Page 54 of Statistically Speaking
Those few simple words plunge me back to a different world. Her voice, the rasp of cigarettes, the surprisingly gentle tone. When she was calm, she spoke so softly, it was almost lyrical. And Gems. She was the only person who ever called me that, before or after. I have not been Gems for so manyyears, and I feel the sharp sting of tears when I become her once more.
“It’s me, Mum,” I reply, swallowing down the unexpected lump in my throat. It is fast and it is strange and it is inexplicable—but I am engulfed in a rush of warmth. Of relief. Of a comfort that I rarely felt when I was with her, but which I have never forgotten, which has never been replaced. It is a ghost of our real life, a shadow at the edges of harder times, but it is there—the long-ago memory of my mother making me feel safe and loved.
We are both silent, and I try to imagine her—over a decade older, sitting who knows where. I hear the grind of a cigarette lighter sparking into life, and smile. The sound of childhood.
“How are you, Gems? It’s... it’s been a while, eh, babe?”
“It has, Mum, yeah. I’m good. Really good. It’s so nice to hear your voice again.”
She laughs, and I laugh too. I can’t believe what I’ve just said, but it’s true—all of the ambiguity, all of the borderline dread I was feeling about this conversation has gone up in a puff of smoke. Her lighter has burned it away.
“Where are you, Mum? Are you still in London? I came to the estate. Tried to find you. Someone told me they thought you were dead.” She coughs, and I hear her move the phone away while she does it, before she can speak again.
“Almost, love, but not quite! Can’t believe you went back to that place, Gems. Can’t have been easy for you.”
“It wasn’t, no.”
There is a pause, and I feel the weight of our mutual silence, the words we have not said, the thoughts we have not shared. The years that separate us, the blood that binds us.
“I’m sorry about that, love. I left a few years ago. I ended up—well, it’s a long story, not a pretty one. But I left, and I’m livingin Stoke-on-Trent now. Did one of those house-swap things the councils do, someone who wanted to move to London when I wanted to get out. Didn’t care where I ended up, to be honest, as long as it wasn’t there, you know? I needed to leave it all behind.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. I nod because I do understand—I understand the power of leaving it all behind. I, I have to assume, was part of the past she needed to escape from. It hurts, but I get it. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions, and the brutal compartmentalization of our lives seems to be a thread that connects us.
“What’s it like?” I ask, not even sure where Stoke-on-Trent is. Somewhere in the middle, I think, my mind conjuring up images of Wedgwood and fine china factories.
“It’s okay. People are nice. What about you, Gems? Have you settled anywhere?”
“I’m in Liverpool,” I say simply. “Kind of settled. Can I—can I come and see you, Mum? Would that be okay?”
I am as surprised as she is by those words. I had anticipated possibly speaking to her—but I have shocked myself with how strongly I want to sit with her. To be in her company. To feel her arms around me. I know it is probably a fantasy, but I still feel it.
I have no idea what her mental state is these days, or if she is still in love with the various substances that overwhelmed her love for everything else. But she sounds well—she sounds in control. Sad but sane. It might be a phase, or she might have picked a clear day to call me. It might be an illusion, but it is one that I desperately want to be true.
She does not reply immediately, and I feel a leaden churn in my stomach, the creeping doubt, the opening tremors ofrejection. It is not an unfamiliar sensation. She has rejected me before, in many different ways. I wonder for a moment if I have been a fool to lay myself so open to being rejected again.
“I’d like that, Gems,” she says eventually, her own voice heavy with emotion. It must have been hard for her too, to make this call. To not know what reception she would be given. To anticipate her own rejection, another in a long line from a world that has never understood her.
“Okay, Mum. I will, I promise. I’ll see you soon.”
Chapter 23
One Disagreement, Two Sorry People
That night, Karim and I have our first-ever argument.
I avoided telling him much about my conversation with my long-lost matriarch while we did the pub quiz—I had to concentrate on remembering the answers to every subject that didn’t involve a ball or a bat or an athletics field. Though, to be fair, he did get a very tricky Eurovision question (1971—Monaco—Séverine taking the country’s only ever win with the forgotten classic “Un Banc, Un Arbre, Une Rue”).
After the quiz has finished, we walk back to my place, enjoying a night that has taken an unexpectedly warm turn. The drizzle has cleared and the temperature has climbed, and we both end up carrying our jackets instead of wearing them.
As we walk toward the coastal path, he says: “So. Tell me more about it. How did she sound?”
“She sounded... good. Better than I remember. Better than I hoped for, I suppose. I think I expected the worst; it was way too believable to accept that she was just another druggie who died young. I suppose maybe one step up from that would be alive but just as messed up as she always was.”
“And this was a few steps up from that, was it?”
“It was,” I reply, smiling in the darkness. We are holding hands as we walk, finding an easy rhythm, paces matched. “She seemed really clearheaded. Maybe it was the move that did it. Or maybe she moved because she wanted to get more clearheaded... or maybe it was a blip, and I’ll turn up at the weekend and she’ll be running around naked hitting people with a frying pan.”
There is a brief hitch in his step, and I know that I have surprised him.
