Down to Earth

‘Kevin’s a freelance IT expert and I’m a pilot.’

I felt my eyes open wider. ‘A pilot?’

He grinned at me. ‘I fly cargo planes for a living, and I can tell you that flying the things definitely beats coaxing terrified people to jump out of them.’

Half of me wanted to get back into the car and hear about how Matt had become a pilot, but it had been a long and traumatic day – and it was now nearly twenty four hours since I had landed in the airfield and found that my world had fallen apart. I shook my head, there was so much I wanted to find out. But first, I had to see my mother.

The nursing home was in semi darkness as I stood on the wide-stone step and rang on the bell. A few minutes passed before I heard soft footsteps and the front door creak open, revealing a girl of about my own age dressed in a nurse’s uniform, black Afro hair swept up in a tight knot.

She looked me up and down. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I’m Michaela Anderson. I’ve come to see my mother, Susan Anderson.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s rather late. We’ve started getting the patients ready for bed. Can you come back tomorrow?’

‘I really need to see her now.’

She pursed her lips but stood back to let me pass. ‘I’ll have to talk to her first. A lot of our residents get upset when their routine is disturbed.’

I stepped into a wide hallway, lit softly by a yellow light, with a wide central staircase sweeping upwards. It would have looked like any other large house, except for the sterile looking office which opened off to one side and the faint smell of stale urine and antiseptic in the air.

‘You’ll need to sign the visitor’s book.’ She led me into the office and turned a hefty tome towards me so I could add my name to the list of daily visitors. She eyed me apprais-ingly. ‘I haven’t been here long myself, but I don’t remember having seen you before.’

‘I’ve been away,’ I said vaguely, following her round the corner where she paused at a lift door. ‘She won’t be expecting me.’

We stepped into the lift and waited in silence while it took us to the second floor.

‘Wait here, while I go and talk to her.’ The nurse turned to walk down a carpeted corridor, but I caught her arm.

The nurse stared at me and I read the name on her badge in the dull light. ‘Please, Zenelle. It would mean a lot to me to be able to tell her I’m here myself, in person.’

The nurse looked doubtful.

‘How is she?’ I asked. ‘Is she very down?’

‘She has good days and bad days. Today she has been quite calm. It would be a shame to get her over-excited so close to bedtime.’ Zenelle looked into my pleading eyes and seemed to relent. ‘Very well, you can come with me while I talk to her, but if she doesn’t want to see you, you will have to come back tomorrow when we have more staff on duty.’

I nodded and followed her as she went to a door which surprisingly was standing ajar. I found I was inexplicably nervous of seeing my mum in these unfamiliar surroundings. I don’t know what I expected – locked rooms with bolted doors or something. Calum had said my mother was in a secure nursing home after all. I peered inside to see a slender woman with short, cropped brown hair sitting slumped on the edge of a single bed staring into space. She seemed listless and tired, her shoulders hunched miserably forwards as if even sitting up straight was too much of a bother. Zenelle walked over and spoke softly to her and the woman looked up.

I felt the tightening in my stomach which had become all too common in the last twenty four hours. The woman looked like a stranger and yet was heart-rendingly familiar. My mother had been all elegant curves, while this woman was painfully thin. The mother I had seen the week before had only been in her late forties, whereas this person must be in her mid-fifties.

Willing my legs to move, I inched towards her, noticing the agitated look on her face as she stared at me in disbelief. This was a pale imitation of the woman I had gone to with my problems, the chair-person of the Woman’s Institute, charming hostess to my father’s colleagues and the woman behind the powerful, dynamic man my father had been.

‘Mum?’

‘It’s not you,’ she said, her voice coming out in a thin wail of distress. ‘It can’t be. They say my daughter is dead.’

She began to rock to and fro on the bed, her eyes darting about the room as if looking for a means of escape from something she didn’t understand. ‘You’re not real. They tell me you’re never real – just an illusion I’ve conjured up.’

I went to her and rested my hand on her shoulder but she shrugged me off. ‘Mum, it is me. It’s Michaela.’ I tried to take her hand but she wrapped both arms protectively round her body, her hands wedged firmly under her armpits as she continued to rock, her red-rimmed eyes avoiding my face.

‘I hurt,’ she whimpered. ‘I ache all over and you’re making it worse. Go away and leave me alone … I know you’re not really here.’

Chapter Fifteen (#ulink_1ef8e056-e9cc-5f55-8078-863df056a177)

My mother, it seemed, spent most of her time in the nursing home trying to kill herself and was apparently on constant suicide watch.

I sat shakily in the office as Zenelle made a cup of tea and handed it to me. I don’t think she realised I was the cause of my mother’s grief.

‘Susan is not allowed laces on her trainers or a belt on her trousers. Where you or I would see an ancient beam or a harmless tree, she thinks only of hanging herself. We might see a simple glass of water or a mirror, but to your mother they are a means of cutting her wrists.’

‘Surely she could be given anti-depressants or something to help her?’

‘Susan has been on a variety of different medications, but she suffers from side-effects. Look,’ Zenelle said kindly. ‘If you want to know more about your mother’s treatment you should come back tomorrow and see the doctor.’

‘I can’t leave her here like this,’ I told the nurse, resting the tea down on the corner of the desk. I felt tears of helplessness welling up. ‘There must be something I can do.’

‘She’s getting the best possible care,’ Zenelle assured me. ‘And you couldn’t take her home even if you wanted to. Susan is here under the mental health act.’

‘Could I see her once more before I go?’

Zenelle pursed her lips and I was sure she was going to say no, but she nodded briefly. ‘You can go in to say goodnight and tell her you’ll be back tomorrow, if you like. But I warn you, you may not get a positive response.’

I stood in the doorway to my mother’s room for several minutes, watching as she rocked back and forth and plucked at her short hair. I wanted to take those few steps across the carpet towards her, fling my arms round her and inhale the comforting smell of the mother of my childhood, but I felt sure she would flinch away from me. ‘I’ll come back and see you again tomorrow, Mum,’ I promised, my voice breaking with emotion.

‘You won’t come back,’ my mother whispered. ‘I’ve seen you before and they just give me more pills to make you go away again. You always go away and then they tell me you’re dead.’

‘Don’t upset yourself, Susan. Michaela is here to visit you,’ Zenelle told her. ‘Why don’t you sit together for a while and I’ll go and see to Ethel in the next room.’

Mum looked up at the nurse, a glimmer of hope crossing her face. ‘You won’t give me more pills?’

‘Your next tablets are due in an hour,’ Zenelle told her, glancing at her watch. ‘Just enjoy your daughter while she’s here.’

I crossed the room slowly, afraid to make Mum shy away from me, but when I drew close enough she reached out and clasped my fingers so tightly that it actually hurt. Leaving my hand in hers, I put my other arm round her shoulders and sank down on the bed next to her.

‘Is it really you?’ she asked tremulously.