Читать книгу Cathy Kelly 6-Book Collection: Someone Like You, What She Wants, Just Between Us, Best of Friends, Always and Forever, Past Secrets - Cathy Kelly - Страница 37

As she listened to the six o’clock news on the kitchen radio, Emma cut the steaming chicken breast into small pieces and then ladled a large spoon of mashed potato on to the plate. She’d made some gravy for her father’s dinner but knew it would be a mistake to give any to her mother. Gravy went the same way as things like baked beans or dark pasta sauces: all over either Emma or the floor. It was an inexplicable fact that the only occasions Anne-Marie became upset at meal times were when she was eating something with the capability to stain. With pale foods, she fed herself quietly with the plastic fork or meekly let herself be fed. With bolognaise sauce, she became agitated and hurled her fork across the room, splattering the furniture and walls till the place resembled a bit of modern art. It was like feeding a child, Emma had thought on many occasions. An adult-sized child who could be surprisingly strong.

‘Mum,’ she called now, putting the plate on the kitchen table along with a cup of lukewarm tea. ‘Mum, dinner is ready.’

When her mother didn’t appear, she went looking. Anne-Marie was in the dining room vigorously attempting to open the patio doors. It was her favourite occupation after pacing around the house restlessly and only the fact that the doors were permanently locked with the key carefully hidden meant she couldn’t escape. Three months ago, when she’d disappeared one night and had been – mercifully – discovered by the next-door neighbours standing crying in their front garden, Emma had insisted that all the doors and windows remained locked.

Jimmy, shattered by his wife’s sudden disappearance from their bed at three in the morning, had nodded mutely. The house was now a mini-Colditz. Anne-Marie had proved herself to be remarkably resourceful at climbing out of wide-open windows. Complicated window locks that allowed windows to be opened no more than a fraction were the only option. Child-proof fasteners on the cupboards and drawers were another innovation, along with a plastic cover for the front of the video after she broke the previous one by sticking a tape in backwards which jammed the mechanism. It would be awful during the hot months of the summer, Emma knew, when they’d long to throw open all the windows. But Emma wondered what would have happened by then. Would her mother still be living at home? She was deteriorating so fast, Emma was sure her father wouldn’t be able to cope for much longer. Not that he was coping that well now.

Today, a cool Friday evening in March, Anne-Marie was in a calm mood and patted Emma’s arm gently as she was led into the kitchen for her dinner. Emma put sugar in the tea, then sat down beside her mother to see whether she needed help or not. Or not was this evening’s answer. Attacking her meal hungrily, Anne-Marie stared into space as she chewed. Her once-pretty face was now devoid of expression a lot of the time, except when she was unaccountably afraid. Those times, her big eyes were wide with some unspoken fear. Fear was one of the few emotions left to her these days. Today, her face was a blank canvas, her eyes glazed over and the muscles slack as she chewed slowly with her mouth open. Emma had never realized how much a person’s face relied upon emotions until her mother had become ill. She’d assumed your face was your face, sometimes lit up with thoughtfulness or happiness, always marked with some sort of expression even when you were mentally miles away.

But watching a woman succumbing to the horrible grip of Alzheimer’s made it clear to her: the brain was everything. When that was slowly being eaten away by the ruthless progression of the illness, the face became just another body part. All the humour or intelligence seemed to have faded away. Anne-Marie didn’t talk much any more; except for murmured ramblings or the occasional angry moments when she threw things and then cried pitifully for Jimmy.

She still said people’s names out loud and she recognized them – Emma, Kirsten, Jimmy, and Pete especially for some reason. But putting the right name to the face was often beyond her. She called Emma ‘Kirsten’ most of the time, which Emma no longer minded. She was thinking ahead to the time when her mother wouldn’t recognize her and wouldn’t be able to call her anything.

‘She’ll know you’re important to her but she won’t actually know who you are any more,’ the kind Alzheimer specialist had explained to them all on the sobering day three months previously when he’d made his diagnosis.

Of all of them, Jimmy had been the most shocked by those words. Emma had long since read every book about progressive dementias that she could lay her hands on. She knew all the painful details, from the slow, gradual loss of faculties to the final indignities of incontinence, and liquid meals if, as sometimes happened, the patient stopped being able to swallow. With her usual forbearance, she’d forced herself to read every horrible detail.

Kirsten refused to look at any of the books her sister bought, while Jimmy had resolutely insisted that there was nothing wrong that couldn’t be cured.

An operation, he said gruffly, that’s what was needed.

He’d built a lovely conservatory for this doctor once and the man knew all about brain surgery. That was it.

They trekked to see a neurological specialist who had looked candidly at Emma across the room and kindly tried to explain to Jimmy O’Brien that it was unlikely that any surgery could help his wife. He could probably have explained what was wrong with her but, instead, recommended them to the gentle, helpful Alzheimer expert who’d managed to impart his dreadful news as compassionately as he knew how.

Only an autopsy would confirm his suspicions, he explained, because of the nature of dementias. But he was pretty certain Anne-Marie O’Brien had Alzheimer’s. She would eventually need twenty-four-hour nursing care.

Jimmy had looked as if he might cry for the first time in his life. His big shoulders were slumped in defeat, he wasn’t the booming, hearty Father Christmas any more, but a broken shell of a man. Kirsten looked out of the consulting room window, her face impenetrable. Only Emma had talked to the specialist, discussing what they should do for the present, what sort of treatment, if any, Anne-Marie would benefit from, and what nursing homes he could recommend. Jimmy and Kirsten went outside: Jimmy to sit with his wife, who’d been outraged to be left with the specialist’s nurse while the rest of them went in for a chat; Kirsten for a forbidden cigarette.

It was easier to talk frankly without them in the room.

‘My father has trouble dealing with this,’ Emma said.

‘It’s hard for everyone. I can’t think of many people who would find it easy,’ the specialist replied. ‘The difficulty is that you will be the person coping until the others come to terms with your mother’s illness. Your sister also has trouble with it…?’ he probed gently.

Emma nodded. Now was not the time to get into Kirsten’s blinkered view of life. Like the naughty toddlers who thought that if they covered their eyes and couldn’t see you, you could no longer see them, Kirsten believed that nothing could hurt her unless she actually looked it straight in the eye.

‘In practical terms,’ Emma began, getting out a notebook to record exactly what he said, ‘where do we go from here? How long is my mother likely to continue the way she is now?’

At the time, she was often agitated and, while talkative, couldn’t remember conversations or incidents or even meals. Minutes after having lunch, she’d angrily complain that she was being starved and wanted something to eat.

The specialist explained that it was impossible to work that out. The illness progressed at different speeds. Some people stayed at one level for ages; others, like Anne-Marie, became worse with dizzying speed.

He pointed out that Alzheimer’s worked along a step system: a person could be on one level for a while, then drop to the next step, never to go back up. The descent was irreversible.

Drugs could help in the early stages but, ultimately, the progression continued. Because Anne-Marie was a young patient, she could live many years with the illness. Moreover, as she was energetic and had a tendency to move around a lot, caring for her could ultimately be harder than for an older, less mobile person. She would need a secure, specialized unit which would inevitably be expensive. If she became more agitated than she was now, he would advise admitting her to the psychiatric hospital to try and help her with drug therapy which would at least help her to sleep.

‘Some people wear themselves out walking constantly; others want to eat all the time because they forget they’ve been fed, and then they put on huge amounts of weight. Every patient is different, each one is unique. But,’ he leaned forward in his chair, ‘the patient isn’t the only patient, if you understand what I mean. The whole family is affected by Alzheimer’s. The family needs to be looked after and often that’s where the biggest problems occur. The principal carer has a lot to put up with. Will you be the principal carer?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I have a job and, up till now, my father was trying to work from home on the phone. I’d drop in every evening to see how things were going. But the past month, he’s had to take time off because my mother wouldn’t let him leave in the morning.’

The specialist nodded. ‘She’s afraid. Think about it: she looks at her house and she doesn’t always recognize it. She knows she’s alone but she has no concept of for how long or when someone she knows is coming back. It’s terrifying. She needs someone with her all the time, I’m afraid.’

It had been a long hard road since they’d been given the diagnosis. A combination of family and friends had chipped in to help look after Anne-Marie. Emma spent most Saturdays with her mother and dropped in three times a week in the evenings, cooking and cleaning. Her father now worked part-time, leaving the bulk of the work to his second-in-command, while two neighbours sat with Anne-Marie for a couple of mornings each week, to give Jimmy time to work.

Kirsten turned up on Sundays to help, but was no good during the week as she said she was worn out with her new job as a dentist’s receptionist. Even awful Aunt Petra rolled up on Friday mornings to sit in the house, although Emma wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not, as Aunt Petra had a bad hip and osteoporosis and was likely to break something going up and downstairs after the constantly moving Anne-Marie.

What they really needed was some qualified help, Emma felt. Her mother was no longer sleeping well and was reaching the point where she needed more specialized care than a well-meaning band of friends and family doing their best.

But Jimmy wouldn’t hear of it; it was as if he’d managed to convince himself that nothing too awful could really be happening if they didn’t have specialist care for his wife. Having family and friends around meant things were all right, weren’t they? Once there was a care worker or nurse in the house, then he would have to give in and admit that there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

Stubborn as usual, he and Emma had had several rows about this.

‘We’re not having any nurse,’ he’d said angrily. ‘There’s no need. I can look after your mother myself.’

But you’re not looking after her yourself, Emma wanted to say. You’ve already got help and you need more. Hating herself for not saying it, she left. Over eight months of therapy had taught her that when she found herself unable to say what she wanted to, it was wiser to simply leave. That way her father would know she was angry and didn’t agree with him, even if she wasn’t strong enough to say so to his face.

As a stand, it wasn’t emphatic enough but it was something. She poured her mother some more tea, making sure the cup was out of her reach until enough milk had been added to make it suitably lukewarm.

Anne-Marie took it and drank it straight down, spilling a little down the front of the pink pleated blouse she’d adored when she bought it in a sale in Ashley Reeves years before.

‘Twenty pounds down from fifty!’ Anne-Marie had crowed delightedly that day, waving the pretty blouse with the mother-of-pearl buttons. ‘It’ll go beautifully with my grey skirt.’

Emma wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye at the memory of those days and sighed. Heartache and tiredness fought for supremacy. Exhaustion won. It was the second outfit her mother had spilled food on that day. More clothes to wash.

Emma had been bringing her parents’ clothes home to wash them herself because Jimmy really wasn’t much good with the washing machine. The amounts were getting bigger all the time and Emma was struggling desperately to keep up. Anne-Marie had been so conscious of how she looked; always immaculate and beautifully dressed and made up. Emma was determined to make sure she stayed that way, no matter what.

She wondered briefly whether a nurse would apply Anne-Marie’s beloved make-up every day the way she tried to. Probably not. Make-up would be far down the list and yet it was strangely important.

They desperately needed a nurse, someone qualified to step in some of the time. It was expensive, Emma knew, but her father wasn’t a poor man. He could afford to pay for some nursing care. Except that lack of funds wasn’t behind his stubborn resistance to the idea.

‘Anyone home?’ called Kirsten’s voice from the hall. ‘It’s me.’

‘We’re in the kitchen.’

Kirsten ambled into the kitchen, threw her jacket on a chair and slumped down beside Emma, not going near their mother to greet or kiss her.

The months she’d been parted from Patrick had certainly changed her: she’d lost that expensive sheen that came from having a husband well off enough to provide endless hair and beauty treatments as well as ensuring that she didn’t have to work.

Now her job as a dental receptionist meant she no longer had the money to have her hair constantly cut and coloured, and the twice-weekly manicures were a thing of the past. Her hair was longer, honey-streaked with darkening roots, and her make-up was patchy after a long day at work and no time to run to the loo every five minutes and primp. Only her flamboyant leopard-skin handbag and large engagement ring were signs of the old Kirsten.

Patrick was fighting tooth and buffed nail to keep his fortune from Kirsten’s grasp, but he hadn’t asked for the ring back.

‘What’s up, Sis?’ she asked. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any tea going? I could murder a cup.’

‘In the pot,’ Emma said. ‘Say hello to Mum.’

‘Hi, Mum,’ Kirsten said without any real feeling. She dragged herself to her feet with the weary air of a post-twenty-six miles marathon runner and investigated the teapot. ‘This is cold,’ she announced. ‘I’ll make more.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Emma asked, irritated by her sister’s lack of interest in their mother.

‘At a loose end. Thought I’d drop in and see what you were up to tonight. Maybe you’d fancy a movie or something.’

Emma suppressed the desire to snap that if Kirsten had time to spare, she could have used it in looking after their mother more often. That wasn’t fair. They had to have a life beyond caring for her. And Kirsten was lonely since the break-up of her marriage.

She no longer had the money to run with her old crowd. Popping off to New York for a spot of shopping or Meribel for skiing wasn’t an option any more, nor was running up huge bills in ritzy restaurants. Too embarrassed to drift back to the friends she’d known before she got caught up with the rich, trendy crowd, Kirsten appeared to live a rather solitary life and had taken to dropping in on Emma and Pete a lot, bringing the newest video release and giant tubs of Pringles.

‘We’ve nothing planned,’ Emma said. ‘Pete’s working late and we were going to have a takeaway. Why don’t you join us?’

‘Yeah,’ Kirsten said, ‘maybe I will.’

When her mother had finished eating, Emma escorted her upstairs for the difficult ceremony of changing her blouse. Anne-Marie coped with being fed quite well most of the time and didn’t seem to mind having her teeth brushed, although she swallowed more toothpaste than she spat out. But having her clothes changed was like a red matador to a bull. As soon as one button was undone, she began to rage at Emma, pulling her arm away and squealing as if she was being hurt.

‘Jimmy,’ she roared plaintively. ‘Make her stop!’

‘Mum,’ Emma said as calmly as she could while dodging blows, ‘we’re just changing your blouse. You know you hate wearing anything dirty…’

‘Jimmy,’ roared her mother louder.

Where was bloody Kirsten when you needed her, Emma fumed.

‘Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy…’

The front door slammed and heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs.

‘What are you doing with her?’ screeched Jimmy O’Brien, appearing at the door, his face like thunder.

Anne-Marie, hearing more yelling, began to scream even louder.

‘Jimmy, Jimmy! Help me!’

‘I’m here!’ he yelled back, trying to hug his wife. But she, upset now, dragged herself away from him.

‘What have you done to her?’ he accused Emma.

Tired after the long morning and afternoon looking after her mother, Emma just sank back on to the bed. ‘Nothing,’ she said dully. ‘Trying to change her blouse because she got dinner on it.’

‘That bloody blouse doesn’t matter,’ Jimmy yelled.

Something in Emma snapped. She’d taken a half-day from the office so her father could have an entire day to work. She was tired after working until nine the day before on paperwork she wouldn’t have time to do today. And it had been an exhausting afternoon with her mother successfully emptying a bottle of toilet cleaner all over the landing, which had taken ages to clean up.

Those bottles were not childproof, no matter what they said on the label.

Now she stared at her father, feeling the white heat of fury racing through her veins. ‘The blouse is very important,’ she said, her voice low and calm so it wouldn’t upset her mother any further. ‘Mum likes to look nice. It’s always been very important to her. The problem is that I am not trained in changing the clothes of somebody like Mum. Only a trained carer would be able to do it without upsetting her, as you know.’

Jimmy started to interrupt. ‘Listen to me – ’

But Emma couldn’t. She got up and left the room to her father’s outraged demands that she get back there immediately, young lady.

She found Kirsten eavesdropping at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Way to go, Sis. I take it we’re leaving?’

Emma nodded grimly. She couldn’t allow herself to speak.

Arriving home, she got out of the car and waited for Kirsten, a throbbing headache growing behind her eyes. She wanted to scream and yell at herself for being such a coward, for not telling her bloody father exactly what he could do with his nastiness, bad manners and total lack of appreciation for all she did. She’d had the chance to say all those things and she’d certainly been angry enough but, yet again, she’d failed. Impotence was her middle name. Along with weak-willed, stupid and plain old pathetic. Elinor would not be impressed.

‘You look miserable,’ Kirsten said when she slid elegantly out from behind the steering wheel of her car, bearing the inevitable Pringles and a giant bar of Tob-lerone. ‘I hope it’s not because you’re planning to phone Dad up and apologize for walking out on him in mid-flow. He hates to lose the audience when he’s warming up for the big fight. You are a bad girl.’

Her sister grinned weakly. Kirsten always managed to defuse things with her blithe unconcerned manner.

‘The only thing I’m planning to do tonight is watch whatever terrible movie you get out of the video shop and stuff my face with pizza.’

Pete took one look at Emma’s taut little face when he got home and said they were all going out to dinner.

‘To hell with the budget,’ he said, hugging Emma. ‘You need cheering up and I don’t need you to tell me why.’

They went to a small Italian restaurant and gorged on home-made pasta and wonderful ripe red wine, finishing up with complimentary glasses of grappa because Kirsten had smiled so beguilingly at the owner that he had to pull up a chair and talk to them, making cow eyes at Kirsten.

It was when Emma was weaving her way tipsily back to the table after a trip to the ladies’ that she overheard Kirsten and Pete deep in heated conversation as they waited for the bill.

‘I’d like to smash his bloody face in, you know,’ Pete was saying, unusual venom in his kind voice. ‘When I think of the amount of time she spends with your mother, looking after her, doing bloody everything…For Emma’s sake, I never say anything because I think she can do without another bossy bastard in her life, but one day I’m going to tell your father exactly what I think of him!’

‘Don’t hold yourself back on my account,’ Kirsten said lightly. ‘He’s not on my list for the Nobel Peace Prize either and he adores me. Emma’s problem is that she’s got to confront him herself. I don’t know why she hasn’t done it years ago.’

Despite the insulation of wine and grappa, Emma felt miserable again. It was no good bolstering herself with alcohol to hide how she was feeling. She was kidding herself. Only confronting her father would help. But there were so many terrible things happening to him right now that it would be cruel to fight with him. It wasn’t his fault that she hadn’t had the courage to stop him browbeating her years ago. She couldn’t kick him when he was down.

‘Will I stay in the bathroom longer to give you pair more time to talk about me?’ she enquired, walking to the table and dropping a kiss on Pete’s bald head.

‘Sorry, love, we were only talking about your damned father,’ Pete said guiltily. ‘I know you don’t want me to interfere, but I’d prefer to say something to him. It’s not right the way he treats you and I can’t stand it any longer. You’re like some indentured servant to him and it’s about time somebody stood up to him and said so.’

‘Oh, Pete.’ Emma sighed. ‘Poor Dad has so much to cope with right now, with Mum being ill. We can’t say anything. Let me handle it, please?’

Kirsten and Pete shrugged in unison.

The next day, Emma drove reluctantly to her parents’ house. It was a glorious sunny morning with not a cloud in the sky. Just the sort of day when she and Pete liked to laze around in the garden, enjoying the sun and getting lost in the weekend supplements, reading bits out to each other and cooking lazy food like scrambled eggs. Or perhaps visiting the garden centre to see what new plants they could buy and kill. Neither of them were very good gardeners; their handkerchief-sized plot of lawn was patchy, to say the least, and the petunias which the garden-centre assistant had sworn blind would flourish anywhere, were all depressed and stunted. Only the little purple flower that Emma suspected was a virulent weed was doing well. It already covered the rockery, surrounding her purple heathers, and was about to make a hostile takeover of the bulbs which were struggling to sprout above ground.

Instead, she had to spend three or four hours looking after her mother because her father had an appointment for lunch with an old pal. She felt guilty at how much she dreaded the day ahead of her.

How did nurses and care staff do it, she wondered miserably as she sat at a red traffic light with the windows rolled down, enjoying the last bit of fresh air she’d get for hours because there was no way Anne-Marie could be trusted with any window open. Surely it was an impossible job to care for people whose minds were slipping away and who veered between wild mood swings that could make you laugh or cry?

It was different when you weren’t related to the person, Emma supposed. It mustn’t hurt so much when an Alzheimer patient shouted angrily at you if they were just that: a patient, instead of the mother who had cared for you as a child.

Her father was waiting for her inside the hall door, his jacket on and the car keys in his hand. He looked agitated.

‘You’re late,’ was all he said, as he marched past her. ‘I haven’t made her any lunch. She’s having a bad day.’

This turned out to be an understatement. Emma found her mother locked in her bedroom surrounded by the contents of her wardrobe, Jimmy’s wardrobe and all their drawers. Socks, shirts, blouses, trousers, handkerchiefs lay in heaps around her. Anne-Marie, dressed only in a slip and tights, was making piles of things on the bed, carefully placing garments on top of each other in a perilous heap until they fell over and she started again.

Her long, once-cared for hair was tangled and unwashed, her face was make-up-less and she didn’t wear any of the jewellery she so loved. Not an earring or her wedding and engagement rings, which she’d never taken off. She wouldn’t have left her bedroom in the morning without making sure she was wearing at least her pearl studs and a necklace. And the only time Emma could remember seeing her mother with her hair that messy had been years ago when she’d been ill with a virulent flu.

Emma felt her eyes brim with tears.

Two hours and several tantrums later, Anne-Marie was dressed in a navy blue dress, with her pale hair gleaming and her make-up carefully applied. She admired herself in the hall mirror while Emma cooked some pasta for their lunch.

Whatever bad mood Anne-Marie had been in, she’d recovered. Now she sang to herself in a high voice, occasionally dancing into the kitchen to smile sweetly at her daughter. They had lunch and then retired to the sitting room where Emma switched on the TV. A black-and-white movie was just starting.

‘Mum, sit with me and we’ll watch this,’ Emma said, patting the cushions on the couch.

Her mother sat obediently beside her. Anne-Marie rarely looked at the television any more but she loved old films, particularly musicals. Now she curled up beside Emma and watched the beginning of Now, Voyager.

If anyone had seen them, they’d have thought it was a touching tableau of a mother and daughter watching a film together, Emma thought wistfully. In reality, it was different. Would she ever have her own daughter to sit and watch television with? Maybe not.

But why not? Emma sat up straighter on the couch. What was stopping her? She didn’t know if she was infertile or not. Until she found out for certain that she couldn’t have a baby, why mourn as if she couldn’t? Life was too precious to waste in an agony of not knowing. Anne-Marie began to sing her own tuneless song and Emma stroked her arm. If ever there was proof that life was too precious to waste, it was her mother. She should have had years left to enjoy her life; instead, she was locked in this terrible illness, her life as good as over.

Emma couldn’t waste the rest of her life. She wouldn’t. Fired up with sudden, glorious enthusiasm and feeling like St Paul on the road to Damascus, she was desperate to tell Pete.

It took him a while to answer the phone. ‘I fell asleep reading the papers,’ he admitted. ‘I was so tired.’

Emma smiled.

‘What’s up, Em?’ he asked, yawning. ‘Is your mum all right?’

‘Do you remember when we talked about having tests done to see why I wasn’t getting pregnant?’

‘Yes,’ said Pete hesitantly.

‘Do you still want to do it?’ Emma asked, her heart thumping.

‘Absolutely.’ He’d never sounded more sure of anything.

‘First thing on Monday morning, I’m going to the doctor,’ Emma announced. ‘I want a baby, Pete. I’ve been stupid putting this off for so long, but I didn’t think it was the right time with Mum so sick. It’s the right time now, though.’

‘Oh, Em, I love you, you daft thing,’ Pete said. ‘What made you decide now?’

‘Sitting here with Mum did it,’ she explained. ‘Her life is just slipping away, day by day, and here am I wasting mine because I can’t face the truth. If we can’t have a baby, we’ll adopt. Anything is better than doing nothing, which is what I’ve done for years. I’ve been so stupid.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Em,’ he said.

‘I’m not, but I have wasted time. You need to be on the adoption list for years before you get the go-ahead to adopt a baby from abroad; I’ve wasted too much time already.’

‘Let’s see if we can have our own baby, first. I’ve been reading about that IVF thing. There’s a twenty per cent success rate, mind you, so if it doesn’t work the first time, we’ll try, try and try again.’

‘It’s not cheap,’ Emma said.

‘If I have to sell my body to finance it, I will,’ joked Pete. ‘Seriously, love, we’ll manage. This is the most important thing in the world. We’ll borrow the money if we have to, I don’t care.’

‘You’re wonderful, do you know that?’ Emma said.

‘Ditto. Come home soon and we can practise getting my specimen in the paper cup!’

It was well after seven before Jimmy came home. Emma was exhausted and longed to go home to Pete so they could make plans. She was eager for it to be Monday morning so she could start on her quest to discover what was wrong with her. Whatever it was, she was sure they’d overcome it. She and Pete were going to be parents, that was definite.

Jimmy was in a foul mood. ‘Did you not make any dinner for me?’ he demanded as soon as he realized that there was nothing inviting waiting in the oven for him.

Emma stared at him. He was unbelievable.

‘No,’ she said coolly. ‘I didn’t make any dinner for you because I assumed you’d be home long before this.’

‘That’s marvellous. I reared you and you can’t even make me a bit of dinner. Listen to me, my girl…’

‘No,’ Emma said sharply. ‘You listen to me. I have been here all afternoon on my day off looking after Mum and the first thing you do when you get back is shout at me. It’s just not good enough.’

‘Don’t take that tone with me, young lady!’ Jimmy roared.

For once in her life, Emma didn’t quail. This was a day for firsts. She’d made a momentous decision to do something about a baby, now she needed another momentous event.

‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ she said, ice in every word. ‘Because if you do, I’m walking out that door and I’m not coming back, and then you’re going to find out exactly how much I do for you.’

‘Rubbish,’ he shouted at her.

‘When you have to look after Mum full-time without my back-up, when you have to clean this house for yourself and wash and iron your own clothes, perhaps then you’ll be sorry, Dad.’

‘Kirsten would do it in a flash,’ he snapped.

‘Kirsten wouldn’t be bothered,’ she replied witheringly. ‘She has her own life and she figured out how to say no to you years ago. I’ve only just learned.’

She picked up her handbag. ‘I won’t be back until you’ve apologized,’ she said.

Jimmy’s face lost some of its bluster. ‘What about your mother?’

‘We need to discuss nursing care, whether you like it or not.’

‘I don’t like it,’ growled her father, ‘and it’s my decision.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not your decision alone. It’s mine and Kirsten’s too. It’s getting to the point where we can’t look after Mum on our own. Either you get carers to come to the house, or she needs to go to a nursing home where she’ll get specialized care. And you can stop the bullying, Dad, it doesn’t work any more.’ She ignored her father’s furious mouthing. ‘And never talk to me like that again. I’m looking after Mum because I love her, not because of you.’

She drove home fast, pushing her foot to the floor in an attempt to get rid of the nervous energy she was experiencing.

She waited for the guilt to come, the overwhelming sense that she’d failed everyone who loved her by giving in to an appalling display of temper and ungratefulness. Nice girls didn’t fight with their fathers. But it didn’t happen; she didn’t feel any guilt, only a glorious sense of release.

She’d been seething with anger and resentment for all her life but had kept it to herself. Anger was bad, unfemi-nine, destined to make people hate you. Or so she’d thought.

Today, she’d discovered that wasn’t true at all. Pete, whom she loved, would be delighted with her for standing up to their father. Did it matter if her father was angry with her? He’d been angry with her since the day she was born, for no apparent reason. She’d given him a valid one, that was all. And he needed her more than she needed him. She didn’t need him at all. It was a heady feeling.

She found Pete making dinner and she ran to him, throwing her arms around him.

‘You haven’t changed your mind, have you?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Far from it,’ Emma said. ‘It’s been quite a day.’

The next day, they lazed late in bed.

‘It’s nice to have you to myself,’ Pete said, wrapping his body around hers.

‘I suppose I have been spending a lot of time with Mum,’ Emma sighed. ‘I hope she’s OK. It’s her I feel guilty about.’

‘Your father is the one responsible for all this,’ Pete said. ‘He’s abused you and the only way to teach him a lesson is to be tough. Tough love.’

‘He can’t cope and he can’t admit it,’ Emma said.

‘That’s his problem. You can’t take the troubles of the world on your shoulders, Emma. You’ve been at his beck and call since you were born. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad daughter just because you need your own life away from that bully.’

She snuggled against him, enjoying the feel of his body against hers.

‘It’s sad,’ she explained. ‘I’d have sympathy for anyone in Dad’s situation but I can’t reach him. Our relationship is so bad, I’ll never be able to do that.’

‘You look after your mother,’ Pete pointed out. ‘Making sure that she’s well taken care of is the most important thing. Don’t let him use that to manipulate you.’

‘I won’t.’

In the end, Kirsten got involved.

‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ Emma said a week later as they drove to the hotel where they were going to meet their father and the carers they were to interview for the position of looking after Anne-Marie.

‘He’s never off the phone to me,’ Kirsten complained. ‘He can’t use the washing machine, that was the first problem. He broke the Hoover yesterday and, as for the microwave, forget it. I told him I wasn’t his bloody slave and he could learn how to do it himself. And,’ she smirked, ‘I gave him a piece of my mind for being so nasty to you. Told him you’d been a far better daughter to him than I ever had and that he didn’t deserve to see you ever again.’

‘You didn’t!’ Emma was lost in admiration. ‘That was sweet of you.’

‘Well, if he’s got you to lean on, he won’t be on the phone to me all the time, so there was a certain personal motive behind my sweetness,’ she admitted.

Emma laughed. Kirsten never changed.

‘It’s been an awful week,’ Kirsten protested. ‘I had to get him off my back somehow. Still, it worked. He’s finally realized that he can’t look after Mum on his own, mainly because you did so much.’

Jimmy seemed to have diminished when they saw him standing in the hotel lobby. He looked smaller, thinner. Emma felt the old guilt that she shouldn’t have left him on his own to look after Anne-Marie.

Kirsten poked her in the ribs. ‘No getting all maudlin and apologetic,’ she warned. ‘Dad has to apologize to you, not the other way round. Mum’s illness doesn’t allow him to be an even worse bastard than he already is.’

Apologies weren’t Jimmy’s forte.

‘Hello, girls,’ he muttered. ‘I said I’d meet them in the bar. We should go in.’

‘Don’t you have something to say, Dad?’ Kirsten enquired.

He looked Emma in the eye for the first time. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘I wasn’t fair on you the other day.’

‘Apology accepted,’ she said formally. That was as good as it was ever going to get. Her father would never acknowledge that he had more than just the other day to apologize for. But it was her own fault for being such a victim. She’d let him walk all over her. Still, if they could get on well enough to look after Anne-Marie together, that was good enough.

‘Shall we go into the bar?’ she said brightly. She wanted to get this over with. Now that she felt she’d made a new start with her father, she was dying to tell Kirsten her news: that she and Pete were on the baby trail and nothing was going to stop them having one. Nothing.

The results were unexpected. There was nothing wrong with either of them. Pete’s sperm count was excellent and Emma had no blockages, scarring or obvious reasons why she’d never conceived.

‘There is absolutely no reason why you can’t have a baby,’ the specialist said. ‘We call it unexplained infertility.’

It sounded so inconclusive, so unconvincing. Emma found it incredible that in a world of modern science where everything was transplantable and where mice could grow human ears on their backs, infertility like hers could be inexplicable. But unexplained infertility left her with that most precious commodity: hope.

‘Some people in your position wait and hope, but as you’ve waited and hoped for quite a while, you could try the IVF option,’ the specialist said encouragingly.

Outside the clinic, Pete had held her hand so tightly that it hurt. She could see him biting his lip and knew he was afraid to even look at her, afraid that she’d go to pieces. Yet for some unaccountable reason, she didn’t feel upset: she felt relieved. As if a millstone had been cut from the rope where it hung around her neck. Her inability to have a baby was inexplicable, not something she’d done, not some flaw within her traitorous body, not a problem that couldn’t be fixed. The cleverest minds had told her so. The fear and dread of the result was out of her hands.

After years of being scared to discover the truth, she now knew it. And it was cathartic, like a balm to her soul. Because unexplained infertility meant hope.

‘Pete…’ She swung around to face him, stroking his tense face, feeling the soft skin where he’d shaved a few hours before. ‘I’m not upset, love, really I’m not.’

He didn’t believe her; she could see that. His normally open, smiling face was racked with grief for both of them. But Pete hadn’t read every book and magazine article on infertility the way Emma had. He assumed that this result was the worst thing, but it wasn’t.

‘Don’t you see, Pete, we can start again,’ she pleaded. ‘We’ve been messing around for so long, wondering what was wrong, afraid to talk about it and afraid to talk about the future. But now,’ she smiled a smile of genuine pleasure, ‘they can’t find anything wrong. That’s what unexplained infertility means. I don’t have anything they can see. That may mean I can never have a baby or it may mean I can. Let’s try IVF. We’ve as good a chance as anyone else has.

They’ve got a twenty per cent success rate, as you told me. I don’t mind gambling if you don’t.’

For a moment, Pete stared at her, then his face cracked into a beaming smile. Picking her up, he whirled her around, kissing her fervently and yelling, ‘I love you,’ at the top of his voice.

Clinging to him, Emma threw back her head and whooped, not caring that passers-by were looking at the happy couple who looked as if they were re-enacting a movie scene about young lovers.

‘Where do we go?’ demanded Pete. ‘Let’s do it now, right this minute, immediately!’