Chapter Thirty
Time changes everything
It’s six a.m. and a thunderstorm has woken me, with rain hammering on the balcony like a scene from an Eighties soft rock video.
If I had a fire escape, there’d be a saxophonist on it, possibly wearing a bandana.
The storm reminds me of when Simon and I were kids – long hot summers, sleeping under just sheets, and Mother Pells letting us go outside when the weather ‘broke’ to cool off.
We would run about the garden in our pants, laughing in the rain.
Then she would bring out beach towels – a Showaddywaddy one and a green tie-dye one – calling, ‘Come in now, you rain-dancing rascals!’), and she’d wrap us up, one in each of her arms. It felt safe, like Gabe’s hand did on the small of my back.
But in this storm, I am alone. I lie, trying to doze off again, although the rain is too loud and my brain is whirring round and around.
I need to get up soon anyway. The plan is to catch an early train to Swindon and taxi from there.
It’s expensive, and as Yuvana still hasn’t paid me I’ll have to put it on a credit card, but anything to get to Mother Pells before she bumps into someone who’s read the news.
Two hours later, I’m at Paddington. I get a flat white and a croissant, dipping the latter in the former, glad of the caffeine and carbs after last night’s sambuca, but even more glad I stopped drinking when I did.
Channing has already sent me a picture of him and Melanie joining in a ‘Ruff Mudster Challenge’ at London Fields – clearly uninvited and still wearing last night’s clothes – which only serves to confirm that I made the right decision.
As I am passing Upper Crust, a man in the queue wearing a plastic rain poncho says, ‘Hey, aren’t you that old woman with the robot face?
’ While this is an imaginative interpretation of the news story, I’m really not in the mood for uninvited questions from strangers, so I just keep on walking across the concourse towards platform four.
The train to Swindon is less than an hour – on a good day.
Today is not a good day. According to an announcement, the heavy rain overnight has caused a landslide onto the tracks, and at Didcot Parkway we all have to get off and transfer to a shuttle bus.
I am squashed in next to a middle-aged woman wearing much more practical clothes than me, who is reading the Highway Code.
I’m getting really worried that I won’t make it to Mother Pells in time.
I am also angry with Cassia (I mean, who else would have sold the story?) and wish I had Nandy to talk to about it, or even just send a sticker to, but I don’t dare – she was so annoyed with me last time I saw her, and after what happened with Kai, I can now see why.
There’s also the money thing, and what all this is going to mean for the work with Yuvana.
I’ll need to call Merlyn. I let out a little sigh and the woman next to me looks round sympathetically, then offers me a Tracker bar from her bag.
‘They were the UK’s first cereal bar,’ she tells me.
I say, ‘Righty-ho,’ which I’m worried is becoming my new catchphrase.
The bus smells of Pakora that time he rolled in a dead seal on the beach in Suffolk.
It’s taking ages via an ‘alternative route’ because there’s flooding at Shrivenham, and the winding roads mean I keep getting either thrown into the aisle, or against the UK’s first cereal bar woman.
I get my phone out, and ignoring all the missed calls from god knows who about the newspaper article, I message Simon to tell him I’m going to see Mother Pells, waiting for the ticks to turn blue.
They don’t. What can he be doing? Misting his Lion’s Mane (not a euphemism)?
At about ten a.m., we arrive at Swindon bus station, which is not, in case anyone was wondering, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
After about twenty minutes – most of which is spent queuing for the toilet behind a woman having a loud video call about what I think/hope is cooking related as she keeps shouting things like ‘plunge them into icy water!’ and ‘skim off the fatty liquid!’ – I find a taxi and I’m on my way.
It’s funny how long it takes your brain to process things when you don’t want to.
At first, I think the lights flashing outside Mother Pells’ house are to do with Dinah.
Some sort of outdoor decorations? She’s always one for a display at Christmas so maybe she’s put something together for summer? Or maybe it’s a party. Maybe it’s…
It’s an ambulance.
The taxi driver is muttering something about how it’s the third ambulance he’s seen this morning and how that’s ‘not a good omen’.
They’re not bloody magpies, I think, but say nothing and instead focus on paying the ￡60 fare without vomiting with worry, both at the fact that my card is likely to be declined, and at what I am about to face.
Thankfully, the payment goes through. I get out of the taxi and walk towards the ambulance and the people gathered beside it.
Now I am closer I can see that one of them is Josie, talking to two paramedics. She is holding an umbrella and has her arm around a child, who is wrapped in a blanket. It takes me a moment to realise it’s Hélo?se as her hair is short. They all turn around as I approach.
‘Erica? I didn’t expect…’ Josie’s face is serious.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Your mum’s in the ambulance.’ She looks guarded, but it’s Josie, so she can never not be kind. ‘The stream at the back of her house burst its banks and she slipped in. Hélo?se and I found her. We were dropping off some scones Hélo?se made. Thank goodness…’
She pulls Hélo?se closer to her. ‘It was Hélo?se that helped her.’
‘Go and see your mum, love,’ says one of the paramedics in a thick west country accent, who must be wondering how she can possibly be my mum. ‘We’re just about to take her to the Great Western.’
I climb in the back of the ambulance. It’s more like a room than I thought it would be, with drawers and compartments full of equipment on the walls.
Mother Pells is lying on a trolley wrapped in a red blanket, with an oxygen mask strapped to her face and a dressing on her head.
Another paramedic is sitting with her, writing notes on a clipboard.
‘Mum, it’s me. Are you okay?’ I bend down and take her hand.
I can see her eyes just above the mask staring at me and darting from side to side.
She looks so frail, like a little bird. I want to wrap my arms around her, like she did to me and Simon in the storm.
But her hand pulls away from mine, and her head shakes.
She’s making a noise but it’s muffled. Could it be crying?
‘Mum, it’s Erica.’ My voice comes out croaky. I go to take her hand again but she won’t let me.
‘She’s getting a bit upset, love,’ says the paramedic. ‘I don’t think she recognises you. Maybe better to just…’ He looks towards the door of the ambulance.
‘But… I…’
She’s shaking her head and moaning. The paramedic strokes her arm, then looks at me impatiently, so I turn and climb back out of the ambulance.
There is suddenly something large and sharp in my throat, and it feels like I can’t swallow, or speak, or even breathe.
Ten minutes later, I’m in Josie’s car. We’re dropping Hélo?se off at home with Laure, then Josie is taking me to the hospital.
She’s put me in the back to keep an eye on Hélo?se, who is next to me, shivering.
Under the blanket wrapped around her, she’s only wearing a t-shirt and I can just make out the design, which seems to be either a raccoon dressed as a person or a person dressed as a raccoon.
I pull her close to me so she can get some of the warmth of my body.
‘Thank you for helping my mum,’ I say. ‘You’re very brave.’
Hélo?se nods and leans in, fitting her head into the space between my armpit and my right tit, which seems to have been perfectly designed for this. I am comforting her. I didn’t know I could comfort people.
‘You got your hair cut,’ I say.
‘I’m a “superhairo”. I gave it to the people to make a wig for the children.’
‘She donated it to a kids’ cancer charity,’ says Josie from the front seat. ‘Less likely to get nits too, which is a bonus.’
We pull up outside Josie’s house and Josie takes Hélo?se inside.
While she’s gone, I get in the front and phone Simon.
He’s not answering – and he hasn’t seen my message.
I can’t call Alannah or either of the boys as they’re all still in Australia and it’s the middle of the night.
They wouldn’t be able to do anything from there anyway.
By now, there are also sixty-three missed calls, two voice notes (who even does these?), eight voicemails and a new message from Merlyn:
Erica – we must reconvene post-haste. Baci, M
It takes just over half an hour to get to the hospital in Swindon.
Josie doesn’t say much on the way, apart from telling me she’s been watering the tubs on my patio and how Keith said our chat didn’t go that well yesterday.
Yesterday? Was that really only yesterday?
Why does it seem as though everything has speeded up?
I want to say to her that… I don’t know.
That I miss her? But I’m not sure if that’s what she would want to hear.
I feel like I have pushed people too far away from me, Nandy included.
The only messages I get now are from a pansexual twenty-four-year-old who hasn’t been to bed yet.
I haven’t even been able to tell anyone what happened with Kofi, and what he told me about Owen, which is burning a hole in my brain, if that’s a thing.
At the hospital, Josie drops me off. I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to go in and see Mother Pells, after what happened in the ambulance.
But if Simon isn’t here, I have to. She can’t be on her own.
She can’t think nobody is here for her. There’s a Costa inside the hospital entrance so first I get a flat white and sit down so I can call Simon again.
There’s a pregnant woman beside me wearing slippers and drinking hot chocolate.
On the seat next to her, I can see the newspaper with the story about me on the cover, but she doesn’t pick it up – she seems to be too busy stroking her belly and grimacing.
Near the counter stands an elderly man on his phone.
I can hear him say, ‘No change at all, Linda, but maybe that’s a good thing,’ then he wipes his eyes on the sleeve of his cardigan.
Simon still isn’t answering but then I see ‘Semen is typing’. I changed his contact name last year and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t still make me laugh. Although not today.
Rica yes
Simon? Are you OK? Mum is in hospital. I’ve just arrived. Where are you?
God
Can you get to Swindon? I think my appearance is upsetting her and one of us needs to be here.
It’s not good Eric 8
Is he drunk? It’s not even midday.
What’s going on Simon?
I ddntt get the dose right rite write… Which one is it?
The mushrooms. Of course. The one time I actually bloody need him, he’s… useless.
It’s fine. I’ll deal with it. I’ll be in touch and let you know how she is.
Twenty minutes later, I walk into the ward.
There’s a woman at the nurses’ station picking the mini Milky Ways out of a box of Celebrations.
She gives me a weird look, perhaps wondering how I can be the daughter of someone who is eighty, and tells me Mother Pells is ‘stable’, but has to get a scan of her brain because of a head injury.
She also tells me she has her own room, which is good.
I think. Or maybe it’s not. Then she says something about my visit being welcome as she ‘couldn’t get hold of the next of kin’, which will of course be Simon, and something about how she’ll be ‘glad to have family here’.
‘Welcome’? But maybe I – at least in my current form – am not.
I walk down the long corridor towards her room and take a breath outside.
Can I go in? Should I go in? What if she doesn’t recognise me again?
What if she gets upset? If I don’t though, she will think neither me nor Simon have come.
Oh crap. What have I done? I feel this unfamiliar, new protectiveness of her, and I am torn between wanting to be there for her, and the fear of making things worse.
So I reverse up the corridor, pausing only at the nurses’ station to write down Auntie Viv’s number on a piece of paper, and hand it to the Milky Way woman. And then I leave.
I need to be nearby, even if I can’t go and see her, so I go back to my ‘dark little cottage’ and let myself in.
There are some takeaway menus and other letters that have been put neatly on the hall table by Josie, the only person who has keys.
It feels safe, and quiet, and not that dark at all.
Maybe a house can be a home without a cat, Auntie Viv.
Thanks to Zoe, tea has become my go-to drink in times of crisis, instead of wine.
There’s a fresh pint of milk in the fridge, which Josie must have put there, just in case.
She’s so bloody thoughtful. The fridge looks clean too, which it certainly wasn’t when I left – I’m pretty sure there was some Gruyère of questionable age in the salad drawer.
I spot she’s also put the fridge magnet Hélo?se got me on the door.
It says, Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
I stare at it, trying to work out what it means. I think I get it now.
The rain has stopped now so, opening the French doors, I move a kitchen chair into the sunny spot, sipping my tea and trying to calm down.
But I can’t stop thinking about Mother Pells pushing me away.
About us not being there for her. About how hard I’ve been on her over the years.
And how I only now realise, late in the day as usual, that we all love, and grieve, in different ways.
I can’t bear it. As soon as the tears stop, they come again, and again, and I have to abandon my tea.
My chest keeps rising and falling in panting noises, like a dog when it’s dreaming.
It’s funny, isn’t it – I used to worry about becoming someone Father Pells wouldn’t recognise.
Maybe I should have focused on the person that’s still here.