Chapter 52 Now
Now
Dimple
There’s something deeply bonding about surviving mothers who can barely survive themselves.
I think that’s why Natalie, Claire, and I clicked so well.
Our mothers’ mental health made for a roller coaster we were strapped into whether we liked it or not.
There were moments everything was great, but predominantly we were just flung around in terror.
Looking back, I think our mothers were a little scared, too.
Latched on to each other as two of the only nurses on their team who didn’t sound exactly like everyone else.
For whom the culture was so new, their mother having grown up in a strong West African community, and my mother raised in a strong South Asian one.
And fear is a powerful emotion. Bonding.
Which is why the bond lasted beyond that one hospital, even if it would eventually be broken by other things.
I remember the play-filled evenings and weekends, no border between their home and mine.
It was all just Home. To all of us. I’d sometimes stay with Aunty Melissa for a few days, or weeks if my mom went back home to visit family.
And vice versa. Nat and Claire were always welcome at Aunty Dev’s.
Wherever we were, Nat and Claire would curl up in one bed and I’d take the other.
At theirs, it meant me being in Claire’s bed, and at mine, it meant being on a mattress on the floor.
Either way, we’d all get to play sleepover.
We’d find torches, shine them in front of our hands and make funny shapes of shadow on the walls.
When it thundered outside, we’d all cram together under one duvet and hold each other until it stopped.
The loneliness I might otherwise have felt with it being just me and Mom was curbed by the sense that we had a bigger chosen family. Until it all abruptly ended when I was still very small.
All I knew was that one day, they were all there, and then one day, they weren’t. I ran away from home to Aunty Mel’s more than once, but she’d simply take me straight back.
Mom was cagey about what had happened, although it was obvious her and Mel had had some kind of fallout.
And then I felt it. The isolation. Mom was working shifts in the hospital all week and helped out at her friend’s florist on weekends for extra cash.
My days were lonely. And Mom felt the isolation, too.
I shouldn’t know what the inside of my mother’s throat feels like.
Shouldn’t know my fingers pressed in there are the best way to get her stomach empty of pills she shouldn’t have taken. But here we are.
I suppose it’s what got me interested in psychology, really. I wanted to know how to help her.
She finally succeeded in killing herself before I finished my postgrad.
There was a lot of guilt in the wake of her death.
I blamed myself for going off to uni, not being there.
Wondered if I studied harder, learned faster, if I’d have been able to intervene.
It was only in trying to downsize the storage unit of her stuff to save cash that I decided to fire up her old phone.
Saw all the texts from Aunty Mel’s husband to Mom.
They started friendly. Too friendly. Lewd, even.
And my mom was just as bad back. Then the tone turned.
She’s already outgrown her shoes. I’m not asking for money. Please just buy her a new pair
She’s your responsibility. You deal with it
And then they worsened.
You’ve got to keep Joy away I’m not asking again. It’s upsetting Mel I can’t have it
It’s not fair on her. She’s heartbroken separated from the girls. Not her fault she’s starting to look like her dad
I’m done asking nicely Dev. Don’t push me
Things got progressively sour as the messages wore on. I read through paragraphs and paragraphs of Mom begging for support, acknowledgment, anything.
My girls don’t want another fucking sister. No two ways about it. So you’d best keep your kid at home where it’s safe
It’s irrational to connect the idea of Nat and Claire denying a relationship with me to my father’s abandonment of me, my mother’s worsened isolation, and her eventual suicide.
But it was a line that pulled me away from my crippling guilt, from the idea that Mom’s death was my fault, and so I took it, a simmering anger helping me survive my grief.
And the anger was only further fueled by the idea that my sisters were my only surviving family—that they were the only things between my being totally alone and not.
As is the hallmark of unhealthy fixation, my life became about little else other than finding them again.
Nat was easy enough to find; she was listed on the East London Chill website, and their office address was a simple Google search away.
I waited for her outside her office one evening.
Watched her step out onto the busy pavement.
There was a curated attractiveness about her.
A little like a show home. Nice-looking, ostensibly, but devoid of a quality that makes it feel inviting. Feel real.
I’d every intention of introducing myself, finding the words somehow. But instead, I found myself just watching her disappear into the London crowd, cursing myself.
Claire was harder. There was a decent amount I could find about her online, her face beaming out of a series of Instagrams in which she’s draped around a variety of young, artistic-looking people. But nothing recent.
I knew it was a risk, that if she could reject me as a little runaway, she’d just as likely reject me again as a young woman, but I still remembered where she lived. Aunty Melissa.
Her eyes went wide when she saw me on her doorstep. I suppose in me she immediately saw the ghosts of her former best friend and husband.
“Hi, Aunty,” I said. “Can I come in?”
The tears flowed thick and fast, regret pouring out of her.
She welcomed me in, offered me food, which I declined.
We sat with cups of orange juice and talked.
It was mostly her asking me questions about my degree, which I dutifully answered.
When we got to the end of these, I summoned the courage to move us onto the more difficult questions.
I asked her how much she knew about the affair my parents had been having.
She was honest, at least. Told me she put two and two together when I started getting older.
Told my father she’d take the girls away if he didn’t keep me out of their lives.
How much would have been different if she’d accepted me?
“Do you mind me asking how he died? My father, I mean. Mom told me when it happened, but I never knew how.”
“He fell. At home. It was an accident.”
Naturally, she didn’t confess that she killed him.
I didn’t know that until Natalie revealed it in our sessions.
I confronted Melissa about it after I found out the truth.
I had to protect myself, my family, she’d then confessed, lined dark hands wringing against each other, eyes looking everywhere but into mine.
I should have known that it was too late to save Natalie.
That she was headed the same way as her father. She’s never been right, that one.
Her inability to see how she’d created the daughter she reviled triggered something in me. I could see why Natalie didn’t take her mother’s calls. Was lucky she didn’t; otherwise, my ruse would have been up.
“You know she died, too?” I found myself saying. “My mom.”
Mel’s chin pinched, knee jostled. “I heard,” she said. “One of our old nursing friends told me. I’m sorry she left you like that.”
Right. I mean, I wasn’t so blinded by anger that I couldn’t see how my mother’s death was her choice. But I also didn’t know how Mel could sit there and feel no blame. No shame.
As we traded a few happy memories of my mother between us, sunny picnics and home movie nights, I couldn’t help but think how small Mel was. Much smaller than I remembered her. In her living room, faded carpet and thin curtains, she looked like a match in a shoebox.
Everyone else was the problem. Always. And her commitment to living this lie had pushed people beyond her reach. Stuffed her home with a loneliness I worried was catching.
It was a blow when she told me about Claire’s death. The finality of never getting to know her was a lot. Although when talking about Claire, Mel’s eyes sparkled. Her daughter, the future movie star. It was clear that memories of her were Mel’s favorite company. Her only company, perhaps.
When I told her I wanted to seek out Natalie, her whole demeanor changed, frame going rigid, diction going from smooth to staccato. Words laced with acid dripped from her mouth as she told me how Natalie had killed her sister. Another shock.
In the end, I thanked Aunty Mel for her time and promised to leave Natalie alone.
Which I did, in a fashion. Unsure of what I wanted from her, of whether she might be as callous and selfish as her mother described, I simply watched her from a distance.
Eventually, I followed her to the clinic she attends for therapy.
I couldn’t help but spot an opportunity to really look behind the mask.
Get to know her. And so I started following Dr. Foster.
Found out about her affair with her patient.
It was easy enough from there to leverage her into retiring from the clinic and facilitating me stepping in as a replacement and the transfer of Nat onto my books.
Dr. Foster’s notes on Nat were both fascinating and terrifying.
It became clear to me that she was a violent, dangerous woman.
I’m not sure Foster bothered to look any of Nat’s exes up, but there were grief-stricken messages for Marc and Luca plastered all over social media.
I couldn’t find anything about what happened to George, although the lack of updates on his LinkedIn profile suggested something dark had befallen him, too.
I’d wanted a sister and instead found a monster. A monster who deserved to be put away for everyone’s safety. And I knew that getting close to her in this way could cost me everything. But after her family had already cost me so much, what did I really have to lose?