One More for Christmas(122)

Her mother headed straight for the kitchen. Liza didn’t know whether to be relieved or exasperated that she was behaving as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. If anything, she seemed energized, and perhaps a touch triumphant, as if she’d achieved something of note.

“Where is the man now? What did the police say?”

“The man is in the hospital, recovering from his head injury. The police took a full statement from me, and some photographs, and said they’ll keep me updated on his condition—although I won’t be sending him a card or flowers, I assure you.”

Her mother fussed around the stove, pouring boiling water into the large teapot she’d been using since Liza was a child.

Everything about this room was achingly familiar. With its range cooker, and large pine table, the kitchen had always been her favorite room in the house. Every evening after school Liza had done her homework at this same table, wanting to be close to her mother when she was at home.

Her mother had been one of the pioneers of the TV travel show, her spirited adventures around the world opening people’s eyes to the appeal of foreign holidays from the Italian Riviera to the Far East. Every few weeks she would pack a suitcase and disappear on a trip to another faraway destination. Liza’s schoolfriends had found it all impossibly glamorous. Liza had found it crushingly lonely. Her earliest memory was of being five years old and holding tight to her mother’s scarf to prevent her from leaving, almost throttling her in the process.

To ease the distress of Kathleen’s constant departures, her father had glued a large map of the world to Liza’s bedroom wall. Each time her mother had left on another trip, Liza and her father would put a pin in the map and research the place. They’d cut out pictures from brochures and make scrapbooks. It had made her feel closer to her mother. And Liza’s room would be filled with various eclectic objects. A hand-carved giraffe from Africa. A rug from India.

And then Kathleen would return, her clothes wrinkled and covered in travel dust. And she’d bring with her an energy that had made her seem like a stranger. Those first moments when she and Liza were reunited had always been uncomfortable and forced, but then the work clothes would be replaced by casual clothes, and Kathleen the traveler and TV star would become Kathleen the mother once again. Until the next time, when the map would be consulted and the planning would start.

Liza had once asked her father why her mother always had to go away, and he’d said, “Your mother needs this.”

Even at a young age Liza had wondered why her mother’s needs took precedence over everyone else’s, and she’d wondered what it was exactly that her mother did need, but she hadn’t felt able to ask. She’d noticed that her father drank more and smoked more when Kathleen was away. As a father, he had been practical, but economical in his parenting. He’d make sure that they were safe, but spend long days in the office where he worked, or locked in his study. There had been no games of hide-and-seek in the garden, no puzzles at the kitchen table, no quiet reading or casual conversation.

Liza had never understood her parents’ relationship and had never delved for answers.

During school holidays a severe-looking woman called Mrs. Bumble had been enlisted to look after them—an arrangement just barely tolerated by them all.

Liza’s younger brother, Matt, had seemed less troubled by the lack of parental involvement, lost in his teenage boy’s world of sport. His view of the world and life had always been smaller than hers, his gaze focused on the next game, or the next meal, while Liza had thought about her mother exploring the desert in Tunisia on the back of a camel and wondered why she needed her world to be so large, and why it needed to exclude her family.

Was it those constant absences that had turned Liza into such a home-lover? She’d chosen teaching as a career because the hours and holidays fitted with having a family. When her own children were young she’d stayed home, taking a break from her career. When they’d started school she’d matched her hours to theirs, taking pleasure and pride in the fact that she took them to school and met them at the end of the day. She’d been determined that her children wouldn’t have to endure the endless goodbyes that she’d had as a child.

She rarely left them alone—which was another reason she was feeling so uneasy right now.

Sean was chatting to her mother, the pair of them making tea together as if this was a regular visit.

Liza glanced around her, dealing with the dawning realization that clearing out this house would be a monumental task. Over the years her mother had filled it with memorabilia and souvenirs from her travels, from seashells to tribal masks. And maps. There were maps everywhere—on the walls and piled high in all the rooms. Her mother’s diaries and other writing filled two dozen large boxes in the attic, and her photograph albums were crushed onto shelves in Liza’s father’s study.

When he’d died, five years before, Liza had suggested clearing the room out, but her mother had refused. “I want it to stay as it is. You know I don’t like tidy spaces. A home should be an adventure. You never know what forgotten treasure you might stumble over.”

Stumble over and break an ankle, Liza had thought in despair. It was an interesting way of reframing mess.

Before her mother could sell this place it would need to be cleared, and no doubt Liza would be the one to do it.

When was the right time to broach the subject? Not yet. They’d only just walked through the door. She needed to keep the conversation neutral.