Page 1 of A Good Mother
THE PARISH OF ST MARY, LITTLE BUDDINGTON, CHESHIRE
PRESENT DAY
Morning has broken.I know this before I open my eyes because outside the dawn chorus is in full song. I picture pale sunrays illuminating the sky while an array of little birds go about their business. No care for their sleeping human neighbours. Stubborn beaks and wings spread wide. Joyful in the new day.
I know each of them by name, not personally but wouldn’t that be nice. I mean their song and species, their chirps and trills, whistles, and rattles. There was a poster on the wall in school and after listening to a tinny recording of birdsong, we took turns identifying them. I won a prize, a bookmark. I refused to use it, such was my pride and I still have it in my box of treasures.
I listen. Remaining motionless apart from my eyelids that open slowly, revealing where I am. Not in our bedroom. The reason why. Because I couldn’t bear to sleep another night by my husband’s side.
It’s been torture. The close proximity to a person who’s let me down so badly is oppressive, as though he’s intruding on my personal space but, thankfully, not the forbidden area of my mind. My thoughts and secrets, my intentions, are known only to me.
I should’ve left the fug of our airless, soulless room before and I feel foolish for enduring it for so long. Especially the pig-like grunts that make me think of the petting zoo at the local garden centre.
Here, at least I’ve been able to leave the curtains and the window open. Greet each new day as it begins or ends. Sun, moon, stars. An unexpected pink sunset and all the elements in all their glory.
I hate the dark. Claustrophobia’s ally. When I am exhausted or in a low mood the sheath of gloom is like a blanket. It smothers me and brings on a panic attack. Invisible fingers wrap around the sinews in my neck. Thumbs press on my windpipe and then the drum of my heart beats Morse code for help as my lungs beg for oxygen.
I spent most of last night in such torment. Baited first by my conscience and utter, lip-numbing fear but considering what lies ahead of me today, it was expected. Then slowly, as I became resigned to it all, calmness settled and left me cocooned in a wonderful sense of peace.
Anyway, it’s here now. Morning. And once it begins this day will change my life, and that of others forever. Some more than most. Lives will end and lives will begin.
It’s 6.30am. I know this because I heard a motorbike engine as our neighbour rumbled off on his way to work. Regular as clockwork Joe is. Same as the milkman. He’ll be here at 7.30am on the button, making the last few drops on his rounds of the village.
Today is Sunday. One pint of orange, two of milk, fresh bread and six eggs. Maybe I should have cancelled, but Bobby needs the custom so it’s all good.
I hate Sundays, have done for so long; yet today, I welcome it and what it will bring. Usually, the hours stretch on and on until my shift is finished. That’s how I see life, as a shift. Rinse and repeat. Another day ticked off the calendar. But it’s never truly over, not really, because even when the body gives in, the mind carries on.
I’m a mother and they never clock off. There’s no handy sign to hang on the door saying, ‘Sorry. We are closed.’
Mothers never flip the sign, not really.
Perhaps that’s added to it all. To today. The humongous responsibility that’s fallen on my shoulders ever since the children arrived. Since then, it’s been down to me. No matter what anyone says, the buck stops here. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just sat down with a cuppa, resting your achy feet and frazzled mind, or your favourite programme has started. If they call, you answer.
I wouldn’t change it though, not for the world because my children are what makes mine go round, or they did until it all changed. My hand has been forced and I have to make a choice. One I don’t relish, and never wished for, and I don’t think I deserve. Nevertheless, it has to be done.
To look at me, sitting here, you wouldn’t know what was going on inside, the churn of my stomach that disturbs the butterflies. You’d think I was completely composed, or dead. Not decomposed. Although there have been moments when I’ve felt rotten to the core and wished I could escape my own mind. One that is riddled with hate, such terrible anger that bubbles inside, telling me to do things I never would’ve considered before. Like the thing I’m about to do.
Calm returns, and I tell myself there’s no rush and I obey because once I push back this duvet, place my feet on the carpet, it will start. No going back.
I can’t allow my resolve to weaken, but I can delay the inevitable. So, I’ll listen to the birds beyond the window, and hold on to the last moments of ‘before’.
One more hour. One more chance to think it through, so it’s all straight in my head. Then it will be ‘after’. This is the part that makes my tummy flutter the most and makes my chest contract because ‘after’ means stepping into the unknown.
What I will do, how and when I will do it I am sure of. And I hope that when it’s done, my actions will be deemed justified, for the greater good. Or at the very least, I’ll have spared my family more heartache than is necessary.
So, until I hear the hum of the milkman’s float, the clink of bottles and the creak of the gate, here I will stay. Go over it all. Everything that led to today.
I need to walk it through in my mind, just one more time.
BEFORE
MARCH 2020
GINA
Gina sat in silence,pretending to watch the television when in truth she was forcing herself not to look at Jimmy, her husband. He was slumped in the armchair opposite no doubt trying to take in the ramifications of the prime minister’s landmark speech.
It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen it coming. The press were always one step ahead of the public thanks to leaked memos and inside contacts hence Sky News had been pre-empting something big for the past twenty-four hours.
