Chapter 9
‘I was going to tell you when we were there, but then the whole Tasha pregnancy thing took over,’ Dot says.
She’s on the telephone to William, I think. And I’m guessing she’s just told him about our plans to travel to America and he’s not overly happy about it.
‘No, I don’t think it’s ridiculous, actually. We’re not stupid, we’ll take it steady… Yes, one of us could fall and break a hip but we could do that here too. Getting older is no reason not to live!’
I leave the room, and when I come back with tea, she’s no longer on the telephone. I wonder which of them ended the call and how it was left.
‘Not in favour, I’m guessing?’ I ask.
Dot shakes her head, her eyes flashing defiance. ‘What that man needs to remember sometimes is that I single-handedly brought him and his brothers up. It’s as if he thinks you hit a certain age and you’re entirely useless.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t think that,’ I say. What I don’t say is that I’m having second thoughts myself. What if one of us does have a fall? Or what if the long flight is just too much for us?
‘I want us to have this adventure, Mabel,’ Dot says, and her voice is serious. ‘We’ve missed out on so many years, but we can still have this. We can’t just give in and stay at home for the rest of our lives, can we?’
I’m wondering whether there’s a compromise, a sort of halfway house between not going at all and doing this grand and somewhat terrifying trip. I’d be happier if we were talking about going somewhere in Europe, but of course that wouldn’t help with seeing Geoff.
‘We can’t,’ I say. ‘We won’t.’
‘William said we’re not going and that’s that,’ she says, fury in her tone and her eyes.
I laugh a little, because doesn’t this man know that no one tells Dot Brightmore what she can and can’t do?
‘It’s like he’s the parent and you’re the child,’ I say, smiling in the hope that she’ll follow suit. She doesn’t.
‘Let’s book it, Mabel. I’m worried that he’ll stop us, somehow. But he can’t if we’ve already booked the flights and everything.’
I feel a little bit dizzy, a little bit overwhelmed.
I wouldn’t know where to start with booking a trip to America.
Can you still go into a travel agent and get some help?
Or is it all online these days? I think about Erin, still asleep upstairs.
She’ll help, if we ask her. If she didn’t have exams, she’d probably offer to come with us.
That’s when an idea starts to creep in, but before I have time to voice it, Dot’s mobile telephone rings again.
‘Oh, it’s Sean,’ she says, and then lifts it to her ear. ‘Hello, love. If you’ve been speaking to your dad and you’re calling to try to talk me out of going to America—’
She goes quiet, and I wonder what Sean is saying. But a smile creeps over her face and I wonder whether it’s possible that Sean has had the same idea that I have.
‘I’ll put you on speaker,’ Dot says, ‘so that Mabel can hear.’
She fiddles with the buttons, her glasses low on her nose, and then Sean’s voice is in the room.
‘Hello, Mabel!’
‘Hello, Sean.’
‘I was just saying to Nanna, I don’t want to cramp your style but I could come along on the trip to America if you like. Keep you out of trouble, that sort of thing.’
Dot’s beaming now. ‘What do you think, Mabel?’
‘Are you sure you can spare the time, Sean? You must have limited holiday.’
‘I’d love to come, if you’ll have me. I haven’t seen Geoff for ages. I’ll have a look at my calendar and send some dates.’
‘Well,’ Dot says, ‘I think that’s sorted, then. But Sean, did William ask you to do this?’
Sean snorts a laugh. ‘No, he just told me about the plan, said it was ridiculous and that we had to put a stop to it. He doesn’t know I’m offering, but hopefully this solution will suit everyone.’
‘Thank you,’ Dot says, and there’s a hairline crack in her voice. ‘That means a lot.’
‘No worries, Nanna. See you soon.’
After the call ends, neither of us says anything for a minute or two. I’m the first to break the silence.
‘He’s a gem, isn’t he?’
‘The very best,’ Dot says. ‘So we’re really going to do this, Mabel?’
‘I think we really are.’ Something about Sean accompanying us has made me less scared about the whole endeavour.
I feel like he’ll know enough about travelling to guide us through it, and he’ll look after us if we’re finding it a bit much.
I wasn’t sure it was something we could ask of him, but now that he’s offered, I feel light as air.
I fetch my notepad from the kitchen drawer, have a look at our list. I cross out the second item and add a third.
Dot and Mabel’s first list
Marry me Get married
Find Geoff
Travel to America
We make a start on the jigsaw we picked up that day when we were out walking with Erin and Sean.
We tip out the pieces onto the dining table and start sorting them into middles and edges.
It’s methodical work, and we don’t speak much while we’re doing it.
I can’t get over the fact that we’re here in Broughton, doing a jigsaw in my back room, and in a month or so we might be on another continent.
I try to imagine what Arthur would say, and find I can’t, because this is something I never would have agreed to before Dot came back into my life.
I reach out for her hand, cover it with mine, and she looks at me and grins, and it lights me up like a string of Christmas lights coming on.
* * *
Erin has a shift at the supermarket that afternoon, but she comes home barely two hours after leaving, and her face is deathly pale, her eyes red raw.
‘Erin, what’s happened?’ I ask. I put the back of one hand against Erin’s forehead. ‘Are you ill?’
‘No,’ she says, her voice a fraction too high.
There is something wrong, and all we can do is wait for her to say it. And then she does, and I wouldn’t have guessed it in a hundred years.
‘It’s Mum. Dad came into the shop, to find me. She had a heart attack this morning, while she was getting ready to go to work. She’s gone.’
I’m stunned, the way you always are with a sudden death.
I didn’t know Erin’s mum, but I sometimes felt like I did when she talked about her.
And she can’t have been older than fifty or so.
That’s Julie’s age. It’s unthinkable. I look at Dot, see the empathy flooding into her expression.
She hasn’t known Erin long enough to love her yet, but she knows that I do.
Dot and I both know what it is to lose a mother, but neither of us lost ours so young, or when we were estranged, living apart because of not being able to see eye to eye.
Erin looks so lost, and all I can do is take her into my arms to show her that I’m here for her, and it doesn’t feel like enough.
‘Oh Erin, love,’ I say. I whisper it into her hair, over and over, and I hope she feels soothed by it. She’s probably not able to feel anything just yet, other than shock.
I make tea for something to do, but we don’t drink it.
And as we sit there in stunned silence, I keep asking the same question in my mind.
Why would we – Dot and I – be allowed to keep going to this age, and someone else be taken so young?
It’s a question you ask again and again, if you’re lucky enough to grow old.
Erin’s telephone buzzes with a message and it’s like it wakes us all from a stupor.
‘It’s Dad,’ she says. ‘He wants me to go there, to be with him and Jade.’
‘Jade’s her sister,’ I tell Dot. And then I turn to Erin. ‘Is that what you want?’ I am willing to do whatever I have to do to protect her.
‘I suppose it’s the right thing to do. We should all be together. And Mum was the one who had the biggest problem with me, so perhaps it will be all right…’ Her chin quivers and she collapses into sobs, and I hold her tight.
‘It’s up to you,’ I say. ‘If you want to be with them, you go. But if you don’t, stay here. No one is going to make you do anything.’
I’m thinking about her exams and I’m sure she is too.
She’s worked so hard these last few weeks.
I hope this won’t throw her entirely off course.
But it’s bound to, isn’t it? Losing a mother is a gargantuan thing for anyone, at any age.
And there’s nothing I can do to cushion it for her, much as I might want to.
‘I’m going upstairs for a bit,’ Erin says. ‘I’ll pack a bag. Go back there for a few days.’
I nod tightly, selfishly hoping that she’ll come back. That this won’t be the end of her living here. After she’s trudged up the stairs, Dot and I look at one another.
‘Poor thing,’ Dot says.
‘I just want to shield her from it. To protect her,’ I say.
Dot smiles, then. It’s a small, secretive sort of smile.
‘What?’
‘It’s just that you sound like a mother when you say things like that.’
I tuck that away and keep it, and it’s there when I’m hugging Erin goodbye and telling her to come back or telephone me whenever she wants, day or night.
It’s there when Julie comes and we tell her the news and she drops down onto the sofa as if all the air’s been sucked out of her and tells us about losing her mother a few years ago.
It’s there when we go to bed, and I say that the house feels oddly quiet without Erin, and isn’t that a strange thing because it was just Arthur and me for so many years?
I was always so sure I didn’t want to be a mother. That I wouldn’t know what to do or be any good at it. But life has a funny way of working out sometimes, and these recent months with Erin I’ve felt closer to motherhood than I ever have before. And perhaps she’ll need me more than ever, now.