Entanglement. Katy Mahood

Charlie didn’t have to worry about his mother making a scene. There was no early morning phone call, no senseless anger. There was only the quiet burr of traffic from two streets away and the clink of bottles and glasses in the kitchen. Charlie lay in bed watching the sky moving in the mirror on Beth’s dressing table. Strange, he thought, how the view he knew so well became exotic when reflected in the glass: an uncanny glimpse of the familiar, forever unreachable.

      Beth stood in the doorway, dark hair tumbling down the back of the brown and gold dress she’d made herself. She was wiping her hands on a tea towel, the smooth skin of her forehead creased into a question. ‘Are you going to phone your mum?’

      He considered the question. Was it worth it, really? After the funeral, his mother’s phone calls had grown more frequent for a while, berating him at all hours for the fight with Ben, for Annie’s death, for all the negative aspects of his character that she could dredge up in her drunken state. After a few weeks, she had gone silent, until a month ago, when he’d had a call from her local police station. She’d been found wandering in a T-shirt and slippers, confused and disoriented. They’d assumed at first she was just another drunk, the officer had said in an apologetic voice, but then she’d had a seizure in the back of the police car and ended up in hospital. Could Charlie come to collect her? Typical, Charlie had thought. But he’d gone, because who else was there?