I sink into the bath, my leg raised and resting on the side so that I don’t wet my chain. Nina has replaced the orange-scented bath foam with one that smells of lavender. It’s much more pleasant. I lie back, placing a folded towel for a pillow behind my head, and locate the lump in my breast again. Perhaps I’m hoping for a miracle and that it might have miraculously vanished overnight. It hasn’t, of course.
I honestly don’t know how I am supposed to react to Nina’s remedies. I believe there’s certainly a place for complementary medicine, but it is alongside, not instead of, modern medicine. I am someone who has spent more than three decades working at a doctors’ surgery and witnessing how medicines can prolong lives and fight cancer. Nina is clutching at straws. And I don’t know what I can do to make her understand that.
I can still taste the garlic in last night’s chicken Kiev in the back of my throat. It was so overpowering and I wonder if, going forward, that’s how every meal is going to be – crammed or coated with some ‘miracle’ cure. Throughout dinner, each time she brought up something she had read online that might help, I wanted to grab my plate, hurl it at the wall and scream at her to shut up. But I don’t, partly because I don’t want to hurt her feelings and partly because I need to keep her onside.
I struggle to relax so I climb out of the bath and dry myself, slip a dress over my head then return to my room. Too wound up to sit, I pace up and down instead.
I’ve counted them and there are three potential directions I see my future heading in. The first is that I am going to leave this house in a wooden box. The second is that I’ll persuade her into allowing me a proper professional diagnosis and, if necessary, treatment. Presently, the former seems more probable because Nina has inherited many of her dad’s traits, one being his stubbornness. The third is that I am going to help myself. To date, each of my escape plans has been thwarted. So I need to be smarter.
As I scan the walls, floors and ceiling with a fresh perspective, I’m distracted by the photograph of Alistair that Nina glued to the wall just under my bedroom ceiling. With my extended chain, it’s no longer out of my reach. I balance on the ottoman and tear at it. It comes off in two strips. I take it to the toilet and flush him away.
I know every square inch of my bedroom, but not so much the bathroom. I look around. I don’t even know what I’m searching for or how it might help me get out of here. But Nina has taken precautionary measures. The mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet has been unscrewed and removed, as has the heavy lid of the porcelain toilet tank.
Suddenly I start to cry. I don’t want to die at sixty-eight. If my time is up, I want it to be out there, not stuck in here. I don’t want to spend my remaining days mimicking my mother’s final moments in a hospice deathbed, mourning a life I never had the chance to finish properly.
And what will I have to apologise for when my day of reckoning comes? Will I be sorry for what I did, or for what I didn’t do, in the name of a mother’s love? Will I be forgiven for how I let my daughter down, for my sheer bloody ignorance? How can I ask for forgiveness when I truly believe that what I did was the right thing to do?
CHAPTER 52
MAGGIE
TWO YEARS EARLIER
Something is putting an immense amount of weight on my head, pushing it deep into the pillow as far as it will go and preventing me from moving it. I try to lift my arms to push myself up, but they are as weak as a baby’s. I slowly reach for my scalp to push away whatever is holding me down, but all I feel is my hair. It’s matted and greasy to the touch. Then I realise the pressure isn’t coming from the outside, but the inside.
I begin to panic. This is what a stroke must feel like; blood has stopped pumping to my brain and my cells are slowly dying. I need to get help. I attempt to move my neck but it’s as stiff as plywood. A shooting pain runs up the left-hand side of it and then spreads across the back of my head, making the pain even more excruciating. I want to open my eyes but it’s easier said than done. Eventually both sets of eyelashes unstick and everything is bright again, but my eyes struggle to focus. I am completely disorientated. Wherever I am, it’s grey and gloomy, and unidentifiable objects surround me. Gradually, I push my way up whatever it is I’m lying on; they’re soft to the touch, like cushions, maybe? I don’t get very far because every inch releases more sharp bursts across my head. I don’t have the strength to continue.
A voice comes from nowhere, alarming me. ‘Let me help you.’ It sounds as if it’s coming from a tape recorder played at half-speed. ‘Give me your arms, Maggie,’ it continues, and I suddenly realise who it is. Nina is here, but she sounds different.
‘Thank God,’ I mumble, my throat dry and crackly. I slide my hand around until I eventually find hers. ‘I need an ambulance.’
Nina’s hand leaves mine and I feel the warmth radiating from her body as she leans across me, places her hands under my arms and lifts me until I am in a slightly raised position. The pain in my head switches sides, forcing a sharp intake of breath. I’m beginning to wish she’d left me where I was.
Her fingers gently part my lips and something small and with a smooth texture is placed between them. The next thing I feel is something wet and cool pressed against my mouth, then liquid running down my chin.
‘Take a sip of water and swallow,’ Nina says.
It feels like such a monumental effort to ask her again to call 999, so I do as she says without question. If she is here with me then I am safe. So I close my eyes again and drift back into sleep and dream of her when she was my baby girl. All I ever wanted was my beautiful baby girl ...
I’m barely conscious again, but my head still throbs like a jackhammer is pounding the living daylights from it. I reach out my hand until I feel Nina’s and it calms me in an instant. This time when I open my eyes and take a deep breath, the space around me no longer smells stale. There’s a familiarity about it, but also a newness.
‘Take it slowly,’ Nina advises and helps to lift me up into a sitting position. She tilts my head back and the stiffness in my neck makes me cry out. ‘Open your eyes a little bit more,’ she says, and I feel a cool wet cloth dabbing at them. Then two cold drops sting each of them. ‘It’s okay, they’ll help,’ Nina adds.
In a croaky voice I tell her that I have a splitting headache, so she offers me a tablet. My mouth is parched and I guzzle water from the bottle like I’ve discovered an oasis in the desert.
Eventually my senses begin sharpening and I’m comforted to see I’m at home and in my own bedroom. It’s darker than usual.
‘What happened to me?’ I ask.
Nina’s fingers entwine within mine. Hers are warm while mine are cold. ‘Moxydogrel,’ she whispers.
‘Moxy ... what?’
‘Moxydogrel,’ she repeats. There’s a pause as my muddled mind lurches from one half-baked memory to another and tries to recall why I recognise the word. Suddenly it hits me and I know that she can see it in my expression because her fingers dig deep into mine like claws.
My hearts pounds like my head and it wants to burst through my ribcage.
What does she know?
