CALLUM
Before I even contemplate heading to Carrick, I head to my childhood home, for peace of mind. The new carer has been calling every morning, and Dad actually seems to like her; a fifty-year-old woman with a maternal air about her. She rings with a daily report. It’s win-win all round, a break for Linda, company for Dad and the easing of all our guilt. In the darkest hours of the night, my conscience torments me. I should spend more time with him. I should have more patience. But it’s mentally exhausting recovering the same painful ground repeatedly.
‘How are ye?’ I call as I let myself in the front door.
As usual, I’m compelled to do a double-take at the bottom of staircase, as though I might see Mam still lying there, over twenty years later. It’s an image that will never leave me. It was me that found her that day.
Dad told the neighbours she had a terrible fall. I was thirteen when I first found a note explaining otherwise, folded in a drawer with her wedding ring. It had been hard enough to accept that she was gone, but that she’d chosen to leave us is something I struggled to forgive, until recently. For years, I resented my father for not doing more, for not being able to stop her. Now, I mostly pity him.
‘In here,’ Linda calls from the kitchen.
Dad’s perched in his usual chair, withSky Newsblaring from the flat-screen television on the wall. He stares, mindlessly entranced, barely glancing up when I walk in.
‘He’s not having a great day,’ Linda confides. ‘Might be an idea to get Dr Tomson to have a look at him on Monday.’
‘I’ll phone the surgery and make arrangements.’ I dial the all too familiar number and am issued an appointment for Monday afternoon, before spending a fruitless hour in the gloomy kitchen with Dad, who’s apparently engrossed in the election campaign for the future president of America.
‘Will ye be ok?’ I ask Linda as I stand to leave.
‘We’ll be grand. Don’t worry. Enjoy your weekend with Abby. Must be getting serious if she’s bringing you home.’ Linda raises her eyebrows knowingly at me.
‘I can only hope so.’
