I slump back in my seat. “And look at my screwed up life. This man you’re proud of, that you’ve watched over the last few years, is he happy?”
“You’ve come through that. You’re sober now.”
“I’m still fucked up.”Because of you.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could change what happened, but I can’t. Don’t let the past stop you’re happiness now. I’ve seen you have a new girl…Ruby?”
“Do you follow my life?” I interrupt. “You seem to know a lot.”
“Of course I do, and youlookedhappier recently. Are you happier?”
“I don’t want to talk about my life.”
“You’re right. This isn’t my business.” She inhales a shaky breath, and I see her energy fading in front of me. “I wish you’d brought your guitar though.”
“What?” I frown.
“I listen to some of your music. You wrote some beautiful songs. My talented son.”
This is too much. “Your son? By blood, yeah but not by love.”
Tears well in her eyes. “Don’t, please.”
“I didn’t come here to tell you I forgive everything because I don’t. I live with the scars.”
“I’m not expecting you to. I wanted to see you, that’s all. I missed you.”
Fuck.I stand. Am I shaking too? “Don’t. You don’t have the right. You made your choices.”
“And now you make yours, Jem. Make the right ones.”
The sun shines through the open curtains. A bright autumn day fills the room with a humid warmth that isn’t helping my dizzying pain. “I think I need to leave now.”
Mum sits forward and grips the chair arm with pale hands. She wants to stand and can’t. “Okay.”
The unrelenting ache grips and the words spill. “Mum, you left me. Not just once but again and again.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
I hesitate. She’ll leave me one final time, and I’ll never see her again. Every other time Mum left, I couldn’t understand why she didn’t say goodbye. Often she’d go when I was at school, and I’d come home to find a note and some money.
When people leave, they should hug you with the promise they’ll see you again. This is what she wants to do now, but there’s no promise of a next time.
“Bye, Mum.”
The decision is made in the moment, without thought, without rationalisation. How can I leave and not hug my Mum goodbye? I pull the chair closer, sit, and hesitantly place my arms around my mum. She’s all bones and I’m frightened of hurting her. Mum hugs me back, hard, but not as hard as I think she’d like. Her back shakes, face buried into my T-shirt, and I fight, fight, fight against the tsunami of pain engulfing me.
People say they love you. Then they leave you. Or they die. Sometimes both.
When I walk back to the car through the afternoon sun, away from the smell of the hospice cloying my senses, I clutch the emotions and drag them back inside. I’d forgotten how severe the pain that others cause can be, and how the need to obliterate this is what pushed me into a life of addiction.
I can’t go there again.
I won’t fall into loving another person who’ll leave.
I can’t fall any further into whatever is happening with Ruby.
Because when she leaves, the fallout will send me back to my old life and this time that will kill me.