Image: © Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
It’s raining. I’m in the back of the car, Beth is in the front with Dad. When there were four of us, Beth used to sit next to me and we’d watch raindrops slither down the windows, try to guess which one would get to the bottom first. She nearly always lost and would then be grumpy, shout at me or sulk, her arms folded tighter than a seatbelt. But I still preferred that to being alone.
Last night I told Dad I didn’t want to go. I told him now I’m fifteen I can stay at home on my own. I told him it’s not Mother’s Day, not for me, anyway. It’s just another Sunday. He clenched his jaw, then put his hand on my shoulder. It was heavy and his grip was tight. ‘Son, you’re going and that’s that.’
From the backseat, I strain to hear what Dad and Beth are saying, their words competing against the steady rain and the noise of the engine, and I soon give up. The muffled silence is suffocating. Unlike living above the pub where there’s always noise: downstairs, inside, outside, voices large and loud.
A couple of years ago, in my first year of high school, we watched a documentary called The Knowledge about London cab drivers who have to memorise thousands of street names and places. According to neuroscientists it expands the hippocampus, the part of the brain where they store all that information. My hand shot up. ‘That’s a bit like my mum,’ I blurted out. ‘She can remember all our regulars’ drinks. And she knows who likes which potato with their Sunday roast.’ That got a few giggles, even from Mrs Sahota.
I gaze out of the window, track a drop of rain down the pane with my finger. Beyond, all I can see is fields and trees and sky. Green and grey, grey and green. On and on and on.
We drive past a cow. It stares at me like the world is about to end.
I yawn. It’s such a long way and because Dad drives so slowly, it takes even longer. Mum used to call him a Sunday driver, which I didn’t understand for ages because we never went anywhere on Sundays. It used to make them laugh, though. Mum with her honk-snort medley, Dad wiping away tears with the back of his hand.
We slow down and turn onto a gravel path, the car jerky as it crunches over the stones. The main building looms like a medieval castle and today its grey bricks blend into the sky behind it. Every time I walk through the front doors, I’m jolted by how modern it is inside. It’s all white walls and white ceilings, floor tiles that resemble the chessboard in the games room, huge pot plants in corners. There’s a reception desk with a neon strip running along its rim, the top of a computer monitor poking out above it.
In the common room, people of all ages are huddled around tables. There’s tea and coffee for the grown-ups, blackcurrant or orange squash for the kids, biscuits for everyone. They all seem to be talking. Pretending, possibly, that everything’s fine. I tell myself I can pretend too. I pretend this is the pub, the people are customers in for their Sunday lunches, and for a few moments, I enjoy the comfort of the noise.
I glance around the room until I find her. There she is: sitting in the far corner by the window, her hands clasped in her lap. Although she looks like my mum – her short wavy hair cut the same way, her t-shirt and jeans the same ones she wore before – that woman is not my mum. My mum disappeared a long time ago. I don’t know when. Not because I was too young, or not paying attention, but because it’s not something that you can pinpoint to a day on a calendar. Parts of her started dropping out, like a scratched record skipping a few bars – or playing the same ones on repeat – until one day all the notes had fallen away, and the song of her life was gone.
Someone in the room drops a glass, its raucous smash followed by the delicate skate of shards across the floor. I punch the air and let out a cheer.
Dad gawps at me, blotches of red stamped on his cheeks, either in disappointment or embarrassment. Or both. Beth grabs my hand and squeezes, which is somehow worse.
But when I look over at Mum, she’s standing up and she’s smiling. Maybe she remembers? Maybe she remembers that we always cheer when someone drops a glass or a cup in the pub? I yank my hand out of Beth’s, dash in and out of the tables to the one near the window, and stop in front of her – the beat of my heart loud and clear like the bell for last orders.
Like a rest between two notes, Mum and I are silent, suspended in time. I scan her face for any signs of recognition and see she is doing the same. ‘Hello,’ she says.
In my mock GCSE exam last month, I read Neuroscientists are doing studies on those cabbies to find out whether larger hippocampi and enhanced neuropathways can stave off early onset Alzheimer’s. I can save them a lot of time and money, I wrote across the front of my paper, and walked out five minutes after sitting down.
‘Hello?’ I take a step towards her, arms outstretched.
Then she tilts her head to one side. ‘Have we met before?’
My throat thumps and my ears ring. There’s a sudden taste of blood in my mouth. I slot my arms across my chest as if that had been my plan all along and tip my head back, focus on a crack in the ceiling. I blink and blink and blink. As I lower my head again, the soundtrack of the room rushes back in – the clatter of cups and the gentle chatter of people. My mum’s forehead is furrowed. She looks concerned, or maybe she’s just confused. In a second or two, Dad and Beth will join us and we’ll all sit down, try to finish our drinks, try to have a conversation, try to be a family. But for now, I stand in front of my mum and I realise that for the first time, I’m taller than her; and outside, it’s finally stopped raining.
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