‘And you’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ Jack asked as I struggled into my coat.
‘No. Thanks for offering, but you were right,’ I said. ‘This is something I need to face up to myself. I’ll text when I want a lift, then we can get straight off. I don’t want to spend the night round here.’
‘You’re not likely to run into your mam, are you?’
‘No, I timed it. She’ll have her weekly toning tables session today. Just need to make sure I’m out of there by five.’
‘And if you do?’
Ugh. Mum. Just the thought of seeing her filled me with horror.
‘If I do… I do,’ I said, trying to sound confident. ‘I’m not running away. Not any more.’ I shivered. ‘But God, I hope I don’t.’
‘Go on, say it again.’
‘I’m an adult, this is my life and no one controls it but me.’ I went over to kiss him. ‘Thanks for pushing me to do this, love.’
He held me tight for a moment. The warmth of his body flowed into me; gave me strength.
‘Your taxi’s waiting,’ he said at last, brushing my hair back from my face. ‘Be brave, Kit. Just ring if you need me.’
‘I will.’ I gave him a peck. ‘See you in a few hours.’
***
I was ready. I could do this.
Those were the words I kept carouseling around my brain as I stepped out of the taxi and made my way up the stairs to Nana’s flat, occasionally interspersed with the lyrics to I Have Confidence from The Sound of Music.
Except I wasn’t ready, not at all. I wasn’t ready to be at home, so close to the two people who’d committed the ultimate act of betrayal right in front of me. I certainly wasn’t ready to confront my mum. But if I could just take this first step, I was on my way.
The stairwell was the same familiar stairwell, clean and sterile, with a faint hint of synthetic apple from the disinfectant the cleaning staff used. It seemed like a thousand years since I’d last been there, although in reality it was less than four months ago. Life had changed so completely since then.
The visit was going to be a complete surprise. I hadn’t told my nan I was coming when I’d spoken to her last, about two weeks ago. I knew she probably wouldn’t remember, plus there was every chance that if she did, she might let it drop to my mum.
Sending a firm order to the butterflies dancing rumba steps in my belly to give over, I tapped at the thick, swimming-pool-water glass of Nan’s front door.
It sometimes took her a while to answer. After a minute, I knocked again.
Eventually, a figure appeared behind the glass. It was distorted and warped by the weird ripple pattern, but I knew in an instant it wasn’t my nan.
This figure was youngish, tall and slim, well-dressed in a figure-hugging pink lace shift dress and matching jacket. Thick flaxen hair hung loose over her shoulders. There was no mistaking those kitten heels, that immaculate pink-and-peroxide style I knew so well.
Mum.
What the hell was she doing here? She was supposed to be far away, getting toned in exchange for some extortionate fee. Typical she’d pick today of all days to change her routine.
Despite what I’d told Jack before coming over, my first instinct was to run again. Leg it down the stairs before she could get the door open, find Jack and the dogs and get the camper as far away from this hell of bad memories as possible.
But a voice, one that for some reason had an Irish accent, kept whispering in my ear. ‘Be brave. You can do this.’ I wasn’t ready, but I knew if I ran again, now, it was another failure. Another victory for Mum and Ethan as I let them control me, dictate who I saw and where I went. I was a whole new Kitty now, and new Kitty couldn’t let that happen.
‘I can do this,’ I muttered out loud to myself. ‘I’m here for my nan. I’m an adult and I’ve come to see my nan and no one can make me do anything I don’t want to do.’
The door opened, and there… there was my mum. Another round of Botox had shaved a couple more years off her age since I’d been gone, but apart from that she looked the same as ever.
‘Hello,’ I said, trying to sound firm and confident and all those other things I didn’t feel. ‘I’ve come to see Nana.’
I don’t know what I was expecting. Hysterics, at the very least. Tears, recriminations, white-hot fury. The usual passive-aggressive guilt-tripping and emotional blackmail as she pleaded with me to come home. I definitely didn’t expect the quiet, sedate hug I suddenly found myself enfolded in. I just stood there, wide-eyed, while my mum’s perfectly manicured arms wrapped around me.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said in her gentlest voice. ‘Come inside, please.’
I followed her in, blinking in bewilderment.
‘I haven’t come home,’ I said. ‘Not forever. I just want to see Nana then I’ll be getting straight off again.’
I steeled myself for an onslaught of blame. But Mum just smiled sadly, as well as she could through the evil stuff she insisted on paralysing her face with, and gestured to the sofa.
‘Have a seat, angel. Would you like tea? I’ve got some of my green, or there’s the other kind if you really must. But I do recommend the green. It whitens the teeth, you know.’
‘Thank you,’ I said automatically, sitting down. I shook my head. ‘No, I mean no. I don’t want tea. Where’s Nana, is she asleep?’
‘That’s right.’
Mum parked herself next to me on the sofa, and I instinctively recoiled. Even her scent, the expensive perfume she practically bathed in, caused some sort of visceral nausea in me. I was still haunted by those silhouettes, the two people who claimed to love me most in the world, committing the ultimate act of betrayal.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Mum said gently.
‘I’m not staying.’
‘Why not, Kitty?’
‘I… can’t,’ I muttered. ‘I just came to…’
I trailed off. Everything had started to feel sort of dreamlike, Mum’s familiar scent regressing me gently back to childhood. In the familiar surroundings of my nan’s front room, even the silhouettes started to fade.
‘I just came to see Nana,’ I managed to whisper.
‘I fixed your room up,’ Mum said.
‘My room?’
‘Yes. New bedding for you, and I put all your favourite books in there. There’s a little television set, and I got you some new clothes so you wouldn’t be short of anything you needed.’
‘Why?’
‘So you can come home, of course. A fresh start for you.’ She ran a soft hand over my hair. ‘You know you don’t have to go back to Ethan.’
‘Ethan.’ I jerked awake when I heard the name, and pushed her hand off my head. ‘Don’t you dare talk about Ethan to me!’ I snapped, surprised by my own passion.
‘Don’t raise your voice, Kitty.’
‘Don’t raise my voice! Are you fucking kidding me?’ I glared at her. ‘Go on, Mother. Ask me why I ran away.’
‘Oh, I think we all know that,’ she said in an offhand tone.
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s what you do, isn’t it?’ She laughed, that little trilling laugh that made her sound like a silly affected schoolgirl. ‘When you’re upset, you run away. Everyone knows that.’
I flushed with shame and embarrassment. It was a cheap shot. And the dismissive way she said it, as if the whole thing had been some foolish little kid’s fancy rather than what it was. A total breakdown.
Okay, so there had been another time I’d run away from home without telling anyone where I was going. After my dad died eighteen months ago, my brain, rebelling against the never-before-experienced pain of grief and loss, had started taunting me with frequent tricks. Seeing Dad where I knew he couldn’t be. Forgetting he’d died and trying to call him on the phone. I’d genuinely felt I might be losing my mind.
Mum and Ethan had practically pulled me apart as they’d tried to ‘look after me’. There’d been this horrible aura of What To Do About Kitty all around me, all the time, until I could barely think. Struggling to cope with my bereavement and the feeling of being watched twenty-four hours a day, I’d taken off from Mum’s, where I’d been staying. Taken off in the middle of the night, with only the shakiest grip on what was real and what wasn’t.
I hadn’t got far that time. My mental health was too shattered for anything as logical as hitch-hiking. I’d gone to the Whitestone Press offices and slept on the floor, under my desk, where Laurel found me shivering next morning.
After everything she’d been through losing Jason, she understood at once. Taken me home to stay with her, convinced me to see a doctor, who’d referred me to a grief counsellor. And yet still, all my mum remembered was the time her daughter ‘ran away’. Ran away from home, even though I’d been twenty-four years old and entitled to go where I wanted. Ran away from her.
‘This was different,’ I mumbled.
‘I’m assuming Ethan did something to ruin your big day.’ She softened her voice to a persuasive croon. ‘Tell your mum all about it, angel. We’ll fix things together, like we always do.’
I gave a bleak laugh. ‘Yes, Ethan did something. And it’s no good pretending you don’t know as well as I do what it was.’
She frowned, creasing her perfectly smooth, white brow. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You shouldn’t do that. You’ll get frown lines.’
She lifted her brow at once. ‘What is it I’m supposed to know, Kitty?’
I leaned forward. ‘I saw you, Mother. With Ethan. My wedding day, by the trees – ring any bells?’
She blinked. ‘The trees? What trees?’
‘The ones at the farm, of course.’
Mum looked thoroughly confused now. ‘There aren’t any trees there, Kitty. It’s just open farmland.’
‘Oh please, I’m not a child. The days when I believed something just because you told me it was true are long gone,’ I snapped. ‘There was a little clump of trees with fairy lights, and I saw what you and Ethan were getting up to behind them.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
I swallowed hard. This was the most difficult bit to say out loud. But I’d come this far…
‘I saw you… I saw you kissing,’ I said. It was actually a relief to get it out. ‘I saw what you did, Mum. Kissing my fiancé – no, sorry, my husband. Your own daughter’s husband.’ I could feel nausea rising just thinking about it. ‘That is seriously sick, you know that?’
To my surprise, Mum let out a peal of laughter.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, forcing herself quiet again. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s not funny. It’s just so… impossible.’ She took my hand in both of hers. ‘Kitty, honey, you’re really not well. I promise you, that never happened.’
‘You think I’m that easy to manipulate, that you can just say that and make it go away? I saw you, Mum! Both of you!’
‘I’m your mother, Kitty. I love you. Do you really believe I’m such a monster that I’d do that to you?’ She actually had the gall to look hurt.
‘Yes.’ I shook my head in confusion. ‘I mean, no, I didn’t. Until I saw it.’
‘And with Ethan!’ There was no mistaking her facial expression, even through the Botox. She was genuinely appalled at the idea. ‘Even if he wasn’t your husband, even if there wasn’t the ten-year age gap—’ it was a fourteen-year age gap, but Mum’s rounding down when it came to her age was always generous ‘—what makes you think I’d have any interest in Ethan? No offence, angel, but I can’t abide the man. You know that.’
‘But I saw it,’ I said, almost in a whisper. ‘By the trees, the day of the wedding.’
‘I told you, Kitty. There weren’t any trees.’
‘You were having a row, and then he… I saw it. I know I saw it.’
She guided my head to her shoulder and I let it rest there, too dazed to resist.
‘It’s happening again, baby,’ she said in her softest voice.
‘What is?’
‘Do you remember last year? You told me you’d just spoken to your dad on the phone and you were going to arrange a fishing trip for the first weekend in July. Gave me all the details, right down to what sandwich fillings you were planning to have. Two weeks after he died, my love.’
‘Yes,’ I muttered dreamily. ‘That’s right. I did talk to him.’
Mum looked worried. ‘Kitty…’
‘No, I mean I know I didn’t,’ I said. ‘But it felt like I had. It was so real, Mum. I mean, even now, I can hear that conversation like it happened. I think it’s how my brain tried to medicate me – to numb the grief.’
She took my hand and stroked it with her thumb, just like she used to do when I was little to comfort me.
‘Marriage is a scary thing for the brain to cope with too, Kitty,’ she said gently. ‘Especially if we’re not ready. Sometimes it’s not until the vows that it hits us it’s for life. That’s how it was for me when I married your father.’
‘Yes…’
‘Ethan pushed you into it, didn’t he? Before you really had time to consider if he was the right one.’ She shook her head. ‘I always worried about you being with someone so much older.’
‘It did seem to happen fast,’ I mumbled. ‘I was still getting over losing Dad, and he just steamed ahead with the plans while I was trying to get myself better.’ I snorted. ‘Taking my mind off it, he said.’
‘He’s a selfish man. They all are.’ She dipped her head to look into my face. ‘So you see now what’s happened?’
‘I… don’t know. It felt so real.’
‘It’s this old brain, playing games with you again,’ she said, tapping my head. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that. Deep down, you know. Don’t you?’
‘I was coming down with the flu. When I saw it. When I thought I saw it.’ I glanced up to meet her eyes. ‘Can flu make you hallucinate, Mum?’
‘I think it probably can, if there are other factors at play too,’ she said. ‘Your mind was trying to send you a message, Kitty. It knows Ethan was never the right man for you.’
I didn’t know what to think any more. What I’d seen… it’d been so strong. So vivid. But then, the hallucinations about my dad had felt real too. And Mum had sounded so genuinely shocked at the suggestion there could be anything between her and Ethan.
It did sound completely implausible. They’d fought all the years they’d known each other. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes – or thought I’d seen it – I never would’ve believed it.
Had I been running all these months from something that didn’t exist? Could it have been cold feet, pure and simple, that had turned me into a homeless fugitive and nearly seen me sleeping on the streets?
But I was so certain I had seen it. The whole thing had played out in so much detail, it just had to have happened…
I badly needed to get back to the camper and have a talk and a cuddle with Jack till my brain felt right again. He understood what grief could do. He’d get it.
‘I need to go,’ I said to Mum, forcing my voice even so she wouldn’t guess what was going through my head. ‘Can you wake Nan up for me? I’ll just say a quick hello then come back another time, I think.’
Mum looked serious. ‘I can’t do that, Kitty.’
‘Please. I don’t like to interrupt her nap, but I can’t just go without seeing her.’
‘No, I mean I can’t. Your nana’s asleep.’ She took my hands in both hers and pressed them gently. ‘The other kind of sleep. The kind… the kind you don’t wake up from. They took her yesterday.’