What Lies Between Us(52)

‘Please don’t do that.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because you’re my sister.’





CHAPTER 44





MAGGIE


From the day I gave birth to my daughter, I have strived to have a better relationship with her than my mother had with me.

Mum wasn’t a nice woman; she admitted as much long after I’d ceased allowing her to have power over me. She was on her deathbed when the words came, unprovoked and in a rare unguarded moment. It wasn’t so much a confession, more of a statement of fact. A fact that my sister Jennifer and I already knew all too well.

We were sitting in armchairs on either side of Mum’s hospice bed. A catheter tube poked out from beneath Mum’s sheets, leading to a quarter-full plastic bag of brown urine. She was so dehydrated that an IV had also been inserted into her arm. A plastic mouth mask lay close to her hand, within easy reach for when unaided breathing became too difficult. Her bed faced a floor-to-ceiling window, and she stared out across the garden and towards a copse on the grounds’ perimeter.

‘I didn’t have the capacity for love,’ she said without apology. ‘I never cared for either of you as I should have.’

I was neither surprised nor disappointed to hear it. I don’t recall her ever cooing over us, kissing us, picking us up when we fell over or proclaiming her love. She kept us fed and watered, our house was always clean, and she ensured we both got the best education we could. Perhaps that was her way of expressing love, or maybe it was born out of duty. Either way, that’s where her responsibilities ended.

‘Having a family was the done thing back then,’ she continued. ‘You were expected to marry a man you might not even love, start a family and not discuss how you really felt. You just got on with it without complaint. Before you were born, I thought perhaps that when I held you in my arms for the first time, something inside me might click, like a light switch turning on a bulb. But it didn’t. And then I hoped it might happen with Jennifer, but again, I remained in darkness.’

‘When I look back on our childhood, I feel like I should resent you, but I don’t,’ said Jennifer. ‘I just kind of feel sorry for you for everything you’ve missed out on with us. It wasn’t all bad, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Mum replied. ‘I couldn’t have asked for better children. Despite everything, you’re both here with me now. But I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left me here to die alone. I blamed both of you for me not living the life I thought I deserved. That was for me to shoulder, not you.’

‘Did you ever love Dad?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps, in my own way. Although I don’t think I ever really got to know him. He was too busy at the bookies or chasing other women for any of us to be involved in his life. You didn’t get the parents you deserved.’

For the first time, Mum reached out her hands to grasp both of ours. Her skin was ice-cold and I felt her surface-level veins protruding like liquorice laces. ‘Learn from my mistakes, girls. You’re lucky to have Vincent, Jennifer – be happy together. And Maggie, I truly believe you will always have Alistair to support you. He won’t let you down. He’ll give you everything you didn’t get from your dad and from me.’

Only a few short years later I learned that among Mum’s many failures, she was a truly awful judge of character.

There were just four months between Mum’s diagnosis and her death. If detected earlier and when she had first found the lump in her breast, she might have survived, with treatment. Instead, she said nothing and hoped it would disappear as quickly as it had arrived. To many people of her generation, a cancer diagnosis was akin to being unclean. So when she finally sought help, it was too late.

Now, like Mum, I have a lump in my breast, too.

Since discovering it this morning by chance, my emotions have been all over the place because I’ve witnessed what it can do. As well as Mum, this disease killed my grandmother and my aunt. So the odds aren’t in my favour. Mum was a prisoner of her own denial, whereas I am a prisoner of my daughter.

I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. Things between Nina and me are on an even keel right now. I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I’m not ready for it to end. If I tell her what I’ve found, it’s going to complicate matters. But if it is the worst-case scenario, it might also be a blessing in disguise and just what I need to get out of here.





CHAPTER 45





NINA


Maggie is getting on my nerves tonight. It’s not what she’s done; it’s what she is not doing – and that’s talking. When she’s this quiet, it puts me on edge. The last time it resulted in a blow to my face from her ankle cuff and a series of events I can’t quite piece together. I hoped we had turned a corner since then. Maybe I’m wrong.

As she stares blankly at the dining room wall, I give her the once-over. ABBA’s greatest hits album is spinning around the turntable, but even I am starting to get a little fed up of hearing the same tracklist every time we eat. I first started playing it to taunt her, because I knew how much it reminded her of Dad. And she hates to be reminded of him. Now I think it’s just irritating us both.

I need to find out what’s on her mind in case it’s a threat to me. However, I’m momentarily sidetracked when I notice how quickly she seems to have aged lately. Her hair and eyebrows are now completely white and the cream-coloured jumper she wears hangs from her bony shoulders like a bedsheet, giving her a cartoon-ghost-like appearance. For a moment, I imagine I am Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense having dinner with his wife. Perhaps only I can see Maggie; maybe I’ve gone completely mad and she only lives in my imagination. It’s not as if I have anyone to ask to verify her existence.