The sun bakes the skin on my sockless feet, propped up on a plastic garden chair, and I flex my toes languidly noting the need to shave my legs.
‘Do you want some more strawberry smoothie?’ Mum asks, draining her own glass until only a trace of pinkish froth remains on the rim.
‘Yes! It is really good. Here, I’ll do it.’ I pour a little too eagerly and some smoothie slurps onto the table. Neither of us make a move to get a cloth, the heatwave excuses us both our impassivity.
Mum taps her cigarette ash into a half drunk mug of tea and sighs. ‘A bit of a breeze would make it just perfect. You know I have enough trouble getting to sleep as it is. Last night I had to cover myself in a wet bath towel to stop from overheating!’
‘Oh, I thought the sleeping pills were helping?’ I ask.
‘They are, they are. It is just the heat – it is so stuffy at night and whenever I feel myself nodding off to sleep I panic that I can’t breathe. Oh but it isn’t that bad, it will pass when the weather gets back to normal and then I’ll be complaining about the rain again!’
We are silent for a while and I watch a small insect crawl over the yellow centre of a daisy and disappear around the back of the flower head. There are shrieks from the kids down the street, it sounds like they are having a water fight. I’m tempted to join them. The creases behind my knees and elbows are sticky with sweat, so is the top of my neck at my hairline, I really should get a shorter style next time.
‘I read your notebook.’ Mum breaks the silence and I stop drinking and put the glass down on the table. ‘It, I…well. It was in that box you wanted to store up in the attic. Johnny hasn’t been round yet so I haven’t had a chance to get it moved up there. It has been blocking my hallway for weeks!’
I sit still, very conscious of how hot I am feeling. Adrenalin filters into my bloodstream, my heart beats faster and harder, I struggle to keep my breathing regular, struggle not to gasp or pant.
‘You should not have left it there, Amy. It was on the top of the box. It is not like it says what it is on the cover, I was reading it before I knew what I was doing. And then I saw it and I couldn’t stop. I had to read it.’
Mum pauses, I look at her for the first time. I am not sure what my expression is telling her because I don’t know what I’m feeling – flushed, anxious, pumped up, frightened. I want to ask her if she read the whole diary. Did she read the bit? The bit I really never wanted her to know.
That I had a teenage crush on my teacher, that I worried about my frizzy hair, even that I scrawled ‘I hate Mum’ across double pages in moments of frustration - please let that be what she has read. I don’t speak. She needs to be the one who says it. I can’t say it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me at the time?’ Mums voice catches and there are tears in her eyes. She read it. Oh, I could kill myself for writing it down and then bringing it into her home! Is it possible that I wanted her to read it? No. I’ve spent three years being careful not to even hint at it. Three years of biting my tongue, of going to the bathroom to have a cry and of splashing my face with cold water so she could never tell. Three years of living with the guilt of lying by omission, but telling myself I was lying for her. I didn’t want to upset her, I didn’t want her blaming herself and I didn’t want to watch what it would do to her if she knew.
As time passed it became impossible to change my mind and tell her – even if I wanted to. And now, because of my laziness and stupidity, she knows. I stare at my smoothie. I don’t speak.
‘Oh Amy! I’m so sorry! I should have been able to tell. I should have been there for you. Did you have anyone to speak to? Oh my gorgeous chil…, my darling. I am so sorry.’ Tears glisten on Mums cheek, she bites her lip and her eyes sweep around the garden, bewildered. I have done this to her.
I am tempted to tell her it is not true, that I just made it up and wrote it down in a moment of creative lunacy but she is no fool. So I do the only thing I can do - I reassure, I placate, I soothe and I praise her. And all the time I am silently screaming in grief because I lost out on getting comfort from my mother, because I lost my enthusiasm for life, because I lost my baby.
copyright © 2013 Kat Friel
