Jenny Downham Before I Die

Five

Sometimes on a Sunday Dad drives me and Cal to visit Mum. We get the lift up to the eighth floor, and usually there’s a moment when she opens the door and says, ‘Hey, you!’ and includes all three of us in her gaze. Dad usually loiters for a while on the step and they talk.

But today when she opens the door, Dad’s so desperate to get away from me that he’s already moving back across the hallway towards the lift.

‘Watch her,’ he says, jabbing a finger in my direction. ‘She’s not to be trusted.’

Mum laughs. ‘Why, what did she do?’

Cal can hardly contain his excitement. ‘Dad told her not to go clubbing.’

‘Ah,’ Mum says. ‘That sounds like your father.’

‘But she went anyway. She only got home just now. She was out all night.’

Mum smiles at me fondly. ‘Did you meet a boy?’

‘No.’

‘I bet you did. What’s his name?’

‘I didn’t!’

Dad looks furious. ‘Typical,’ he says. ‘Bloody typical. I might’ve known I wouldn’t get any support from you.’

‘Oh, shush,’ Mum says. ‘It hasn’t done her any harm, has it?’

‘Look at her. She’s completely exhausted.’

All three of them take a moment to look at me. I hate it. I feel dismal and cold and my stomach aches. It’s been hurting since having sex with Jake. No one told me that would happen.

‘I’ll be back at four,’ Dad says as he steps into the lift. ‘She’s refused to have her blood count checked for nearly two weeks, so phone me if anything changes. Can you manage that?’

‘Yes, yes, don’t worry.’ She leans over and kisses my forehead. ‘I’ll look after her.’

Cal and me sit at the kitchen table, and Mum puts the kettle on, finds three cups amongst the dirty ones in the sink and swills them under the tap. She reaches into a cupboard for tea bags, gets milk from the fridge and sniffs it, scatters biscuits on a plate.

I put a whole Bourbon in my mouth at once. It tastes delicious. Cheap chocolate and the rush of sugar to my brain.

‘Did I ever tell you about my first boyfriend?’ Mum says as she plonks the tea on the table. ‘His name was Kevin and he worked in a clock shop. I used to love the way he concentrated with that little eye-piece nudged into his face.’

Cal helps himself to another biscuit. ‘How many boyfriends have you actually had, Mum?’

She laughs, pushes her long hair back over one shoulder. ‘Is that an appropriate question?’

‘Was Dad the best?’

‘Ah, your father!’ she cries, and clutches her heart melodramatically, which makes Cal roar with laughter.

I once asked Mum what was wrong with Dad. She said, ‘He’s the most sensible man I’ve ever met.’

I was twelve when she left him. She sent postcards for a while from places I’d never heard of – Skegness, Grimsby, Hull. One of them had a picture of a hotel on the front. This is where I work now, she wrote. I’m learning how to be a pastry chef and I’m getting very fat!

‘Good!’ Dad said. ‘I hope she bloody bursts!’

I put her postcards on my bedroom wall – Carlisle, Melrose, Dornoch.