assume Mum’s not staying here?’

  Kit chuckled, ‘Not quite up to her highness’ requirements, you mean? Aye, you may be right.’

  She paused and sobered, ‘She’s in a facility about twenty minutes from here – St Michael’s. They have nurses and activities and all that. It’s very fancy, had some famous in-patients – in fact, they’re not called in-patients, they’re called guests!’

  I pressed my lips together. ‘So, what she said in the card was true, she’s sick?’

  Kit nodded, ‘I’m afraid so, love. But not in the way you might think.’

  Chapter Four

  My mother had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s six months before. She’d ended up in a unit outside Glasgow, where she’d been living, and somehow they’d managed to track down Kit to take responsibility for her.

  She was docile, most of the time, Kit said. In fact, Kit admitted, Nina was easier to deal with now. She seemed to have forgotten so much of what made her angry and jealous and vindictive. Her personality was sweet and childlike, and yet it was so hard not to expect that set jaw and imperious look to make an appearance. It did, every now and then, Kit said.

  ‘Are you okay? You’ve gone pale. Paler.’ I heard Kit get up, and watched as she brought a bottle of whisky and two glasses over to the table, pouring a healthy dram before clunking the glass down in front of me in a way that brooked no question.

  I downed it, feeling the liquid burn my throat, and made a face.

  ‘That’s for sipping, not downing. And I gave you the good stuff!’ Kit laughed. ‘Serves me right for being a good hostess.’ She topped up my glass and held hers up, ‘Slainte.’

  I clinked my glass against hers and sipped, feeling the heat on my lips this time, a pleasant warmth that settled in my belly. It tasted a little like relief, a little like oblivion.

  ‘So…’ I took a breath, ‘how bad is it?’

  ‘Oh now, you were so fiery half an hour ago, don’t tell me a little sickness makes you change your mind about your mother? She’s been punished appropriately now, is that it?’ Kit raised an eyebrow at me, mocking. ‘Like how you don’t speak ill of the dead?’

  I shook my head, ‘No, I just… I was expecting cancer… or liver failure. Or something where she might need a transplant from me.’

  Kit snorted, ‘Lord, my baby sister did a number on you, sweet girl, didn’t she?’

  I ignored that, however true it might be. ‘Is she gone? Is there… nothing left of who she was?’

  I’d never really understood Alzheimer’s. It always seemed like something older people got as they gradually lost the memories they’d made in life. I saw it a bit like a spool unravelling, the thread fraying until it wasn’t one thread at all anymore, just a mass of fluff and good intentions.

  But my mother was young, and for all her faults she’d been vibrant, sharp as anything. She’d had… vivacity. Life. The idea of her being whitewashed was almost impossible to comprehend.

  ‘Oh, she’s there all right, she gets that look in her eye sometimes like she’s the Queen of Sheba, demanding a royal greeting. The way she held out her hand to me once, like she expected me to kiss it…’ Kit smiled, and tilted her glass towards mine, ‘Have another sip, hen, it’ll help, I promise.’

  I did as she asked, closing my eyes briefly.

  ‘I wondered what would happen when I sent the birthday card. If you’d come or if she’d burnt that bridge too badly.’

  Kit’s voice was so faint that I thought I’d imagined it. When I opened my eyes, she gave me a look of concern, almost guilt. ‘She begged me to send it, convinced it was your birthday. The staff were getting worried about her, refusing to eat or drink. The only way she’d eat was if I wrote out a card for her. She said the exact words she wanted me to write.’

  Kit gritted her teeth and shook her head, fingers tracing the rim of the glass. ‘I was convinced she’d forget we’d written the card, that she’d wake up the next morning and insist again, refuse to eat until I’d written the same card every day… but she didn’t. I went to see her, and she asked me how I was, and if I’d sent the card. She wondered whether you’d be eating chocolate cake for your birthday, as it was your favourite. I was shocked.’

  I blinked.

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Wasn’t what?’

  ‘Chocolate cake. It wasn’t my favourite. It was Victoria sponge with strawberry jam. Sharon next door used to make me one on my birthday. Because Mum always forgot.’ I gritted my teeth and pushed my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

  I’d never really spoken about my mother with someone else. When I was a kid, admitting her faults felt shameful. I was always waiting for someone to say, ‘Well of course she didn’t get you a birthday cake, you’re a bad kid and you don’t deserve one.’ The minute someone told me I deserved it, I knew I’d crumble. So I never spoke out.

  When I reached my early twenties, I’d throw out the odd edge of a story with the insouciance of a well-trained liar, someone who was above such things. Unflappably cool, with her ‘bad mum’ stories and her dead father. The woman with the devoted husband at the age of twenty-two.

  So I stopped talking about Nina. If I didn’t think about her, or him, or any part of that life, then I could focus on my future, my own family. That had been the plan. And it had worked pretty well, until it hadn’t.

  ‘How did you find my address?’

  Kit looked embarrassed, rubbing the back of her neck as she considered the grooves in the table. ‘Ah, well, there are still some newspaper articles floating around from that time, it mentioned your boyfriend’s name, and I took a chance that you’d married, and then there you were, this big shot at a charity! So I called your work and asked for you, and the wee lass on the phone said you were off on maternity, but she could tell me where to send the flowers.’

  I growled, ‘That’ll be Simone, the number of bloody times I’ve told her about personal data and GDPR and staff security. Giving out my home address!’

  ‘I know!’ Kit agreed. ‘I said to her, “Wee gal, what if I’m an axe murderer or something?” and she said, “Oh no, are you?” and I hung up! That’ll teach her a lesson!’

  Kit nodded, impressed with herself, as she waited for me to laugh. I did, but mainly from the earnest look on her face. And then once I started I couldn’t stop, wiping tears from my eyes at the thought of twenty-year-old Simone’s face as the axe-murdering Granny from Glasgow hung up on her.

  ‘So, what did you have?’ Kit asked and I stopped laughing. Damn.

  ‘Um, I… didn’t.’ It was easier. Otherwise she’d ask what his name was, and we’d never given him one. It still didn’t sit right with me. He was here, ever so briefly, he was real. But naming him felt like another loss. I think Dan had hoped that by not giving him a name, it would be like it had happened right at the start, before he’d even become a person. It didn’t work.

  ‘Ah, I see,’ she nodded. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  I nodded, staring at the table.

  ‘Can I ask…’

  Oh no, I thought, not more questions, not more prodding and poking and swimming around in my grief. How far along were you? What happened, was it something you did?

  ‘Why did you come here? I would have bet a thousand pounds that you wouldn’t have come.’ Kit looked at me in disbelief. ‘I know my sister, I knew what she could be like back then.’

  ‘She could be kind sometimes. She had her moments.’

  I
kept those memories close, protected them. The days she’d do me up with her make-up, play with me like I was her little doll. She’d push me on the swings, so high I was sure I’d flip over the top of the railing, and in those brief months she worked at the bakery, she always brought me back an apple turnover because she knew I loved them.

  I mean, I supposed I only loved them because she brought them back for me, and she only brought them back because they were free. But I felt special. I’d never had a baked treat before then, not from a bakery, in a little paper bag! And my mum got it for me, especially!

  You could destroy anything with enough hindsight and rationality, but it still made me feel cherished when I thought of that little brown paper bag clutched in my sticky fingers. Some things stayed despite the facts.

  Kit’s face softened, but she still looked unconvinced.

  I didn’t want to tell her that even bad family was better than none, when you’d built your life around someone. When you had kept secrets and told lies, and you figured your husband was going to leave you.

  Nope, too much.

  I shook my head, ‘I guess I want to believe that people can change. That you’re not the sum of the worst things that happened to you. I’d imagined her married to a nice man, maybe finally having what she wanted, and then maybe she’d be nice too. Maybe she’d be happy.’

  ‘You want her to be happy?’

  ‘I want to know that desperately unhappy people can be happy eventually, yeah. That people who make mistakes can find peace.’

  Kit widened her eyes and shook her head, like she’d never heard such a crazy story in her life.

  ‘And… and maybe I wanted to stand in front of her and tell her I was okay. Even though she left me in the shit, I survived and had a good life, a lovely husband and a beautiful home and a job I love…’

  Even as I was saying it, I could hear myself and tried to stop. You don’t have those things, not really, Taz, they’re a lie… this is all a lie… you tricked him and he picked you, and now you’re getting what you deserve.