peered at Becky who was playing with her friends at the back of the pub garden. Then I walked away, my heels grappling with the gravel in the car park, my mind full of a heady mixture of emotions: guilt, embarrassment, pride and exhilaration.
‘Fuck them all,’ I said to myself, forcing the guilt and embarrassment away. I quickened my step, heading towards the sea, chest feeling like it might explode. The sea roared around me, the darkening skies above regarding me as though to ask: ‘What next, Selma? What next?’
In response, I started running, my dark hair untangling from the high bun I’d ended up putting it into, streaming behind me. When I finally got to the sea, I grabbed onto the edge of one of the chalk stacks, leaning over and gasping for breath. Then I stumbled to the water’s edge, sinking to the ground, the smell of sand and seaweed clogging my nostrils.
‘I can’t,’ I said, grabbing onto handfuls of sand. ‘I can’t do this any more. I just can’t.’
I closed my eyes and saw the faces of all the people who’d made up my social world the past few years. And then I saw Mike … and Becky.
My beautiful Becky.
They were the walls with which I’d built my life lately.
They are my prison.
I imagined those walls falling one by one, a glimpse of light in the distance. Just some space, that was all I needed. A few days would give me a chance to catch my breath and get away from it all. It had worked another time, many years ago, when Becky was a newborn. Why wouldn’t it work now?
I let out a sob as I thought of Becky. No! What was I thinking? I couldn’t just run away, I had responsibilities …
Or could I?
‘I can’t,’ I whispered.
‘You can,’ a voice said.
I froze. Someone had spoken, a voice carried over on the breeze. I explored the darkness behind me then noticed a figure. Of course, I knew who it was before he stepped into the moonlight.
Idris.
Becky
Sussex, UK
1 June 2018
Becky has to sit down when she hears her mum’s voice at the end of the phone, grasping at the arm of the chair she’s in, trying to control her breathing.
Ten years.
It has been ten years since they last spoke. They’d had an argument over her mum’s reluctance to send money to help Mike after a walking accident in France. Not that they’d talked much before then anyway, just the occasional awkward dinner for some birthdays, the odd letter. Of course, the cheque had arrived the next day for her dad. But the words her mum had spoken as she’d tried to defend herself, the bitterness and hatred she’d directed at Mike, the lies, had been the final straw.
Until now.
Her mum clears her throat. ‘He said I ought to call.’
‘Who said?’
‘The annoying nurse standing over me right now. Honestly, you should see the look he’s giving me.’ There’s a voice in the background, some laughter.
‘You’re in hospital?’ Becky asks.
A sigh. ‘It seems so.’
Fear bubbles at Becky’s core but she swipes it away. She can never be sure with her mum. She must wait, see what she says, before she allows herself to react.
Summer pads over, nudging her nose into Becky’s lap as though sensing her discomfort. She pats her dog’s head, drawing strength from her.
‘Are you okay?’ Becky asks politely, like she’s asking an acquaintance.
‘I’m dying.’
Becky drops the phone. She scrambles to grab it before it hits the wooden floor. The other dogs bounce in, crowding the hallway. Becky stands, pressing the phone to her ear.
‘Wait,’ she says. ‘Just … wait. What’s wrong with you?’ she asks, voice trembling.
‘Cancer. Of course it’s cancer. When isn’t it cancer?’
‘Jesus.’ Becky paces up and down the hallway as the dogs trot after her. ‘Have they actually told you you’re dying? The doctors, I mean?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Becky’s medical training suddenly rushes to the fore. She grasps at it like it’s an anchor stopping her from drowning. ‘What type of cancer?’
‘Breast cancer.’
‘Have you had chemo? There are new advances, new treatments being developed. You have money, they can—’
‘Oh Becky, sweetheart, I’m a lost cause.’
Becky feels tears spring to her eyes. She looks up at the ceiling. It doesn’t matter what her mum has done really. She’s Becky’s flesh and blood. The person who gave birth to her, who had her curled up inside of her for nine months.
And now she’s dying. She will be gone, the person she wakes each morning thinking of despite all her attempts not to.
Becky takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself. ‘How long?’
‘Days, they’re saying.’
Becky suddenly feels sick. How could it be days?
‘Are you still there, Becky?’ Her mum’s voice cracks then. The first hint of vulnerability. It strikes such sadness in Becky’s heart, she can hardly breathe.
‘Sorry, Mum, just trying to get a handle on things,’ Becky whispers.
They’re silent for a few moments. Just breathing together, mother and daughter.
‘Will you come?’ her mum eventually asks, her voice small like a child’s. ‘I don’t want to die alone.’
Becky puts her hand to her mouth, stifling a sob. ‘Of course. Where are you? I’ll be right there.’
The ward Becky’s mum is staying in isn’t bleak like Becky expected. Instead, there are sunny scenes painted on the walls. Becky can even see her old hometown’s quaint shops from the vast windows that line the back, including the charming little bookshop she remembers her mum doing a signing at once. It was three years after her mum had left. Becky was living in Busby-in-Sea with her dad then, settled at school … just. It had taken time to adjust to a life without her mum’s presence in it, without any woman’s presence, especially at certain times, like when she needed to buy her first bra. A chat over the phone or a quick lunch snatched in between her mum’s writing deadlines weren’t quite enough for occasions like that. She’d hoped a weekend stay with her mum to attend the launch of her novel would change things, but her mum had been so busy and flustered sorting out her party, practising her speech. Did that sound right to you, Becky? The part about writing being like the float keeping me above water? Would boat be better? It meant they barely spent time together to say hello, let alone talk about shopping for bras. An eleven-year-old Becky had attended that book launch resentful and sulky, the photos after showing not one smile from her.
Now that same bookshop displays a poster of a moody-looking novel called The Cave, described as a ‘gripping novel from debut author Thomas Delaney’, a photo beneath it of a slightly overweight man in his thirties with a walking stick.
It was strange coming back to the town she’d left all those years ago, seeing the familiar chalk stacks in the distance,