thank you. Though I have to admit, the pillow’s a bit lumpy.’
‘Here,’ Becky says, lifting her mum’s head and shuffling under her so she can lean on Becky’s lap. ‘Better?’
Her mum smiles. ‘I knew the Rhys thunder thighs would come in handy one day.’
‘Charming!’
Her mum laughs, but then her laugh turns into a cough. Becky gives her more water.
‘I don’t know how you lived here,’ Becky says, looking around her. She realises she’s absent-mindedly stroking her mum’s hair as she says that, as she is so used to stroking her dogs as they lie on her lap. She remembers her mum doing the same when she was young, singing her a lullaby as she fell asleep.
‘Oh, it was better equipped back then,’ her mum says. ‘There was a toilet and a makeshift shower over there,’ she says, gesturing to the corner opposite to her. ‘A kitchen at the front, with a huge table. Anyway, it didn’t really matter. It was more about the space to write, the people. At first, anyway.’
Her eyes stray over to the half-finished painting of Idris, pain flittering across her face.
‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ Becky says simply.
Her mum nods. ‘The first time I saw him was the day the boy nearly drowned …’
As she begins to tell Becky about those first few days, Becky tries to find the anger she once felt at her mum for falling in love with someone else. Not just someone else, but a ‘bloody hippy’ as her dad referred to him. But as her mum lies with her head in Becky’s lap, eyes alight with memories, Becky finds it impossible to be angry. Instead, it feels like her love for her mum has never been stronger. It swells inside her as she strokes her hair.
But as her mum continues with the story, the sound of her voice grows increasingly slurred and panic clutches at Becky’s heart. It’s as though coming here has made her mum feel safe enough to slowly loosen her grip on life. Becky is desperate for her to hold on a little longer, this woman who gave birth to her, who held her in her arms, who protected her despite all that came after. The past twenty-four hours have reminded her of the good memories. They crowd in, suffocating the bad that have so dominated thoughts of her mum all these years. Instead, they’re replaced with the smell of her mum’s warmth when Becky crept into her parents’ bed at night. And the love, so much love, that she saw in her mum’s eyes.
How could she have forgotten that?
One of her tears splashes onto her mum’s cheek but her mum doesn’t notice. She is lost in her own memories, words barely making sense now as she recounts her story, so wrapped up in her past that she is beyond caring if Becky can understand what she says.
Over the next few hours, as darkness creeps into the cave, the only light provided by a flickering candle, Becky leans against the damp wall, legs out flat, her mum’s head now heavy in her lap. She watches a bird glide across the sky outside under the moonlight, another pecking at oysters that have washed up ashore with its distinctive orange beak. It peers up at her, noticing her watching, holding her gaze.
‘You always had a way with animals,’ her mum croaks.
The bird takes flight at the sound of her voice, its wings spread wide against the dark skies.
Then her mum closes her eyes again, mumbling something incoherent under her breath. Becky knows the end is nearing. Her mum is delirious now, breath rasping, chest rising so slowly, too slowly.
Becky holds her mum closer and silently sobs. She sobs for all the lost years, but anger starts filtering in again now too. She can’t help it. Anger at her mum, the dying woman in her arms, the most important woman in her life who walked away. The woman whose lies even now might be being whispered in the dark, surrounding her, pressing into her.
As though hearing her thoughts, Becky’s mum grows silent. She blinks up at Becky and Becky recognises the dimming of light she has seen so many times in the eyes of the animals she cares for.
‘Are you comfortable?’ she whispers, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. She doesn’t want to scare her mum.
Her mum nods, clutching onto her daughter’s hands which are crossed over her thin heaving chest. ‘I am, darling, thank you. Will it be soon?’
Becky purses her lips, trying not to sob. She could lie. Tell her mum there will be many more hours, days, weeks. But she isn’t like her mum. She can’t lie.
‘Yes. I think so,’ she replies.
Her mum closes her eyes, tears squeezing out from the corners. When she opens them, there is a new vitality. This often happens just before death, a final fight for life. It fills Becky with terror.
Not long now …
‘I don’t think you know how much I love you, darling,’ her mum says. ‘Always have. Every moment of every day, you’ve both been in my thoughts.’
Becky frowns. ‘Both? You mean Dad too?’
‘No, you and your sister.’
Becky goes rigid. ‘Sister?’ She looks at the empty packet of pills. ‘You’re delirious.’
‘No,’ her mum says, peering towards one of the paintings of the child, the one with the eyes scratched out. ‘I had another child, with Idris.’
Becky shakes her head, heart thumping so painfully against her chest she can barely breathe. Her mum’s head suddenly feels like lead in her lap.
‘Idris took her,’ her mum whispers. She is growing weak again. She looks ahead of her, towards the wall of the cave, eyes glossy with tears. ‘He took her from this very cave.’
‘Are you telling the truth?’ Becky asks.
A faint crinkle in her brow as her mum’s eyes begin to close. ‘Why would I lie about such a thing?’ she whispers. And then she is gone.
Selma
Kent, UK
27 July 1991
Idris led me to the cave, his hand still wrapped around mine. A campfire flickered outside it, and the sound of guitar music, laughter, even a child giggling was carried along with the breeze. As we drew closer, I could see seven people sitting around the fire on colourful chalk boulders, listening to a young tanned man dressed in just shorts playing a soft tune on his guitar. The girl I’d met a few days before was sitting beside him with her arms wrapped around him, her fingers hungry in his hair. A tall black man sat beside her, dressed smartly in chinos and a white shirt, his fingers tapping gently on his knee, his eyes closed. A brown and white Jack Russell lay with its furry chin on the man’s foot.
Behind the group sat a woman in her fifties wearing an oversized kaftan dress, paper flowers in different colours scattered around her. She was doing something I couldn’t see, her arms moving erratically, her back bent over. Swaying to the music nearby was a slim, attractive woman with short, blonde hair, the flames of the fire dancing on her tanned skin. I recognised her as being a local yoga teacher, and thought it no surprise that someone like her had been drawn there. But what was a surprise was seeing timid Donna among the group, with her son Tom. She must have come directly from the pub just after I left. What on earth was she doing there?
Then there, beyond them all, was the cave and the old hotel looming dark and abandoned above it. The cave was too dark to properly see inside but I caught glimpses of colour on the walls. Idris’s paintings?
When we approached the group, everyone seemed to sense him, growing quiet as they peered up. The young man even stopped strumming his guitar and Tom stopped