pain relief. Days and nights are dominated by medicine; morphine in higher and higher doses. Outside, beyond these four walls, other people’s lives continue. People rush past late for work, or laugh into their mobiles. The postman drops letters we no longer care about. Strangers stagger past the end of the road, late at night, after an evening at the pub. They are ignorant of the thin existence we cling to in here. The edges of their jovial conversations pull me towards happier times, but we each have one turn at life and I must accept hers is almost over. I have prayed and prayed to the Lord, and still she isn’t getting better. It must be her time.
Sometimes when she has enough energy, Mother still worries about small details, irrelevancies to me, given the state of her health. Whether the bins will be put out at the front on Wednesday. Whether the dishwasher has been emptied. Maybe the routine of minor details helps her hold on to life. But for the most now all she does is sleep.
I fear that I will lose my father almost immediately after she dies. He is not coping; when he isn’t staring at my mum, he stares into space, leaving me to run the household. He does not eat. I don’t know whether he sleeps. From time to time he clings to me and cries and cries.
I miss my family so much, stuck here in this prison of death. My husband, the musky sweet smell of him. The kindness in his eyes. My boys. The softness of their skin as I hold them at bedtime, cheek to cheek. Their energy. Their laughter. I hope everything will be all right when I’m back home with Craig. Lately, as I spend so much time sitting here, watching my mum sleeping, the rise and fall of her body beneath the counterpane, I feel my family moving away from me. Craig is coping so well without me. Better than I expected. Carly is being so helpful, which is unusual. She seems to have risen to the challenge of five children, coping better than she does with just her own. She has the constant support of her own mother, Heather – I hope it is not Heather who is bearing the brunt. A few months ago, I was worried about Carly; not enjoying her summer holiday, not enjoying her husband or her children. I was sad for her. But now, the tables are turned, Carly is on top of everything, and it is me who is sinking into quicksand.
Mum is calling me. A weak cry on the edge of the wind.
The boys are restrained in their car seats; tightly, as if they are convicts, and Pippa is sitting – back straight – on her booster seat. Everyone is making too much noise, Pippa being Little Miss Cheery, Little Miss Too Helpful, as usual.
‘Quiet boys,’ she thunders, making more noise than they are. The percussion already beating around my temples explodes. I pray for the ibuprofen I took twenty minutes ago to start working, and press a button on the steering wheel. Classic FM glides silkily into the Volvo. I turn the volume up to drown out the sound of the children. ‘Fingal’s Cave’ by Mendelssohn takes me away from here. I could be swimming in a Scottish ocean. Watching waves crash through sea-hollowed rocks. Anywhere but here.
A horn beeps discordantly through the music. The car behind is telling me the lights have changed. I press the accelerator and the car jerks forwards across the road junction in the middle of town. Next left and we are outside Craig and Jenni’s house – a few more minutes and I’ll only have my own three to put up with. Half an hour and Rob will be home. Rob. Always so helpful. Always doing something useful. Working at the surgery. Looking after the children. Doing DIY at home.
Please, Rob, will you just grab a glass of wine and sit and talk to me? Even if the children are running wild upstairs. Even if the dishwasher needs unloading. We had a world together before we had the children. A world of quiet conversation on the sofa. Gentle nights out sharing a Chinese, a curry. Trips to the theatre. Trips to the cinema. Holidays that were holidays, not child-care assault courses. And now? The children are drowning me, stopping me from being the person I used to be. No longer Carly, but ‘Mummy’, a stereotypical shadow of what is inside me. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. The word is beginning to disgust me. As I attempt to park the car, the rear beeper chirruping like a maniac, my stomach tightens as I think of last night. Rob hovering over me as I loaded the dishwasher.
‘Don’t stack the bowls that way. They don’t fit properly.’
He took them out. He put them back in again in a row on the upper shelf.
‘There you are.’ A pause. ‘See.’
And then he turned to me and gave me his concerned, patriarchal look – the look that makes me want to shout; staring at me too intensely, knitting his brows together.
‘Carly,’ he said, ‘I know you’re finding this stage difficult.’
‘Don’t you?’ I asked, standing with my hands on my hips, my arms and legs wide apart. ‘Don’t you find it difficult, Rob?’
‘Demanding. Not difficult.’
‘What’s the difference? You’re getting pedantic enough to become a lawyer.’
‘Maybe. In another life.’
He snapped the dishwasher shut and it started churning water. He challenged me with his eyes.
‘What would you do, in another life?’ he asked.
‘I don’t even know what I want to do in this one.’
‘Nihilistic,’ he muttered.
I looked at him standing in front of me, face laced with a frown, forehead a river bed of wrinkles, and missed him. Missed the man who would have laughed and dragged me to the pub, words like nihilistic never even thought of, dead on his breath before they became real.
‘I’m not perfect enough for you, am I?’ I heard myself shout, hard-edged and strident, tears peppering my eyes. I blinked to push them back. He took me in his arms.
‘Carly, none of us are perfect. You’re as perfect as it gets.’
My body stiffened against his. ‘I know that’s not what you think.’
‘Come on, Carly, leave it, I was only trying to help.’
‘And how exactly do you think criticising me helps?’
My stomach knots as I remember. Rob’s face contorts in my mind and becomes Craig’s. Craig’s face with its slightly suppressed aura of irresponsibility. Perhaps that’s why I am pulled towards him right now. Responsibility is killing me.
I sit in the car, noise sliding around me, and close my eyes. I am undressing Craig, moving my hands across his torso, down, down towards his jeans. I squeeze my thighs together.
How long have I wanted to have sex with him? For as long as I can remember? Or for as long as Rob has wanted Jenni?
I am back thinking of the first time I saw his almost naked body. In a swimming pool at Center Parcs. A child-centred weekend, several years ago. He was wearing white Aussiebum swimming shorts.
‘Mummy, are you all right?’ Pippa squeals, shaking me by the shoulders. I open my eyes. ‘Are you going to take the boys out of the car, or do you want me to?’
She is leaning through the gap between the front seats and unbuckling them for me. I watch her and wonder what it is like to be her age. Loving life without sex, drugs or alcohol. Getting high on sweets, fizzy drinks and simplicity. If only I could go back to a time when strawberry laces would have satisfied me.
Craig answers the door, bare chested, a damp towel draped around his midriff. His body is not as toned as it used to be; fat nestles self-indulgently on his belly. But then, I’d like to try some self-indulgence right now. His boys run into their house, past his legs, through the hallway into the sitting room.
‘Sorry. Had to clean up after a shout.’
Fireman’s speak for being called out. Craig the hero. I raise my eyes from his torso and hold his gaze.
It’s been so long since I flirted with anyone. Bitch-whore Jenni, is this how it’s done?