Kieran.Stories

Mum has said she will only come back for the funeral. Her replies on WhatsApp are terse. I reply in kind. By the time I put her away, I’m exhausted. I have no clue what time it is over there right now. I notice the black Reebok hat that has fallen behind my bed, and I leave it there. 

Marian’s teeth come in overnight, painfully. There are circles of blood and saliva on my pillow; wet and dry overlapping. I pull down the cord that turns on the bathroom light. When I look in the mirror, Marian’s face is there, fully formed, as I suspected it would be. I move my mouth and she moves hers. Marian was lacquered over me like a white paste, but now the only difference between us is height. 

Mum texts, just after I’ve had the call to say Dad died overnight. I wasn’t there, which is difficult to believe. They don’t ask if I’m okay, but I suppose it isn’t their job, or maybe it is. I put on my coat and shoes. The day before last, I saw Marian’s worn Dr Martens, spruced up to an extent, in the window of the British Heart Foundation. I want to go in and ask for them back, but I wonder if they’d recognise me. 

In the car, I touch the filling at the back of Marian’s mouth. She complained frequently about her teeth. She once went out with a dental hygienist, when we were at university, just for the tips he might impart. It is the shape of the inside of her mouth that is surprising to me. I soothe the same filling with my tongue, close my eyes, and start the engine. 

My tongue but Marian’s teeth, I think, as I turn onto the main road: how on earth have I made that distinction? 

The room is unbearably close. Dad is describing a trip we took to London when I was twelve. 

‘It was your birthday,’ he finishes. He smiles for a long time. 

What he is recalling is the weekend he took Marian to see Cats. She had begged him for tickets, and Mum leaving for Florida was probably her trump card. I remember the poster on her side of our room; the amber eyes and black background, and the dense text below. 

It wasn’t her birthday, but for Dad’s sake, let’s say it was. If Florida had already happened, we would have been on the cusp of teenhood. 

‘Dad, that was Marian, not me.’ I say this quietly, hoping that it won’t register. It is a battle I have already lost, on both sides. He has heard me, but he does not understand. 

I do remember, during that period, I was babysat a lot by Nana. Perhaps while they sat through Cats, she was teaching me peg solitaire at the dining table. Dad wouldn’t let her smoke in our house, but when he wasn’t there, and it was the three or two of us, she existed in this cloud of smoke. It was my job to carry the Ruddles County ashtray around, wherever she went. There were lots of times when Marian was out, and it was just me and Nana. She taught me to make strong cups of tea. ‘But no sugar,’ she said. ‘Once your teeth go, they go; there’s no getting them back.’ Of course, she had none of her own teeth left.  

‘It was your birthday,’ Dad says. Because I was thinking of Nana, when I look at him again, I see a little of her in his face. ‘Terrible,’ he adds. 

Driving home, I try to recollect times Dad took me on a special trip, but I can only remember the times I rejected him. I stop at Sainsbury’s. After ten minutes of wandering I have added nothing to my basket. I buy a packet of Airwaves and leave. The gum does nothing for my sinuses. 

Before bed, I wash my face with a flannel. The quiet in the flat feels damp. I stand in the bathroom and remember how after Mum left for Florida, all those years ago, Marian said she’d never leave me, she wouldn’t let us be apart, and if that ever happened she would cast a spell to reverse it. She was more prone to magical thinking, but sometimes I was convinced. 

The old neighbours played bhangra music through the night. I never thought I’d miss them. I put the flannel down and it sticks to the inside of the sink. There is a port-wine stain underneath my eye. Marian would arrange stones on our bedroom floor and say, ‘I’m casting a spell for you to never leave me.’ I thought at the time it was odd she didn’t just cast a spell for Mum to return. She sat in that circle for hours, all night, in her torn Daisy Dukes. 

I moved Dad here at the end of October last year. It was my best option money-wise, and moving him into my flat was never a practical solution. There were decorations the first time I visited. BEWARE. HELP ME! There were bloody hands and green zombie eyes glued to the windows. We are talking about Cats again. 

‘Do you remember where you took me for tea after?’ 

‘No,’ he says, attentively. 

‘Pizza Hut.’ 

He laughs. ‘It was a treat.’ 

I gleaned this fact from Marian’s diary. She wrote pages and pages at that age. I know that from the beginning of Cats to the end, she needed the toilet. I know that Dad shouted at her for spilling Coke on the hotel bed. I had forgotten they had stayed over in London. The train was so busy Marian thought it would stop moving; this was a real fear. There was a man that kept staring at her in the stalls. She thought the pavement felt hotter in London, although she knew that wouldn’t make sense if she said it aloud. ‘That was a special weekend,’ I say. 

‘Yes. Now, be careful, she’s watching us.’ 

There is a care worker standing by the window, but I can’t be sure Dad means her. I watch as she turns around and walks past us. She smiles down at us. I’ve had a conversation with her before. I told her that I work at the leisure centre on Moor Park, that I come home smelling of chlorine and I can never get rid of the smell. She found this funny for some reason.  

‘I won’t call you Spot, because I know you don’t like it.’ 

‘I don’t mind it. I haven’t been Spot for years, though.’ 

‘You’re a grown woman!’ With each word, he thumps the arm of his chair: ‘You – are – a – grown – woman.’ 

It is a chance meeting. David sees me first. I have come to No Filter to read The Bee Sting, which was the last book Marian posted about on her Instagram. I am at the table by the counter. David is in his running gear. He’s wearing a black Reebok hat. He is served his takeaway coffee but imposes himself on my table. He starts to repeat how amazing it is that we have bumped into each other like this. He has run from Squires Gate. I ask if he wants to help with a bookcase I have bought from Ikea. It’s been sitting, boxed, in my room for a week, and I haven’t had the time to make it.  

‘Or I’ve been putting it off.’ 

‘Of course. Of course.’ 

We walk back to my flat opposite the library. David hasn’t said much at all, but I wonder if it’s because he has been leading up to this. He pulls me in and kisses me on the mouth. 

From the corner of my eye, I see crumpled leaflets from local kebab shops on the occasional table. We walk up the stairs together, still kissing awkwardly. He tastes of coffee and milk. 

David, swept away, takes the keys from my right hand and unlocks the door for me. I am not sure if this is supposed to be romantic, a display of his masculinity; I wonder how Marian would have reacted to this, but then I know that she would have liked it on some level, even if she knew David could be patently ridiculous in these sorts of moments. 

In bed, I do something I have never done before, and David pulls back. He looks at me amazed. The sex doesn’t last long. He lays prostate on top of my lavender covers. Then, perhaps it was inevitable, he starts to cry. His lycra shorts are on the floor by my wardrobe. 

‘Just why.’ 

‘I’m sorry.’ 

‘Why?’ He points to my face. ‘It’s fucking uncanny.’ 

‘I don’t think it is. I don’t think it is uncanny.’ 

He then collapses into the sheets. Ten minutes later, he starts to apologise for his outburst but then tells me that everything Marian did was selfish, especially that. 

‘Perhaps if you’d been more present,’ I say. 

‘I was. Not enough, obviously, but I thought I was – being present.’ In response to this exchange, David attaches himself to me like a limpet. I let him. He tells me things Marian has missed, but then he speaks to me as if I am Marian. 

‘Rome,’ he says. We would have been married by now, too; that is the most obvious thing that did not happen because of what Marian did. While David talks, I remember little details about him. We are on a bed in a hotel in the Lakes. He tells me about the kingfisher he saw on Christmas Day with Lucy, his sister, in 1997. I pull away from him. I tell him that I am not Marian. I find this difficult to believe. 

*

I collect Mum from Preston train station. She landed in Manchester and stayed in a Premier Inn overnight. She is wearing a velvet blazer, black suit pants, and patent shoes. Her grey hair is pushed back by an Alice band. I take her suitcase. 

‘Marian,’ she says, after only the briefest flash of confusion. She only blinks then repeats my name, and says I look tired. 

‘I am tired. My head feels like fog.’ Mum does not respond to this. She either doesn’t know how to deal with a statement like this – likely – or she is too preoccupied with sheltering herself from the rain. 

‘It’s raining.’ 

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, unlocking the car, ‘I didn’t plan it.’ 

‘I know you didn’t plan it, Marian.’ 

I drive us across the bridge and past County Hall. We are at the docks when I ask Mum how her work is. 

‘Complicated.’ 

‘Is that good?’ 

‘Marian, I have had a long day.’ 

‘You’ve had a long flight. And you stayed in a hotel.’ 

‘Yes. You know what I mean.’ 

‘I do know what you mean,’ I say. 

‘Stop it, you sound just like Ruth.’    

I drag Mum’s case up my stairs. When I find her, she is in the kitchen filling the kettle. Throughout the funeral, her case was in the back of my car. It wasn’t a long service, and there was no wake. This man had no friends that I knew about. I am listening to the kettle boil as I turn over Dad’s life. That was it; that’s all. 

‘Thank you, for organising.’ 

‘It’s fine,’ I say. 

‘Don’t be obstinate.’ 

I didn’t realise I was being obstinate. I get the jar of Nescafé down for Mum, and a tea bag for me. 

‘What’s this mug?’ she asks. 

‘It’s not anything. It just has cats on it.’ 

‘You don’t have any cats.’ 

‘No, but I like them.’ 

‘Do you have lots to sort – the house?’ 

‘Yes, lots.’ 

We sit at the table, by the skylight. 

‘How’s work?’ 

‘I said. Complicated.’ 

‘You like it that way.’ 

‘I heard on the radio,’ Mum sips her coffee, ‘that inner peace is only possible if you are focused on one thing’ She points one finger forward, presumably towards the one thing she is, or will be, focusing on in the future. I have never given her quest for inner peace much thought. 

‘Why wasn’t your sister there today?’ 

‘Hm.’ I focus on the heat coming from my mug. ‘She was.’ 

Mum scratches underneath her eye. This is something I do. It’s odd to think that she does this in Florida, in her white apartment, without thinking about me at all. 

‘Do you think Dad was lonely, in life?’ 

‘In life?’ 

‘He didn’t have any friends.’ 

‘Marian, no one has any friends.’ 

‘I slept with David. The other week.’ 

Mum slowly starts to shake her head. ‘Where is he?’ 

‘I don’t know.’ 

Mum sits back in her chair as I lean forward. I wonder when she will leave, and what her plans are now. I am then forced back from the table by an excruciating pain in my spine. 

On the floor, my back swells and stretches. Mum is over me, then crouching by me. She stops my skull from cracking too hard against the floor. She holds either side of my head firmly. I can smell her sweat. I am unable to hear anything apart from blood pumping into my neck. I focus on one thing; I focus on a line of cola flowing from a can onto white hotel sheets. 

When it’s over, I am a foot taller. Mum puts me to bed and closes the door to my room. 

They are making improvements to my street. When I drive off in the morning, I am accompanied by a billow of grey gravel. I feel like I’m in the Old West.

At the GP’s this morning, 9.35am, I filled in Marian’s details on a double-sided piece of A4. The paper was poorly photocopied. 

I said my back hurt sometimes, and also explained how I was struggling with my sleep. She gave me exercises for my back, and suggested physiotherapy if nothing improved. 

‘I don’t mind it.’ 

‘What’s that?’ she asked, softly. 

‘The pain in my back. I don’t mind.’ 

I also asked what the chances were of suffering from the same illness as Dad. 

‘He called it cancer of the skull, before he had it, and then he had it and had no idea he did. If you see what I mean.’ 

She talked to me seriously. ‘I do, Marian.’ 

I was sad when I had to leave. 

Instead of driving all the way to Moor Park, I left the car on double yellows and walked into town. I bought those boots from the British Heart Foundation, and dropped my old pumps into a bin on the front. I walked to the end of the pier, remembering all the things I didn’t say.