Chapter 26
HEATHER
Heather uses the paintbrush to apply the tonal contrast to the puppy’s fur and takes a step back, surveying her work.
Something’s not right. The shading? She glances again at the photograph she’s working from, printed from the Internet.
The puppy’s eyes in the photograph look mournful and beguiling.
In her painting, however, it looks exhausted and depleted.
She drops the brush into a jam jar of water and wipes her hands on the apron tied around her waist. She’s placing all her hopes for the future on a venture she’s not tried for over twenty years, and her recent attempts clarify one thing: if she’s ever had the skill required, she sure as heck has lost it now.
She glances at the piles of ordered receipts on her dining room table. She’s neglecting her paid day job in preference for this, her fantasy, and she’s beginning to feel inconsequential and foolish.
And she knows the reason it’s not coming together.
She’s distracted by Scott-Bloody-Reynolds.
She unties her apron and drapes it over one of the dining room chairs.
Since being in St Albans, she’s seen Scott every other week.
Their hook ups, generally in Edinburgh or Glasgow, are passionate, intense and short-lived.
She spends the interlude between his visits unpicking their time together. Just as she’s doing right now.
‘Oh, you’ve asked Gerry for his expertise?
’ he’d said when they last spoke and she mentioned Gerry was coming round that evening to help with her work.
There had been a heaviness to the statement, implying he didn’t like the idea of her hanging out with Gerry.
But is that fair, given she and Scott are not a ‘thing’?
Surely she's allowed to see who she wants?
Often when they meet, Scott receives numerous phone calls and texts, which he refuses to elaborate on. Then, when he leaves, Heather can’t help but wonder if he’s withdrawing.
If she were to ask, Claire would tell her it’s because she’s making herself too available. Men prefer the chase, right?
Heather is washing her brushes and wiping them on the rag tucked into her waistband when her phone rings. An unknown number.
Typically, she’d reject the call. But this is an Edinburgh landline number interrupting her just before dinner. Curiosity, as much as anything, makes her accept the call.
‘That you, Heather?’
The elderly voice on the other end of the line has an air of familiarity about it. But Heather can’t for the life of her link it to a name.
‘Erm, yes?’
It can’t technically be a bogus call if it’s from a traceable number and her name is known, she rationalises.
‘This is Doreen.’
Heather’s mind whirrs through Doreens past and present. And the only one that springs to mind is –
‘Doreen MacLeod, that is. Your mother’s neighbour?’
Heather’s heart rate accelerates. Why would Doreen be reaching out after all this time?
‘Fraser’s in Aviemore. I was calling him about your parents. He gave me your number.’
The receiver in Heather’s hand becomes slippery with sweat as her mind rattles from one possible reason for the call to the next. Fraser would not pass her number on lightly. This can only be an emergency.
Doreen, thankfully, is not the type to beat about the bush.
‘Your mum’s had a fall, dear. Nothing too serious.
But they want to check her out. I’m at home with your dad and your brother’s somewhere up a mountain with a tour group.
So, I’m afraid it’s down to you, pet. Your mum needs someone to check if she needs anything.
A nightie or whatnot. Or to bring her home if she gets discharged.
It’s dark now. We wouldn’t want her trying to get a taxi on her own, would we? ’
Wouldn’t we, indeed? Heather thinks of all the times in her teenage life where her father refused her a lift because he didn’t approve of a particular boyfriend or the theme of a chosen movie she’d gone to see. But this is her mum. It’s not exactly the same.
‘I see.’
There’s a pause before Doreen lays down her gauntlet.
‘I saw you the other day. Watching from your car.’
Heather is mute on the other end of the line, her words solidified along with her thoughts, but Doreen is clearly not allowing family feuds to interfere with her planning.
‘She’s at the Western General Hospital. Accident and Emergency.
Unless of course they’ve admitted her. It’s impossible to find out anything from that place once they’ve got their talons into you. ’
Heather finds it interesting to note that Doreen uses birds of prey, with their laser-focused ability to assess vulnerability in their victims, as her metaphor. Doreen interprets Heather’s continued silence as compliance. ‘Good lass,’ she says, ‘I’ll let your father know.’
The line goes silent as Doreen hangs up and ends the call.
Heather stands in the centre of her lounge for several minutes, the phone still to her ear.
What should she do? The last thing she feels capable of navigating today is a reunion with her mother who refused point blank to side with her when her father was at his most indefensible.
A chronology of her mother's responses to arguments about her dad's behaviour floods her brain:
Cutting up her supposedly too short skirts with kitchen scissors? – Understandable.
Stuffing her childhood pets with no discussion or empathy? – Just his way.
Giving her the silent treatment over her choice of university course? – Unfortunate.
Making her homeless after she fell pregnant with Georgia? – Poor timing.
Refusing to escort her down the aisle? - No comment.
Feeding her allergy prone daughter peanut butter? – A simple mistake.
Telling her to get out of his house once and for all? – A proportionate response.
It was the finality of her dad’s last statement that forced the permanent wedge between them.
If her dad truly didn’t want anything to do with her, what could Heather do about it?
But her mother never made any steps to rectify things between them either.
Aren’t mothers meant to be on their daughter’s side?
Isn’t their role to minimise tension and act as mediators?
Heather’s mother did none of it. She watched as Heather cried, cajoled, rationalised and endured her father’s cold shoulder for months on end and never, ever intervened until Heather finally got the message: she was out.
Of course, Heather loves her mother dearly, but to get a call to arms in the early evening after all these years feels incredibly unjust. Her mother has not reached out to her in fifteen years. Not once.
Heather removes the phone from her ear and studies the blank screen. Debating her choices and going over the past hurts is irrelevant, she knows. She’s going to go. There’s nothing else for it.
Ignoring an incoming call – Scott this time – she grabs her coat, throws a water bottle and a banana into a small bag, picks up the appropriate keys, and leaves the house.
***
‘Heather!’
Her name is a waft of gentle air on her mother’s lips. She seems as surprised to find herself in the hospital as Heather is to be there. The last time Heather walked through these Edinburgh hospital corridors was a frantic rush to get to her small daughter after a full-blown anaphylactic shock.
Her mum is hooked to an array of medical machines monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure and the like. A cannula in her left hand connects her to a bag of fluids which to Heather’s unpracticed eye has only a few minutes left to run through.
‘Hi mum. Fraser’s away. He gave Doreen my number.’
Heather’s mum nods. Trust Doreen.
‘I’m sorry they bothered you, love. I’m perfectly fine.’ Heather’s mum attempts to sit more upright on the hospital bed and wobbles slightly with the effort. She doesn’t look fine. Her crepey skin has the colour and appearance of wax paper.
Heather’s skin prickles as she tries to establish how to play this. Her mother has frozen her out for years, yet now lies vulnerable and alone. She pulls a plastic chair, dark grey, to her mother’s bedside. ‘What happened?’ she asks, as though the past fifteen years have not happened.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s silly, really. Your father wanted a cup of tea, and I turned too quickly and well …
it seems I spilt it.’ She pulls the right-hand sleeve of her hospital gown upwards to reveal her elbow.
The skin beneath is wrinkled and visibly reddened.
‘Then it seems I took a little tumble. But I’m alright, dear.
I am.’ Her mum reaches over and pats Heather ineffectually on the hand.
A student nurse comes over, her brown hair tied into a no-nonsense bun and enclosed in a hair net. She identifies Heather as next of kin and gives her a summary of her mother’s treatment.
‘We just wanted to check there wasn’t anything behind the fall,’ she explains, ‘but it seems it was just a wee bit of a faint after the spill.’
‘That’s right. That’s right,’ Heather’s mum says. ‘A wee faint. Nothing else.’
The nurse turns her attention back to Heather.
‘The scans were clear. No sign of anything ominous. You’re free to take her home.’
She checks the bag of fluids has been completely drained, then detaches the plastic tubing linking her mother to the stand and removes the cannula.
The nurse moves to another patient leaving Heather to take her mother’s clothes from the cupboard beside her hospital bed.
‘Are you able to get dressed?’ she asks her mum tentatively, ‘or do you need me to –,'
The thought of helping her mother dress after over a decade of hostility is something Heather is prepared to do, but she is relieved when her mum says, ‘Nonsense. I’m perfectly capable.’