Chapter 31 #2
‘If anyone was in the wrong, I was. I’ll admit, happily, that I made a whole load of mistakes when you were kids.
I freaked out when I realized I’d given birth to this deeply sensitive child, because I was terrified that you’d turn out like me, like my parents.
I couldn’t see that your sensitivity, your empathy, that actually it was a gift, Olivia.
A glorious gift. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you feeling what I did.
I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t know how to handle it.
’ She raises her hands in the air. ‘Nobody ever taught me. Certainly not my mum and dad. I’ve told you what they were like.
I suppose my way of surviving that was to try and become super-controlled.
I handled your anorexia badly in part because there was no guidebook on it, but mostly because I was so caught up in how badly I had failed you as a parent.
I’d tried so hard not to be like my mum and dad and I’d clearly made a mess of it.
I can see now how my need to control everything had really bad effects on you.
I can see how my pushing everything down was a terrible way of dealing with things because they always have to come up somewhere.
But there weren’t any self-help guides to explain that to me back then, and I wouldn’t have had any time to read them even if there had been.
Your anorexia was awful, awful. I thought I’d been terrified when you had to have your appendix out, but that was nothing. Nothing. It was like a physical pain.’
‘But you didn’t let me go to hospital.’ Olivia clings to her cappuccino, in an attempt to stop her hands from doing their old, nervous jig … an impulse she suddenly realizes that she hasn’t felt for some time now.
‘Because it was an awful place, Olivia, not because I didn’t care.
I’d done my research on it, seen all these reports of teenagers who had absconded or, even worse, killed themselves on the premises.
It felt safer to keep you at home. Again, I don’t know if that was the right decision but it was the one I made and I can’t go back now, even though I’ve tried to, believe me. Repeatedly, with my therapist.’
‘I don’t understand,’ says Olivia. ‘You make out that you’ve always cared but the last few years you’ve been so cold. So lacking in affection.’
‘Because you’ve been so busy, Olivia. You have such a full life. I thought you didn’t need me, that you of all people would understand that I needed to go inwards.’
‘But you never once sat down and tried to explain to me what was going on with you and Dad. You could have done that, you know.’
‘Maybe I could have done.’ Tina finally takes a sip of her coffee.
‘But when you get older you don’t want to burden your children with your baggage.
If you’ve done parenting even vaguely right, they’re off living their own lives, and that’s exactly as it should be.
I didn’t want to add to your already bursting in-tray. ’
‘Inbox, Mum.’
‘Well, in our day it was an in-tray. Anyway, it had always been tough with your dad, but when I retired, or rather was put out to pasture, kicked out of the job I’d dedicated so much of my life to, as so often happens to women of my generation, well, it very quickly became unbearable.
I couldn’t watch this man I loved destroy himself in the same way my parents did.
He never left the house, he’d not get up until mid-afternoon, then he’d immediately start drinking until he passed out on the sofa twelve hours later.
It grinds on you. I didn’t want to divorce him any more than I wanted you to be ill, but when someone has a problem and they ignore it there eventually comes a point where enough is enough.
You can’t tell when it’s going to come but it always comes, believe me. ’
‘You had your own Erling Haaland moment,’ says Olivia quietly.
‘A whatty-whatty?’
‘Oh, it’s just … It’s nothing, Mum. Carry on, I’m listening.’
‘I had to put boundaries down with your father. And with you, even. I know you don’t approve of how I’ve gone about things, but I had to stay steady.
You had your own journey to go on, clearly.
So I just had to carry on and focus on making the most out of my life, starting afresh, and hope that one day you might come round and let me back in.
I’m sorry, Olivia, I really am.’ She pauses, as Olivia nods her head.
She is receiving an apology from her mother, and she needs time to let it sink in, to allow the words to really get into her bloodstream, where Olivia suspects they will have as magical an effect on her as Rose’s gummy.
‘But enough about me,’ Tina continues. ‘You were talking about getting therapy for Saskia. Is she OK, darling?’
‘She’s … she’s OK, but it’s tough being a teenager now, isn’t it?
Sometimes we all need a bit of extra support.
And it was while I was talking to her that I thought we needed to have a proper chat too.
Because I’ve sort of shut you out. Well, not sort of, I absolutely have shut you out.
And I so love having Lily around. Even Dad can be OK when he’s not drunk.
He likes being with the kids and he’s genuinely interested in what they are up to.
I think he’s even starting to realize how much he’s messed things up.
But yeah, all of that was making me think it would be good if we could, you know.
’ Olivia feels her fingers drumming nervously against the mug, begins clicking them to shift the energy around.
‘Well, if we could spend more time together.’
‘I would like that,’ Tina says, putting her hand over her daughter’s.
Olivia feels the nervous energy in her fingers dissipate.
‘You know I’m not getting back with your father, though?
He needs some proper help, but you won’t have any luck if you’re hoping to get him out of your house and back into mine, I’m afraid. ’
‘Well, speaking of Dad … he can’t continue living in our shed.
He’s hardly going to get well living out there with no prospect of any future ahead of him.
I’m not suggesting you take him back, but given you’re rattling around in that massive house …
’ She looks anxiously at her mother, finds the courage to carry on anyway.
‘Maybe you could sell it, downsize? And then Dad will have some money to get his own place. We might even be able to convince him to go to rehab if we’re lucky.
I just can’t juggle it all, Mum. It’s a lot. ’
‘I know it is, darling.’ Tina reaches across the table with her other hand, and squeezes both of Olivia’s in it. ‘I know it is. I’ll think about the house. Maybe it’s time for everyone to move on.’
To the barista, to the other coffee-drinkers, it’s a simple moment, an everyday one between a mother and a daughter who happen to be passing through on their way to somewhere – something – more interesting. But to Tina and Olivia, it is a destination in itself.