The Mummyfesto (43 page)

Zach nodded. He went with Julie down the corridor. I squeezed Rob’s hand. He was going to be OK.

I turned back to Marie.

‘Would you like to be with Oscar while I take him off the ventilator?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘Come through with me to his room then, and we’ll do it as soon as Julie’s taken Zach to play.’

Ten minutes later I was looking at a little boy lying on a bed. A boy I almost didn’t recognise. There were no masks, machines or tubes. It was just him. Oscar. He’d come back to us. I felt a brief spurt of elation before the reality flooded in. The laboured breathing. His bloated abdomen sticking out below his sunken chest. The glazed look in his eyes. He would not be with us long. But while we had him, he would be made so very welcome.

I found her sitting in a crumpled heap in front of the cupboard under the stairs, her wet knickers around her ankles. Tears were seeping silently from the corners of her eyes.

‘It’s OK,’ I said, crouching down next to her and pulling her to me. ‘I’m here now. Everything’s OK.’

Mum looked at me, the skin around her mouth twitching. ‘I couldn’t find toilet,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t remember which door it were. I thought it were in there.’ She pointed to the cupboard under the stairs. Mum had lived in this house for fifty-odd years. She had never had a downstairs toilet.

‘No, it’s upstairs, next to your bedroom. Never mind, let’s get you cleaned up.’ She nodded and shut her eyes for a moment as if she couldn’t bear me to see her shame. My mother, who had no doubt had to clear up plenty of
my ‘accidents’ in her time, now having to be cleaned up by her own daughter.

She was quiet as I helped her get changed. Quiet and thoughtful rather than quietly vacant. She looked up at me when we were finished and took hold of my hand.

‘I don’t know where owt is any more,’ she said. ‘Not even in me own home. It don’t feel like me home now. Not really. It’s too big for me. I’m scared, you know. Scared of getting lost in me own home.’

She looked old and frail and bewildered. She looked lost.

‘How about we find you somewhere new to live?’ I said. ‘Somewhere you’ve just got one room with a little bathroom. Where you’ll get your meals cooked and there’ll be company for you and where there’ll always be someone there to help you when you need it.’

She shrugged. She really wasn’t up to making decisions any more. Life had come full circle. It was my turn to look after her. To do the right thing. Even if she didn’t understand what that was.

I’d known the performance was going to be good. Actually, beyond good. But it was only when I saw Will up there on stage, playing the part of the bully, that I realised just how good it was.

The audience of Year Nines was silent, none of the usual giggling and fidgeting. They watched intently as Will chose his ‘victim’ and began his calculating reign of terror. Psychological, all of it. He never laid a finger on
him. But he coaxed and cajoled his classmates to join in the laughter, to point the finger, to sign up to the silences.

And when, after a sustained campaign of terror and ridicule, the victim didn’t come to school one morning, they watched Will sneer and gloat, crack jokes about what might have happened to him. Until they were called into assembly, that was, and told by the Head what had actually happened to him. And told in no uncertain terms that it must never happen to anyone at that school again. At which point everyone turned to look at Will and he slunk off on his own down the corridor, knowing that this was all his doing. And that nobody would ever allow him to forget it.

Charlotte was crying by the end of the performance. She wasn’t the only one, though, not by a long chalk. Several of the girls in her year had tears streaming down their faces. Only theirs were tears of guilt.

The pupils broke into a spontaneous round of applause. Not the usual behaviour at the end of a PHSCE lesson, albeit a rather unconventional one. Will wasn’t interested in milking the applause, though. He simply went up to Charlotte and gave her a hug. And everyone knew then that things had changed and she wasn’t on her own any more.

I waited at the bottom of the road for Anna to arrive. I hadn’t wanted her to come to the house. Alice would have asked too many questions about where we were going and why. Saying goodbye to people wasn’t one of her strong
points. She’d cried on the three or four occasions when one of her classmates had left the school. And that had been because they were moving away from the area. Not because they were dying.

Dying. I still couldn’t get my head around it. Still couldn’t forget the catch in Sam’s voice as she told me on the phone. And the silence at my end as I’d failed miserably to find anything suitable to say. What could you say? It was a mother’s worst nightmare. My own mother had worn the same haunted expression on her face for thirty-two years because of it. The thought of Sam having to go through that, of Zach having to cope with losing a sibling, was so unfair. And so bloody, bloody cruel.

Anna’s silver Polo pulled up on the kerb next to me. I opened the door and got in. We looked at each other. We’d both opted for navy. One stop short of funereal black. We burst into tears at exactly the same moment.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ I said as I leant over and hugged her.

‘I know, I feel so utterly helpless. I’m still not even sure if we’re doing the right thing by going. Maybe visitors are the last thing they need.’

‘I did ask her to text me if she changed her mind. If it wasn’t a good time.’

‘I don’t suppose there is such a thing as a good time,’ replied Anna.

‘No. I guess not. But I just want to be there for her. To let her know she’s not on her own.’

‘It sounds like Rob needs a hell of a lot of support too. Sam always said he was in denial about the whole situation. I think it’s hit him hard.’

‘Maybe we could ask Paul and David to help,’ I suggested, ‘take Rob out somewhere to get away from it all. Not now. Afterwards, I mean.’

Anna’s face crumpled. The usual air of cool, calm togetherness, replaced by something altogether different.

‘He’s gone,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘David. He’s left me. Well, actually Will sort of kicked him out. It’s rather complicated.’

I stared at her. Not quite able to take it in. I don’t think she was, either.

‘Why? What happened?’

‘The whole fuss at the hustings. The stuff about the dope. It came from David.’

‘Jeez. You mean he told her on purpose, to smear you?’

She shook her head.

‘No. He told her years ago. When he was having an affair with her.’

My mouth must have visibly gaped open. She managed a weak smile.

‘Oh, Anna,’ I said, ‘that’s awful. You poor thing.’

‘Not really. Not as poor as Sam.’

‘Hey, this isn’t competitive misery, you know. On any normal scale this is massive.’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I don’t love him, you see. I haven’t loved him for ages.’

She said it quietly and calmly. The way you would if you were discussing a type of cheese you’d gone off.

‘Oh. I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

‘I did a very good job of the whole sham marriage thing.’

‘And you didn’t know, about the affair I mean?’

‘No. I guess I was too busy with the children. It was when Will and Charlotte were little. That’s why he said it happened.’

I shook my head and blew out a short whistle. ‘Women can’t win, can they? They get slagged off if they’re not putting their kids first and cheated on by their husbands if they are.’

Anna smiled. ‘Shame that can’t be in the mummyfesto,’ she said. ‘It’s a good line.’

‘Why did you stay with him so long?’ I asked.

‘The usual reason. I was planning to stick it out until Will and Charlotte had both left school.’

‘But what about Esme?’

Anna hesitated. ‘She wasn’t planned. We were still having sex, although it was pretty much down to being every Friday. You know, like how some people have fish on Fridays. That sort of thing.’

I nodded. ‘So when she came along it meant you had to stay that much longer.’

‘I tried to make it work, but he grew more distant than ever. He just wasn’t there for me emotionally. Maybe he was only staying for the same reason I was. I don’t know. He never wanted to talk about our relationship. Said I should stick to counselling people at work.’

‘But there must have been times when you were tempted. You know, to see another man.’

‘It’s surprising how easy it is to avoid eligible men if you put your mind to it,’ she said. ‘Especially if you counsel troubled teenagers and you work from home the rest of the time.’

‘You went out of your way to avoid them?’

She shrugged. ‘It was easier that way. I was far too vulnerable. It would have been so easy to fall for someone else.’

‘Someone who could have made you happy.’

She shrugged again. ‘Like I said, the children always came first.’

‘And you still didn’t throw him out when you found out about the affair?’

‘Will said I was too fucking reasonable. I guess he was right. That’s why he ended up doing it himself.’

I shook my head. ‘So what happens now?’

‘We go and see Sam and neither of us breathes a word about it, OK? I don’t want her to know. Not right now. She’s got enough to deal with.’

I nodded slowly and sighed. ‘Considering we were planning to run the country a few weeks ago, we really are in an awful mess, aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I guess we are.’

I was dreading the visit to the hospice. I couldn’t think of anywhere worse in the world than somewhere that children go to die. Of course, Sam had told me enough times that it wasn’t like that at all. That a lot of children just
went there for respite care. That it was actually an incredibly life-affirming place to be. I hadn’t believed her though. I’d thought it was her just seeing the good in everything. And always being so bloody positive.

She was right. I realised that within a few minutes of walking through the door. The woman who greeted us was bright and welcoming. Inside it was light and airy, the sounds of music and laughter resonated along the corridor. People who walked past us were smiling. An air of calm pervaded the place. I glanced at Anna. She raised her eyebrows at me. Clearly she hadn’t expected this either.

The corridor led to a communal area where a boy was sitting with his father playing chess. It was a few seconds before I realised it was Zach and Rob.

‘I hope you’re beating him,’ I said, bending down and putting an arm around Zach’s shoulder. He turned around and smiled. Not a full grin but a smile all the same.

‘I’ve got him on the defensive,’ Zach said.

‘And the sad thing is I am actually trying,’ added Rob.

‘Where’s Oscar this morning?’ the woman who had shown us in asked.

‘In the lights-and-bubble room,’ Zach replied. She gestured to us to follow her and opened a door off the corridor we had just walked down. Oscar was lying on a water bed. His eyes were open and he was gazing up at a massive lava-lamp-style tube which ran from the floor to the ceiling. His eyes swivelled to us as we came into the room. I tried to think there was a flicker of recognition
there, but I couldn’t be sure. He looked very weak. Very weak indeed.