into contact with something about me that she found difficult. As if I was a puzzle she found too frustrating to solve. Over and over. Time after time. I came to a halt at the end of the frozen aisle.
She’d followed me, a few steps behind. ‘What support are you getting?’ she said. I turned to see her, arms crossed tight across her chest. The cold was really coming off those freezer cabinets.
I looked at her closely and wondered when she’d decided to put fine lines of black back into her gold and silver hair, and when the skin had begun to sag off her bones like that. Like sheets draped off ladders. Because it was like seeing her again after an absence of years – as I thought, if Dad had been here, you wouldn’t have had to ask about what support I was getting because it would have come from him. You’d have known that and you’d have let him get on with it.
‘Well, let’s see,’ I said. ‘The thing I tried to call you about last week, the CF parents’ group? That was great actually. Everyone sat around and talked and we shared some of our experiences. I might try and do some fundraising, or something.’
‘Parents’ group? What, like AA?’
‘It’s run by one of the charities for cystic fibrosis. It’s a support group for parents of children with CF.’
‘I understand. Sharing the burden.’ She scanned a shelf of fish fingers. ‘If it’s sharing the burden you’re after, you’d be better off at the church.’
I clenched my fists and adjusted something on Mia that didn’t need adjusting. ‘Let’s not talk about me for a bit. How are you, Mum? Tell me how you are.’
‘Bearing up.’ She released a resigned and exhausted sigh. ‘Sarah Blackwell keeps on at me about Dad’s headstone. Tiresome cow. I won’t be pushed on it, particularly as all she wants is symmetry in the graveyard. All that landscaping. You’d do a better job of it than her. You’ve got a good eye for design. Perhaps you should consider that for your next career? Get your hands into the earth sometime?’
‘I can’t work with damp earth. With Mia, the bacteria – did you read the email Dave sent out with all the things that are dangerous for her? Like sandpits and lakes and soil?’
‘Yes, of course I remember, but you’re obviously feeling over-sensitive so I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. Oh look, coconuts on offer. In the frozen aisle, for no good reason.’ She picked one out of its wooden box and held it against the strip lighting. ‘I read that these give you a lot of energy. Something about the fats in them. You’ll be as right as rain after a few of these.’
I pressed a palm against the top of my head, but it was no good. The words began erupting before I could start counting to stop them. ‘Mum.’ I brushed a strand of hair from my face and straightened my back.
She lowered the coconut.
‘It’s not my diet, or the sleep I’m not getting, or the absence of a career plan. Coconuts aren’t going to relieve the burden. I’ve got feeding and nappy stuff to do, like everyone, but as well as that I’ve got nearly ten drugs a day to administer and a hundred threats to watch out for and hours of physiotherapy. And I don’t know if I’m doing any of it right. Too many digestive enzymes will hurt her. Not enough and she’ll get stomach cramps. I worry about walking under shop awnings when it rains in case dirty water drips off it and on to her. I cross the road when the street-cleaner vehicle is coming. Every single minute of the day I’m terrified I’ll get it wrong and it’ll be the start of her getting really ill. I’m so tired, Mum—’
‘Yes, all right. I understand.’ She flapped her hands like she was trying to disperse a cloud of tiny flies.
And I was crying again.
I’d spent a lot of time crying in the bathroom before we had IVF, and even more during IVF. Perched on the edge of the bath, overflowing with disappointment when another pregnancy test failed to produce a pale blue line. At the beginning, Dave was always there, his hand held over mine, our faces buried in each other like a couple of swans. But toward the end, after months and years had passed, he was there much less. And even if he was, I was never sure if he had heard me somewhere in the house and just decided not to come.
I wasn’t sure because I never asked and I never asked because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear the answer. But one day, after another negative test, I’d had enough. I had grown so tired of the prodding and the poking and the lacking and the not knowing that I walked into the kitchen and said to Dave: Let’s put the house on the market because, really, what’s the point of this place if it’s only going to be you and me? Have you ever thought that maybe this isn’t happening because we – you and me – don’t work? That maybe this isn’t supposed to work?
Despite all the tests, the doctors never found out what was wrong with us. There wasn’t a single sperm count or hormone level that was abnormal.
Dave left the kitchen after that outburst. It was a Saturday and the football was about to start but I think he missed the match that time.
We never spoke about what I’d said and then on the Monday he left for work with a smile, like our conversation was forgotten, like life had grown over any wound I had made. And, soon after that, an embryo grew anyway. There was life inside me and no space left for old memories of tears in bathrooms and kitchens.
Mum almost had her back to me now, like she was sheltering from the wind.
‘I don’t think you do understand,’ I said, crying. ‘No, of course you don’t. Why would you? You never ask.’ The last confrontation I’d had – with Richard – had felt exhilarating. But this had the contours of an old habit. Goading her. Pushing her for more than she knew how to give. ‘I’m tired because when I’m awake all I think about is how to keep her alive and when I lie down to sleep all I can think about is her dying anyway. I have dreams when I bury her and I wake up and nobody can tell me it’s only a bad dream.’
Come on, Mum. Tell me that you feel something. Anything.
Mum looked up and down the aisle. ‘Do calm down.’
She placed her basket carefully on the floor in front of her and bowed her head, as if she were taking Communion. When she looked up again her eyes were cold and determined. ‘Come to church. Next Sunday.’
I searched for a tissue in my pocket. ‘Mum, you’re not listening.’
‘There’s a noticeboard that people pin prayers on, prayers for people who are unwell or in need. If you come and look at that board you’ll see exactly how much illness and sickness is around us. You’re struggling, granted, but we are all tested at some point. Deborah Maccleswood posted a lovely little note about her daughter’s breast cancer. Such a difficult thing for that family to be going through, but they’re praying together and they’re supported by all of us in the church. You might find some solace in that.’
‘Why would I find solace in another family’s suffering?’ I pressed the tissue angrily to my cheeks. ‘And if there’s a God, a truly all-powerful God, then he or she or it is a fucked-up deity. Letting children suffer and die.’
Her face had lost all its colour. I didn’t care.
‘There’s nothing there,’ I said. ‘And if there was something up there? I’d spit in its face for allowing this.’
‘He gave us his only son,’ she said tearfully, angrily.
‘I wouldn’t give Mia’s life for anyone or anything. That’s what a mother should be, isn’t it? The person saying: No, stop, you’ll have my child over my dead body. But I’ll have to watch her be taken from me all the same.’
Mum turned to the cereals shelf and pulled a yellow-and-blue box off the display. ‘She’ll be eating porridge, soon.’ I could tell from the quiet of her voice that tears were near. She turned abruptly and walked back in the direction of fruit and veg, then halted – torn between her desire to be away from me and to have the last word.
‘You’re