Page 84 of Am I Allergic to Men?
‘Do I look awful?’
‘Yes. Not as bad as when that bus hit you, mind…’ Her hand reaches to my mine. I remember this hand. ‘You have more lives than a cat, Lucy Callaghan…’
‘Where is my cat by the way?’
‘In my house. Her new favourite thing is to sleep on the toilet and then attack anyone who goes near it. I had to pee in a shower tray the other day.’
I try and laugh but even that hurts.
‘What’s my cat’s name? I don’t remember.’
She looks mildly perturbed. ‘Your cat is called Pussy.’
‘Oh yeah, I knew that. I just wanted to hear you say that word out loud.’
She laughs and shakes her head at me. I take a few deep breaths as the pain in my head starts to throb. I want to say it’s bad but I can liken it to a couple of insane hangovers I’ve once had.
‘Can I get someone now?’
I shake my head. ‘I quite like having you to myself. That rarely happens.’
She perches herself on the edge of the bed. ‘Are you in pain?’
‘Pain is relative. It was far more painful living without my memory for a bit. You replacing all my knickers. Or sharing a bathroom with four sisters again.’
‘I forgot how much shower gel you get through. Can I at least tell your sisters you’re up?’
‘Wait, just a few more moments.’
She studies the edges of my face, hands gripped around the steel railings of my bed. When I was in my first coma, Mum would spend weekends here camping out in the Premier Inn next door. Dad said she’d hardly slept, she’d just wander here in the night and read to me. My Lucy loved reading, she told the nurses, so she’d sift through the classics and read them to me, stopping occasionally for vending machine tea. We all have different versions of Mum in our head, she’s our fiercest critic and our loudest cheerleader, but I suppose we all love so hard because of her.
‘I guess you know why I was in a doctor’s office then,’ I ask her.
‘Your sisters did say. They tried to cover it up but I got the truth out of them. If you needed the money, you could have come to me or your father, Emma?’
‘It was more than that, Mum. I just wanted to put something out into the world that had meaning. It can’t always be about me even though I’d like it to be.’
She smiles. I was expecting more of a bollocking there but she seems to be holding back. It’ll possibly come later as not even she is so callous to give it to me both barrels when I’m in a paper dress.
‘Tell me what you remember,’ she says.
‘God, everything. It’s like a librarian has been in and helped me restock my brain but fuzzy memories of who I’ve seen and who showed up in the last few months.’
‘You saw Tony,’ Mum reminds me.
‘You have a thing for Tony.’
‘Because I think he’s one of the few men I’ve met who is your equal, Lucy, who understands your value. No one else really comes close.’ She puts a hand to my face, tears forming in her eyes.
‘You can cry if you want, Mum. I will allow for a public show of emotion here. I nearly died. Twice.’
‘But you didn’t,’ she replies a little smugly. ‘And I never really had any doubt.’
‘Because of your secret medical degree?’
‘Because you’re made of sterner stuff, Lucy.’
‘That’s all you.’
