Chapter 20
Poppy
I am sitting in my car, outside the childhood home I’ve not seen for over a decade, waiting for them to get here.
Waiting for my sister, who I haven’t properly talked to for seventeen years, and my nephew, who I hadn’t even met until the day of the funeral. I have been avoiding thinking, and feeling, and crying, for so long now, I’m not sure I even exist any more.
I am just a blob of a human being, melting on a hot summer’s day, confronting a past that makes me cringe and a future I can’t even imagine.
I’ve coped until now by keeping busy. By out-bitching myself in the office, and by using up every spare moment of every day drinking or working or sometimes both at the same time.
Because that’s what hip flasks were invented for.
Everything’s been building up to this – to this A–Z madness – and now, I feel like I’ve been here for hours.
My blouse is sticking to the sweat under my armpits, and I have no clue why I still have my leather jacket over my shoulders.
Just for show, I suppose, like the stupid high-heeled sandals that are crippling my feet. Heaven forbid I look less than perfect.
I might look it, but I really don’t feel it. I’m a nervous wreck, and every time I hear the distant sound of a car engine, one that might be hers, I try and pull myself back together again.
I’ve planned for this, I tell myself. I’ve practised my neutral face in the mirror, and my calm speaking voice by talking out loud.
I am determined not to start us off on the wrong foot, but …
well. She’s late. And there’s nothing like being locked out of your dead mother’s house to make you tetchy.
Obviously, I’d arrived early as well, so it’s almost an hour I’ve been waiting now. Walking around the gardens; counting the gnomes; staring through the windows. Thinking about stuff I didn’t want to think about.
It was the window peeking that finally did me in.
Shielding my face from the glare of the sun, like you do when you’re at an ATM on a bright day, and gazing inside at the living room.
Seeing the chintzy sofa and the matching armchair, and picturing Mum sitting there, watching a movie or reading a book or on the phone to me.
The little side table next to it, where she kept her glasses – both the type she used to read with, and the type she used to drink wine from.
The books on the shelves; the now-empty vase she usually had filled with wildflowers.
The brand-new flat-screen TV that I’d heard all about – ‘darling, I swear, Richard Burton’s head is bigger on my new telly than it was in real life! ’
It all looks the same. Apart from the flat-screen. Just like it did the last time I was here, which is way too many years ago. I almost expect to see her pottering around in there, wearing her yoga pants and a nice pashmina, wandering in from the kitchen with a jug of something cool and alcoholic.
It’s the knowledge that she won’t ever wander in again that breaks me. And when the tears come, they come with a vengeance – as though they’re annoyed that I’ve been avoiding them for the last few days. Holding them back, imprisoning them behind chains made of to-do lists and meetings.
I retreat into the car, with the air con on, and just let them flow. Best to get them out of the way before putting my game face on. At least one grubby angel needs to try and stay strong enough to get through this.
I’m tired, and sad, and I want my old life back – the one where kicking the arses of the graphics team was the most trying thing on my schedule.
Or, even better, the one before that. The one where I was a loud, proud angry young woman, preparing to do battle with the world.
Preparing to battle with Rose on one side, and my mum on the other – safe in their love and secure in the knowledge that both of them would always be there for me.
Now, I have neither – and I’m finally being forced to think about it. To do like our mum asked, and look back at where it all started to go wrong. This is not my idea of a fun time, and it doesn’t help to stem the waterworks.
By the time I hear her car chugging up the lane, I’m a bit calmer, but a lot soggier. I have kept a box of tissues on the passenger seat for exactly this kind of occasion, and clean myself up, inspecting my face in the mirror when I’m done. Not perfect, but good enough under the circumstances.
I get out of the car, and arrange myself carefully, aiming to look fifty shades of okay by the time she actually arrives.
Part of me is terrified – part of me is relieved. She’s now forty minutes late, and I had been starting to wonder if she’d decided not to come. If I wasn’t worth the effort. If she’d just completely forgotten about me.
Because that, even if she doesn’t realise it, was one of the things she got really good at. And that, as far as I can see, is where the rot first started to set in.