Caro had paused, finding it hard to say the words, as if that would make her fears real. ‘I think there’s something wrong,’ she’d said candidly. There. It was out. ‘Sometimes it’s like she’s in a world of her own. She’s forgetting things. Last week she went out and left food in the oven again. Another day, she took the car to the shops and forgot about it, so she got the bus home. I just think… I think we need to persuade her to get checked.’
He’d nodded. ‘Okay, whatever you think.’
That was it. Whatever Caro thought. Not, ‘let me take care of this’. Or ‘don’t you worry, it’s all going to be fine.’ Just ‘whatever you think.’
Over the next few months, Caro had to do all the thinking. Dad went off again, and every time he came back, Mum was a little worse. It took countless appointments and tests before they eventually got the diagnosis. Early onset dementia.
So now they knew.
Over the next couple of years, Mum declined, receding more and more into her own world. Caro moved in, paid for a nurse to cover for her when she wasn’t there. Dad would come back less and less until one day Mum had no idea who he was.
Then he packed his bags.
‘But how can you leave her like this? She’s your wife!’
‘Caro, she has absolutely no idea who I am.’
‘That doesn’t matter! What happened to “sickness and health”?’
‘Don’t be like that.’
‘Like what?’ Caro had yelled. ‘Like a decent person? Like a loving family member? What the fuck am I being like, Dad?’
He’d walked out. Conversation over.
He never came back again.
No word.
No communication.
The bastard.
It was the last time she spoke to him. The mobile phone number he’d had was long since disconnected. He was just gone. Vanished. Time passed and she’d come to terms with the fact that he’d erased them from his life… until the moment she’d seen Lila’s Facebook post.
She absolutely didn’t want it to be him because it would open a new chapter in a book she’d come to terms with finishing. A book in which the villain walked away with no punishment for his crimes. To be honest, she figured he’d probably taken early retirement and was living in Thailand or somewhere else that the sun was hot, the beer was cold and he could live like a king on his earnings.
Sometimes she wondered if she should be furious, raging at the injustice of it, and a little part of her felt that way, but the bigger part of her refused to give him the opportunity to pick at a scab. They didn’t need him. He wasn’t worth it. In truth she wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t the guy who’d choose the hard path, who’d opt to live with someone who couldn’t take care of him, who had no idea who he was, of who he had been to her.
That’s exactly what Caro had done ever since and it was tough. Really tough. Especially since the accident. Yep, as if the fucked up gods of shit luck hadn’t given them enough to deal with, they’d heaped on more. A couple of months ago, while the carer who stayed with her overnight had been dozing, Mum had – for some unknown reason and for the first time ever – found the house key, unlocked the door, and wandered out of the house during the night, onto a main road. The lorry didn’t even have a chance of seeing her. So now it really was over. No hope of coming back from it. The guilt that Caro felt about allowing that to happen sat like a lead weight in her gut. She’d thought she was doing the best she could for her, making sure a trained carer was with her. But no. It hadn’t been enough. Since that night, her mum had been in hospital. She knew she would lose her soon. The accident had left her with irreparable damage and in a deep coma. The brain that was failing her had now shut down altogether, the body still alive but in a hospital bed, being tended by kind strangers, while Caro and Todd sat by her bedside for an hour or two or longer if the nurses – as they often did – turned a blind eye.
She was happy to do it, but it was a devastating vigil that shredded her heart when she thought of the woman her mum used to be. Sometimes – and she’d not shared this thought with anyone – sometimes, she wondered if it was a blessing that she was asleep, that Caro didn’t have to worry about her getting lost, getting hurt, or feel her heart break when Mum got upset or frustrated or scared or confused. Right before the accident, the dementia had been so advanced that Caro had lived in a permanent state of fear. Now, she knew exactly where mum was. Right there. In bed. Where Caro could hold her hand, tell her she loved her and brush her hair until itshone, even though her mum never responded. It didn’t matter. She told herself that Yvonne knew she was there.
The combination of the come down from the gin and the thoughts of the past were bringing on the kind of melancholy that Caro did everything to avoid. What was the point? There were no choices when it came to her mum, nothing she could do to make it better. All she could do was be there.
But her dad? She had a choice here. She could put on her new Next boots and walk away, or she could go face this situation, work out a way to speak to Lila, find out the truth and deal with it.
Stretching up on the bed, she shook off the tiredness that was seeping into her bones. She was doing this. No choice. Nothing to lose. It wasn’t as if he was going to be there and there was a potential for a scene. Ugh, the very thought of that made her shiver. If she didn’t get a chance to speak to Lila, if there was no way of finding out the truth, then she’d come back here, get a good night’s sleep on this lovely bed, and go home in the morning. If she did speak to her, then at least she’d know and she could come up with a new plan.
A quick check in the bathroom mirror told her that the hair and make-up were still looking great. Determined not to spoil them, she ran a bath, carefully tucked her hair into a shower cap, then soaked for fifteen minutes, loving the feeling of the warm water on her skin. She should do more of this. Item number one on the agenda after she got home – spend more time relaxing. Stop fretting. Stop filling the day so she didn’t have to think. Stop thinking too much when the incessant activity didn’t work. Just chill. Relax.
Reluctantly, she climbed out, dried off, and brushed her teeth. She’d thrown a toilet bag into her handbag this morningas an afterthought, and now she was glad of it. Toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, hairspray.
Her new dress was hanging in the wardrobe and she pulled it out, slipped it on, thinking it would probably have been wise to have tried it before now. She needn’t have worried. It fitted like a glove. The boots and the thick opaque tights she’d picked up at the till matched it perfectly, and by the time she draped the shawl over her shoulders she was starting to feel a bit better until… damn, no bag. All she had was a huge bag that wasn’t exactly evening attire. Bollocks. Her gaze fell on her toilet bag. It was red satin, a gift from Todd, and as long as no one looked too closely, it could pass as a clutch. Probably.
After dumping out her toiletries, she threw in her phone, purse and room key. No room for anything else.
She checked herself in the mirror. Was this a ‘Hello, I might be your sister’ outfit? Or an ‘Oh, so sorry, I mistook you for the daughter of someone I once knew’ ensemble?
