The Mother’s Lies. Joanne Sefton

you be getting back to the children?’ Barbara asked, probably just to try to change the subject away from food.

      ‘Darren’s taking them out for the day. To be honest, though,’ Helen said, taking her opportunity, ‘I could really do with a shower. Do you both mind if I—’

      ‘No, no, no,’ her parents flustered in unison. ‘You get home, love,’ continued Neil. ‘Get a bit of kip if you can – it’ll do you good.’

      *

      In the bathroom, she saw Barbara’s cake of Chanel No. 5 soap sitting on the windowsill. It was carefully placed on a folded flannel, drying in the sunshine so that she could rewrap it in its embossed tissue paper and slip it back inside the plastic soapbox and then its cardboard box; but she must never have gotten round to completing the task. The sight of it caught Helen off-guard; she’d forgotten all about that little ritual of her mother’s.

      She didn’t have to pick up the soap to smell it; the perfume still hung heavy in the warm, close air. Gulping it down as her breathing turned ragged and the tears came, somehow the scent had thawed the numbness that had consumed her in the hospital.

      There was no point in trying to stop it – Helen let her crying keen out unchecked through the empty house. The ugly, screeching noises seemed to scratch at the walls like trapped wild beasts. In some distant, unmoved part of her mind, she registered mild surprise that she could sound like that. Then she carried on anyway.

      The shame of it was that the crying wasn’t for Barbara, or even for Neil, though that was part of it. She was crying for herself; for the loss of her mother, for the sort of mother she’d never had in the first place, for the family that was slipping away from her. She’d never bargained for this. She didn’t deserve it. She wailed, like Alys might, simply because it wasn’t fair.

      The shower helped, though, and once she was calmer, there was some small comfort to be had in being able to take time to dry her hair properly, to smooth on some body lotion and file her nails, but she was constantly remembering that the time was hers only because Barney and Alys were with Darren. She tormented herself with the thought of what a wonderful time they would be having, of them not wanting to come back, and, worst of all, of the inevitable moment in the future when Darren would insist on them meeting her. Whilst she could just about stomach the thought of the kids being happy in the company of their father, she felt very different when she pictured a perfect, nuclear family unit that she wasn’t part of.

      Gradually, the thoughts took on a relentless, tinnitus-like quality, thrumming incessantly through her over-weary mind. She tried to take a nap but was too strung out to sleep; then she picked up her novel, but put it down again after reading the same paragraph three times.

      Barbara and Neil still had a VHS player. Eventually, Helen put on a second pair of socks, retrieved a pack of custard creams from the kitchen and looked on the shelf for her old copy of Dirty Dancing. She had to blow the dust off the case before she opened it. It felt surreal, putting on a film (and not a cartoon) in the middle of the day, with the sunlight streaming in the window, but she just prayed that her teenage favourite would give her racing mind a break.

      The custard creams were finished before Johnny and Baby even got to the watermelons. It worked as well as Helen could have hoped, suppressing the thrumming of worries in her mind.

      Then the call came from Neil.

      ‘Helen?’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘It’s your mum – you’ve got to come quickly.’ The panic was clear in his voice.

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘She’s being sick—’

      She felt her shoulders relax a fraction and jumped to reassure him.

      ‘They said it was the anaesthetic, Dad. I think it’s normal, for some people anyway. Have you spoken to a nurse?’

      ‘It’s not normal, Helen, she’s bringing up blood. They’re talking about intensive care. You need to just get here.’

      ‘I’m coming.’

      It was a fifteen-minute drive to the hospital, but it took an eternity. Her heart pounded all the way, with the thought of Barbara in pain and Neil anxious and afraid. She had no idea whether she really should be panicking. Nobody had suggested things could go badly once Barbara had come out of the recovery room and back to the ward – at least not in the short term. Surely she was in the best place and whatever it was they could hook her up to a machine and get it ‘stabilised’, as they always said on the TV?

      Helen had recognised from that first trip with them to Mr Eklund that Neil was finding the hospital difficult, that he felt out of his depth and – there was no other word for it – terrified. She still had hope that her dad had just had a panic, that she’d get there to be told it was a fuss about nothing, and her parents would be sitting in the cubicle happily watching some quiz show or cookery repeat on the mini bedside TV.

      She found a parking space near the main door – she’d already bought a weekly permit for her own car and insisted on doing the same for Neil’s – and hurried in.

      They weren’t watching TV. As soon as she entered the ward, she could see the hubbub of people around Barbara’s bed. There were eight or nine of them clustered into the little room, some bent over her, two holding IV lines, and Neil standing a couple of footsteps outside the door, looking smaller than she’d ever seen him.

      ‘Helen!’

      She gave him a hurried hug, and then turned to look through the glass at Barbara. If she’d looked bad before, she looked deathly now. Her skin was chalk-like, paler than the white sheets that she was lying on. She was wearing a breathing mask, which seemed to cover most of her face, but her eyes burnt out above it, bloodshot, widened and, above all, scared.

      Neil pulled Helen back when she tried to step into the room.

      ‘They said not to. They need the space.’

      She was still taking it in as she stepped back – the extra lines now attaching her mother to various machines, and the ominous red-brown stains on the bed. Then a woman in civvies – an open-neck shirt and some tailored trousers – turned away from the bed and stuck her head out of the room.

      ‘You must be Mrs Marsden’s daughter? I’m Rebecca Evans. I’m a consultant here. There’s a trolley on its way to transfer your mother to the intensive care unit. She should be fine, but we need to take the precaution. I’ll have to ask you and Mr Marsden to stand back please.’

      The woman gestured towards some chairs by the nurses’ station, but Helen had no intention of being herded off into a corner.

      ‘First, tell me what’s going on? This morning she was doing fine. They said she just needed to get the last of the anaesthetic out of her system. Surely she can’t have had a reaction this late?’

      The woman shook her head. ‘It’s not the anaesthetic. I can’t—’

      She stopped speaking as the main ward doors opened and two men wheeled a trolley through at speed. She waved her hand towards the chairs again and this time Helen stepped backward. Without even bothering to check if she’d gone, the consultant turned back to the bed, barking out incomprehensible instructions to the nurses and porters. The transfer was made in seconds, despite all the tubes and wires that Barbara suddenly seemed to have coming out of her.

      Three or four of the nurses hung back. Barbara was out of their hands now. The others advanced down the ward together, surrounding the trolley like it was some kind of battering ram, with Ms Evans setting a brisk pace in her low heels.

      The eldest of the ward nurses came over to where Neil and Helen were standing.

      ‘They’ll let you know when you can see her,’ she said. ‘Come into the office; that way we’ll be ready when they buzz for you.’

      She had a kindly, grandmotherly way about her, and they followed meekly, walking