‘Mum,’ I reply. ‘What brings you here?’
‘Meg called me.’ She holds a small kitbag up. ‘I’ve come to do your nails.’
I’m lost for words as she walks away from me. I can hear her unpack what must be manicure regalia onto the dining table before I’ve even shut the front door.
‘Mum,’ I stand in the living room doorway, feeling a prickle of anxiety, wondering what Meg has said. ‘My nails are fine, I …’ I’m trying to find the words that express what I feel but are not – Please leave, Mum. I need to write an Oscar-nominated song. I don’t want to tell you what’s going on in my world. I like to pretend that everything’s all right on the phone. Can you please piss off back to the Cotswolds?
‘Open a bottle of wine, Elizabeth, I’m staying the night.’ Her stone-grey eyes catch mine and her eyebrows arch as if to say, ‘Go on, I dare you. Tell me you’re too busy.’ She says nothing, then continues to unpack an array of tiny, multicoloured bottles.
My husband has left me and I’ve just been up in the loft convincing myself I can earn a proper living songwriting, yet it seems – I glance down at my fingernails – that a manicure is more important. ‘I’ll get the wine.’ I walk towards the fridge, hoping she won’t follow me, and discover the lack of food and abundance of crisps. There is, however, a beef stew I’d forgotten about. Sylvia. I offer up a silent thanks to her.
Having filled two glasses, I place them both on the dining table and take a seat. She’s standing at the bi-folds, staring out into the garden. The tail end of a rain shower spits on the glazing.
‘You’ll have to take up gardening,’ she says, her arms folded across her chest.
I know then that Meg has revealed enough. ‘I was going to tell you.’
‘When, exactly?’ She hasn’t taken her eyes off the lawn.
‘When I felt I could.’ I shrug. ‘It’s only just beginning to be real to me.’
The sounds of Sylvia’s children, rushing into their garden after the rain, permeate the room. I stare at an ancient ring of a coffee cup on the walnut dining table, as my mother takes a seat next to me. She raises her wine glass to her mouth and I can tell she’s fighting tears. She then pulls an antiseptic wipe from a plastic container, leans forward and grabs one of my hands. She uses both of hers to gently clean mine. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
My shoulders move up and down again. ‘It is what it is.’
‘What happened?’ She asks the question as she wipes clean my other hand.
‘How much did Meg say?’
‘She just told me that he’d gone, implied there was another woman.’ Her eyes once again meet mine. ‘Was there? Is there?’
I let her words hang in the air a moment before replying. ‘Yes and yes.’
‘Bastard,’ she whispers, picking out a particularly lurid bottle. ‘Fuchsia, I think. You need brightening up.’
I don’t reply; know there’s no point. If my mother has made up her mind that I need fuchsia nails, then that’s exactly what I’m going to get. She has already travelled a hundred miles. She picks up the file and gets to work.
Minutes later, she speaks again. ‘You’re not alone.’
I tap her arm affectionately. ‘I know that, Mum. Thank you.’
‘We all have crosses to bear. Most of us have faulty husbands and most of us learn to live with them.’
She is, of course, referring to the fact that my father’s first love was alcohol, over and above both her and me.
She squeezes my hand in hers. ‘I loved your dad,’ she says, ‘and he loved me.’
I remember lots of tears; my mother weeping into her coffee cup, her bed sheets, her book … I can’t hide my discomfort, and I shift awkwardly in the chair. ‘He had a funny way of showing it,’ I say.
Mum frowns. ‘Don’t judge.’ Her voice has a hint of scolding to it. ‘I get what you’re going through but … there’s nothing worse in this world than losing a child. When Simon died, a big part of your dad did too. It was after that he changed. He was running away from the hell of it all.’
I start to interrupt but she stops me.
‘This was before people talked about their feelings. There was no such thing as counselling. Grief counselling was what he needed but, to be honest, even if it had been around, he wouldn’t have gone. Instead he drank bourbon to help face the pain.’
I wait until she draws breath. ‘I’m not judging, Mum. I just don’t understand why you’d put up with that.’
‘You were young. And then, suddenly, you weren’t. Why change something that worked in so many ways for us? Besides …’ She smiles and cocks her head at me. ‘We were happy.’
I bite my lip. And my tongue. She’s right. I have never had to deal with the heartache of losing a child. And who am I to judge her when I forgave Adam once before too? I convinced myself we could get past his failings.
‘Can you forgive him, maybe forget about this, and put it behind you?’ she asks. It’s as if she can hear my thoughts, see into my very soul.
‘No.’ My tone is emphatic. ‘I hope someday I won’t care, so maybe I can forgive him, but I’ll never forget how he’s hurt me.’ I do not say the word ‘again’ out loud. My mother doesn’t need to know about the last time.
She nods, doesn’t push the point.
I hear my last words echo in my head and feel a huge weight lift from my locked shoulders. After many weeks of therapy, it’s taken my mum talking to make me say it out loud. I will not be taking Adam back. My marriage is over.
I can almost hear the tiny monkey-nut-size baby Babushka cry. I may finally be back in touch with my core, but it hurts – as if my heart is being squeezed in a vice. The coffee ring on the table blurs as my eyes fill and my mouth begins to tremble. My mother drops my fuchsia hand and pulls me into her arms.
I can’t sleep. Today’s emotions have just been too much. I feel spent, exhausted, but somehow I’m not sleepy. I’m sitting up in bed, my back against the silver-button-punched, fabric headboard, having a conversation online with Sally from Manchester. We’ve kept in touch since we found each other on an Internet forum months ago. For someone whose husband has made mine look like the archangel Gabriel, I’m astounded at her capacity for forgiveness. She has taken him back. She makes no apologies for the fact that she loves him; he’s still her husband and the father of her child. Part of me admires her and part of me feels for her.
‘He’ll do it again!’ I want to shout at the screen, type the words, but I don’t. I wish her well, but secretly believe that ‘her Colin’, as she calls him, will soon be back in the arms of the skinny, solvent woman he was shagging, or someone else just as accommodating.
I stare into space. Maybe my mother is right. Maybe I judge far too quickly, and just maybe I shouldn’t. Then again, I focus on the image of Adam actually shagging his bitch whore girlfriend. I grit my teeth and almost visualize penetration.
Nope. No forgiveness here anytime soon.
I have, since meeting with Matt in Starbucks, wallowed in my own filth for almost a week. All he did then was tell me nicely what a wanker I’ve been and suggest I try and be less of a wanker. Now, we’re back in the same American coffee house, but I have showered, shaved and am dressed in dry-cleaned jeans and a crisp white