Truly Madly Guilty(48)

The TV shows. Erika remembered the first time she’d turned on the TV and seen her mother’s hallway, there for the world to see in all its disgusting glory, and how she’d leaped back, both hands pressed to her chest as if she’d been shot. It was like something from a nightmare; an enemy had filmed her dirty secret and broadcast it. Her rational mind had worked it out in the next instant. Of course it wasn’t her mother’s hallway, it belonged to an elderly Welshman on the other side of the world, but even then Erika still couldn’t shake that feeling of exposure, of public humiliation, and she’d turned it off, with an angry swipe of the remote, as if she were slapping someone’s face. She’d never watched one of those shows the whole way through; she couldn’t bear that glib, pseudo-sympathetic tone.

‘Yes, for real,’ said Erika. ‘Like on the TV shows.’

‘Wow,’ said Vid.

‘She has a pathological attachment to inanimate objects,’ Erika heard herself say. Oliver sighed.

‘She accumulates stuff to insulate herself from the world,’ continued Erika. She couldn’t stop.

For most of her life she had avoided analysing her mother’s ‘habit’ or even thinking about it much, except when absolutely necessary. It was as though her mother had a socially unacceptable fetish. When she had left home she was able to detach herself further still, but then, one night about a year ago, Erika had typed the word ‘hoarder’ into Google, and just like that she had developed a voracious appetite for information. She read textbooks, journal articles and case studies, initially with a racing heart, as if she were doing something illegal, but as she accumulated facts and statistics and terms like ‘pathological attachment to inanimate objects’, her heart slowed. She wasn’t alone. She wasn’t that special. There was even a ‘Children of Hoarders’ website where people like Erika shared story after story of identical frustrations. Erika’s entire childhood, which had once seemed so unique in its secret dirty shame, was nothing more than a category, a type, a box to be ticked.

It was all that research that had led to her decision to get counselling. ‘My mother is a hoarder,’ she’d said to the psychologist at her very first session, the moment she sat down, as dispassionately as if she were saying, ‘I have a bad cough’ to her GP. It had been exhilarating, as if she’d once had a fear of heights and now she was skydiving. She was talking about it. She was going to learn tips and techniques. She was going to repair herself like a broken appliance. She’d be as good as new. No more anxiety over visiting her mother. No more waves of panic when some smell or word or passing thought reminded her of her childhood. She’d get this sorted.

The exhilaration had diminished a little when it had turned out the repair process wasn’t quite as speedy or systematic as she’d hoped, but she was still optimistic and she still felt it was a sign of her good mental health that she could discuss her mother’s problem so freely now. ‘It’s not a sign of mental health,’ Oliver had said once, with unusual irritability, after Erika had begun telling an old lady in a supermarket check-out queue exactly why she needed to buy so many heavy-duty garbage bags. ‘It makes you look unstable.’ Oliver didn’t understand that Erika experienced a strange, wondrous pleasure in telling on her mother. I’m not keeping your secrets any longer, Mum. I’m reporting you to this nice little old lady in the shopping centre; I’m reporting you to whoever cares to listen.

Vid seemed fascinated, intrigued.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘So she just can’t throw anything out, eh? I remember on one of those shows I watched, this old fella, he kept newspapers, right? Piles of them, and I just thought, mate, what are you doing, you’ll never read them, chuck them in the bin!’

‘Well,’ said Erika.

‘Chuck what in the bin?’ Tiffany reappeared with Dakota (who appeared so colourless and ordinary, standing next to her vibrant mother) and Holly, who seemed to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after all that yelling. She could be a drama queen.

‘Everything okay?’ said Erika.

‘Oh, yes, all good,’ said Tiffany. ‘Holly just had a bump playing tennis on the Wii.’

‘Did a tennis ball hit your nose?’ Oliver asked Holly. It was like the whole shape and texture of his face changed when he spoke to children, as if he stopped clenching his teeth or something.

‘Uh, Oliver, the tennis balls are not technically “real”,’ said Holly. She held up two fingers on each hand to place inverted commas around the word ‘real’.

Oliver slapped the side of his head. ‘Silly me.’

‘Ruby’s head went wham! against my nose.’ Holly rubbed her nose resentfully, remembering. ‘She has a super-hard head.’

‘Ouch,’ said Oliver.

‘Dakota is going to take Holly to show her the little house where Barney sleeps,’ said Tiffany.

‘I want a puppy for my birthday,’ said Holly. ‘Exactly like Barney.’

‘We’ll give you Barney!’ said Vid. ‘He is very naughty.’

‘Really?’ said Holly. ‘Can I have him?’

‘No,’ said Dakota. ‘That’s just my dad being silly.’

‘Oh,’ said Holly, and she threw Vid a baleful look.

Maybe I’ll get her a puppy for her birthday, thought Erika. She’d tie a red ribbon around its collar and Holly would throw her arms around her, and Clementine would smile indulgently and fondly. (Was she drunk? Her thoughts seemed to keep skidding off in all kinds of hysterical directions.)