I Owe You One: A Novel(25)

“Have you been helping Mum?” I ask Jake again. “Or has Nicole?”

“Jeez, Fixie.” He rolls his eyes. “Get off my case. I haven’t even seen Mum.”

Now that Jake is in here, the magical, transfixing bubble we were in has burst. And suddenly I feel guilty. I’ve dodged all the work. I’ve forgotten about the party. I’ve forgotten about everything except Ryan and me.

“I’ll go and see if Mum needs anything,” I say. “You know what she’s like. She’ll be back in the kitchen.”

I’m not being totally noble here. I’m feeling the need of Mum’s calming presence. Jake unnerves me, and I was already unnerved enough by Ryan. I need an injection of Mum’s calm, loving, steadying voice. I want her to say something that makes me smile, so I can take a step back from life and see it all in perspective.

I head out and glance into the sitting room, where all the guests have given up standing. They’re perched all over, on chairs and even the floor, chatting and smoking and still nibbling food. But sure enough, Mum isn’t anywhere to be seen. I knew it.

“Mum?” I call, as I stride down the corridor toward the back of the house. “Mum, are you there?”

I see a familiar flash of blue linen through the open kitchen door, but it’s in the wrong place somehow. I pick up speed, frowning as my brain tries to process the sight. There’s something not right, but I can’t work out—

“Mum?” I push the door right open—and my heart freezes in horror.

Mum is collapsed over the table, motionless. Her piping bag is still in her hand; her straggly hair is all over her face. “Mum?” My voice is strangled in alarm. “Mum?”

I push her shoulder gently but she doesn’t respond—and now terror is ripping through my guts.

“Mum? Help!” I yell through the door, frantically patting her cheeks, trying to work out if she’s even breathing. I can’t feel a pulse, but then, I don’t know how to feel for a pulse; I should have done first-aid lessons …

“Mum, please wake up, please.… Help! Someone please HELP!” I yell again, my voice hoarse, tears of fright springing from my eyes. “HELP!”

Footsteps are thudding along the corridor. I grab for my phone with fumbling, panicky fingers, feeling totally surreal. I’ve never dialed 999 in my life and I’ve always wondered what it must feel like. Now I know. It’s the scariest thing in the world.





Seven




When everything happens at once, it’s hard to process. It’s hard not to go around with a bewildered look and your brain only half engaged, because the rest of it is crying out, What’s happening? What’s happening?

First Ryan arrived out of the blue, which was enough to be dealing with. Then Mum collapsed and I thought my world had caved in. And then we got to the hospital and she was OK, and that was kind of shocking in its relief.

Except of course she wasn’t really OK. She isn’t really OK. As it turns out, she hasn’t been OK for ages.

She’d never even mentioned she’d been having chest pains, which is so bloody Mum. I wanted to scream when it came out. All this time, she’d had a dodgy heart and she’d never let on? A lot of her trouble comes down to smoking, they’ve said. She used to smoke, and of course Dad was on thirty a day. But then there’s the fact that she works fourteen-hour days in the shop. Still. At her age.

Make changes is the phrase every single medical professional used during those few days that Mum was in hospital. Make changes to your life. When Mum replied, “I’m not changing what I do! I love what I do!” they just reiterated it. You need to make changes. But this time they looked at us—Nicole and me—as they said it. They gave us the job of changing Mum. (And Jake too, I guess, except he wasn’t there much of the time. He had meetings to be at, apparently.)

Now it’s two weeks after the party. And if it were up to Nicole and me, even with our best efforts, I’m not sure anything would have changed very much. But that’s irrelevant now. Because last Friday, a brand-new thing hit us, like a juggernaut: Mum’s sister, Karen, came to stay.

We don’t even know Aunty Karen. She might be our aunt, but she’s lived in Spain for twenty-seven years. She never comes back to the UK, because it’s “too bloody cold.” She doesn’t do email, because it’s a “pain in the neck.” She didn’t come to Nicole’s wedding, because she was having a “procedure.” But she’s here now. And not only has Mum changed, the whole house has changed.

She burst into the house like a suntanned whirlwind, dragging a bright-pink wheelie case, her hair in a highlighted, straggly blond ponytail.

“I’m here!” she cried to Mum, who was sitting on the sofa. “Don’t you worry! I’ll take care of things! Now, first things first: flowers for the invalid.”

We all watched, a bit gobsmacked, as she produced a bunch of bright-red fake flowers from her bag, like a magician. “I don’t do fresh flowers,” she added. “Waste of bloody money. Put these in a vase, just as good, and you can use them again.” She thrust the plastic flowers at me, then she peered at Mum and shook her head. “Oh, Joanne. Bloody hell. Look at you. Look at your lines. I know I’m lined”—she poked at her suntanned, crinkly face—“but these are from fun. Look at you, working yourself into an early grave! That’s got to stop. If you can’t enjoy yourself, what’s the point of life? I’m taking you away.”