Chapter 2 #2
‘Poor you, but it’s completely natural, you need time to get your thoughts straight. It might be good for you to surround yourself with the feeling of your mother for as long as you can,’ Ruth said. ‘Still, if you need anything, you know where I am.’
‘Thanks Ruth.’ She meant it. ‘And, I’m so sorry, for forgetting about us meeting up this morning.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter, you know me, happy to eat pastries for both of us…’ With that she laughed that tinkling sound that somehow made Heather feel as if the world could be a lighter place if only you could change the way you looked at it.
It was one of those days that Heather felt she would always remember, not just because it was the day her mother passed away.
It was a day she took to herself, to reflect on the absence of the woman she had tried to love more than she’d ever been able to.
In spite of everything, Heather found it was comforting to sit in the little kitchen and remember some of the happier times they’d spent together over the years.
Some of the most vivid memories of her mother were those holidays they’d spent back on Pin Hill Island.
Her mother had grown up there. She always spoke about it so wistfully.
Secretly, Heather suspected she couldn’t shake the dust from her shoes quickly enough to escape to London and follow her West End dreams when she was a girl.
As the evening drew in and the kitchen fell into a series of unfamiliar shadows, Heather wondered if she should call Philip and tell him that her mother had died.
Maybe not, what was the etiquette with ex-husbands and the passing of relatives who were no longer related anyway?
Her stomach rumbling with hunger pangs pushed her from the chair and she reminded herself that they weren’t connected to each other any more.
Philip had started a new life. He could already be dating someone else.
In London, a man with a fortune wasn’t going to be single for very long.
Heather wondered if he’d slip into a second marriage with some glamorous woman about town, or more likely someone much younger who would fall for his easy charm.
The fact that he had just made a cool four million pounds from the sale of their flower shops wouldn’t hurt either.
No. Philip was firmly in her past and, even if she was sitting here alone for the rest of her days, their time together had run its course. She knew that even if staying together might have been easier, it was no longer what either of them truly wanted.
There were half a dozen eggs in the fridge and, for a moment, Heather wondered at the idea of her mother cooking an egg for herself; perhaps that was one of those things Carmelita did when she dropped in twice daily to check up on things.
Perhaps Carmelita cleaned too? It was the only likely explanation for the unfamiliar orderliness that had taken hold of the little house.
Funny, but Heather could imagine her mother sitting down to a boiled egg some evenings with a triangle of toast on the side.
Tonight, because she was here alone and suddenly ravenous and her stomach growled to remind her that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. She decided to make an omelette.
There was salt and pepper, eggs and cheese.
She toasted a slightly hardened heel of brown bread to go with it and settled down to the silence of the kitchen again.
She must have slept, sitting at the table on the club chair that had been her mother’s favourite.
She woke at nine to the sound of a car alarm pealing into the unheeding London chill from one or two streets across the back fence.
As soon as her eyes shot open, she knew immediately she couldn’t stay here.
What on earth had she been thinking earlier?
She gathered up her bag and took her mother’s key from inside the front door.
It was only when she was standing out on the street, the night sky that familiar not-quite-black shade of London, that the reality of her situation actually hit her.
She was cast adrift, completely alone in this city now.
There were no foundations with which to fasten her to anywhere – she had no family, no husband, no business, and even her flat had strangers pinning their notes to the cork board in her kitchen.
For the first time in her life, she knew what it was to feel truly lonely.
She was alone, completely and utterly on her own.
As she stood there, her head swimming, her heart racing in a skipping panic, she understood something that had never made sense before.
Was this what her mother had felt? The aching desire to connect with something that made you feel not quite so empty?
Had Dotty just needed to blot the world out and keep it at a distance removed enough to feel as if she was protected from it? Had that been it all along?
Heather felt herself stumble, her balance lost, making her swerve.
The bricks were cold and rough against her back, but she only vaguely registered them.
She fumbled for the key in her oversized bag and when her shaking hands managed to separate it from the jumble of other things she didn’t need, she thrust it as quickly as she could into the door, pushing hard and tumbling back into the hall.
When she slammed it shut behind her it seemed to echo into a vastness so deep she might drown in the silence.
She felt herself sliding to the floor and then she cried as if her heart might break, uncontrollable sobs that she just gave herself over to, since she had no idea where they were coming from or how to stop them.
She had neither the strength nor the will to try.
Instead, she lay against the door and sobbed until it felt as if there were no more tears left in her.