local – and I’m never allowed to throw them out. I used to try sneaking a few old papers in my bag to dispose of at home, but she’s no fool, my mum. She’s got eyes in the back of her head. So now I’ve given up. It’s not worth the bitterness and the hurt silences.
‘Pot noodle?’ she shouts from the direction of the kitchen.
‘I brought some sandwiches,’ I call back, stacking the load of washing-up liquid bottles on top of an identical monster family-pack, bought the last time we were in the shop seven days ago. ‘Ham salad. Your favourite.’
‘Oh, lovely. Bring them through.’
We eat squashed together on a two-seater sofa, an ancient standard lamp with a fringed green shade towering over us on one side. On the other, a chest of drawers is bumped right up to the sofa, and a laundry basket sits on top, containing a tangle of old electrical leads and dozens of paperback books. Perched at a jaunty angle on this pile, looking sad and slightly cross-eyed, is the largest of Mum’s stuffed parrots. This one – a hideous blue, green and pink thing – is sitting in a cage.
Mum has a thing for exotic birds. She says they make her happy. If it weren’t for the man-made chaos in here, you might think she was aiming for a ‘tropical rainforest’ feel to her décor, in that wherever you are in the house – even sitting on the loo – you’re practically guaranteed a sighting of a stuffed parrot.
Mum tucks into the sandwiches with gusto. I’m sure when I’m not there she lives on tea and biscuits and microwave meals. And pot noodles. The oven finally disappeared under piles of junk about two years ago, so now only the kettle and microwave are fully functional. The fridge gave up the ghost about the same time and hasn’t been fixed because Mum refuses to have visitors to the house, apart from me (and that’s only on the unspoken understanding that I won’t criticise her living arrangements) so I try to bring a healthy food parcel every time I visit.
‘How did you get that bruise?’ I ask, and she glances at a big purple mark on her arm.
‘Oh, that.’ She shakes her head dismissively and pulls her sleeve right down. ‘I was climbing over a pile of bedding and my foot got caught in a duvet, that’s all.’
‘God, Mum, you have to be careful,’ I murmur. ‘Anything could happen.’
It’s actually my worst nightmare. That Mum’s hoarding might end up being the death of her. That, one day, a pile of boxes will tumble on top of her, or worse, that she might accidentally start a fire that will blaze all the more fiercely as it devours her monstrous, ceiling-high towers of newspapers and medical journals. What if she can’t get out of the building fast enough?
But she’s immediately on the defensive. ‘Oh, rubbish. The place might seem a bit untidy to you but I’m the one who lives here. I’m used to it.’
‘Yes, but all these newspapers? It’s a fire hazard, Mum. And what if a pile of boxes falls on you and you injure yourself and I’m not here to help?’
She laughs and pats my hand. ‘Honestly, Poppy, you can be so melodramatic at times. I’m absolutely fine. Now, let’s have some tea. And you can tell me all about your new job.’
‘I haven’t got it yet, Mum.’
‘When do you find out?’
‘Friday.’
‘Well, they’d be stupid not to make you restaurant manager. You know the place inside out.’ She takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘Who else would do such a good job?’
I smile at her, surprised to find my throat tightening with emotion. Mum’s default mode is generally prickly and defensive these days. She’s rarely so openly affectionate. ‘I hope you’re right, Mum.’
She smiles. ‘Of course I’m right. You’ve given everything to that place. It’s only what you deserve.’ She sets off on a winding assault course to find the kettle, weaving around wobbly landmarks and walking over a rustle of newspapers that haven’t yet migrated to one of the towers against the wall.
I stare around me, taking in the full extent of the nightmare. I try not to look, usually, because what tends to happen is, I start noticing things that surely even Mum wouldn’t be sad parting with. (Most of it is useless tat, to my eyes anyway, but stuff like the growing stack of washed-out tin cans she’s keeping ‘just in case they come in handy’? I mean, really? So then I’ll start hinting about possibly disposing of them to make space for other things, at which point a heart-twisting mix of seething anger and tearful vulnerability will appear on Mum’s face, and I’ll know to stop because I’ve gone too far. Then I drive home feeling sad, guilty and utterly frustrated because I’ve racked my brains and I really don’t know what to do to help her.
The one time I gently suggested she might want to speak to someone about her collecting (I wouldn’t dare call it hoarding), she stormed away into the bathroom – the only room with an operational door to slam – then wouldn’t take my phone calls for a week. She apologised eventually but I haven’t dared be so direct with her since.
Mum was a doctor specialising in cardiology before she and Martin divorced and she went to pieces.
The only hearts she’s interested in these days are the cheap, ornamental kind with cute slogans on them.
Harrison and Mum tend to give each other a wide berth these days. He and I had a shouting match over Mum – the only heated argument we’ve ever had – when he said wasn’t it time I took the situation in hand and cleared out all the clutter myself instead of letting her fester her days away in such a hell-hole? I couldn’t make him understand that Mum has always had a will of iron and that if she digs her heels in over something, there is no one on this earth – not even me (especially not me) – who can shift her.
She was pregnant with me when she started her medical degree, and it’s a mark of her steely determination that she gave birth during the Easter holidays and was back at uni along with all her classmates when the new term began. Despite baby me keeping her up at night, she still managed to pass her exams that first year with flying colours.
I don’t know how she did it without any help and precious little sleep. I always imagine her sitting in a little pool of light at the kitchen table, poring over her medical books at some deathly hour of the night, flicking the pages over with one hand while managing to soothe and feed me at the same time. Having a tiny baby to take care of was never going to stop Donna Patterson, as she was then, in her quest to become a doctor.
When I was one, Mum fell in love with Martin Ainsworth, her next-door neighbour. At least, I think she loved him. She must have, in the beginning. But I can only really remember the rows.
Until I was twelve, I assumed he was my dad because neither he nor Mum ever told me any different. I couldn’t understand why we didn’t have the close sort of relationship my friends had with their dads. I was desperate for his approval but I never quite managed to please him and I thought it was because I wasn’t bright enough or funny enough or well behaved enough. There were times when I almost managed to convince myself that it was just the type of person he was – always harshly critical of everyone – because he was like that a lot of the time with Mum, too. She could never do anything right, either.
But deep down, I always knew it was my fault he didn’t love me enough.
When I found out – at the age of twelve – that he wasn’t actually my biological dad, a lot of things that puzzled me about him finally made sense. I wasn’t his real daughter and he must have resented me being there, particularly because I ate up so much of Mum’s time and love.
Mum fell to pieces after he left and they divorced, which surprised me. I thought she’d much prefer the peace that reigned in the house once he’d gone. I certainly did. When Martin was there, it sometimes felt like we were inhabiting a war zone, never quite certain from one moment to the next what was about to rain down on our heads. Not literally. Martin was never physically abusive. But emotional abuse, I discovered, can feel just as wounding.
When