Nick
Nick
Seven years after
It’s Saturday, and that means he has to go and visit his mother.
He’s left it too long this time, and he feels ashamed. But it’s getting harder and harder to psych himself up to go.
He misses her, but it’s been so easy – a salvation of sorts – to lose himself in his new relationship and pretend that she almost… doesn’t exist.
‘Don’t go,’ Maggie says, as he shifts beside her in the bed, about to get up. ‘Stay here with me and let’s have sex all day.’
He turns back, kisses her hard on the mouth.
‘You have no idea how tempting that is,’ he says. ‘But no can do, I’m afraid.’
She sniffs.
‘Is it bad that I’m jealous of your mother?’ Maggie says, sitting up in bed and stretching her back. ‘Does that make me really fucked up?’
He looks at her. She’s smiling, relaxed, pushing the boundaries with her humour as always, but he finds himself swallowing a lump in his throat anyway.
‘You really don’t have anything to be jealous of,’ he says.
‘I’m jealous of everything that takes you away from me,’ she says, blinking. She stares straight into his eyes and he feels the familiar desire surge. Inconveniently. ‘I’m obsessed with you. I want to be with you all the time, Puppy.’
‘I want to be with you all the time too,’ he says.
It sounds lame when he says it. Cheesy. But he means it. Maggie, his girlfriend of two months. He’s addicted to her. They are addicted to each other. Is it just a chemical thing? He can’t be sure.
He doesn’t want to think about the fact that addictions are rarely healthy.
‘I know, I know,’ Maggie says, standing up herself. She joins her hands in a circle above her head and stretches sideways. ‘And Lottie is always saying it’s a good sign that you look after your mum. She thinks it says a lot about your character. Makes you future father material, apparently.’
He doesn’t know what to say to that.
‘I’ll be back in time for dinner,’ he says. ‘I promise.’
‘You better be,’ she says, and she kisses him again.
His eyes fall on the clock by the bed. Nearly 11 a.m. already. Shit. He’s going to be so late.
To add to his troubles, today there’s engineering works on the railway and so he has to get off at Surbiton and catch a replacement coach, which takes more than an hour. He could have got a taxi. He forgets sometimes that even though he’s only a junior analyst, he’s still earning silly money. He can afford things like taxis.
But his mindset is still stuck in his childhood, when every penny had to be counted.
Eventually the coach pulls in at Woking station and he clambers off, sweaty and annoyed. He’s more than two hours later than he promised to be.
He has his mum’s favourite chocolates tucked under one arm. Black Magic. It’s getting tricky to find them these days, but they’re the only ones she likes. Last time, he brought her some ridiculously expensive artisan truffles from a pop-up shop by the tube and she told him they tasted of soil.
She liked the box they came in though.
He takes a deep breath as he reaches the corner of the small cul-de-sac. The houses are arranged in a horseshoe, and in the middle, standing out as it always has, is his mum’s. Or what little you can see of it underneath the foliage that now grows so high it almost completely conceals the building.
He takes a deep breath and pushes his way through the weeds. On the front step is a pile of soggy boxes, damp from earlier rainfall. A child’s bike – pink, with streamers and one missing wheel – lies on its side, half-buried in a bush.
The pane of glass in the front door is cracked, mended with gaffer tape.
That’s new, and it worries him.
He rings the doorbell, trying not to look through the front window.
Eventually, the door opens, and there she is. Looking the same as he always remembers but perhaps a touch thinner. Her hair is still a cropped grey carpet against her head, glasses on a chain around her neck.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he says, and he feels the complicated mix of emotions bubble away inside him.
She leans forward and hugs him tight.
‘Hello, Nicky,’ she says. She’s beaming at him. ‘Come in! It’s so good to see you.’
She shuffles backwards to let him in. It’s worse than last time.
He swallows. He can hardly bear to look inside the house, which is so gloomy and dark compared to the bright light of the outdoors.
‘Just be careful here,’ she says, as she squeezes through the incredibly narrow gap – the only slither of floor space that remains.
So. Much. Stuff.
Piles of it.
‘I was just having a little tidy before you got here…’ his mum begins, her voice faltering. In her hands she’s clutching an ancient recipe book, a knitting needle and a Barbie doll, naked from the waist down.
‘Mum,’ he says. ‘This is worse than before.’
‘Alright, alright, don’t get at me. Not when you’ve just got here.’ She squeezes her eyes shut and bats at the air in front of him.
He feels a headache threatening. He shouldn’t have left her so long. This is what always happens when he leaves her for too long.
‘Don’t get at me, Nick,’ she says, again, blinking repeatedly. ‘It’s not kind.’
He puts an arm around her shoulders, looking around. Wonders how much he can persuade her to deal with today. He was meant to be taking her out to lunch – Pizza Express in the town, her favourite. But thanks to the replacement coach it’s nearly 2 p.m.
‘Have you eaten anything today?’ he asks, looking down at her.
‘I was just about to have some lunch. There’s some beans on the stove.’ She gestures vaguely in the direction of the kitchen at the back.
‘Christ,’ he mutters, squeezing past the mounds of crap that line both sides of the hall. The kitchen is slightly clearer – at least he can see some of the floor in here, but the sink is piled high with dirty dishes and there’s no work surface space to speak of.
The hob is filthy, a pan bubbling furiously on the back ring.
‘Mum,’ he says, lifting off the beans. They have boiled over, the sauce separating and puckering before his eyes.
‘It’s because you rang the doorbell,’ she shrieks. ‘You distracted me!’
She turns away then, head down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, pulling her towards him. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
‘You were late,’ she sniffs into his shoulder. ‘I thought perhaps you’d forgotten to come. And I was getting hungry…’
‘The trains were buggered. I did text you… and I tried to call the landline but you didn’t pick up.’
‘I don’t know where the handset’s gone,’ she says, as though it has legs and decided to walk off. She pulls away and looks around.
‘Where did you last have it?’
She shrugs.
He takes his record bag off his shoulder and sets it down on top of an old pizza box, which itself is piled atop a plastic storage container on the little wooden stool he remembers from his childhood. Inside is what he usually brings: rubber gloves, bin liners, wipes. He’ll do the best he can, as usual. But it’s not enough.
What he really wants to do is spend a week down here, with a skip, and get it sorted once and for all. Properly.
But he knows it would be futile. It might help, for a few weeks, but she would soon fill the place back up again.
He rips a bin liner off the roll, shakes it out and tips the burnt baked beans into it.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Let’s just do a little bit in here shall we, Mum? Before we go out. Just to make it safe.’
She bites her lip, but gives a short nod. He picks up a plate that’s sitting on top of the grill and tips mouldy crusts of bread into the bin liner too.
‘I was going to do that… I was just going to get around to it…’
‘Mum,’ he says. ‘It’s fine. We’ll just do what you’re comfortable with, OK? Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.’
It takes all of his patience, but patience is something he has developed a lot of over the years. He knows not to rush her, not to push her too hard.
He picks up a lampshade that’s resting inside a cardboard box.
‘This is broken,’ he says, showing her where the fabric is torn. It also stinks of smoke.
‘Yes but it can be mended, the frame is still good.’
‘Mum, it’s huge and it wouldn’t fit anywhere in the house. Don’t you have lampshades on every lamp anyway?’
‘Yes but I liked that because the frame is black not white… I only found that the other day. Someone had left it on the pavement. I was really pleased with it.’
He sighs, sets it down behind him.
‘The box can go then,’ he says, picking it up. ‘It’s stained inside.’
‘Oh, OK, if you think… it’s just a useful size, that’s all. You don’t often see them that size do you?’
They continue in this vein until he becomes slightly firmer with her. He knows now how to wear her down, and it’s horrible, manipulative even, but he reminds himself that it comes from a place of love.
Eventually they find an old MiniDisc stereo system underneath a pile of carrier bags, which he recognises as his.
‘This is mine,’ he says, yanking it free from the position it has clearly occupied for weeks. A cloud of dust follows.
‘Is it?’
‘Yes, and I don’t want it anymore. It doesn’t work.’
‘Oh but… perhaps we can take it apart? Keep some of it for spares.’
And so they continue. Under one pile, Nick unearths a photograph.
‘Oh,’ he says, staring at it.
It’s of him, in his room on the first day he arrived at the Cecil Broad Building, grinning from ear to ear.
‘That’s a lovely one of you,’ Jayne says. ‘One of my favourites.’
He shoves it into the bin liner.
‘What are you doing?’ she squeals, rummaging around to retrieve it.
‘It’s backlit,’ he says, shortly. ‘I’m in shadow.’
‘What are you talking about? No you’re not! I remember that day… You were so excited…’
She pulls it from the bag triumphantly.
‘I should get a frame for it. Now, hang about, I saw one just yesterday that would be perfect. Where was it? Somewhere upstairs…’
She wanders off. He briefly considers arguing with her but decides it’s better to use the time she’s distracted to throw things into the bag without letting her see.
‘That’s a bit better,’ Nick says, an hour later, when there’s a clearer path through the kitchen to the back door. But it’s a hollow achievement.
He has told her time and time again how dangerous it is to keep piles of newspapers and letters and… God knows what… in the kitchen, stacked up so close to the open flame of the hob.
It makes him furious, given what he went through. But she’s too fragile for him to use it against her.
‘Could you please promise me you’ll try to keep the kitchen clear? It’s just for your safety, Mum. I worry about you so much, you know.’
She nods like a penitent child.
‘How’s the bathroom at the moment?’
She looks up at him and gives another little shrug, as though she knows there’s nothing she can say.
He puts his arm around her, his eyes trying not to see the piles upon piles of newspapers that fill the living and dining rooms, and then he kisses the top of her head.
He is a bad son. He should have stayed here, taken care of her. Not moved away to London and his life of debauchery. But his sanity – already so fragile, already hanging on by a thread – depends on him being able to escape from this most of the time. From being able to put it in a box and pretend it doesn’t exist.
‘Pizza Express?’ he says. ‘I think we’ve earned it.’