‘Excellent! A perfect opportunity to start my research!’
I waited until Joan was snuggled up in bed before allowing the thought that had been simmering in the back of my brain to boil over. Ebenezer had summed it up in his note: Being without one’s mother can be difficult.
Leanne had gone years without speaking to her parents. Was that a deliberate decision from the outset – had she walked away, intending it to be the last time? Or had she hoped to make them stew for a bit before the inevitable reconciliation, only things happened and time slipped past and then one day the distance had grown too vast to find her way back?
How would I feel if Karina or Aunty Linda called to tell me that Mum was ill, in hospital, and she might never recover?
Would I regret every week, every day I’d missed the chance to speak to her, to let her in on my new life?
Or would the lessons I’d learnt without her ensure that we could then move forwards in a way that was so much better, we’d both be grateful for the time apart?
I did know that if she got hit by a bus tomorrow, and her last words to me had been begging me not to leave, I would probably never forgive myself.
I picked up my phone, put it down again. Picked it up, unblocked her number, then hurriedly blocked it again as though her mum powers would be able to detect my actions from several miles away. In the end, realising that calling her while unable to stop crying was probably not the best idea, I sent a text to Karina asking how things were. Five minutes later, a reply:
All good! We’re at the theatre watching Jeeves and Wooster! How are you?
How am I? Lost, lonely, heartsick for the little girl asleep upstairs and my friend, who can’t even get to the toilet without help. Wondering what on earth I’m doing, and how I can possibly help.
And then I thought again, and sent Karina an answer that was equally as true:
I’m doing okay, thanks. Getting better every day.
I would call Mum one day, when I was strong enough, secure enough to handle it.
One day.
Steph was not happy. She’d left multiple messages by the time I found a spare minute to call her.
‘What’s the plan, Ollie?’
‘They aren’t sure yet. The results have come back mixed. Leanne’s all clear for cancer, thank goodness, but her liver is not great. She can probably come home in the next few days, but it depends how well she responds to the medication.’
Steph interrupted with a snap. ‘Diane at children’s services said Joan is living with you.’
‘She is.’
‘And that you’d be happy to provide support to her mother for as long as she needed it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Which, from what I can tell, is currently indefinitely.’
‘Well, obviously we’re hoping that things will get a lot better…’
‘Remind me again, caring for a sick woman and child is what number on the Dream List?’
I sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Why would you even ask that?’
Having a friend to stay: item ten.
‘Because you need to see what’s happening here. You made a momentous change so that you could stop continuously prioritising someone else over your own dreams and happiness.’
‘What?’ I was utterly blindsided, my eyes stinging as they held back tears of hurt and humiliation.
‘You’ve severed one highly dysfunctional relationship and almost immediately reattached yourself to someone else who needs taking care of. This need to be needed is precisely why you decided to follow the No-Man Mandate and have the Dream List rules in place, to ensure this didn’t happen.’
‘I… my relationship with Joan is not dysfunctional.’ My voice was a hoarse croak. ‘I’m helping out a neighbour – a friend – who is very ill. I don’t want to be the kind of selfish person who wouldn’t do that!’
‘So what’s next on the Dream List, then?’
‘How can I think about the Dream List when three days ago I found a woman unconscious on her bedroom floor? A woman who has no one else to pack a bag and take her clean pyjamas to the hospital, or to step up and take care of her child, so she doesn’t have to go and live with strangers in foster care? I’ve not had a spare second to think, let alone plan some stupid fantasy night out.’
‘That’s my whole point,’ Steph said, sounding calmer now. ‘You’ve not had a spare second, Ollie, because you’ve taken on the responsibility of fixing this whole situation. Other neighbours would drop a meal round, take a bag to hospital or offer to watch Joan after school. They wouldn’t expect to do all of those things, along with everything else, turning their entire life upside down indefinitely.’