Chapter 42 #2
I hover in the doorway for a moment, like one of the flies from the kitchen.
Back in the flat in Tottenham, this same scenario would play out: I would hover in the doorway and she would tell me to go back to bed.
I half expect her to do the same now. Why is she reading Shallow Embers? I almost don’t want to know the answer.
She wrinkles her nose. ‘Have you been smoking?’
‘No.’ I point to the book. ‘A bit of nighttime reading?’
She looks down at her lap. ‘Ah. Yes. I was just interested.’
‘You’ve read it before.’
‘A long time ago.’
‘You’re making headway, you’re nearly halfway through.’
‘I was looking for a certain part.’
I wish she had told me to go back to bed. ‘Well, I’m getting some water, do you want anything?’
‘No, thank you.’
I turn to the door.
‘Mal, wait.’
‘I’m tired, Mum, I think I’ll—’
‘I found the part.’
‘Right.’ I turn back to her but can’t meet her eyes, so I stare at her legs. She does seem older, but Ronan was wrong. She is no less sharp in her mind.
‘I wanted to ask you about it.’ I see her motion towards the couch. A sign for me to sit.
‘It’s past one o’clock.’
‘You have never slept well, Mallory. Five minutes won’t change that.’
She’s right. I don’t have an excuse, and I don’t want to start an argument.
But I also don’t want to have this conversation.
I tentatively push the door shut.
I move to perch on the edge of the couch, making sure to find a position that will allow me to get up quickly and make a swift exit if necessary.
Which it probably will be. A position that also – I realise – makes me feel like I am about to be reprimanded by a head teacher.
It is an odd sensation to feel like I am a teenager again.
And even odder that now my youth seems so close to the present moment.
Far less than it did fourteen years ago. ‘OK. What part have you found, Mum?’
I still don’t know where to look. I glance at the silent TV.
BBC London is on, with subtitles. Maybe this is a new thing she does.
Watches things with the sound off. Maybe this is what happens when you live alone.
When you want to feel less isolated. Maybe this is what Ronan meant when he said he didn’t want me to end up like her.
Is she lonely? She’s never said it.
She’s never seemed it.
‘I always found it interesting that Shallow Embers was marketed as a book about a girl who runs away from home,’ she says. ‘It just seemed to me to be a book about a girl who is running away from herself.’
Jesus. I didn’t come downstairs for reviews. I could just as easily have pulled up my Goodreads page if I wanted to hear what my book is. ‘I was young when I wrote it, Mum. I honestly can’t even really remember it.’
She picks the copy up off her lap, with an air of Let me remind you.
It’s the first edition hardback. She must have taken it from the bookshelf behind her.
I watch her push her glasses back up her nose and flick through the pages until she pauses about two thirds in.
She runs her finger down the text until it stops, and she makes an aha noise.
With it comes the realisation that my mother is about to read an excerpt of my book to me.
One that I probably (most definitely) don’t want to hear. ‘Mum – why don’t we just—’
‘Mia’s mother appeared in the doorway,’ she cuts me off.
Her voice becomes posher again, as she assumes the accent.
It makes me uncomfortable, her reading my words in that affected voice.
‘Neat as a pin, eyes sharp. The instinct to run had never been so strong.
To leave the woman who had caused her so much pain was an act that felt fundamental to the trajectory of her life – one that she always knew would happen.
Mia had fantasised about this moment over and over again – in the dead of night beneath her sheets, on the school bus, crying in the bathroom, alone.
She had fantasised about the exact words she would say, and constructed numerous versions of how things would look, and depending on the pain she was feeling, the extremities of the interaction would shift.
Sometimes she would visualise that there would be screaming and tears.
Sometimes she would imagine the goodbye was achieved with only a look, and no words.
In her darkest projections, the interaction would end with chunks of hair and blood on the carpet.
But tonight was different. It was at odds with every version Mia had imagined.
Tonight was eerily calm, as if her mother had always known – always expected – that this would eventually happen.
And what really made Mia falter was that it was as if her mother was prepared, ready and even willing.
Her mother’s willingness to say goodbye had never been a version Mia had considered.
One where her own mother allowed it to happen.
Her mother allowed her – or even wanted her – to leave, to be on her own, to fend for herself in the world. She was only fifteen.’
Mum stops.
I feel her look at me, waiting for a response, but I don’t know what to say. I pick at the couch seam for what feels like an eternity, then opt for: ‘I had actually forgotten that bit.’
‘I see.’
‘Mum...’
‘Earlier, in the kitchen, you said you write what you know.’
‘It’s just a story, Mum.’
‘You never told me that’s how you were feeling.’
‘It isn’t real life.’ I point at the book. ‘That girl isn’t me.’
‘Isn’t she?’
‘No.’
Her eyes remain locked onto my face. Something about the awareness of her glare builds a pressure inside me.
‘You think I wanted you to leave?’
‘Mum, seriously, this is ridiculous – it’s late—’
‘I brought you up to be able to face the world.’
‘The book isn’t about us, Mu—’
‘That’s what’s so interesting about first-person narratives – you only see things from one particular point of view.’
‘Mum, please.’
‘I personally would love to see a sequel, or a spin off, from the mother’s point of view.
Perhaps write that one next, instead of your romance novel.
’ She is angry, but the fury is not in the volume of her voice, rather, it is in the design of her words: the precision of each consonant, and the inflection of each sentence.
Direct, but not forced, like she has rehearsed this.
There is intent. And I am in no way ready.
I am caught off guard. I feel my cheeks flushing.
‘A story about how the mother sacrificed everything for her children.’
‘Oh my God – really, Mum? You want to do this now?’
‘One where she is left to fend for herself, and does it. One where a man leaves her with absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. I think I’d read that. It sounds good.’
‘Can we please—’
‘She is very determined. Very capable of seeing a way through. Proactive. Maybe she becomes a lawyer. She manages to fulfil her own dreams.’
I pause, staring at my feet, the pressure in my brain rising to fever pitch. ‘You made your own choices, Mum. Please don’t blame us for that.’
‘I was surviving.’
‘Is that what you call it? That’s not what it felt like.’
She suddenly laughs. ‘Wow.’
‘Yeah. Wow.’