‘You’re not going to eat? It’ll be ready in a minute.’ Deb looked over, askance: there was so much more she wanted to talk about in the diaries. ‘I wanted to ask you…’
But, Janice had suddenly slumped in her chair. ‘Oh, no,’ Deb muttered, and knelt in front of her mother. ‘Mum? Are you all right?’
‘I’m just tired, love,’ Janice said in a low voice. ‘Can you help me to bed?’
‘Of course.’ Deb turned off the heat under the beans. The toast popped, making her jump, but she left it where it was.
Fortunately, everything was on one level, so Deb didn’t have far to walk with Janice, who took everything at a shuffle. Once she’d got Janice into bed, Deb went back to the kitchen, picked up a banana and made a quick cup of tea and took it into the bedroom.
‘Here. Eat this, at least.’ She unpeeled the banana and handed it to Janice. ‘When was the last time you ate a decent meal?’ she asked her mother, thinking with a sinking horror in her stomach how easy it would have been for her not to have driven over today.
‘I don’t know. A couple of days ago.’ Janice ate the banana in careful bites, then sat up slowly to drink the tea. ‘I get too tired to cook.’
Deb swore to herself.
‘Mum.This is why ready meals exist. Or I can come over and cook for you, freeze some stuff up so you can just microwave it. Or get Beatrice to come over and make you a sandwich or something. You know she wouldn’t mind.’
‘I will do no such thing. Beatrice has her own life.’ Janice handed Deb the banana skin. ‘It’s the dialysis. Let me sleep and I’ll be right as rain later. Then I’ll go to the shops.’
‘You’re not going to the shops in this state. I’ll get a shop delivered,’ Deb repeated, showing Janice the supermarket app on her phone. ‘Look. It’s ready to go.’
‘Fine,’ Janice sighed, drank a little more tea and handed the mug back to Deb. ‘Can I sleep now?’
‘Of course.’ Deb took the mug and went back to the kitchen, where she ordered Janice’s standard food selection. She viewed the list sadly. They were meagre choices. Janice insisted on having the supermarket value version of everything, despite the fact that Deb paid, and was more than happy to add in some better quality bits and bobs. Today, she’d added in some things she knew her mum liked: some good quality ice cream, a pack of chocolate brownies, kiwi fruit, strawberries, diet cola. They were all things that Janice viewed as occasional luxurious treats, and things that Deb knew other people didn’t even think were that special.
That was Grandma Elise’s influence, again, she thought, as she sat down at the small kitchen table with its ceramic tile top and ate her beans on toast alone, trying not to cry. Grandma Elise had, according to her little diary, gone hungry for much of her childhood.
Deb remembered that Janice had told her, while she’d never gone without food, as a child, there hadn’t been many treats on the table. Janice had grown up on simple, cheap vegetables and the cheap cuts of meat here and there: tinned food and simple cooking. It wasn’t bad – at least we ate, Janice would say – but it had given her a lifelong horror of what she thought of asextravagancewith food.
This scarcity mindset had always made Deb so sad for Janice – and herself. Growing up, she’d been so aware of how careful Janice was with money and food, and there was something in that fervent dislike of extravagance that always made her anxious. She’d had to consciously make herself try new foods asan adult, and get out of the habit of working out how much each portion of food would cost per meal.
She finished her meal, and opened the diary again. Janice hadn’t wanted to talk about her mother, again, like she never really did, despite posting Deb the diary. The resentment and anger was deep for Janice – Deb knew that. She wondered if her mother would ever get over it and see Grandma Elise for who she really was – a scared, lonely and hungry girl who had lost everything and everyone she once loved.
Deb could see that: the diary made her see it, if she had ever doubted it before. And, in a way, she wondered if that was why Janice had sent it to her in the first place: Janice knew that she couldn’t forgive her mother, but perhaps also knew that Grandma Elise needed understanding. If Janice couldn’t give it to her, then perhaps she knew that Deb could.
So, perhaps, on some level, that was Janice’s act of love for her mother. Deb let out a long sigh, and put her head on the table.
She didn’t want to leave her mum in this state, but Janice made it very hard to let anyone help her. What was Deb going to do?
TWENTY
‘Lovely day for it,’ Dan called out to her across the car park of the Loch Cameron Inn. It was raining and he was wearing his brown parka with the fur hood up, faded blue jeans and muddy walking boots. ‘Just as well I came prepared.’
‘Yes, it’s a little bit damp today.’ Deb laughed nervously as she approached him. ‘Did you find it okay?’
‘Yeah. Bit off the beaten track, isn’t it? Hi.’ He leaned forward shyly and planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘You look great.’
‘Thanks.’ In fact, Deb had purposefully dressed down for the occasion, wearing a baggy jumper, jeans and walking boots as well, all of it under a bulky black puffy coat. She’d tied her mid length blonde hair up in a ponytail – thinking that she really needed to get her roots done – and applied a minimal makeup. She was going for “I’m doing fine without you, but also not making an effort for you”.
When she’d checked in with Janice that morning on the phone, she had neglected to tell her that she was seeing Dan. She definitely would not approve of Deb meeting up with him. It made Deb edgy. Deep down, she had the sense that she might be making a mistake, but there was something in her that feltcompelled to see Dan – if only to tie up loose ends, or make sure that she was doing the right thing, one way or the other.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he added.
‘And you,’ she said, more to be polite than anything. Actually, she wasn’t sure how she felt about seeing Dan. It was… strange. Dan belonged in Glasgow: in their flat, in the city, where they sometimes met for dinner or to go out with friends; he didn’t belong here, in Loch Cameron. Her new haven.
‘So, this is where you’ve been hiding out.’ Dan looked around him, at the beautiful old stone inn with its small, old fashioned windows and hanging baskets. Even in the rain, they were a vivid riot of colour.
‘Not really hiding. Working.’ Deb zipped up her coat; the sky had been clear when she’d left the cottage. Typical.
