My stomach dropped into my toes as I paused in the hall. Then a crash. One that rocked the walls, reverberated through the air. My mouth went instantly dry as fear surged through me.
A wail.
Mum’s wail.
Then a scream and a bigger crash from the living room and I ran as fast as I could to the source of the noise.
I stopped in shock as I took in the obliterated room. Mum stood swaying in the middle. She looked a state – her face red from crying, in jogging bottoms, her hair all bunched on the top of her head. But the living room looked worse. Glass littered everywhere from smashed photos. Thousands of fragments decorated the sofa, carpet, table…
“Mum?”
She ignored me, let out another guttural scream and chucked a family photo she was holding against the wall. It exploded like shrapnel.
I ducked. “Mum!”
“WHAT’S THE POINT? WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT?”
She didn’t even note my entrance, let alone the fact I was drenched in fake blood. She just walked over to our display shelf.
“Mum, you’re barefoot! The glass!”
She picked up another framed photograph – this one showing all of us on holiday in Italy.
“Mum, no!”
It careered through the air and hit the wall. More shrapnel rained down, I ducked again.
“I GAVE MY WHOLE LIFE. EVERYTHING. FOR WHAT? WHAT THE FUCKING HELL DID I GIVE IT FOR?”
“Mum.” I trod gingerly across the glass, feeling it crack under my heels. Until I was right in front of her. “Mum! What’s going on?”
She looked up, finally noticing me. I could smell alcohol on her breath.
“Oh, hi, Audrey. We’re losing the house, ISN’T THAT JUST FUCKING FANTASTIC?” She picked up a letter from the table and shoved it into my hand. “See! SEE! We’re losing the house. His lawyers, his EXPENSIVE LAWYERS. Taking everything. Because I can’t afford someone as good because HE LEFT ME ON MY OWN.”
My eyes blurred at the writing.
Dear Ms Winters,
I regret to inform you that… As we discussed yesterday on the phone… As you initially did agree to a Mesher order it’s very difficult now for us to retract it… Regretfully…expecting the house to be put on the market within the next six months…
“SEE?” she yelled. “SEE?!”
I scrunched the page shut, not even able to process my own emotions. “Mum, you need to calm down,” I said softly, like she was a child I was trying to get to sleep. “Come on, let me make some tea.”
“I WILL NOT CALM DOWN, I HATE HIM, HATE HIM, HATE HIIIIIIIIIIIM!”
Three more photos exploded. She was demolishing them without even looking at them now. Dougie’s leaving ball combusted into nothingness. My baby photo cracked against the ceiling, raining glass snowflakes down onto us.
I covered my head with my hands, my heart shaking with fear. “Mum? MUM?”
But it was like I wasn’t there. I walked out of the living room, my hands trembling, hearing another smash behind me. I grabbed my phone out my bag and rang Harry.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.” But it rang on until the answerphone kicked in. I winced as I heard more smashing. I pulled up Dougie’s number, hardly able to hit the right button. It was Saturday. He had to answer, he must…it rang…SMASH…oh God, Dougie…pick up.
“Hello?” There was music on in the background.
“Dougie?! You have to come home. Now! It’s Mum. She’s gone mental.”
“Woah, Audrey. What’s up? What’s going on?”
“Get a cab! Just get here. Dougie, it’s bad. It’s really bad.”
“What what what? Hang on, I can’t just come, I have to go out tonight. It can’t be that bad…” He was interrupted by a louder crash and a long scream. “What was that?!” “It’s Mum! She’s got a letter from the lawyer. Dougie, she’s trashing the place. She’s probably got glass all in her feet. Please. Get home. Please.” I started crying.
“I’m leaving now. I’ll be an hour or so. Can you ring someone? Leroy?”
“She won’t want anyone to see her like this!”
“Is Harry with you?”
“He won’t pick up.”
“Okay, okay.” Dougie’s voice shook but I could sense him trying to keep it together. “Just hang on, Audrey. I’m on my way.”
I hunched over my phone, almost hyperventilating as I stared at the dimming screen. Another crash. This one so huge it shook all the walls.
“Mum?” I called. “Dougie’s coming round.”
No answer. I made myself breathe in, breathe out, in and out. Then returned to the mess of the living room.
It was trashed. The coffee table had been flung against the cabinets – smashing everything inside. Two of the shelves had collapsed. The broken table lay at the bottom, covered in shattered ornaments, photos, fallen books. The armchair had been tipped upside down and the bottom fabricky bit had been kicked in. By the looks of it, she’d attempted to pick up and throw the sofa too. The cushions lay strewn on the floor, the rug all pulled up around the legs.
Mum wasn’t there any more.
“Mum?” I called brightly, like I was calling her down for dinner or something.
I jumped as she appeared in the doorway.
“Hi, Audrey.” She left a trail of blood on the white-painted floorboards. She was bleeding quite badly from her feet, smears of it everywhere. My stomach curdled. She was acting calmer now. She wasn’t crying. She’d retied her hair. She was holding an old tin of blue paint from when we painted Dougie’s room.
“What’s the paint for, Mum?”
“Well, if he wants the house, I figure, give him the house, yeah? But WHOOPS.” She pinged the top off the paint tin like she was a magician. “BUTTERFINGERS.” And, before I could yell “Stop!” she’d chucked it all over the place. It sailed through the air, as if in slow motion, and then splattered against the floor, the walls, the sofa, the dilapidated cabinet. She laughed manically. “Whoops, Paul! I hope that doesn’t lower the value! God forbid that ugly slag can’t afford a new Dyson.”
“Mum! Mum! Stop!”
She smiled, ignored my cry and dug a pen out of her jogging bottoms pocket. “What do you say, Audrey? Want to do some decorating?” She hobbled over to the wall, leaving bloody footprints in the pool of paint.
I could hardly breathe. I definitely couldn’t speak. It was like I was hovering above it all. Like my brain had identified “a trauma” and had pressed the emergency parachute button. She ripped the pen top off.
The pen hit our gorgeous wallpaper. The wallpaper I’d grown up with. The wallpaper that had been there when I took my first steps, ate my baked beans and sausages in front of children’s TV.
TAKE IT ALL, YOU BASTARD, she scribbled in huge letters.
I stood with my mouth open, tears frozen on my face as her graffiti took up the whole main wall. She looked slightly lost when she was finished, and that was my moment to grab her. Stop her. Bring her to her senses. But I was too frozen, too slow. So she just laughed and hobbled back into the kitchen, slipping slightly in the paint. More smashing jolted me into action. I slid over the ruined living room to the kitchen and almost got hit in the face with a flying plate.
“Our wedding china,” she explained, tossing it like a frisbee. The shattering pierced the air as it collided with the tiled wall. “Got it in the divorce, but it’s not like I’m going to have any space for it now, am I? In whatever shitty flat I can afford.”
Spin crash, spin crash. I ducked, dived, weaved my way to her, trying to grab her arms to get her to stop. The alcohol on her breath was stronger this close. I grabbed at her hands but she fought me off.
“LEAVE ME ALONE, AUDREY!”
A giant bottle of gin lay empty on the kitchen table. When she ran out of plates, Mum dropped it on the floor.
“Mum?” I pleaded again. Trying to get eye contact. But, before I knew it, the kitchen drawer was open and she had a pair of scissors clutched in her hands. Dread pulsed through me at the sight of the blades. “Mum!” I ran towards her but she pushed past me, knocking me to one side, running to the hall. She held out the scissors and scoured a deep line across the wall as she stumbled past the stairs. She staggered out of my eyeline, leaving only a trail of bloody footprints.
I breathed in and out, noticing how it was catching in my throat, not making it to and from my lungs. I couldn’t lose it. Not till Dougie was here.
Then I heard her scream.
The sort of scream that replays on your brain in dark moments for the rest of your life. I skidded and ran to the noise where I found her with her arm out, the scissors held up against her wrist.
Every part of me ran cold.
“Mum.” I coughed it out. Not good enough, not caring enough. Oh God, the fear. Where was my phone?
“Would he even care?” Mum asked, pushing the blade harder against her skin. “Or would he just be relieved? Oh well, how sad, but at least I don’t have to deal with my whingey ex-wife any more.” She laughed hollowly and pushed the scissors in.
“No! Mum, please!” My phone was in the living room. The scissors weren’t sharp but I didn’t know what damage they could still do. “Mum, I love you. I need you,” I begged. “Please. Stop.”
She looked at me for the first time. “Audrey,” she whimpered, shaking her head. “It hurts, Audrey. I’m so…so…h-h-humiliated and alone. It hurts me but it doesn’t hurt him. It’s not fair.”
I took a step forward. “I know it’s not fair. It’s really not fair. It’s not your fault, none of this is your fault.”
She flinched at my step, pressed the scissors harder still. A very small dot of blood shone on her wrist. Oh God, oh God. “Mum, don’t! I need you. Dougie and I. We need you. We love you. You have us.”
Her eyes met mine again but they were veiled with a sheet of tears. Her lip wobbling, her hands shaking on the scissors. I didn’t breathe and then…then…she screamed so loud, so high, so full of agony that I felt part of my soul shrivel up. The scissors flew against the wall and she collapsed in on herself, her knees buckling under her, falling to the ground like a dropped egg, smashing into pieces as she hit the floor.
I ran to my mother.
“It’s-s-s-s no-o-t f-f-f-air.” Her back heaving and lurching with pain. “I g-g-gave him everything, Audrey. My h-h-heart. My life. My youth. I g-gave him his children. He t-t-told me it was going to be for ever. He p-p-promised. He made a v-v-vow.”
Tears spilled from my eyes, snot from my nose, pain from my heart. I hugged her so tight. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“What does it all mean? What did any of it mean? Why? Why did he do this to us? What didn’t I do? Au-Au-Audrey, what didn’t I do?”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“I must’ve d-done. Men don’t just leave their w-w-wives. You have to give them r-reason to leave.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t think that.”
“Where am I going to live, Audrey?” Her voice was so faint, so high-pitched, so empty of hope.
“We’ll find somewhere.”
“This is my h-home. Our h-home. Audrey, he said he loved me. He…it…everything was so romantic. How can th-th-this come out of that? It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.”
“I know, I know.” I was crying so hard – tears for me, tears for her, tears for Dougie. Tears of anger, grief, shock, relief and pain merged with each other, carving rivers out of my make-up, joining ranks as they fell off my chin, dripping onto the blood-stained floor.
I hugged her, pulling her into me. She started shivering so I wrapped my big wedding skirt around her. We sobbed together, spilt like milk on the floor, the pinching scent of paint making our eyes water even more. I rubbed her back, I stroked her face, I murmured reassuring nothings. I felt her calm down. I felt her come back. I felt the adrenaline lift, only to be replaced by the dead weight of grief.
She lifted her head only once to look at me. “He’s not coming back, is he?”