Chapter 3
As I ended the phone call to Maple Manor, there was a heaviness in my chest and trying to assuage my guilt, I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Mum would accuse me of betraying her trust, and to some extent she’d be right. But one of us had to think about her future.
I’d worry about the repercussions later. First, I had to get my meeting with Rory out of the way. That’s if it was ever going to happen. Our scheduled time had been and gone.
I’d waited all morning for Rory to call me into his office, but he’d spent most of it making and taking calls.
Watching him through the huge window that separated him from us, his minions, I was beginning to think Rory had forgotten about me and with my early finish nearing, I willed him to hurry up.
I gave my to-do list a final once over. Not that I’d had loads to get through.
The number of house hunters always dwindled as we got closer to Christmas.
People were too busy preparing for the big day to even think about moving house.
Yuletide was the real estate lull before the new year storm.
A lull I was determined to make the most of.
Smiling at the line of ticks, it was good to know I was heading into my festive break with a clean slate.
Memorandums of sale had gone out; mortgage checks had been done; property listings were up to date…
and with no work-related niggles to spoil the celebrations, I, too, could forget about extra bedrooms, renovation potential and south-facing gardens for a while.
It had been a tough year. When I wasn’t stressing over sales targets, I’d been worrying about Mum.
Her behaviour had become increasingly strange since Dad died.
When she wasn’t talking to my father, she was poring over her childhood photos and reminiscing about long ago events as if they happened yesterday.
It had been easy to blame grief. My parents hadn’t just been married since forever; they’d shared a love that in my fifty years I could only imagine.
Such was their connection they’d been almost telepathic.
They’d instinctively knew what the other was thinking and often finished each other’s sentences.
I smiled as I pictured them. Being best friends, they’d done everything together and boy did they laugh.
My parents hadn’t just been a team, they’d been inseparable.
A montage of memories ran through my head.
Mum and Dad trying to figure out which way the wallpaper pattern went when decorating the living room.
The two of them singing, swinging and swaying to songs on the radio as they made dinner.
Their hysterics when Mum knitted Dad a jumper that had one arm longer than the other, which he insisted on wearing regardless.
Their open arms when I returned from London because life had unfortunately lifed.
I sighed, thinking it no wonder Mum had retreated into the past. A future without Dad was probably unthinkable.
I wondered how different things might’ve been if I’d had children.
Would they have given Mum a reason to live without Dad, rather than exist?
I hadn’t made a conscious decision to avoid parenthood.
Being a mum would have been a possibility had I met a man who didn’t want mothering himself.
Someone who was happy to be a partner instead of another responsibility.
I scowled, unable to help but recall the should come with a warning losers I’d dated over the years.
It’s often said you don’t know a guy until you’ve lived with them, and Jamie, my first ever boyfriend, was a case in point.
We were both eighteen and at college. Me through choice; him because it was easier than working for a living.
That should have been my first red flag, but being young and in love, I wasn’t just colour blind, I was sightless.
Handsome and carefree, Jamie was tall and slim, and his hair was a mop of unruly blond curls.
He had the most expressive chestnut eyes, and he talked with his hands as much as his mouth.
He saw life as a big adventure and when he suggested we take a gap year and go travelling, he talked of cruising the Seine in Paris, island hopping in Greece, gondola rides in Venice and relaxing beach days in Portugal.
Everything sounded so romantic and being na?ve, I readily fell in with his dream of working our way across Europe.
Except there was no our about it. I was the one blistering under the sun while grape picking in France.
It was me who mixed jugs of sangria for thirsty tourists in Spain and it was my feet that ached after long shifts waiting tables in Greece.
Jamie had zero work ethic and was more than happy for me to pick up his slack.
A situation I put up with for far too long.
Whereas women like Mum struck gold with their life partners, unfortunately others weren’t so lucky. Then there were women like me who didn’t just get burned, we got incinerated.
My mobile bleeped and I glanced at the screen. Talk of the devil. Mum’s fourth message that day, I again felt tempted to ignore her.
Mum was intent on demonstrating she wasn’t ready for an old folks home, but instead of telling me she’d highlighted our Christmas viewing in the Radio Times to prove her eyesight was good, or giving me an update on her Duolingo sessions to show she was still compos mentis, knowing my luck, if I left her latest message unread, it would say she’d had a fall after attempting a lap of the garden to prove she was still mobile.
Opening it, I took in a GIF of Betty White doing Usain Bolt’s victory pose, accompanied with the words ‘old but still lit’ and I could see Mum chuckling to herself as she pressed send.
While on the one hand she was right to laugh because it was funny, on the other, she was refusing to go down without a fight.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, wondering if I should cancel our appointment at Maple Manor.
The way Mum was acting, if I didn’t, there was a chance she might never speak to me again.
I questioned if she was right in her assertion that I was overreacting.
The fluctuating hormones of perimenopause didn’t allow for the most rational of thinking.
I swiped Betty White off the screen, telling myself there was no point doing anything rash. After a few days’ quality time with Mum over Christmas, I’d know the right thing to do.
‘Speaking of Christmas…’ I screwed my to-do list into a ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.
Setting my email’s out-of-office notification, I hit the shutdown button.
I switched off the lights on my miniature desktop Christmas tree and dropped it into my bag, and checking my watch, glanced in Rory’s direction for what seemed the hundredth time.
While he continued to chat on the phone without a care in the world, I muttered under my breath.
Anyone would think it didn’t matter my festive holiday had officially started.
‘You done already?’ a voice asked from behind me.
My body tensed. I hadn’t even heard Callum come in.