Sometimes it seemed that, when Mum left, a strange kind of social angst had replaced her. On sports days or parents’ evenings, when Dad couldn’t make it and instead I was accompanied by Mum’s sister, who – much like Mum – always seemed slightly reluctant to touch me. On Mother’s Day, whenDad and I failed to escape the greetings cards and bouquets, the saccharine assumption that all mothers were good. I never knew what to say when people asked where she was, partly because I wasn’t actually sure.
Though he tried to hide it, I felt the steepness of Dad’s struggle to juggle the parenting and housekeeping and working overtime to make the rent. And he couldn’t, not always. For a while we sofa-surfed around Bedford, and I can still recall that life-raft sensation of trying to sleep – or even just relax – in houses where we were always the guests.
‘This doesn’t define you, you know,’ Dad said to me once, as he gently brushed my hair in a bedroom that wasn’t my own. ‘You are more than what she did. Promise me you’ll remember that.’
And so I did. In fact, I resolved to take it with me, always: that I would never make myself accountable for another person’s choices.
Reluctantly, Mum did try – I suspect at Dad’s insistence, or maybe she felt guilty on some level – to stay in touch for a few years, afterwards.
I remember devoid-of-sentiment birthday and Christmas cards. Awkward phone calls, the odd excruciating visit. On one particularly torturous trip to a freezing and deserted café, where she bought me coffee – even though I’d never drunk the stuff in my life – I asked her why she wasn’t coming home. Not to guilt-trip her, or elicit pity. I was just curious, mostly.
For the first time in what felt like years, she looked at me.Reallylooked at me. Her eyes were the tired, dull brown of weathered wood. ‘I don’t think you’d want that.’
And I thought,Maybe you’re right.
So perhaps she knew me better than I’d realised.
Once I hit my mid-teens she appeared to lose interest entirely, and essentially vanished for good. And really, I was relieved.Because, to me, forced contact had always felt uncomfortable in a way that no contact at all did not.
As the years passed, Josh and I pondered the possibilities. Depression? An affair? Addictions? Dad denied all these, but perhaps even he didn’t know.
Because I just can’t believe that feeling nothing for the child you birthed is no more complex than being a bit cold-hearted. I am sure that, even for my mother, it couldn’t have been that simple.
10.
Rachel
March 2000
‘Well, shit. A pill that keeps you young. Where do I sign?’ says Ingrid, setting down three mugs of tea and a plate of buttered crumpets on her coffee table. It is late, and this was unplanned –Are you free? I need you– and she is wrapped in a pale pink dressing gown that swamps her slight frame.
‘Don’t get any ideas,’ I mumble.
‘You run a wellbeing company,’ Polly reminds Ingrid. ‘Isn’t popping pills against your core values or something?’
Ingrid flicks on a lamp. The room glows gold. ‘So’s eating buttered crumpets, babe. I won’t tell if you won’t.’
Polly turns back to me. Her shoulders are damp from the hair wash she rushed to finish when I called, her usually sleek auburn waves now fated to be twice their usual size in the morning. ‘And you have no clue where Josh got it?’
‘Some kind of doctor.’
It’s the first time I’ve ever lied to my friends, and it doesn’t feel good. But Josh asked me to keep to myself – for the time being, at least – that the invention was Wilf’s. Not that I would have had the strength of mind to stand between Polly's wrath and Wilf right now anyway.
They exchange a glance. ‘Bloody hell. You should get on to the BMA.’
I pick a crumpet from the plate and take a huge bite, wipe butter from my lips. ‘Not practising.’
I wish I could tell them the truth, not least to confide my fear that Josh will feel some kind of moral obligation to repay what Wilf has done for him by taking that pill too.
Still. Even half a confession feels good. The storm that’s been rumbling in my stomach ever since Josh told me about Wilf’s invention is beginning to subside.
‘You’re not going to take it, right, Rach?’ Polly asks, her face crumpled with concern.
‘She won’t even try my home brew,’ Ingrid reminds her, through a mouthful of crumpet.
‘I mean, I wouldn’t, ordinarily,’ I say.
Polly takes my hand and grips it, as if we’re at the top of a rollercoaster in the moments before it plummets. ‘Well, then, you shouldn’t. You don’tneedto take it.’
