FORTY
I’m half human, half pad thai at this point.
The takeaway container is warm against my chest as I limp down the hallway of my apartment building. One heel dangles from my hand, the other having met a tragic, undignified end near the bus stop – may she rest in peace. My tote bag is sliding off my shoulder; even it’s trying to abandon ship.
Everything hurts. My feet, my lower back. My scalp is tight in at least three places from a ponytail that has slowly pulled the joy from my soul all day. But I made it. Another day, another dollar, another minor breakdown expertly delayed.
All I want now is to collapse into my couch, slide into sweatpants, maybe rewatch Pride and Prejudice and inhale carbs in a horizontal position. Maybe – maybe – save the rest of this pad thai for lunch tomorrow if I manage to pretend I have self-control.
I fish my keys out of my bag with one finger, unlock the door, push it open—
And regret everything I’ve ever done to deserve this.
She’s here.
June Toohy – formerly Hayes – is on my couch.
One leg crossed neatly over the other, wine glass in hand, lipstick perfect, hair sculpted into high-maintenance elegance – a woman who looks like she hasn’t blinked in four hours. A half-empty bottle of red sits beside her on the coffee table – next to my overpriced fig-scented candle.
She turns, eyes bright as if this is a fun surprise for both of us. ‘Darling! Look at you.’
My stomach sinks. I blink, trying to make the image disappear. It doesn’t.
My mother, uninvited, in my apartment, mid-wine-bottle and wrapped in my throw blanket like she owns the lease.
‘Did I die?’ I ask flatly. ‘Is this the afterlife?’
She lifts her wineglass in greeting. ‘Can’t a mother visit her daughter?’
I stare at her. ‘A text would’ve been nice.’
‘Oh, please. You never answer. And look at you.’ She tsks, scanning me from head to broken heel. ‘You look … tired. Go take a shower, you’ll feel better. I’ll set the table.’
Before I can say anything, she’s already on her feet, plucking the pad thai from my arms and waltzing into the kitchen as if I invited her, as if this is her apartment and she hasn’t burnt every bridge between us.
I close the door slowly. Drop my bag by the shoe rack. I stare at the space she filled as if I’m watching a movie I’ve seen before and already hate.
My entire body is braced. Tight in that quiet, familiar way I always feel around her.
As though one wrong move could trigger a memory I’ve spent years trying to forget.
And all I wanted was to put on sweatpants and rot in peace.
The shower is set to scalding.
Not warm. Not relaxing. Scalding – the kind of heat that peels the day off my skin and hopefully the emotional residue that came with it. I stand under the stream, arms braced against the tiles, steam rising thick around me, thinking, Why now?
That’s the thing about June. She never shows up when things are a mess.
She doesn’t do crisis. She does aftermath.
After I start to feel grounded. After I’ve begun pretending that I’m a person with a routine, a budget, maybe even a decent therapist. Then she swoops in – a high-drama cold front, trailing vintage perfume and unsaid things behind her.
When I re-emerge, she’s set the table. Or, well – set the coffee table. Two mismatched bowls sit on cheap placemats she pulled from my kitchen drawer. The pad thai has been divided unevenly – hers suspiciously larger – and my candle’s been lit, as if this is some kind of mother-daughter séance.
She’s already halfway through her portion.
I sit in a fresh pair of pyjamas, hair still damp. I don’t speak.
She does.
‘There was a woman in the hallway earlier,’ she says, plucking at her noodles. ‘The one with the dog. Rude. Didn’t even smile. Just stared at me like I was furniture.’
I chew slowly. ‘That’s Mrs Bateman. She’s blind.’
June pauses. Then, without missing a beat, ‘Blind people still need manners.’
I hum noncommittally, forcing myself to nod.
She moves on. ‘Honestly, this building is falling apart. I nearly tripped on that rug in the entryway. You’d think, with what they charge for rent, they could afford better taste.’
‘Mmm,’ I say, poking my noodles. ‘Welcome to the housing crisis.’
She sips her wine. ‘Still working at that marketing agency thing?’
‘Yep.’
‘Doing … what again? PR? Socials? One of those internet jobs where no one knows what anyone else does?’
I don’t look up. ‘Copywriting.’
She waves her hand like I told her I knit sock puppets for a living. ‘Well, as long as it pays the bills.’
I smile tightly, the kind I use at networking events. ‘It does.’
She sighs, a dramatic exhale that implies she’s carrying the weight of my life on her shoulders. ‘I would die if I had to live here, but I guess grunge is all the rage these days.’
I stay quiet. Anything I say will open the floodgates. And tonight, I’m not ready to drown. Not yet.
June’s wineglass is nearly empty. Which means the descent is coming.
It always starts in the same place.
With him.
‘You know your father had the audacity to post a photo from Santorini last week?’ she says, casually stabbing at her noodles. ‘Santorini. With her.’
I don’t ask who her is. I already know.
‘Matching t-shirts. Matching cocktails. I mean, who even does that? They look pathetic.’
I hum into my wine. I don’t indulge her. But I don’t stop her, either.
‘I saw it on Facebook. I don’t even check his profile, not really, but it was in my suggested feed.
Probably because the algorithm knows I’ve been looking at Greek villas again.
’ She sips. ‘He always said Greece was too touristy. But now, with his wax-doll wife and that fake hairline, suddenly it’s romantic. ’
Here we go.
The next step in the dance.
She leans back against the couch, dramatic and effortless. ‘He gets to pretend he’s twenty-five again, and I’m what? A washed-up hag? The double standard with age is a joke.’
I don’t say anything. So, she fills the silence with the greatest hits.
‘I gave up everything for that man. My twenties. My figure. My career. I could’ve been something, you know.
I was the youngest consultant in my firm.
I had a Vogue subscription and went to yoga twice a week.
And instead, I got stretch marks, postnatal depression and a husband who couldn’t keep it in his pants past our tenth anniversary. ’
She swirls her noodles slowly, building steam. ‘I used to be envied. Girls wanted to be me. I had potential. Now I’m the bitter ex-wife who over-tips and talks too loud at brunch.’ Her laugh is brittle. ‘And he gets to play house with someone who still thinks he loves her for her personality.’
I don’t tune out this time.
I don’t dissociate, or blur the edges, or mentally escape to a fake vacation in Italy the way I usually do.
I stay in the moment.
I watch her.
Not just the words. The way she says them. The bitterness undercut by something quieter – something closer to grief. Or fear. Or the crushing awareness that life passed her by while she was too busy trying to win a war she’d already lost.
My pulse rises and I set my wineglass down carefully. ‘Why are you really here, Mum?’
June doesn’t blink. ‘I told you.’
‘You didn’t.’ My voice is calm. Measured. The same voice I use when coaxing someone out of a meltdown in a client meeting. ‘You talked about Dad. His vacation. His new wife. But you didn’t answer the question.’
She gives a small laugh – tight and brittle. ‘Why do you always do this? Make everything so cold. So clinical. You think you’re better than me because you’ve got your little job and your tiny apartment and your fake friends.’
‘Answer the question.’
Her shoulders stiffen into armour. ‘I’m here,’ she says crisply, ‘because I’m your mother. And mothers are allowed to spend time with their daughters.’
My jaw ticks, but I stay quiet.
June lifts her wineglass again, swirling it in slow, lazy circles like she’s the picture of patience.
‘You act like everything I do is some calculated manipulation. Like I’m not allowed to …
exist in your life.’ She takes another sip.
‘I gave up everything for you girls. My figure. My freedom. My career. I had dreams too, Jamie. I was going places. And then your father – well. You know how that ended. I had no choice but to focus on raising two ungrateful daughters while he swanned off to live his best life with whatever woman sparked his interest. But I stayed. I didn’t abandon you.
I didn’t get to live. I sacrificed. And now what?
I get silence. Distance. You treat me like I’m some shameful secret, like I’m not allowed to show up without a permission slip. ’
There it is.
The monologue she’s workshopped for years. Polished and red- lipped. Practised enough that she almost sounds as if she believes it.
She doesn’t see the cracks in it. She doesn’t see me.
I lean back. Let it hang in the air between us like something spoilt.
I don’t rush to fill the silence. I don’t defuse it.
June won’t meet my eyes. Instead, she stares into her wineglass as if it holds a better version of this conversation. Her breathing quickens. Her hands tremble slightly. And still she clings to the version of the story where she was the one left behind. Never the one who left.
I stare at her. At the woman who gave me life and then spent years pretending she hadn’t. ‘I’m not going to fight with you,’ I say softly.
June scoffs. ‘Could’ve fooled me.’
‘But I am going to say this. And I need you to really hear it.’
Her wineglass stills.
‘You didn’t sacrifice everything,’ I say, voice calm, words deliberate. ‘You disappeared.’
She stays quiet. Blinks.
‘You talk about what you gave up as if it was stolen from you,’ I go on, ‘but you left. Even when you were still in the house, you weren’t there.
You were in bed. Or out. Or crying into your pinot while I packed the lunches and walked Issy to school.
I forged your signature on excursion forms. I memorised the dates of every ballet recital and made sure Issy had clean tights and her hair up.
I sat in the front row clapping for both of us, because one of us had to. ’
June swallows hard, but she still doesn’t speak.
‘I’m not angry about it anymore. I had to grow up fast – fine. I’ve made peace with that.’
I pause. Let the next words settle before I say them out loud.
‘What I’m angry about is now. That after all these years of pushing everyone away, now that you’re finally alone, you think you can just … show up. That you can insert yourself into my life like you never left it.’
Her face tightens at that, but I keep going.
‘You don’t get to demand a relationship because you finally looked around and realised no one’s sitting at your table.’
‘I was in pain,’ June says, too quickly. ‘I loved you. I tried—’
‘But we were children,’ I say. ‘You don’t get to use your grief as an excuse to abandon us. You don’t get to weaponise motherhood now and pretend it was enough to love us from a distance.’
Silence.
‘You want me to pretend it didn’t happen. To play nice. To make you feel like a good mother.’ I shake my head. ‘I’m done performing.’ I meet her eyes. ‘I’m done being the version of myself that makes you feel better.’
And for once, she doesn’t have a comeback.
June stands.
Not slowly. Not shakily. She rises as if she’s been preparing for this moment her whole life – every inch of her rigid with wounded pride.
Her eyes are glassy, though no tears fall. She won’t let them. She’s too stubborn for that.
‘I’ve done nothing to deserve this cruelty,’ she says. ‘You’ve always been the same as your father. Guarded. Impossible. You push everyone away and then wonder why you’re alone.’
I don’t move.
‘What about unconditional love?’ she snaps. ‘What about everything I did for you?’
I let out a soft, bitter laugh. ‘You don’t get to play that card now. Not when it’s convenient.’
She flinches. ‘I was doing my best.’
‘No,’ I say, standing too now. ‘You weren’t.’
Her jaw tightens.
‘I love you,’ I say, and that’s the truth. ‘But I won’t lie for you anymore. I won’t pretend this didn’t happen.’
She grabs her leather bag with shaking hands. Reaches for her keys. Not crying. Furious.
‘Ungrateful children,’ she mutters under her breath. ‘I won’t stay where I’m not welcome.’
I don’t stop her.
At the door, she turns.
‘You’re just like him,’ she spits. ‘Cold and selfish.’
And then the door slams so hard the sound echoes through my apartment.
I don’t move.
I stand there, staring at the door as if it might open again. As if she might return and undo it all, and we’ll have to pretend none of this happened – again.
My pulse is still racing, sharp behind my ribs. But I’m not crying. I’m not screaming.
I’m just … breathing.
I glance around the room. There’s a ring of red wine on the coffee table. The bowls of pad thai, cold and half-eaten, sit like artefacts from a scene I didn’t audition for. The candle’s still flickering, stubborn and bright.
I walk to the table. Pick up the wine bottle. Swirl what’s left. Then pour it slowly, deliberately, down the sink.