Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets

Her mother’s hand jerked and the trail of red liquid started splashing on to her lap, soaking the floral silky skirt with a growing crimson stain. It was like blood, Emma thought in horror.

‘Mum,’ she said in distress, trying to take the spilling glass from her mother. Anne-Marie’s hand was clenched tightly around it and more wine slopped on to Emma and the carpet before she could wrench it away. Crouching down on the ground beside her mother’s chair, she threw her arms around Anne-Marie.

‘Mum,’ she crooned, ‘it’s OK, I’m here and Dad’s here.’

‘But you’re not always here and I can hear the voices and I can’t remember things,’ moaned her mother.

Emma kept hugging her, but her mother couldn’t stop crying. And why wasn’t Jimmy doing anything?

‘Dad,’ whispered Emma, ‘look at Mum. Can you help her.’ She felt powerless to do anything, but so was Jimmy. His face froze as he saw his wife with tears sliding down her face.

‘Help me, help me, help me!’ shouted Anne-Marie suddenly, her voice loud and carrying across the room.

Emma could see Pete arriving from the kitchen with wine, his mouth an astonished oval. He seemed to be walking slowly towards them, as if in slow-motion.

The entire scene seemed as if it was being played in slow-motion, Emma felt. She could sense her father’s eyebrows lifting slowly in shock, could feel people’s heads swivelling at a leisurely pace towards them and mouths opening at a snail-like pace.

‘Mum,’ she soothed, ‘please don’t get upset. We’ll help you, I promise.’

‘You won’t, you won’t! You’re all against me,’ screamed her mother, clambering to her feet abruptly.

‘No,’ she roared, so loud that nobody in the house could miss hearing her, despite the sleighbells of Kirsten’s Christmas album jingling loudly in the background. ‘No, no, no, no!’ She was screaming now, lashing out wildly and shoving plates and glasses across the table. Crockery crashed to the floor. ‘How could you say it? What are you trying to do to me?’ she roared. ‘You don’t understand, do you hear me? You don’t understand. I won’t go there, I won’t!’

Pete dumped the glasses of wine and together, he and Emma tried to put their arms around Anne-Marie to calm her.

‘Mum, it’s OK. We’re here with you, nobody’s trying to send you anywhere.’

‘You are,’ wailed her mother, still trying to shove plates from the table. ‘You’re all in on it!’

‘It’s all right, Anne-Marie,’ said Pete soothingly, ‘all right. We’ll look after you.’

His calm voice seemed to do the trick. She stopped struggling and sat heavily down in her chair. Pete and Emma squatted on either side of her.

‘Mum, it’s me, Emma.’ Emma tried to keep her voice steady. It was hard: she was shaking so much she felt as if her very bones were rattling. ‘Dad, can you help?’

Hearing Emma speak to him, Jimmy O’Brien seemed to come out of the astonished trance-like state he was in. ‘Yes,’ he gasped.

He shoved Pete out of the way and grabbed his wife.

‘Anne-Marie, I’m here with you, love. Don’t worry about a thing. It’ll be all right.’

She collapsed against his bulky figure, her long, pale golden hair escaping from its butterfly clip to stream untidily down her back.

‘Let’s get her home,’ Jimmy said firmly, holding his wife’s frail body tenderly.

Kirsten insisted on staying with her guests but Patrick drove Jimmy and Anne-Marie home in his BMW, with Pete and a terrified Emma following behind.

‘We’ve got to call the doctor,’ Emma said, still shaking.

‘Absolutely,’ Pete said.

But Jimmy O’Brien was having none of it. ‘We don’t need a doctor!’ he roared. ‘She’s perfectly fine. A bit stressed, that’s all.’

Upstairs, where she was helping her mother to change her dress, Emma cringed at the fury in his voice.

Pete and Patrick exchanged a glance. ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy,’ said Pete firmly, ‘you’re over-ruled on this one. Anne-Marie is more than just stressed. She’s not well, she could have something serious wrong with her. I’m phoning the doctor. I can’t live with my conscience if something serious is wrong and we’ve done nothing.’

Emma strained towards her parents’ bedroom door, desperate to hear what would happen next. Her father spoke, only it didn’t sound like him really. This voice was tired and weak, not the obstreperous man she’d known all her life:

‘What if they want to put her in a hospital, what will I do then?’

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ Anne-Marie smiled at her daughter, clumsily trying to close the buttons on a clean dress and failing. ‘I was angry, wasn’t I? I am sorry, I didn’t mean to be. I don’t know what came over me.’

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ Emma said, gently taking over the buttoning. Her mother, who would once have been outraged if anyone had tried to help her with her toilette, sighed with relief as Emma buttoned her up. ‘Tell me,’ Emma began, ‘you said you forget things, Mum. What things do you forget?’

Her mother blinked at her. ‘Where I put things: I can’t find things any more. And I can’t seem to read. I have to get my glasses changed, they’re not strong enough. The words, you see,’ she explained earnestly, ‘the words are too small and jumbled up. I tried using your father’s magnifying glass, but it doesn’t help. Will you bring me to get new glasses, Emma?’

Her daughter had to bite her lip to stop herself bursting into tears.

‘Of course, Mum. But first, let’s get the doctor to look you over.’

The family doctor, an elderly gentleman with the kindest, gentlest hands and a charming manner, examined Anne-Marie from top to toe but could find nothing outwardly wrong. She chatted away to him the way she’d always done, saying she was sorry he’d been dragged out on New Year’s Day and adding fondly that her dear sons-in-law fussed too much.

‘Fit as a fiddle, my dear,’ he told her as he left her room.

‘It sounds as if she’s very depressed from what you tell me,’ he said thoughtfully to Pete, Emma, Patrick and Jimmy downstairs. ‘That could make her lash out and get so worked up that she’d shout. But it could be some sort of seizure. We’d need tests to see what’s really wrong…’

‘No tests,’ Jimmy said angrily. ‘She’s under a lot of strain, that’s all.’

‘It’s more than that,’ Emma said. She ignored the fierce look her father shot at her. ‘She says odd things at odd times, she loses things all the time, she tried to open a tin with an egg whisk the other day. They’re all small things, but I know there’s something wrong, Doctor. Now she’s after telling me that she can’t read any more and she thinks it’s her glasses. It’s not, it’s more than that.’

‘This is the first time this type of strange behaviour has occurred? She’s been perfectly normal until now?’ the GP asked.

‘No. She got very upset with me a few months ago when we were shopping,’ Emma said quietly. ‘In a fabric shop. She began to shout at me and she didn’t know who I was. I couldn’t calm her down and she was calling for Dad, even though he wasn’t actually with us.’

‘You never told me,’ said her father accusingly.

‘I’m telling you now,’ said Emma with an edge to her voice.

‘My wife is stressed and a bit depressed,’ Jimmy maintained. ‘A few tablets, that’s all she needs. Like the time she was on those tablets before, when Kirsten was sick with glandular fever. They sorted her out. That’s all she needs now.’

‘Bring her to the surgery next week and we’ll have a chat,’ the doctor agreed. ‘If she’s depressed, we can help her, but without tests, we won’t know what happened today.’

‘She was overwrought, Doctor, nothing more,’ Jimmy said. ‘She’s fine now, isn’t she? If it had been serious, would she be able to chat to you now as if nothing had happened?’

‘True. She’s only young, too. Just sixty you tell me. Well, Jimmy, I can’t think what could be wrong with her at this age, but we’ll keep an eye on her, I give you my word.’

‘He’s an old fuddy-duddy,’ hissed Pete as Jimmy let the doctor out. ‘Your mother could have a brain tumour and that man wouldn’t recognize it. She needs to see a specialist.’