Dad was never the same after Mum died. It’s hard to explain how he changed – partly because I can’t really remember how he was before, so I don’t have anything to compare him to, and partly because it was the kind of change that’s very easy to hide. Outwardly he barely changed at all. If you’d asked any of his friends to describe him, they’d have told you that apart from the heartache of losing his wife, he was just the same old Barry Clark.
But he wasn’t.
And Finch and I knew it.
We could never quite work out what it was – whether there was something missing from him, or there was something about him that hadn’t been there before – but we knew, without doubt, that it was all about Mum.
She died very suddenly.
Dad always maintained that she was absolutely fine when she went to bed that night. She wasn’t ill – she’d never had a serious illness in her life – and there was nothing to suggest there was anything wrong with her. She looked well. She hadn’t complained of anything – headache, stomach ache, excessive tiredness – she’d just gone to bed in exactly the same way she always did. Setting the alarm for seven-thirty in the morning, reading a book for half an hour, then turning off the light and going to sleep.
Dad said he couldn’t remember who’d turned off the alarm in the morning. He remembered it going off, but he couldn’t recall if Mum had turned it off or if he’d leaned over her and turned it off himself. He thought he must have gone back to sleep again then, because the next thing he knew it was nearly eight o’clock, and if he didn’t get a move on he was going to be late for work. Mum was lying on her side, facing away from him, and he just assumed she was still asleep. It was a Wednesday, Mum’s day off work (she’d set the alarm so she’d be up in time to see us off to school), so Dad decided to let her sleep in.
We were all a bit late that morning, so when Dad told us that Mum was having a lie-in, we were too busy rushing around to give it any thought. All we were thinking about was getting our stuff ready and grabbing something to eat and – in Dad’s case – guzzling down a cup of coffee and trying to find his car keys.
Dad and Finch left the house first (Dad was dropping him off at school on his way to work), and I left a few minutes later. It wasn’t until I’d got to the bus stop that I realised I hadn’t said goodbye to Mum. None of us had. But I told myself it was okay. She was having a lie-in, wasn’t she? It wouldn’t have been fair to wake her up just to say goodbye.
If only I’d known . . .
If only.
Dad and Finch usually got home before me, but that day Dad was taking Finch to the opticians after school, so I got home first. The house was quiet. I called out to Mum – but only in a casual are-you-there? kind of way – and when she didn’t answer, I didn’t think anything of it. She’d either gone out somewhere or she was upstairs in the bathroom or her bedroom. I didn’t bother calling out again. I was going upstairs anyway – I needed to use the bathroom – so I’d soon find out if she was up there. And if she wasn’t, she wasn’t . . .
It was no big deal.
Nothing to worry about.
The bathroom was at the far end of the landing, and Mum and Dad’s bedroom was halfway along, and as I headed along the landing towards the bathroom I was slightly surprised to see that their bedroom door was shut. They usually only closed it at night . . .
I nearly didn’t do anything.
It was only a closed door . . .
There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for it.
I very nearly just walked on past and carried on heading for the bathroom.
But I didn’t.
I don’t know what it was that made me stop. Just a feeling, perhaps . . . an instinctive sense that something was wrong . . .
I don’t know.
I called out to her again – ‘Mum?’ – and although I tried to sound as carefree as possible, as if somehow that would make everything okay, my voice sounded strained. I cleared my throat, stepped closer to the door, and tried again . . . louder this time – ‘Mum! Are you in there? MUM!’ – not caring anymore how I sounded, just desperate for Mum to reply.
But she didn’t.
I gave it one last go, this time knocking hard on the door as well as calling her name, but even as I was doing it I knew in my heart it was a waste of time. I knew what I had to do. And I knew I just had to do it.
I reached for the handle, opened the door, and stepped through into the bedroom.
The curtains were closed.
Mum was in bed.
She was lying on her side, under the duvet, her head just visible, facing away from me . . .
Very quiet, very still.
‘Mum?’ I said softly.
Nothing.
I couldn’t move . . . I didn’t want to move. As long as I stayed where I was – just inside the doorway – I wasn’t close enough to the bed to see Mum’s face, and if I couldn’t see her face, I wouldn’t know for sure why she was just lying there like that . . .
I didn’t want to know.
If I didn’t know, it couldn’t hurt me.
I stood there barely breathing for maybe a minute or so, hoping against hope that if I kept perfectly still and didn’t make a sound I’d hear something familiar in that unearthly silence – a breath, a cough, a sniff, a sigh . . . anything at all . . .
There was nothing.
Something made me move then. Something . . . I don’t know what it was. What makes you do anything? My mind had shut down now, and as I crossed over to the bed I wasn’t thinking or feeling anything. It was as if I was set on automatic – just walking, moving, doing what I was doing . . . moving round the foot of the bed . . . then along the side where Mum was lying . . . seeing her head on the pillow . . . seeing her face . . . her lifeless eyes, staring at nothing . . .
I collapsed then, slumping down onto the bed, and I took her in my arms and held her tightly, cradling her head to my chest.
She was horribly cold . . .
Cold and stiff.
Whenever I think of Mum now, that’s what I remember – that terrible cold deadness. I feel it in the palms of my hands.
The doctor who examined Mum’s body couldn’t confirm a cause of death, and when the coroner ordered a post-mortem, the pathologist didn’t find anything either. No heart problems, no cancer, no blood clots . . . no drugs, no alcohol, no poison . . . nothing at all that could have led to her death. I remember someone saying at the time that ‘it was as if her life was just suddenly switched off’. The only thing the post-mortem established was that Mum probably died some time between one o’clock and eight o’clock that morning.
The coroner opened an inquest into Mum’s death, and during the investigation we were all asked lots of questions. Dad was also interviewed by the police, both at home and at the police station.
The inquest took a long time, but in the end it all came to nothing. There was still no reasonable explanation for Mum’s death. No one could say how she died, or why, and the coroner had to return an open verdict. The cause of death was officially recorded as ‘unknown’.
There were a lot of things I didn’t understand at the time – and even now I’m not sure I know the whole story – and I didn’t (and still don’t) fully understand how some of these things affected Dad. I know he was really angry about the police