‘Hello, have you just got here?’ she said, as if noticing me for the first time.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘Have you brought your lovely young man with you?’
‘Which young man would that be?’ I smiled. She knew who I was.
She frowned, trying to locate a name that was just out of reach. ‘You know.’ She flapped her hands around her head. ‘Long hair. A bit scruffy. Plays the guitar.’
My stomach went into freefall. She meant Adam.
It wasn’t a coincidence that she’d mentioned him today, she did from time to time, and if Greg was with me we both tried to ignore it and move on. But today it stopped me in my tracks and I felt my cheeks grow hot.
‘No it’s just me today,’ I said. ‘Shall we have a cuppa?’
‘Yes please.’
I was glad of the change of subject, and while I popped out to ask someone for a pot of tea – the kettle had had to be removed from Mum’s room after she kept burning herself on boiling water – I left her looking out of the window, lost in her own little world. I hoped she’d have forgotten all about Adam by the time I got back.
Sure enough, when I returned with a tray loaded with a teapot, cups and a plate of ginger biscuits, Mum didn’t mention Adam again, as though the few minutes I’d been away had been enough time to wipe her memory and perform a complete reset, like a faulty computer hard drive.
‘Is Greg here?’ she said instead, peering round me expectantly as I walked through the door.
I sighed. Our conversations could be hard work even for me sometimes, flitting from one year to another, one person to another in such quick succession. It must be utterly exhausting for her.
‘He’s not coming today, but he’ll be here to see you after Christmas,’ I said, carefully balancing the tray on the sideboard and pouring the tea. I placed a cup and saucer in front of her and sat back down with my own.
‘Oh, is it Christmas?’ Mum said, her eyes wide.
‘Yes, in a couple of days,’ I said, for what must have been the tenth time.
‘Oh lovely, I do love Christmas.’ Her face collapsed into a frown then, creases appearing as her eyes darted round the room. ‘Where’s the tree? You can’t have Christmas without a tree, whatever your father thinks.’
‘The tree is in the living room,’ I said gently.
‘But why haven’t I got one in here? I must have one in here.’ Mum seemed agitated so I put my cup back down and took her hand again. Her body stilled and her face gradually relaxed. Her eyes searched me out and a gentle smile appeared on her lips. ‘I used to love decorating our tree you know. I always chose the biggest one I could find.’
I smiled, remembering the towering Christmas trees Mum insisted on squeezing into our house, trees big enough to fit into shopping centres, and the battle she had to make them fit into the room.
‘Your dad thought I was mad of course. But then he usually did.’ She was right. Mum had always had a mischievous streak which Dad definitely didn’t share. At sixteen years older than her, he’d been the sensible one, the one to rein in her madcap ideas. The combination seemed to work somehow, the two of them. They were one of the happiest couples I knew. Mum clapped her hands together suddenly. ‘Oh, do you remember the angel we always put on the top, the one you made at school?’
‘I do,’ I said. It was always a mystery to me how Mum could swing so wildly from not having a clue who I was to remembering tiny details like the Christmas fairy I made more than thirty years before.
‘Can you find it? I want to put it on my tree,’ she said.
‘I haven’t seen it for years Mum.’ Her face crumpled again and I squeezed her hands gently. ‘But I promise to look for it, okay?’
She looked up at me, her eyes sad. ‘Thank you. You can’t have a Christmas tree without a Christmas angel.’
I let go of her hands and took a sip of my almost-cold tea, relieved that she seemed to have calmed down.
‘I’m quite tired,’ she said. ‘Can I go to sleep now?’
‘Course you can. Do you want me to help you?’
‘Yes please.’
As I helped Mum get herself ready for bed, removing her clothes, finding her nightie, assisting her while she cleaned her teeth and brushed her hair, and with the day darkening outside the window, I couldn’t help thinking about all the times she had done this for me, and feeling a pang of sadness at how time had slipped away, for both of us.
