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

Now she stared at her father, feeling the white heat of fury racing through her veins. ‘The blouse is very important,’ she said, her voice low and calm so it wouldn’t upset her mother any further. ‘Mum likes to look nice. It’s always been very important to her. The problem is that I am not trained in changing the clothes of somebody like Mum. Only a trained carer would be able to do it without upsetting her, as you know.’

Jimmy started to interrupt. ‘Listen to me – ’

But Emma couldn’t. She got up and left the room to her father’s outraged demands that she get back there immediately, young lady.

She found Kirsten eavesdropping at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Way to go, Sis. I take it we’re leaving?’

Emma nodded grimly. She couldn’t allow herself to speak.

Arriving home, she got out of the car and waited for Kirsten, a throbbing headache growing behind her eyes. She wanted to scream and yell at herself for being such a coward, for not telling her bloody father exactly what he could do with his nastiness, bad manners and total lack of appreciation for all she did. She’d had the chance to say all those things and she’d certainly been angry enough but, yet again, she’d failed. Impotence was her middle name. Along with weak-willed, stupid and plain old pathetic. Elinor would not be impressed.

‘You look miserable,’ Kirsten said when she slid elegantly out from behind the steering wheel of her car, bearing the inevitable Pringles and a giant bar of Tob-lerone. ‘I hope it’s not because you’re planning to phone Dad up and apologize for walking out on him in mid-flow. He hates to lose the audience when he’s warming up for the big fight. You are a bad girl.’

Her sister grinned weakly. Kirsten always managed to defuse things with her blithe unconcerned manner.

‘The only thing I’m planning to do tonight is watch whatever terrible movie you get out of the video shop and stuff my face with pizza.’

Pete took one look at Emma’s taut little face when he got home and said they were all going out to dinner.

‘To hell with the budget,’ he said, hugging Emma. ‘You need cheering up and I don’t need you to tell me why.’

They went to a small Italian restaurant and gorged on home-made pasta and wonderful ripe red wine, finishing up with complimentary glasses of grappa because Kirsten had smiled so beguilingly at the owner that he had to pull up a chair and talk to them, making cow eyes at Kirsten.

It was when Emma was weaving her way tipsily back to the table after a trip to the ladies’ that she overheard Kirsten and Pete deep in heated conversation as they waited for the bill.

‘I’d like to smash his bloody face in, you know,’ Pete was saying, unusual venom in his kind voice. ‘When I think of the amount of time she spends with your mother, looking after her, doing bloody everything…For Emma’s sake, I never say anything because I think she can do without another bossy bastard in her life, but one day I’m going to tell your father exactly what I think of him!’

‘Don’t hold yourself back on my account,’ Kirsten said lightly. ‘He’s not on my list for the Nobel Peace Prize either and he adores me. Emma’s problem is that she’s got to confront him herself. I don’t know why she hasn’t done it years ago.’

Despite the insulation of wine and grappa, Emma felt miserable again. It was no good bolstering herself with alcohol to hide how she was feeling. She was kidding herself. Only confronting her father would help. But there were so many terrible things happening to him right now that it would be cruel to fight with him. It wasn’t his fault that she hadn’t had the courage to stop him browbeating her years ago. She couldn’t kick him when he was down.

‘Will I stay in the bathroom longer to give you pair more time to talk about me?’ she enquired, walking to the table and dropping a kiss on Pete’s bald head.

‘Sorry, love, we were only talking about your damned father,’ Pete said guiltily. ‘I know you don’t want me to interfere, but I’d prefer to say something to him. It’s not right the way he treats you and I can’t stand it any longer. You’re like some indentured servant to him and it’s about time somebody stood up to him and said so.’

‘Oh, Pete.’ Emma sighed. ‘Poor Dad has so much to cope with right now, with Mum being ill. We can’t say anything. Let me handle it, please?’

Kirsten and Pete shrugged in unison.

The next day, Emma drove reluctantly to her parents’ house. It was a glorious sunny morning with not a cloud in the sky. Just the sort of day when she and Pete liked to laze around in the garden, enjoying the sun and getting lost in the weekend supplements, reading bits out to each other and cooking lazy food like scrambled eggs. Or perhaps visiting the garden centre to see what new plants they could buy and kill. Neither of them were very good gardeners; their handkerchief-sized plot of lawn was patchy, to say the least, and the petunias which the garden-centre assistant had sworn blind would flourish anywhere, were all depressed and stunted. Only the little purple flower that Emma suspected was a virulent weed was doing well. It already covered the rockery, surrounding her purple heathers, and was about to make a hostile takeover of the bulbs which were struggling to sprout above ground.

Instead, she had to spend three or four hours looking after her mother because her father had an appointment for lunch with an old pal. She felt guilty at how much she dreaded the day ahead of her.

How did nurses and care staff do it, she wondered miserably as she sat at a red traffic light with the windows rolled down, enjoying the last bit of fresh air she’d get for hours because there was no way Anne-Marie could be trusted with any window open. Surely it was an impossible job to care for people whose minds were slipping away and who veered between wild mood swings that could make you laugh or cry?

It was different when you weren’t related to the person, Emma supposed. It mustn’t hurt so much when an Alzheimer patient shouted angrily at you if they were just that: a patient, instead of the mother who had cared for you as a child.

Her father was waiting for her inside the hall door, his jacket on and the car keys in his hand. He looked agitated.

‘You’re late,’ was all he said, as he marched past her. ‘I haven’t made her any lunch. She’s having a bad day.’

This turned out to be an understatement. Emma found her mother locked in her bedroom surrounded by the contents of her wardrobe, Jimmy’s wardrobe and all their drawers. Socks, shirts, blouses, trousers, handkerchiefs lay in heaps around her. Anne-Marie, dressed only in a slip and tights, was making piles of things on the bed, carefully placing garments on top of each other in a perilous heap until they fell over and she started again.

Her long, once-cared for hair was tangled and unwashed, her face was make-up-less and she didn’t wear any of the jewellery she so loved. Not an earring or her wedding and engagement rings, which she’d never taken off. She wouldn’t have left her bedroom in the morning without making sure she was wearing at least her pearl studs and a necklace. And the only time Emma could remember seeing her mother with her hair that messy had been years ago when she’d been ill with a virulent flu.

Emma felt her eyes brim with tears.

Two hours and several tantrums later, Anne-Marie was dressed in a navy blue dress, with her pale hair gleaming and her make-up carefully applied. She admired herself in the hall mirror while Emma cooked some pasta for their lunch.

Whatever bad mood Anne-Marie had been in, she’d recovered. Now she sang to herself in a high voice, occasionally dancing into the kitchen to smile sweetly at her daughter. They had lunch and then retired to the sitting room where Emma switched on the TV. A black-and-white movie was just starting.

‘Mum, sit with me and we’ll watch this,’ Emma said, patting the cushions on the couch.

Her mother sat obediently beside her. Anne-Marie rarely looked at the television any more but she loved old films, particularly musicals. Now she curled up beside Emma and watched the beginning of Now, Voyager.

If anyone had seen them, they’d have thought it was a touching tableau of a mother and daughter watching a film together, Emma thought wistfully. In reality, it was different. Would she ever have her own daughter to sit and watch television with? Maybe not.

But why not? Emma sat up straighter on the couch. What was stopping her? She didn’t know if she was infertile or not. Until she found out for certain that she couldn’t have a baby, why mourn as if she couldn’t? Life was too precious to waste in an agony of not knowing. Anne-Marie began to sing her own tuneless song and Emma stroked her arm. If ever there was proof that life was too precious to waste, it was her mother. She should have had years left to enjoy her life; instead, she was locked in this terrible illness, her life as good as over.

Emma couldn’t waste the rest of her life. She wouldn’t. Fired up with sudden, glorious enthusiasm and feeling like St Paul on the road to Damascus, she was desperate to tell Pete.

It took him a while to answer the phone. ‘I fell asleep reading the papers,’ he admitted. ‘I was so tired.’

Emma smiled.

‘What’s up, Em?’ he asked, yawning. ‘Is your mum all right?’

‘Do you remember when we talked about having tests done to see why I wasn’t getting pregnant?’

‘Yes,’ said Pete hesitantly.

‘Do you still want to do it?’ Emma asked, her heart thumping.

‘Absolutely.’ He’d never sounded more sure of anything.

‘First thing on Monday morning, I’m going to the doctor,’ Emma announced. ‘I want a baby, Pete. I’ve been stupid putting this off for so long, but I didn’t think it was the right time with Mum so sick. It’s the right time now, though.’

‘Oh, Em, I love you, you daft thing,’ Pete said. ‘What made you decide now?’

‘Sitting here with Mum did it,’ she explained. ‘Her life is just slipping away, day by day, and here am I wasting mine because I can’t face the truth. If we can’t have a baby, we’ll adopt. Anything is better than doing nothing, which is what I’ve done for years. I’ve been so stupid.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Em,’ he said.

‘I’m not, but I have wasted time. You need to be on the adoption list for years before you get the go-ahead to adopt a baby from abroad; I’ve wasted too much time already.’

‘Let’s see if we can have our own baby, first. I’ve been reading about that IVF thing. There’s a twenty per cent success rate, mind you, so if it doesn’t work the first time, we’ll try, try and try again.’