Rose puts the phone down, and automatically reaches for another chocolate. It takes her three attempts before she manages to get the wrapper off, her fingers are trembling so much, and she doesn’t even taste it once it’s in her mouth.
She’s just going through the motions. Giving her brain something to do. Trying to avoid processing what she’s just heard.
That her mother is dead. That the great, garrulous bundle of energy that was Andrea Barnard is no longer gracing this planet. That she’d been ill for a while, and not told her. That she’d been diagnosed with stomach cancer a few weeks after her birthday, and for some reason kept it secret.
She doesn’t know what she is feeling. It is a sensation unlike any other she has ever experienced. It is a shock, the way she has been told, and that is making her numb. Perhaps it would have been different if she’d been there at her bedside, where she belonged. If she’d been with her. If she’d had the chance to say goodbye.
She wasn’t alone, she knows. Lewis Clarke-Smith assured her of that, in his calm, steady, deep voice. The kind of voice that is used to being listened to, and is used to making itself firmly understood.
Except she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand any of it. Of course things had been difficult in recent years, but she still thought of herself as having a close relationship with her mother. She saw her as often as she could, making the trip down scenic A-roads from Liverpool to Shropshire, meeting her in Ludlow for lunch or shopping in the markets. Having her here for Christmases. Alternate Christmases, of course, as every other year she went to the home of She Who Shall Not Be Named.
They spoke on the phone, they texted each other. They were present in each other’s lives – so why wasn’t she present in her death? In her suffering; in her final days?
Rose feels a stirring of anger in the pit of her stomach, mixed in with shock and disbelief. She tries to stamp it down, she knows it’s not appropriate – but it’s there.
She’s angry that she wasn’t told. She’s angry at the slightly disapproving tone in Lewis Clarke-Smith’s perfect voice – just a hint, the barest sneer, but most definitely there. He thinks she failed her mum, and Rose has the sneaking suspicion that he might be right. And that, when it comes down to it, is why she is angry – because she can feel the guilt starting to curdle its way up to the surface.
She has so many questions, and she asked so few of them. The call was unexpected, shocking. The voice on the end of the line delivered the news with steady, practised sympathy, and he sounded so calm that she completely forgot herself.
It was one of those authoritative voices that she could never resist, like the head teacher at her school. He’s a complete wanker, but somehow everything he says seems to make sense. It was the same with this man, with this Lewis Clarke-Smith who, now she comes to think of it, her mother has mentioned in the past. She’s never met him, but recalls vague stories about am-dram shows and the village fete and borrowing his dog Betty for walks in the hills.
She wasn’t paying attention, of course. And she never went back to the village, or the cottage that had been her childhood home. She was too caught up in her own life, her own challenges. In avoiding memories that would hurt too much. Probably, if she’s entirely honest, too busy planning what she was going to order from the takeaway that night. And Mum’s stories were never in short supply – there was always an anecdote, a memory, an amusing vignette.
She’d taken that for granted, and now it suddenly occurs to her that there will be no more stories. No more tales about her Eighties show-biz life. No more accounts of the size of the marrows in the vegetable-growing contests. No more descriptions of the time she let out a 200-decibel fart during her sun salutation at the village-hall yoga class.
No more Andrea.
It is simply inconceivable, that thought. Her mother, she’d assumed, would outlive everyone. She was a force of nature, a one-of-a-kind, a goddess walking among mortals. She couldn’t be dead. It just did not compute.
Rose is now on to her fourth Creme Egg Twisted, and feeling slightly sick for all kinds of reasons. The news. The chocolate. The fact that all of those questions are still swilling around in her head like sour milk sluicing through a sieve. The fact that Lewis had calmly instructed her that she now needed to watch a bloodyvideo. That a lot of her questions would be answered, and that it’s what Andrea had wanted.
The nausea rolls over her, and she leaps to her feet as fast as she can. She runs into the downstairs loo, kicking aside the various travel brochures she keeps in there, full of luxury holidays she’ll never go on.
She falls to her knees, and pukes up an entire tub of Cadbury’s. By the time she’s done, the toilet bowl is full of thick brown chocolatey liquid, and tears are streaming down her cheeks. She falls back on to her bottom, landing plumply on a Kuoni safari brochure, and lets herself fall apart.
Chapter 12
Poppy strokes her tobacco tin, the one she filched from her mother over two decades ago, tempted to smoke for the first time in years. Instead, she puts it away and slides the desk drawer closed. She picks up her phone, and messages Kristin to say she will definitely be late, and might not make it at all.
Feeling strangely calm, she sends the email from Lewis to her ‘incredibly clever TV’, as her mum always called it, steadfastly refusing to attach the word ‘smart’ to any kind of technology.
‘Smart means a well-tailored suit and some polished brogues, darling, not a few buttons on a silly device,’ she’d always said.
Lewis had answered every question Poppy had thrown at him, as she worked her way through some kind of scarily efficient checklist that had sprung up in her brain during their brief conversation.
She has no idea where it came from – it’s not like she had planned for this, or been prepared in any way. But she was used to holding meetings, and being in charge, and she supposes that’s what kicked in – her lizard brain was helping her process this new information by turning it into action points. She could practically turn her mother’s death into a PowerPoint presentation now.
She had died that evening, in the nearest big hospital. She had stomach cancer. She’d planned her funeral in advance; the arrangements were all made, and there was nothing she needed to do. Lewis, as Andrea’s friend and as her solicitor, was taking care of her affairs, and needed to see both her and Rose after the service. Both of them. Together. In the same room.
Jesus.That was almost as much of a shock as the fact that her mother was dead, which didn’t exactly make her feel good about herself. Andrea was gone, and she was beginning to freak out about seeing her own sister again – how selfish could one person be?
The gin-infused haze has cleared completely now, andPoldarkhas finished. Her legs are still damp from spilling her drink, and she can smell her own body odour. She needs to shower, inside and out, to scrub her brain clean of all the conflicting emotions she is starting to feel.
Keep calm, she tells herself, tapping away on the controls. Keep calm and carry on. There is nothing to be gained here by having a nervous breakdown. It won’t bring your mother back, and it won’t help you.
She moves to the sleek leather-and-chrome sofa in front of the television, and presses play with one long, perfectly shellacked nail.
Chapter 13
