‘Thank you, Nan.’ She sipped her tea.
The thought of failing to turn up for her swim, breaking her promise to take a morning dip every day during the season, was galling. Especially as it was not down to her own actions. Tawrie hardly ever felt sorry for herself, but in that moment, as she grappled with images of her mother raging against getting out of the ambulance, swearing at the kindly nurse who had tried to tend to her cut head, and the mortification of her singing loudly while thewalking wounded sat in silence around her, she did. But none of these incidents were quite as mortifying as when she had threatened to injure Tawrie, who had suggested it might be best, when they got home, for her to go straight to bed. She felt the weight on her shoulders of all she carried and it pushed her down and down.
The truth was she was tired. But it wasn’t anything a quick nap could cure; hers was a fatigue born of years of responsibility and she had almost had enough. Actually, no, she had had enough.
She felt low, missing Ed – or rather missing what she’d thought she had with Ed. Maudie was right when she’d said that if someone doesn’t want you then they’re not the person you thought they were and therefore what you miss about them, or the life you imagined with them, doesn’t exist. It was perfectly succinct but no less hard for her to swallow. All she had to do was repeat it until it sank in: Ed and the life she had imagined did not exist! What she needed to do now was pull up her big-girl pants and go grab the life she wanted. It sounded so easy in her head.
Annalee stirred and Tawrie wondered what it must have been like for her dad, having to put up with his wife’s desperate shenanigans. She wondered if things had been this hard for him. Quickly her mind fled to a familiar thought: what if he’d found it too hard, what if he’d had enough of her mother’s erratic behaviour and so had taken his boat out, stowed his wallet and keys ...? It was no surprise that in this low moment this thought again bubbled to the surface, stoking the embers of her unhappiness, her regret, her anger.
She didn’t know who she could ask. Certainly not her nan, who had lost her son, and not her mother, who just might have been the cause. Uncle Sten? They rarely spoke of anything at a deeper level and Connie, she was sure, would be just as much in the dark as she was. It was a mess. The whole thing was a bloody mess. Daniel‘Dan’ Gunn might have died in 2002, but she was still dealing with the repercussions of it here in 2024.
Annalee opened her eyes. Tawrie could tell by her blink and focus that she was no longer sloshed.
‘How you doing?’ she asked softly.
Her mother nodded and sat up in the bed.
‘You don’t have to sit and watch me.’ Her voice was scratchy; she sounded beaten.
‘I know I don’t have to, but I want to. You took quite a tumble yesterday.’ It wasn’t clear just how much her mother remembered.
‘Yep.’ Annalee wiped a tear that ran along her temple and soaked into the pillow.
‘They’ve stitched up your head and your mouth is a bit of a mess, but other than that, just bruising.’
Her mother ran her fingers gingerly over the fresh wound on her scalp and forehead, as her tongue probed her swollen lip and her tears fell harder. Tawrie looked away from the finger with the ripped-off nail, the nail bed exposed, bumpy and bloody. The sight of it was enough to make her own finger throb.
‘I don’t want you to sit there, just go. I’m okay.’
‘You don’t look okay. You look sad and a bit beaten up, so I’m going to sit here and finish my tea.’ She raised the mug.
‘As you like,’ Annalee huffed, closing her eyes and pushing back against the headboard, reminding Tawrie of a petulant toddler.
‘As I like?’ The words were like a lit match to the balls of angst and frustration that lined her gut. ‘Nothing is as I like, Mum. It’s odd, isn’t it, how everyone in the pub, all the regulars in the wine bar, they all tell me how you have them howling. “She’s so outgoing, really funny, a right old hoot!”’
Her mother opened her eyes and stared at her.
‘Yet all I get is this woman.’ She pointed at her mum. ‘This woman who slopes around the house, quiet, morose, thoughtfuland broken. How come you save the funny, outgoing, hoot of a woman for strangers?’
‘I can get her right now if you want, all I need is a bottle of vodka and an eighties’ playlist.’ Annalee looked away and Tawrie took a beat, reminding herself that her mother was only recently out of hospital.
‘I want to help you, Mum. I want to help you not get into a situation where you fall down the steps in broad daylight and we have to spend the evening in the hospital. Because honestly? I’m done.’
Annalee wiped angrily at her tears, as she did whenever Tawrie attempted to broach the topic, which she had periodically over the years – usually after an event that seemed to bring things to a head.
‘I know we’ve had this conversation before and it all boils down to the fact that it doesn’t matter how much I want you to get help, you have to want it too. It’s you that will have to do the work, and I can’t imagine what it must feel like, what a huge mountain it is for you to climb. I can’t do it for you and neither can Nan, it’s down to you.’
Her mother laughed once and folded her arms across her narrow chest. And whether it was because she was tired or because her heart was newly broken, or maybe because she was utterly, utterly at the end of her rope when it came to Annalee’s behaviour, Tawrie saw red.
‘What’s that laugh for? I’m sitting here trying to rouse you into action, for your own good, for you! And you just don’t give a shit! You don’t give a shit what this is like for Nan, you certainly don’t give a damn what it’s like for me and it seems you don’t care that you could have snapped your neck yesterday, crashing down those steps as you did.’
To her intense irritation, her mother shrugged, confirming exactly what Tawrie had said.
‘You’re unbelievable! It’s not that I want thanks for sitting with you all night, although that would be nice, but to be so bloody indifferent is just—’ She felt the rising tide of frustration in her throat, all thoughts of going gently on her mother now vanished. ‘I’m going through my own shit right now and I have no one to talk to, no one!’ Her voice cracked and Annalee met her eyeline. ‘I loved someone.’ It felt good to say it out loud. ‘Actually, Ilovesomeone, but it’s going to come to nothing. He’s engaged to someone else, and it feels like I’ve been kicked, kicked really hard in my chest and I can barely take a breath and I want to lie down, curl up, hide and be warm. I want to ... disappear.’
‘No, you don’t, love.’ Annalee sniffed. ‘You don’t, not really.’
‘And how would you know how I feel, Mum?’ she challenged.
