The Mother’s Lies. Joanne Sefton

       August 2017

       Helen

      Giving up on sleep, Helen had gone to get a coffee. It was after two a.m., but there was a twenty-four-hour kiosk in the main foyer. She strolled around the deserted tables to stretch her legs, nodding to a couple of medics on their break. She paused to look at a gaudy poster about the fundraising efforts for a new cancer centre.

      Not wanting to be away for too long, she returned to Barbara’s ward, still clutching her paper cup, and slipped through the doorway. A nurse was bent over paperwork at a small desk that had been empty before. She lifted her head to smile and Helen caught the faint scent of toothpaste as she walked past. The late shift at the hospital was giving way to the early one.

      In Barbara’s cubicle, the figure in the bed looked exactly the same as when Helen had left her: still lying on her back, the same shallow breathing lifting the cellular blanket only a touch with each inhalation. Helen felt an unexpected surge of relief.

      She settled herself, then simply sat and held Barbara’s hand, just as she had done before. She was achingly tired, and her mind felt dull. How many people were awake in this building just now? she wondered. There must be babies being born here – as she had been born here. There must be other grown-up children holding the hands of parents and wondering if their time together was coming to an end. Did any of them feel only numbness instead of the grief and worry that she’d expected to feel? Did this distance and lack of feeling make her a bad daughter? No, ‘bad’ was the wrong word – an unnatural daughter, that was more what she felt. And if she was an unnatural daughter, was it her fault or Barbara’s?

      She swept back through her memory, looking for moments of love, special times that she and Barbara had shared, trying to conjure some missing fondness, almost in the way that, as a child, she found thinking of her neighbour’s dead cat helped to stop her getting the giggles when she was in trouble with a teacher.

      There were certainly happy images. Her disbelief when she was allowed the biggest chocolate sundae in the world at an ice cream shop in Italy. Jumping the waves on a beach in France the day after a thunderstorm. Her tenth birthday party, which had been a surprise, with all her school friends jumping out from behind the sofa when the family returned from a ‘grown-up’ celebratory pub lunch.

      Her childhood, on the whole, had been a happy one. But in every mental picture her dad’s face was clearer – shining with joy, sharing her laughter, showing tender concern about some childhood malady. Neil had worked full-time until his retirement. Barbara worked on the newspaper only two days a week when Helen was in primary school, a little more after she went to the high. Those hours together had made little imprint on her memory, it seemed. The best she could recall was that they were filled with books and TV and homework. That she kept out of her mother’s way, without really knowing why. Or was it Barbara who had been keeping out of hers?

      There was a movement from the bed and the limp hand Helen had been holding gripped back. When it was clear that Barbara was waking up, Helen manoeuvred the bed and the pillows to prop her up a bit, and then held the glass that she’d filled to her mother’s lips.

      ‘So how do you feel, Mum?’

      ‘Okay,’ she said, then sipped again. ‘Sore.’

      The nurse from the desk appeared, gently tugging the curtain back.

      ‘I heard your voices,’ she said. ‘Doing okay this morning?’

      ‘Just sore,’ Barbara repeated, and the nurse nodded sympathetically. ‘There’s a painkiller in your drip, but I can get you a tablet too if you can take it. And breakfast will be around in an hour or so. I’ll tell them just to try you on some toast for now.’

      Helen wasn’t sure if Barbara had heard. Her eyes closed slowly and the rhythm of her breathing changed.

      ‘She’ll be dozy after the anaesthetic,’ said the nurse, a little unnecessarily.

      Helen nodded. She was so tired that she was still nodding to the nurse’s back as she replaced the clipboard in its holder and walked off down the ward.

      *

      Neil turned up about half past ten. Darren had picked up the children as arranged and Neil had jumped in the car the minute they’d gone. He was just in time to see Barbara’s third session of dry-heaving. Just the smell of the toast had set her off and she’d not had much peace from it since.

      ‘Oh, love,’ he said, bending down to hold her shoulders as she shuddered over the paper bowl. ‘That’s it, that’s it, there you go.’

      When it was done, she fell back on his arm and let him lower her down to the propped-up pillows. A thread of spit trailed from the corner of her mouth, and she was too exhausted this time to even take a sip of water.

      ‘It’s the anaesthetic,’ Helen told him. ‘The nurse says it should pass in twenty-four hours.’

      Neil grilled her for more information that she didn’t have. The consultants hadn’t done their rounds yet and it was pretty obvious that Barbara wasn’t really in a state to take anything on board anyway. Helen really wanted to ask him about Darren and the kids, but he brushed off her first attempt, telling her they’d both slept like troopers and gone off happily this morning – Darren was taking them to some soft play centre apparently. She didn’t want to seem uncaring, focusing on her own children rather than on Barbara, so she bit her tongue.

      It was a shock for Neil to see his wife looking so fragile, Helen could tell. Having been there since Barbara woke up, she’d had more of a chance to get used to it. If anything, Helen felt there was perhaps a little bit of colour coming back to her cheeks – when she wasn’t throwing up, obviously. But Neil looked dismayed, and even as Helen filled him in on what time Barbara had woken up and what the nurse had said, she could see his wide eyes darting back to the bed, taking in every detail.

      Eventually, Barbara opened her eyes, smiled at him, and gestured for the water.

      ‘You never could keep away,’ she whispered.

      ‘Of course not. Oh, Barbara …’ he bent to kiss her cheek, ‘… you’re looking wonderful, love. You’re going to be out of here in no time.’ He said it fiercely, as if he could wish it hard enough to make it true. Helen couldn’t meet his eye, but she saw that Barbara did. She wanted to be happy for her mother – for them both – but all she could think of was that Darren wouldn’t be there to say that if it was her.

      They made some desultory conversation about the weather and then about the two new families in Neil and Barbara’s street and the building work they were planning. Barbara could nod, or make the occasional comment, and Helen and Neil felt like they were entertaining her. After a while, the trolley came round with some pasta and tomato sauce – nominally this was lunchtime – and Barbara managed not to be sick, although she asked them to swap it for toast. A little later, she even ate a few mouthfuls.

      ‘We could bring you something in,’ offered Neil. ‘Some nice biscuits, or a jam sandwich? Those cheesy crackers? What would tickle your fancy?’

      Barbara looked a little green.

      ‘I