‘Hypnotherapy,’ Mum repeats, with slightly less confidence this time. ‘Have you heard of it? There’s someone who does it over in Leeds, and I think it could be really good for us, Leena, and I thought perhaps we could go together, next time you’re up visiting?’
‘I don’t need hypnotherapy, Mum.’
‘It’s not hypnotising people like Derren Brown does or anything, it’s …’
‘I don’t need hypnotherapy, Mum.’ It comes out sharply; I can hear her smarting in the silence that follows. I close my eyes, steadying my breathing again. ‘You’re welcome to try it, but I’m fine.’
‘I just think – maybe, maybe it’d be good for us to do something together, not necessarily therapy, but …’
I notice she’s dropped the ‘hypno’. I smooth back my hair, the familiar stiff stickiness of hairspray under my fingers, and avoid Bee’s gaze across the table.
‘I think we should try talking maybe somewhere where … hurtful things can’t be said. Positive dialogue only.’
Behind the conversation I can feel the presence of Mum’s latest self-help book. It’s in the careful use of the passive voice, the measured tone, the positive dialogue and hurtful things. But when it makes me waver, when it makes me want to say, Yes, Mum, whatever would make you feel better, I think of the choice my mother helped Carla to make. How she let my sister choose to end treatment, to – to give up.
I’m not sure even the Derren Brown kind of hypnotherapy could help me deal with that.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I say. ‘Goodbye, Mum.’
‘Bye, Leena.’
Bee watches me across the table, letting me regroup. ‘OK?’ she says eventually. Bee’s been on the Upgo project with me for the last year – she’s seen me through every day since Carla died. She knows as much about my relationship with my mum as my boyfriend does, if not more – I only get to see Ethan at the weekends and the odd midweek evening if we can both get away from work on time, whereas Bee and I are together about sixteen hours a day.
I rub my eyes hard; my hands come away grainy with mascara. I must look an absolute state. ‘You were right. I shouldn’t have taken the call. I handled that all wrong.’
‘Sounded like you did pretty well to me,’ Bee says.
‘Please, talk to me about something else. Something that isn’t my family. Or work. Or anything else similarly disastrous. Tell me about your date last night.’
‘If you want non-disastrous, you’re going to need to pick another topic,’ Bee says, settling back in her chair.
‘Oh no, not good?’ I ask.
I’m blinking back tears, but Bee kindly ploughs on, pretending not to notice.
‘Nope. Odious. I knew it was a no as soon as he leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and all I could smell was the foisty, mouldy man-towel he must’ve used to wash his face.’
That works – it’s gross enough to startle me back to the present. ‘Eww,’ I say.
‘He had this massive globule of sleepy dust in the corner of his eye too. Like eye snot.’
‘Oh, Bee …’ I’m trying to find the right way to tell her to stop giving up on people so quickly, but my powers of pep-talking seem to have deserted me, and in any case, that towel thing really is quite disgusting.
‘I am on the brink of giving up and facing an eternity as a single mother,’ Bee says, trying to catch the waiter’s eye. ‘I’ve come to the decision that dating is genuinely worse than loneliness. At least when you’re alone there’s no hope, right?’
‘No hope?’
‘Yeah. No hope. Lovely. We all know where we stand – alone, as we entered the world, so we shall leave it, et cetera, et cetera … Whereas dating, dating is full of hope. In fact, dating is really one long, painful exercise in discovering how disappointing other humans are. Every time you start to believe you’ve found a good, kind man …’ She wiggles her fingers. ‘Out come the mummy issues and the fragile egos and the weird cheese fetishes.’
The waiter finally looks our way. ‘The usual?’ he calls across the café.
‘Yup! Extra syrup on her pancakes,’ Bee calls back, pointing at me.
‘Did you say cheese fetishes?’ I ask.
‘Let’s just say I’ve seen some photos that’ve really put me off brie.’
‘Brie?’ I say, horrified. ‘But – oh, God, brie is so delicious! How could anyone corrupt brie?’
Bee pats my hand. ‘I suspect you’ll never have to find out, my friend. In fact, yes,