Authors: Rowan Coleman
I’d text her, but she doesn’t have a phone. I keep telling her, this is the twentieth century, Mum, get with the programme. But she doesn’t like them. She doesn’t like the fiddly buttons, she reckons. But I wish Mum were here; I wish she were here to take me home, because I am not sure where I am. I look intently around the café. What if she’s here and I have forgotten what she looks like?
Wait, I am ill. I am not a girl any more. I am ill and I have come out for a coffee and I can’t remember why. My curtains are a colour and they glow. Orange, maybe. Orange rings a bell.
‘Hello.’ I look up. There’s a man. I am not supposed to talk to strangers so I look back down at the table. Perhaps he will go away. He does not. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m cold.’
‘Would you mind if I sit here? There’s nowhere else.’ I look around and the café is busy, although I can see other empty chairs. He looks OK, even nice. I like his eyes. I nod. I wonder if I’ll have enough words to be able to talk to him.
‘So you came out without a coat?’ he asks, gesturing at me.
‘Looks like it!’ I say carefully. I smile, so as not to scare him. He smiles in return. I could tell him I am ill. He might help me. But I don’t want to. He has nice eyes. He is talking to me like I’m not about to drop down dead at any second. He doesn’t know anything about me. Neither do I, but that’s beside the point.
‘So what happened?’ He chuckles, looking bemused, amused. I find I want to lean towards him, which I suppose makes him magnetic.
‘I only popped out for a pint of milk,’ I tell him, smiling. ‘And locked myself out. I share a flat with three girls and my …’ I stop short of saying my baby. For two reasons. First, because I know that this is now, and that it was years ago when I shared a flat with three girls, and back then I didn’t even have a baby. Secondly, because I don’t want him to know that I’ve got a baby, a baby who is not a baby any more. Caitlin, I have Caitlin, who is not a baby. She will be twenty-one next year and my curtains are ruby red and glow. I remind myself
that I am not in a position to flirt: I’m a married mother of two.
‘Can I buy you another coffee?’ He signals to the woman behind the counter, who smiles at him as if she knows him. I find it reassuring that the café woman likes him too. I’m losing the ability to judge people by their expressions, and by those little subtle nuances that let you know what a person is thinking and feeling. He might be looking at me like I am a nutter. All I have to go on is his nice eyes.
‘Thank you.’ He is kind and he is talking to me just like I’m a person. No, not that; I
am
a person. I am still a person. I mean he’s talking to me like I’m me, and I like it. It’s warming me through, and I feel oddly happy. I miss feeling happy – just happy, without feeling that every moment of joy I experience now must also be tinged with sadness.
‘So, you’re locked out. Is someone going to ring you when they get back, or bring you a key?’
I hesitate. ‘There will be someone in, in a bit.’ I have no idea if that’s a lie. ‘I’ll wait a while and then go back.’ That
is
a lie. I don’t know where I am or how to get to back, wherever that is.
He chuckles, and I look at him sharply. ‘Sorry.’ He smiles. ‘It’s just that you do actually look like a drowned rat, and a very pretty one, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ I say. ‘Say more like that!’
He laughs again.
‘I’m a fool,’ I say, warming to my new not-ill status. It feels
good to be just me, and not me with the disease, the thing that now defines me. I’ve found a moment of peace and normality in this maelstrom of uncertainty, and it is such a relief. I could kiss him with gratitude. Instead I talk too much. I’m famous for talking too much; it used to be a thing about me that people enjoyed. ‘I always have been. If something can go wrong, it happens to me. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’m a magnet for mishap. Ha, mishap. There’s a word you don’t hear often enough.’ I rattle on and I don’t really care what I am saying out loud, conscious only that here I am, a girl talking to a boy.
‘I’m a bit like that too,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever grow up.’
‘I know that I won’t,’ I say. ‘I know it for sure.’
‘Here.’ He hands me his paper napkin. ‘You look a little bit like you’ve escaped the apocalypse. Just.’
‘A paper napkin?’ I take it and laugh, dabbing it on my hair, face, wiping it under my eyes. When I take it away, there is black stuff on it, which means I put some black stuff on my eyes at some point today, a fact I find comforting: black stuff on my lashes means my eyes will look better, I will look better, even if I look like a better panda. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose.’
‘There’s a hand dryer in the toilet,’ he says, pointing at a door behind him. ‘You could give yourself a quick blast under that. Take the edge off.’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, patting my damp knees as if to make a
point. I do not want to leave this table, this seat, this coffee, and go anywhere else. Here it feels like I am almost safe, like I’m clinging on to a ledge, and as long as I don’t move I will be fine and I won’t fall. The longer I can sit here, without having to think about where I am and how to get home, the better. I push away the surge of fear and panic, and concentrate on now. On feeling happy.
‘How long have you been married?’ He nods at the ring on my finger, which I notice with mild surprise. It feels right there, as if it has bedded into its place on my person, yet somehow it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me.
‘It’s my father’s,’ I say, the words coming from a long ago moment in the past, another time when I said them to another boy. ‘When he died my mum gave me his ring to wear. I wear it always. One day I’ll give it to the man I love.’
There is a moment of silence, awkwardness, I suppose. Once again, present and past converge, and I’m lost. I am so very lost that really all there is in this world is this moment, this table, this person speaking kindly to me, those very nice eyes.
‘Perhaps I could take you for another coffee, then?’ he says, sounding hesitant, cautious. ‘When you are dry and not stuck in the middle of a disaster. I could meet you here or anywhere you like.’ He reaches over to the counter and picks up a stumpy writing thing that is not a pen and scrawls on my folded napkin. ‘The rain has stopped, shall I walk you home?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘You might be a maniac.’
He smiles. ‘So ring me, then? For a coffee?’
‘I won’t ring you,’ I say, apologetically. ‘I’m very busy. Chances are I won’t remember to.’
He looks at me and laughs. ‘Well, if somehow you find the time or the impulse, then ring me. And don’t worry; you’ll get back into your flat. One of your flatmates will turn up any second, I’m certain.’
‘My name is Claire,’ I tell him in a rush as he gets up. ‘You don’t know my name.’
‘Claire.’ He smiles at me. ‘You look like a Claire.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I laugh. ‘And you, what’s your name?’
‘Ryan,’ he says. ‘I should have written it on the napkin.’
‘Goodbye, Ryan,’ I say, knowing that very soon he won’t even be a memory. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ He looks perplexed.
‘That napkin!’ I say, holding up the scrunched-up sodden piece of tissue.
I watch him leave the café, chuckling to himself, and disappear into the dark night. I say his name over and over again. Perhaps if I say his name enough times, it will stick. I will be able to pin it down. A woman on the next table is watching him leave. She is frowning, and her frown is disconcerting. It makes me wonder if everything I thought just happened really did – if it was a nice happy moment or if something bad happened that I hadn’t seen, because I’ve stopped being able to tell the difference. I’m not ready for
that to happen yet. I don’t want that to be true yet. It’s dark outside now, except for a slash of pink sky cutting through the cloud as the sun sets. The woman is still frowning, and I am stuck on this chair.
‘Claire?’ A woman leans over me. ‘Are you OK? What’s wrong?’
I look at her, her smooth oval face, long straight brown hair. The frown is concern, I think, and I think she knows me.
‘I am not exactly sure how to get home,’ I confide in her, for want of any better solution.
She looks towards the door and then obviously thinks better of what she was about to say. Instead she turns back to me, with the frown again. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? It’s fine, I know about your … problem. My name is Leslie, and our daughters are friends. My daughter is Cassie, with the pink hair and the nose piercing? And the awful taste in men? There was a time about four years ago when our girls were inseparable.’
‘I’ve got Alzheimer’s,’ I say. It comes back to me, like the last rays of sun piercing the clouds, and I’m relieved. ‘I forget things. They come and go. And sometimes just go.’
‘I know, Cassie told me. She and Caitlin met up a few days ago, caught up. I have your Caity’s number here, from that time they were supposedly sleeping over at each other’s houses, and attempted to go clubbing in London. Remember? You and I waited all night for every single London train that
came in, until they finally got home at about two. They hadn’t even managed to get into the club. A drunk man had propositioned them on the tube, and they were crying so much we let them off the hook in the end.’
‘They sound like a right pair,’ I say. The woman frowns again and this time I decide it’s concern rather than anger.
‘Will you remember Caitlin,’ the woman asks me, ‘if she comes?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I say. ‘Caitlin, yes, I remember what she looks like. Dark hair and eyes like rock pools under moonlight, black and deep.’
She smiles. ‘I forgot you were a writer.’
‘I’m not a writer,’ I say. ‘I do have a writing room, though. I tried it, writing, but it didn’t work, and so now I have an empty writing room right at the top of the house. There’s nothing in it but a desk and a chair, and a lamp. I was so sure I was going to fill it to the brim with ideas, but instead it just got emptier.’ The woman frowns again, and her shoulders stiffen. I’m talking too much and it’s making her uncomfortable. ‘The thing I’m scared about the most is losing words.’
I’ve upset her. I should stop saying things. I’m never that sure what I am saying any more. I have to really think. And wait. Talking too much is not a fun or sweet thing about me any more. I close my lips firmly.
‘I’ll sit with you, shall I? Until she gets here.’
‘Oh …’ I begin to protest, but it peters out. ‘Thank you.’
I listen to her make a call to Caitlin. After exchanging a
few words, she gets up and goes outside the café. As I watch her through the window, in the glow of the street lights, and I can see her still talking on the phone. She nods, her free hand gesturing. And then the call ends and she takes a deep breath of cold damp air before she comes back in and sits at my table.
‘She’ll be here in a few minutes,’ she tells me. She seems so nice, I don’t have the heart to ask her who she is talking about.
I open the front door for Mum, and then step back, secreting my key in my pocket. Mum doesn’t have a key any more, which is one of the things she really doesn’t like about this new world order. Her hair hangs down her back – its bright, fiery auburn now a dark ruby-red. She is soaked through and shuddering. When Gran told me Mum had just marched off into the night, I wanted to ask her why she’d let her go, why she didn’t try to stop her, but there wasn’t time. I was out looking for her when I got the call from Cassie’s mum.
Now we are back and, for Mum’s sake, I am struggling to not be furious. What would have happened if I hadn’t been here to go after her? Would Gran have stubbornly refused to stop Mum, determined to stand her ground and make a point, still somehow believing that Mum was showing off and should be ignored? I’m supposed to not be here soon. In the next few days, actually, I was supposed to be returning
to London for my final year of university. What then? What would have happened then? Mum would have been lost out there in the rain, and who knows when or even if she would have got home.
Perhaps it is a good thing after all that I am not going back – not that any of them know that yet. Perhaps I can just tell them that this is why I have decided not to go back – because Mum needs me.
Gran is in the hallway waiting, one hand clasped in the other, her lips pressed into a thin line. She’s anxious and angry and upset. Mum is instantly on edge the moment she sees her. I watch the pair of them look at each other, angry, uncertain, resentful, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to make this better, especially not when I know that when the truth comes out, I will have made everything much worse.
I feel that now familiar sickening feeling, the surge of nausea that hits me when I think about what I’ve done, and I push it away. I have to: I don’t have a choice. My mum is sick, really sick, and our family is falling apart around her. I don’t have time for my own problems, not yet. I’m waiting, waiting for it to be the right time. But the right time might never come, and then … It might be better for everyone if I just left.
‘Mummy!’ Esther, my little sister, charges at Mum, bowling into her. Mum picks her up and attempts to hug her hard, but she is cold and wet, and Esther quickly squirms out of her arms. ‘You’re icky! I hungry, I tired, I poorly.’
It’s Esther’s new mantra whenever things aren’t going exactly the way she wants them to. Her sad little face, her querulous bottom lip – it’s a winning act every time, and Esther knows it. She does it because she knows it works so well on all of us.
‘Want some biscuits before bed?’ I ask her, offering the naughtiest thing I can think of, just to see her smile. She nods and jumps up and down, happily.
‘Go on, then.’ I nod in the direction of the living room. ‘I’ll put some on a plate for you.’ Mum lets go of her hand, releasing her back into the living room, her fingers hovering in the air for just a moment, perhaps regretting letting Esther go.
‘What were you thinking?’ Gran asks Mum furiously.