“Anna? You scared me!”
Her voice is the same as it always was, as though she is still the middle-aged mum I remember, not the old woman sitting in front of me now. I find it disorienting, how what I see and what I hear don’t match. My mother is only seventy, but life ages some people more quickly than others, and she was on a fast track for a long time. Fueled by drink and long periods of depression I never acknowledged or understood. There are things children choose not to see in their parents; sometimes it is best to walk past a mirror without stopping to look at your reflection.
She continues to laugh, but I don’t. I feel like a child again and can’t seem to find any words to fit the scenario. I am shocked by the state of her and the house, and have a terrible urge to turn around, walk out, and leave this place forever. And not for the first time.
“Did you think I was dead?”
She smiles and pulls herself up and out of the chair. It looks as though it requires considerable effort.
I let her hug me. I’m a little out of practice when it comes to affection—I can’t remember the last time someone held me—but I try not to cry and eventually remember to respond. It is a long time before either of us lets go. Despite the general chaos, there are still photos of me as a child dotted everywhere around the house. I feel them looking down at us, from the walls and dusty shelves, and I know all those earlier versions of myself would not approve of the me I am now. Every single picture that she ever framed is of me aged fifteen or younger. As though I stopped aging in my mother’s head after that.
“Let me look at you,” she says, though I doubt her misty eyes can see me like they used to.
We share an unspoken conversation about the number of months it has been since we last saw each other. All families have their own version of normal, and long periods of absence without explanation are ours. We both know why.
“Mum, the house … the mess … the boxes. What is going on?”
“I’m moving out. It’s time. Would you like some tea?”
She shuffles past me, out of the sunroom and into the kitchen, somehow finding the kettle among all the dirty cups and plates. She turns on the tap to fill it, and the elderly pipes rattle in protest. They make a strained noise, as though they are as tired and broken as she looks to me now. She places the kettle on the hob, because she thinks gas is cheaper than electricity.
“Take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves,” she says with a smile, as though reading my mind.
I instantly think of myself as the bad penny who just turned up, and wonder if she is thinking the same. The silence is stretched and awkward while we wait for the kettle to boil.
My mother wasn’t always a cleaner, but everything about her and our home was always neat and tidy, spick-and-span, clean. It was as though she was allergic to dirt, and I think I may have inherited her OCD approach to hygiene. Though looking around now, that has clearly changed.
My parents bought this house so that we would be in the right catchment area for a good school. When I still didn’t get a place at a decent public one, they decided to pay for a private education, even though we couldn’t really afford it. My dad was away for work even more than before after that, but it was what they both wanted: to give me the start in life that neither of them had. For me, it was the start of a lifetime of not fitting in.
* * *
I was fifteen when he disappeared for good. That’s more than old enough to walk home alone from school, but Mum said she would pick me up that day. When she wasn’t there, I was furious. I thought she had just forgotten about me. Other people’s parents didn’t forget. Other people’s parents turned up on time, in their fancy cars, wearing their fancy clothes, ready and waiting to take their offspring back to their fancy houses to eat their fancy dinners. I seemed to have little in common with the other children at my school.
I walked home in the rain that day, with my backpack, gym clothes, and art portfolio. It was all so heavy that I had to keep swapping which hand carried what. There was no hood on my coat, and it wasn’t possible to carry an umbrella as well as everything else, so I was completely drenched before I was even halfway. I remember the rain trickling down the back of my neck, and the tears running down my cheeks. Not because of the bags, or the rain, but because earlier that day Sarah Healey had said, in front of the whole class, that I had a Jewish nose. I didn’t know what that meant or why it was a bad thing, but everyone had laughed at me. I planned to ask my mother about it as soon as I got home.