walked out on us. Didn’t want to know.’
‘But it was eighteen years ago, Mum. Surely you’ve come to terms with it.’
‘Come to terms? With having my world turned upside down?’
‘But you’ve got over that. Why look back? It’s not doing you any good. You’ve got a good job, a house, and you could have had other relationships if you’d wanted.’
‘Your dad left without a backward look. He didn’t want a family.’
‘Is that true?’ I thought of Ben and Toby.
She pinched her lips and suddenly all the bluster and fury disappeared and she sank into a chair, her hands covering her face. Part of me wanted to stay on my side of the table and keep my distance, emotional and physical, but another part, the stronger this-is-my-mother part, felt sadness, guilt and pity.
I walked around the table, pulled out the chair next to her, and sat and put my arm around her.
‘What happened, Mum?’
She breathed out a tiny sob. ‘It was my fault, he left you. I was so … so hurt. I wouldn’t let him see you. I told him if he left, he’d never see you again. I would take you away and hide from him. I just wanted to hurt him as much as I could, and you were his Achilles heel. He loved you. More than me. I lost … I lost all sense of reason. I think, well, I know, I went mad. Nothing in my head made sense and all I could feel was terrible, terrible pain. It consumed me. I don’t remember it, but apparently I threatened to kill myself if he came near you. Wicked now. I know that but I…’
I squeezed her shoulders. With her words came clarity of memory. I could remember the descent into madness. The crying, the wailing, the screaming rages. The inappropriate confidences to an eight-year-old. All the fear I’d felt rose back up and I shivered. It had been an awful time. Being allowed to do you as you pleased might sound like a childhood fantasy come true, but in reality it was anything but. I’d been so lost and frightened, especially once the school holidays had started and the days had turned into endless hours of nothing. Putting myself to bed at night had been the worst thing, not knowing when to go up to bed in the long, light evenings. Being terrified that my mum might be dead when I woke up. But it had been equally dreadful for her.
‘I loved him and he didn’t love me. He loved you. I thought he’d take you away and I couldn’t bear the thought that I’d lose you both. It was a madness, and then finally they took me to hospital and all the noise in my head went away. And for those six months, it was peaceful, not feeling anything. The drugs soothed all the sharp edges away, and I didn’t want to live. When I came out they said I had to show that I could cope before you were allowed to come back. It took another eighteen months. You came for visits. Do you remember?’
And suddenly I did. Painful sessions where I sat in the chair in the living room, anxiously picking at chocolate biscuits, too terrified to say or do anything that might upset my silent and watchful mum. They were an ordeal.
‘Even when you finally came home, you belonged to Lynn, and that was almost worse. You didn’t want to come back here. You cried a lot.’
‘Sorry,’ I said automatically, seeing her pain, old guilt resurrecting itself.
‘Who can blame you? Good old Lynn, life and soul of the party, with her perfect husband.’ Her mouth curled in faint bitterness. ‘I had a perfect husband once, except he didn’t love me. I was determined I wasn’t going to lose you again, so I had to make sure everything was perfect, so that I wouldn’t go back to hospital. So that the woman from social services wouldn’t take you away again. I had to be in control of everything. But still you wanted to go back to Lynn’s. Eventually she agreed to stop inviting you, so that I could have you back properly. And after a while you settled down. Bel helped. You remembered her once you went back to your old school. There’s always been something special between you. The pair of you were so stubborn when you were little. Then you both got places at the grammar school. By the time you