Page 78 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
It’s not until I’m back at Dee’s, washing up the breakfast dishes with the radio on, that I think about my mum. Did Matt get in touch with her, to tell her about my accident? And if he did, why didn’t she come?
40
THEN
‘Are you ready?’ Matt asks.
‘I think so.’
We get out of the car and knock on my mum’s front door. I haven’t been here since Granny Rose died, but when Mum opens the door, it still smells familiar. Like her washing detergent and potpourri, with undertones of Mick. He’s not there, but he’s everywhere. His boots by the front door, his coat slung over the banister. I can tell he chose the picture hanging in the hallway, which is bold and bright and nothing that Mum would pick.
For a minute, we look at each other. She’s lost weight, and her nails are bitten down. There are no obvious bruises, but I know that doesn’t mean anything. She pulls me in for a hug, and I can’t let myself relax into it, but I want to.
‘Are you packed?’ I ask.
She nods. Over the past few weeks, since she asked for my help, Matt and I have searched for places she could go. Not too far, but not close enough that she might run into him. We settled on Nottingham, found a room for her to rent in a shared house with three other women. We set her up with a new bank account and gave her some money to tide her over until she found a job,helped her with the paperwork to set up a restraining order. And all the time, she went back and forth, not sure she was really going to go through with it. It’s her house, this, and she owns it outright, having paid the mortgage for more than two decades. It should be him who’s going, but we both know there’s no way that will happen. He won’t let her go, either. That’s why we’re here while he’s at work, why she’s packed her bags in a hurry in the two hours since he left.
Not for the first time, I question whether I should have offered for her to stay in our spare room. I haven’t offered and she hasn’t asked. We’re not close now, haven’t been for years, and living together again would put our relationship under immense strain. Still, I mention it, tentatively.
‘It’s the first place he’d look,’ she says.
We both know it’s true.
‘You know, you can’t tell him where I am, no matter what,’ she says.
Until now, it’s been us telling her this. ‘I know, Mum.’
‘You too, Matt,’ she says, looking at him.
I know that she doesn’t trust any man, and I understand why.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Matt says. ‘Really, I can’t think of anything I’d be less likely to do.’
I can see that she is torn, wanting to believe him but not quite able to. Still, she doesn’t have a choice. Matt’s been in on this with me. He’s had to be. The organisation was more than I could manage alone.
While she looks around the house, trying to decide whether she wants to take anything else, Matt makes us all hot drinks. The tea tastes weird, has probably been in the cupboard for years, but he’s dug out a packet of Hobnobs and we dunk them, none of us saying much.
‘I’m ready,’ Mum says, draining her mug.
I notice that it says ‘World’s Best Mum’ on the front. A Mother’s Day present from years ago. I notice that she is not taking it with her.
‘Let’s do it,’ Matt says, and when he puts a gentle hand on her shoulder, I see her flinch, and he pulls it away as quickly as he placed it there.
I drive and Mum sits beside me in the passenger seat. Matt is quiet in the back. The silence is too thick, so I reach over and put the radio on, and there’s a ballad from the eighties on and Matt starts singing along, his voice deep and out of tune. I smile, can’t help it. I join in. It’s one of those songs I haven’t heard for years but which I remember all the words to. I glance across at Mum as the final chorus approaches and there’s a hint of a smile on her face, and I see that she’s mouthing the words, not quite singing along, but almost. He’s taken everything from her, but it will come back. Her voice, her strength. It will come back.
When we pull up outside the red-brick terraced house, Mum looks at it for a long time before taking her seatbelt off.
‘You know, I’ve lived in that house for thirty years. I wonder how long I’ll live in this one.’
I point out everything positive I see. The flowers in the front window, the way the paving stones at the front are swept clean, the way the sun is shining, hitting the front of the house. I want her to see these things, to know that she isn’t only losing parts of herself, but gaining something too.
We press on the doorbell while Matt gets a couple of boxes out of the car boot. The woman who opens the door is a similar age to Mum. She’s short and slight, and her wavy hair is the colour of caramel.
‘You must be Tina,’ she says. For a moment, I don’t think she’s going to step aside to invite us in, but then she does. ‘Rosemary,’ she says, by way of introducing herself, wrapping her thick cardigan around her.
I wonder how she’s ended up here, in this strange houseshare for middle-aged women. Perhaps she and Mum will become friends. Or perhaps they’ll both keep to their rooms, occasionally crossing paths in the kitchen or the hallway. I wonder whether we should warn her about Mick, about the possibility of him turning up here. It’s possible she has a Mick of her own, of course. I decide I’ll leave it for Mum to navigate.
Rosemary gives us a very quick tour. The kitchen’s old-fashioned but clean, with peeling sticky labels on the cupboards – one for each resident. There are padlocks on the cupboard doors, and the sight of them makes me feel wretched. We go upstairs to Mum’s room, and it looks a bit shabbier than it did in the photos on the internet, but it’s liveable, and that’s enough for now.
