Lessons in Laughing Out Loud (39 page)

Willow looked over Magda’s shoulder, down the long, dark corridor. “Actually, I just remembered—”

Without warning Magda took both of Willow hands and held them in her own. They were cool, and smooth, like marble.

“You are upset and worried for your mum, but you mustn’t be. She is a strong woman. The MS is nothing to her. You know it won’t kill her—she will live to see your children married, I promise you.”

“Thank you,” Willow said, so touched by Magda’s concern that she wanted to at least appear reassured.

“So,” Magda tugged gently at her hands, easing her over the threshold. “Come and see her then!”

Reluctantly Willow slipped her coat off of her shoulders, a crop of goose bumps springing up on the tops of her arms. Outside she had been too hot with the coat on, in this house she was too cold without it. She looked down at her shoes; even they had lost their glimmer and dulled in the shadowy interior. Hanging her coat on the banister, in exactly the way her mother would disapprove of, she advanced along the hallway to the television room. On the other side of the door she could hear some cooking show burbling away.

“Nonsense,” she heard her mother mutter. “Whoever heard of stir-frying broccoli. What has the world come to?”

“Hi, Mum,” Willow said, pushing open the door. Her mother smiled at her voice, and Willow felt a rush of warmth flood her chest. She always forgot that she loved her mother until she saw her.

“Willow”—her mum lifted her head, looking in the direction
of her voice—“you might have come sooner. It comes to something when a mother has to go blind to get a look at her daughter.” She held out her hand and Willow went to her, taking it and sitting on the old leather stool that had always been in that room, placed at her mother’s feet, probably by Magda.

“I know, I’m sorry. It never seems like the right time, work keeps me so busy. But you look well, considering.” Willow spoke tentatively, carefully placing every word, ensuring it couldn’t be somehow misconstrued. It was so long since she had even talked to her mum, let alone seen her, that she felt every second that ticked by was fraught with danger. Imogene Briars was very good at small talk, at passing the time of day. It was when you tried to breach those ramparts of good manners and appearances that things began to fall apart, and yet that was exactly what Willow was here to do.

Willow looked at her mother. She had looked much worse in the past than she did now; her long, silver-blond hair was neatly brushed and shining, and Magda had dressed her in some comfy trousers coupled with a pastel blue T-shirt that brought out her eyes. Willow supposed she expected her mother to look a lot less healthy, wizened and bent over, perhaps with milky-white sightless eyes. It was a relief to see her looking human, happy even. But that was an odd thing about Imogene that both sisters had noticed. She always seemed happier and more relaxed just after the illness had struck, as if the tension of waiting for an attack could be forgotten, for a little while at least, now that the worst
had
happened.

“I feel well, it’s just my bloody eyes,” Imogene said, tapping the center of her forehead with her forefingers. “Goodness, of all the things to go. I don’t mind the pain, you know that. And the legs and what have you. Flailing about is always a difficulty, but I cope. But this, this is almost too much.” Imogene squeezed her fingers. “I’m glad you came. Your sister’s been
useless. Got the nurses in straightaway, she’s barely been here. She thinks because that husband of hers has got money that writing a check will solve anything.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t want foreign nurses looking after me. I need my own family. My own flesh and blood.”

“Holly does all that she can, you know that, Mum. She’s got the twins to look after.”

“The twins. I had twins to look after. I was much younger than you two are now, and all alone before I met your stepfather. I didn’t have any money. I still did it, though.”

“I know,” Willow said, knowing it was pointless explaining that life back then, when it had been just the three of them and an electric meter, was much simpler than it was for Holly now, despite all the material comforts she had. For one thing Imogene hadn’t had a sick mother to look after. Willow and Holly had always wondered why their life was so short of grandparents, and quite soon after Ian and Imogene were married they had taken it upon themselves to look for evidence. All that they found was a letter, dated a few months before their birth, brief and to the point, informing Imogene that she was not to come home again or to try and contact her family. At the time neither sister had been able to imagine what sin could possibly have been committed for her to be so totally excluded from her family. They had been horrified on their mother’s behalf and after carefully returning the letter to the drawer in which they’d found it, they had been especially nice to her, careful not to act up or upset her for several days. Much later Willow had come to the conclusion that in the 1970s an unmarried and pregnant daughter was much more of a scandal than it was now. How would her mother react if she knew Chloe was here, if she knew her situation, Willow thought. She should be full of sympathy and understanding, but Willow would have been surprised if that were the case.
Imogene had covered up her early shame and indiscretion with years of respectability and properness that she clung to above all else. Willow and Holly never knew who their father was. They had never wanted to. Whoever he was, he had long ago become obsolete, eclipsed by the man their mother had married.

“Still, it is hard for Holly, with Gray away so much, and the girls are a proper handful. . . .”

“Those children are angels,” Imogene protested. “Thank God they’ve got your looks and not their father’s, man looks like a boiled egg. I suppose at least if I never see again I won’t have to look at him anymore.”

Willow suppressed a smile. Imogene’s loathing of Holly’s husband was legendary, and entirely fictional. The old lady couldn’t be more thrilled that one of her daughters had married a rich man, she just would rather die than admit it.

“If it wasn’t for the nurses then you’d be in hospital now, you wouldn’t be able to be at home. Graham’s money means you can stay here, in your home.”

“Sometimes I think I can hear him, you know,” Imogene said suddenly, her eyes rolling blindly toward the ceiling.

“Graham?” Willow asked, uneasy.

“No—him, my Ian. I think I can hear him in his study, pacing up and down, moving things around. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of night, wondering where he is, still, after all these years. I go in there and look for him, but he’s never there.”

Willow was silent, watching a TV chef beat an egg with practiced aplomb.

“So how is
London
?” Her mother stressed the word with some venom. “Are you happy?”

“Happy?” Willow was taken off guard by the direct question.

“I just hope you’re happy now, that’s all. Finally,” her
mother said, the tone in her voice shifting just enough to make Willow’s insides clench.

“Yes, I like it. It’s interesting. Victoria keeps me busy, never a dull moment. I’m right in the middle of the biggest celebrity scandal of the moment, as it happens. Have you heard of India Tor—”

“But still no boyfriend,” Imogene interrupted her. It was a statement laced with disappointment and edged with spite. All at once Willow was lost, floundering and fearful of letting her mother down. All the resolve that Holly had taken such care instilling into her was melting away, moment by moment.

“Well, I don’t want to rush into anything . . .” Willow stumbled over her own inadequacy. “I’m sure one day . . .”

“You’re not getting any younger, Willow,” Imogene told her archly. “Your sister left it late to have her two, but even if you get pregnant tomorrow, you’ll be sixty when your eldest graduates from college.”

“They might not go to college,” Willow said.

“Probably not, not if they take after you.” Imogene’s face had clouded, and Willow knew that the grace period was fast coming to an end.

“You could have stayed married,” her mother accused her. “You know the trouble with women today is that they just don’t know what they want. It’s all career this and feminist that. And then all they do is moan about ending up old and alone. You didn’t have to. You had a chance to stay married, even after the affair.”

“It was hardly an affair,” Willow said, letting her mother draw her into a downward spiral of recrimination. “And there was no chance to stay married. It was over, there was no trust anymore. I couldn’t stay in that marriage knowing that . . .”

“It’s that poor girl I feel sorry for. Lost not one but two mothers in her short life. What’s that going to do to a child?”

“I made mistakes that I regret. I let Chloe down,” Willow said quietly, secretly thinking she knew exactly what it was like not to have a mother to turn to. “I admit that I let her down, but now I’m trying to rectify that. I’m owning up to what I did wrong and I’m facing up to the consequences.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Imogene snapped. “You’ve never taken responsibility for anything in your life. The trouble with you, Willow, is that you never stuck to anything, not marriage, not motherhood. You’ve never cared about what you destroy.”

“That’s not true.” Willow’s throat tightened on each word as her mother nudged ever closer to the precipice.

“It’s because you’re cold,” her mother went on. “Heartless. Always have been.”

“I’m not heartless, I’m not cold,” Willow protested, tears clouding her vision. “And if I find it difficult to connect to people it’s because . . .” Willow took a breath; here she was in this room talking to her mother, just as she’d rehearsed in her head a hundred times, but still the next line of the script would not come. She simply had no idea how to start the scene, to say aloud the words she had to.

“Mum, I don’t laugh, did you know that?” Willow said.

“Don’t be so ridiculous.” Imogene frowned. “Of course you do, when you were a very little girl you never stopped, one of you would start and then the other would join in and I couldn’t get the pair of you to be sensible for hours. I’ll always remember this old lady telling me you’d have a fit, if I didn’t stop you laughing. Laugh to see a pudding roll, that’s what I used to say about you.”

“That was before, when I was little,” Willow said. “I’m not sure when I stopped, if it was weeks or months or years ago, but there is no joy in me, not even when I’m happy, not even when I’m with the people I love. I’m broken inside.”

“Nonsense.” Imogene shifted uncomfortably in her chair, directing her gaze toward the door she could not see, as if hopeful someone or something might interrupt them. “In my day there was no such thing as stress. We just got on with it.” Imogene felt for the remote control that was on the arm of her chair, turning off the TV, as if it would somehow silence Willow too. Perhaps a minute of near silence filled the spaces between them, except for the ticking of the windup clock on the mantel.
Who wound it now?
Willow found herself wondering uneasily. It had always been Ian’s job.

“Mum, I want to be better. To be happy. To be able to connect with people, the way that Holly does. I want to be better. I’d like to meet someone and have children. I want to be happy, complete—like Holly!”

“Try visiting your mother more, that would be a start,” Imogene said. “Anyway, I think it’s time for my nap. Yes, I usually have a nap now. Thank you for coming.”

Exasperated, Willow tried again.

“What I’m trying to say is I want to heal. I want things to be okay between us again, for it to be like it used to. Holly and I were looking at the photo album before I came out. I was so happy then. Maybe it was just the three of us, and perhaps we didn’t have much, but you made us feel so loved, all the time. Loved and special.”

“Well,” Imogene said, as if not sure how to take the compliment. “Well, that’s what a mum does, isn’t it?”

“I know, you’ve taught us both a lot about motherhood.” Willow took a breath, steeling herself to find the right words to go on. It almost felt as if she were sightless too, feeling her way through the conversation with her fingertips, trying to tease the right words out. Perhaps there were no right words, perhaps she just had to take a step into the darkness and trust that she would land somewhere.

“Mum, I need to talk to you about what happened between us. About what happened with me and Ian and the way things have been since you found out. I know you didn’t want to face it then. That’s hard for me to accept, but I suppose you didn’t want to believe something like that, perhaps you felt guilty.” Willow felt fear tightening her throat, but still she went on. “But Mum, what happened, it’s shaped the whole of my life, it’s made me a lesser person than the one I should have been. Nothing can ever make it completely better, but if you . . . if you would just accept what happened. If you would just be my mum, I think it would be like having a ton of stone lifted off of my shoulders. I miss you, Mum. Please, please, now at least, could you admit that you knew the truth, you knew what was happening with—”

“Don’t. You. Dare.” Her mother lifted one finger in warning, just as she had done when Willow was a little girl, a warning that was as often as not followed by the back of her hand.