Disappeared, page 11
Dilys’s eyes wandered from her to gaze out of the window. ‘I’d ask her how you’re supposed to cope with this ageing thing. How you’re supposed to get closer to the grave every day and feel it in your bones and not give up when you know it’s coming anyway. That’s what I’d ask today.’ Then she waved her hand dismissively and turned back. ‘But tomorrow it might just be how did she get her fruitcake not to dry out in the oven because mine always does! And at eighty-eight, I think it might be too late for me to get it right now.’
Cerys shrugged at her. ‘Well, we’ll make one together and see. Maybe this time, at eighty-eight, it’ll come good.’
‘Ha! Good try but it’s too late now. A cake needs weeks to season.’
‘Only if you ladle brandy into it and Sammy won’t be able to eat it then. It’ll be just fine made now, and he can ice it with you.’
‘Ah yes, he’ll like that,’ Dilys said with a smile.
‘We’ll do it on Sunday then. As long as it’s iced for Christmas Day that’s all that matters.’
‘I hated Christmas cake as a child,’ Dilys said. ‘Let’s hope he likes it. Now put the kettle on. It’s time we had a talk.’
‘Is it?’ Cerys asked, startled.
‘Long past time,’ Dilys said firmly.
31
‘I don’t know when it started really,’ Cerys said, with Dilys listening intently. She found that reassuring about Dilys – when she listened, she really listened. Not many people truly did that. ‘But I know it got worse when my youngest left home. I just couldn’t find a point to anything any more. And it went from there into a downward spiral.’
‘So you have children? I thought so, seeing how you are with Sammy, and Lily for that matter. So yours would be about her age?’
‘One younger and two older,’ Cerys said in agreement.
‘And you missed them,’ Dilys said.
‘Yes. I hadn’t been feeling right for a while. Couldn’t put my finger on it and thought maybe it was the idea they’d go sooner or later, but after they all left I got deader and deader. I used to call it the blackness and it was eating me up. I really mean that. It was as if it consumed me until there was nothing left. I said I’d stopped seeing my friends so much, but by then I couldn’t face them at all. I just didn’t want to talk, to pretend I was okay, to do anything. Everything was too much effort. My body ached.’ She shuddered as she remembered. ‘I hurt everywhere, in my head, in my heart and it spread into my joints, my muscles, and round my whole body. And the blackness just kept coming.’
‘Did you see a doctor?’ Dilys said with a frown.
‘No, because what could a doctor do? They couldn’t give me back what I’ve lost.’
‘No, they couldn’t, but did you ever think it was more than that?’
Cerys frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you never think a lot of how you were feeling could be due to the change?’
‘What, with being alone? Yes, like I said—’
‘No,’ Dilys said impatiently, ‘the change of life. The menopause.’
Cerys looked at her blankly. ‘No, to be honest, that never occurred to me. And it had been coming on for ages. I mean, I got the menopause earlier this year and it didn’t seem much really. I just stopped, no hot flushes or anything like that. No, this has been building up a long time.’
Dilys shook her head. ‘It’s not all hot flushes. It can make some women feel like you’ve said. All kinds of funny feelings, it can cause. And they don’t come on all at once. It can build for years before that. You mark my words, I bet a lot of it could be down to that.’
‘Oh!’ Cerys was stunned. That had never occurred to her before. Of course she’d expected her cycle to go irregular and stop, and she knew about the hot flushes that had never really bothered her much. But what could the sense of impending doom, and panic, and that grinding sadness that spread through her very bones, have to do with it? That ceaseless sense of anxiety and otherness that made her feel like she wasn’t herself any longer. When she could put that into some form of words, she asked Dilys that.
Dilys nodded. ‘Seen it before in other women. It goes eventually, but it gives some of us a lot of trouble before it does.’
Cerys shook her head wonderingly. ‘How did you get to be so wise, stuck out here alone?’
Dilys gave her trademark snort of disgust. ‘I could drive before this leg, you know. I’ve not been stuck on this hill in isolation for decades!’ She glared at Cerys. ‘I’ve lived here all my life. There’s not a soul in these parts I don’t know, and I know their stories. Now, where was I? Oh yes, pity you didn’t see a doctor. I’m not saying a doctor can make it go away, though I know women who got that hormone therapy and swear by it but I know others who don’t. But sometimes just knowing what it is makes a thing a bit better.’
Cerys thought about it. ‘You know, I think you’re right there. I think it would have helped to know that, if it really is that. When you’re that lost inside the mess in your head, it’d help to know why.’
‘Do you think I could be right about it?’
‘Yes, you know I really think you might just have a point,’ she said wonderingly. ‘When I think now of when it started, how it crept up on me and I just had no idea, how it would come and go in waves at first until it settled in. You could just be right. It might have had something to do with it. Wow!’ She stared at Dilys.
Dilys snorted. ‘That’s the thing with living alone – it makes you better at listening to people. You’ll find I’m right a lot.’
And Cerys laughed at the wicked little twinkle in the old woman’s eyes. ‘Yes, I know you are, and you love it.’ And on impulse, she got up and hugged her. ‘And you keep being you! Please don’t ever stop.’
32
She was twelve years old when the social worker came into her bedroom to tell her that her mother was giving her up. And despite everything that had happened to her before and since, it was still Lily’s worst memory.
‘You need to pack now, Kayleigh.’
‘Why?’ She pulled her headphones out of her ears.
‘Your mum’s not able to look after you right now so she’s agreed you should stay with a foster family for a while.’
She put her headphones back in. ‘No.’ And she turned the music up to full blast.
The social worker bent down and tried to gently remove the headphones and something inside her snapped. She slapped the woman’s hand away. ‘Get the fuck off me!’
The woman stood up, shocked. Yes, whatever – she’d never done anything like that before. Well, she’d never been given away before. She used to fantasise when she was younger that another family would adopt her and take her to live with them, somewhere better and nicer. Then she’d wised up and realised that nobody was going to want her around, just like her mum had said. So her mother might suck, but she was a better option than the alternative.
Even if she was the kind of mum who’d give you away rather than give up the drugs.
Did this woman even know how that felt? She was standing over Kayleigh with a perplexed expression, wondering what to do next. All professional but zero understanding. They were all like that, this lot – said they cared, pretended they had an idea how you felt. But they only saw the pain from the outside. They didn’t know what it was like to live with that etched into your bones so they throbbed with it. So that every bit of you was dirty and unwanted, was human refuse.
Screw them – she wasn’t going to go easily. She wasn’t going to be a good girl. Not now.
33
Could Dilys be right? Cerys asked Lily to pick her up a magazine from the shop in Beaumaris, one of those health lifestyle ones for older woman. She hadn’t actually read one for years but she’d seen the covers when browsing in the supermarkets and there were always headlines about the menopause battle and supplements to survive it, that kind of thing.
Lily came home with a few. ‘Wasn’t sure which you wanted but I thought it’s some reading for you anyway. No, don’t give me the money back – these are on me.’
Bless her, Cerys thought, because those things weren’t cheap and Lily didn’t get paid a lot really. A wad of magazines would take a surprising chunk out of that. A matter Cerys had never had to worry about all her married life, of course, and no matter how angry she was at Gavin for how things had ended up, she had to remember how much of the gloss of those earlier years was down to him.
When they all went to bed later, Cerys settled down to flick through the magazines. She’d been right – there were a few articles among them on menopause and managing it naturally, the benefits of HRT and what to do without it. Her eyes honed in on a text box to the side of a picture of a woman gazing meaningfully at a soya supplement. The headline ‘I thought I was losing my mind’ grabbed her attention and Cerys scanned through with growing interest. Some of it described exactly how she’d felt: the strange sense of anxiety when she’d never been an anxious person, how it came for no apparent reason at all, the joint aches, and fatigue that seemed to suck the life out of her at times. How that anxiety sometimes escalated to a sense of impending doom. One that had made Cerys often feel there was no point in going on. This woman had struggled at work and had ended up quitting her job before they sacked her.
It wasn’t the same, Cerys thought, putting the magazine down on the bed. But there were a lot of similarities. Enough to make her think Dilys really might have a point. Maybe it wasn’t all the kids skipping off to their shiny, new lives and leaving her behind and useless with no purpose. Maybe it wasn’t just Gavin’s work obsession and failing to notice her existence at times. Maybe it was actually, at least partly, this.
Would it have made it easier if she’d known? She rather thought it might. It would have taken some of the guilt away.
She picked up another magazine and began to thumb through that with more interest. Knowledge was power, after all.
34
Lily drove down into Beaumaris. The visitors’ car park was closed for the event so they parked up along the coast road on the way out and walked back in. A couple of volunteer marshals were present along the road to help people park most effectively and bump up onto the verge to keep the road clear. There was a bucket out raising money for the Lifeboat charity. A boat ran out of Beaumaris and Cerys dropped a couple of pounds into the tub. This little town was very proud of its crew.
There was that sense of excitement in the air that Cerys remembered from her own childhood and countless trips with her children to see Christmas lights. Sammy felt it too and began to skip as they walked down the coast road towards the main street. It made Cerys smile to see that but Lily bit her lip and looked round to check for traffic. She really couldn’t relax with him. Would today be the breakthrough that Cerys wanted to see? She wasn’t sure but they had to try.
They strolled down towards the car park, which was filled with market stalls for the afternoon event. The local craftspeople were out in force with local honey for sale, Welsh cheeses, traditional wooden carvings and textiles. Predictably, Sammy showed little interest in any of those and as it was part of Cerys’s mission that they all had a relaxing time, she didn’t expect him to trail round patiently with them while they looked. She had a little cash saved from what she earned for looking after the sheep for Dilys and she planned to make sure they had fun with it. She spotted a sweet stall and headed them towards that.
Lily only had the filter on what he should eat when someone else made her nervous, Cerys had noticed, so she had no concern at all when Cerys suggested to Sammy that he choose one of those beautifully wrapped cellophane cones of sweets, tied up with long trails of swirly red and green ribbon. His eyes glowed as he held his choice in his little and soon-to-be sticky hands.
‘You choose something,’ Cerys told Lily.
‘Me?’ she said, shocked.
‘Yes, you. Look, they’ve got handmade chocolates there.’
‘Are you getting some for yourself?’ She wore a slightly anxious expression, as if she thought she might have committed some kind of faux pas without really being sure what that was.
‘No, because I’ve spotted the hot chestnut stall over there so I’m going to get some of those, but they’re an acquired taste so I don’t know if you’ll like them.’ She sniffed the air as the scent of roasting chestnuts drifted over to them. ‘But nothing says Christmas to me more than chestnuts. I love them.’
‘Oh, could I try too?’ Lily asked, in the manner of a very polite child, Cerys thought.
Sometimes Lily wasn’t really far away from that stage. At times like this, Cerys could see her regress and any adult certainty that she had managed to acquire disappear like mist. But that was part of the plan, to let her experience what Cerys was by now certain she’d missed out on. You couldn’t give that to your child unless you knew that fun from the inside, Cerys had determined. She’d never consciously known that before until the puzzle that was Lily presented itself for her to solve. She bought three cones of the chocolates to take home with them and popped them in her bag.
‘Can he open his now?’ she asked Lily as she bent to unwrap the sweets for Sammy.
‘Yes … but he might drop them,’ Lily said, with that edge of nerves Cerys hated to hear because she didn’t like to think about what might have put it there. Sometimes the not knowing for sure was the worst, she thought.
‘He might, but I expect he’ll be extra careful because they’re so very beautiful,’ Cerys said, smiling at him as she bent down to untie the ribbons. She whispered to Lily as she straightened up. ‘Don’t worry if he does. I’ve got enough to get some more if we do have an accident. Little hands do drop things sometimes but they have to learn.’
‘Is it okay to do that?’ Lily whispered back as Sammy stuffed a flying saucer-shaped sweet into his mouth with big eyes. ‘It’s not spoiling?’ She wore an apologetic expression for questioning Cerys at all because she really didn’t understand if even that was acceptable.
‘Oh, I imagine some people might say that but I don’t agree with them. I’ve always found it’s rare they make a mistake like that anyway. It does happen sometimes but not so much when they’re not worrying about it. It’s important they learn to make judgement calls and I don’t think you can do that effectively unless you feel secure. And you can’t feel secure if you’re constantly worried about making a mistake and the consequences. I know some parents would say if he dropped them, he’d learn to be careful but actually I don’t think that’s true. That’s what we’d like to think but that assumes he was being careless in the first place. Usually they’re just being little! What they do learn is to trust you to put things right and that’s much more important in my eyes.’
Lily nodded thoughtfully.
And really, without intending to, I’ve just described what I’m trying to do with you too, Cerys thought.
She led them over to the chestnut stall and bought two bags, and then, on impulse, spotting they sold hot drinks too, a couple of cups of mulled wine and a hot chocolate for Sammy.
‘Now what I have learned myself,’ she said with a laugh as she stuffed the bags of chestnuts in her coat pocket and shared the load of the cups with Lily, ‘is never to try to balance too much with a small child in a crowded place so let’s grab a seat for a minute while we enjoy these.’
They headed towards some café-style tables set off to the side of the stalls. Sammy sipped his hot chocolate eagerly with his hands cupped around it to warm them. Cerys watched Lily’s face as she sipped the mulled wine.
‘Oh!’ she said in surprise. ‘Oh, I didn’t expect it to taste like that.’ And then a moment later, ‘Ooh, it gets right down to your toes!’
Cerys laughed. ‘That’s such a good description. Try a chestnut and see what you think.’
She showed Lily how to peel the shell away and Lily nibbled cautiously.
‘They’re not nutty at all!’ she exclaimed. ‘But nice, yes, I like them.’
‘These are Christmas to me,’ Cerys said. ‘My mother and I used to make the chestnuts together when I was a child. She loved them as much as I do.’
‘What was she like, your mum?’ Lily asked.
‘She was a farmer’s wife, no nonsense and no fuss. A very practical woman. She had no time to be anything else. She wasn’t much of a reader but she loved to settle down in the evening for an hour with a favourite TV programme. She’d have loved the on-demand TV we have now.’ Cerys could feel her eyes sting as they sometimes still did when she saw her mother through the eyes of her memory. ‘She was a wonderful mother, always there for us, and such a strong woman, right up until she died. Even after we lost my dad, she picked herself up and carried on. I miss her more than I can possibly say. Every single day.’
‘You were very lucky,’ Lily said softly. There was no jealousy in her voice but a sort of quiet sadness that Cerys noticed she often wore around her like a coat.
‘I know.’ She almost didn’t ask her next question because she didn’t want to ruin the day but maybe it needed to be asked and perhaps it was indeed the right time to do so. ‘What was your mother like?’
Lily gave a quick glance at Sammy, who was reassuringly occupied prising a sweet from the cone. ‘Oh, nothing like yours,’ she replied. ‘And I went into care when I was twelve. I never saw her after that.’
‘Oh, Lily!’
‘It wasn’t nice,’ she said, looking off into the distance. ‘I think that’s why I’m no good at this. I just wish I was better. Every child should have a mum like yours. And like you.’
Cerys found her voice choked up inside her. She reached out and put her hand over Lily’s. ‘It is never too late to be who you want to be. It is never too late to create that life.’
‘I don’t know how. Or I didn’t.’ She smiled and it reached her eyes and dispelled some of that gentle melancholy that resided there too much. ‘I think I’m learning a little. You know, I honestly don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.’
