I only had two counselling clients booked in this morning, and then a couple of hospital visits with my music therapist hat on in the afternoon. I loved the variety, but still wished I could be somewhere else today.
When I’d got home from seeing Adam last night, Greg had been absorbed in an online chatroom with fellow recovering gamblers, so I’d left him to it and had soaked in the bath, grateful not to have had to explain where I’d been.
As I lay there in the scalding hot water, I wondered how long it would take for Greg to find out that Adam was back. It was a good sign that he’d already been back for a few months and Greg hadn’t seen him. But then it was hardly a surprise, as Adam’s family lived slightly out of town in a grand house behind electric gates. They weren’t the type to frequent the high street, preferring to keep themselves separate from the rest of us mere mortals. Greg rarely went into town either. But he was bound to find out sooner or later. I knew I needed to do the right thing and tell him myself. I just didn’t know when – or how.
Greg and I had agreed to move back to my hometown after university so I could be near my mum to help with her care if she needed it. Greg had been happy enough – probably because he knew that Adam was well out of the way, travelling the world with his band, sleeping with groupies, his lifestyle a million miles away from ours. At that distance, he’d posed no threat.
But I knew finding out about Adam’s return would throw Greg off balance – not to mention what would happen if he found out I’d been spending time with his nemesis behind his back. We didn’t need that drama right now. Greg had finally got his gambling under control, but he was still vulnerable to setbacks.
It was for the best that Adam didn’t want me to help him.
So why did it feel as though there was a cavern opening up in my soul, hollowing me from the inside out?
I got through the morning, and made sure I really focused on what my clients were telling me. But later, as I was playing some gentle notes on my portable keyboard to a newly diagnosed dementia patient to see if I could stir any memories for him, I found myself drifting off, playing on autopilot.
Finally the day ended, Adam still on my mind. Not only did I feel overwhelmed at the emotions that seeing him again had stirred in me, but I couldn’t help feeling frustrated at his refusal to let me help him. Response to music was such a deep-down, primal reaction, I wascertainI could trigger something, if he’d let me try. But I couldn’t force him to accept my offer.
I sat for a moment, suddenly exhausted by it all. I’d come a long way from the girl Adam had known all those years ago. Back then I’d been unsure of myself, so disbelieving that someone like Adam Bowers would pay me even the slightest bit of attention, and I’d lapped it up like a thirsty puppy. Now here I was with my own office, working as a counsellor, carrying out important research and making a difference to people who were losing themselves to dementia. And yet I seemed to be reverting, emotionally, to the teenager I’d been all those years ago.
I also missed my mum terribly. I missed our kitchen discos and our film afternoons, curled up on the sofa sharing a family-sized slab of Dairy Milk, blankets over our knees while my father was out playing squash. I missed her advice, her cooking. I missed her love.
I think back to the day that the phone call had come to tell me she’d been diagnosed with early onset dementia. I’d been in my room trying to get some work done, listening to Neil Young’s haunting voice singing ‘Old Man’— it was one of my dad’s favourite songs and the melancholy lyrics reminded me of home. When the phone had rung, it was as though I’d had a sixth sense: I’d just known.
‘Reeny?’
‘Dad, what’s wrong?’
There was a pause and my father cleared his throat.
‘Now it’s nothing to worry about Erin but – it’s about your mum.’ He stopped and I heard him sniff, and I had to stop myself from shouting at him to carry on. ‘She’s been having some… trouble.’
‘Trouble? What do you mean?’
‘She’s been… forgetting a few things. Losing things.’ He hesitated. ‘And then the other day she got lost.’
‘Lost? Where had she gone?’
‘Just into town. The same as she always does.’
I waited for him to continue.
‘She was brought home by two police officers in ever such a state. Seems she’d gone out but had forgotten how to get home and then… well, she went into a shop and asked for help. And the police were called.’ His voice hitched a little. ‘Anyway, we sat down and spoke about it later that evening once she’d calmed down, and it seems this wasn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened.’
I went cold.
‘And… is – is she okay now?’
I hardly dared to breathe as I waited for my father’s response, my body perfectly still, my pulse roaring in my ears.
‘I’m really sorry love, but the doctor said she has dementia.’
His words floored me. Mum was only forty; how could she have dementia?
On the phone, the hum of the long-distance connection filled one ear. I could hear my father’s breathing and nothing else.
It wasn’t what I’d been expecting Dad to say. I hadn’t seen my parents much recently, too absorbed in university life – my work, new friends, missing Adam. But even I’d noticed Mum had seemed different when we’d spoken on the phone, or the few times I’d been home to see her. She’d been distracted, unable to fully concentrate on the thread of a conversation, flitting from one subject to another at will. But I hadn’t really given it much more thought beyond simply noticing it. I had wondered vaguely whether it might be her hormones, and I’d even once considered she might have a brain tumour, but that had quickly been dismissed as being too dramatic.
‘But she seems fine,’ I said, aware I sounded like a little girl desperate for her father’s reassurance.
