‘Did I tidy the hallway this morning?’ I gabbled. ‘I don’t think I’ve vacuumed it since the weekend.’
‘Who cares?’ Nicky hissed back. ‘We don’t give a crap what she thinks, remember?’
Only we did. We gave more craps about this than our hearts could bear to admit. Even so, shoulders back, hair in place, I strode down my only slightly messy hallway and opened the door as deliberately casual, couldn’t-care-less as I could manage.
‘Mum.’ The shock was still like a mallet slamming into my midriff.
‘Libby! Oh my! Oh, look at you, darling! I’ve been looking forward to this moment for 3,872 miles!’ Mum stepped forwards, arms automatically reaching out to hug me. I hurriedly stepped back, leaving them grasping at empty air, which was how she’d left me five years ago.
‘Before you come in,’ Nicky barked, springing in front of me, ‘we need to say something.’
Mum’s jaw dropped open. She blinked at us a couple of times. She wore a yellow T-shirt displaying the Invisible Women support group logo with cotton shorts and well-worn trainers. Mum’s hair, dark like mine with a few strands of grey when she’d left, was now mostly silver. She looked physically older, naturally. But her posture, the light dancing in her eyes and bounce in her step were completely new.
‘Of course,’ she said, with an apprehensive smile. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Right. Firstly, while you were off finding fancy-free Helen, I turned thirty-one. I’ve been “going ahead” without your permission for a very long time. Secondly, Libby’s kids will be home in half an hour. You will be gone by the time they get here.’ She didn’t mention that Dad would be with them. ‘Thirdly, none of this is okay. If you thought this would be some joyous reunion, then you’re even more selfish than this whole farce has proven already.’
Mum’s smile vanished. ‘I did wonder if it might be like this.’
‘Fourthly,’ Nicky said, her entire face covered in angry blotches, ‘you’d better find a seat in the garden because you havefive years and two months of explaining to do, and Libby doesn’t want you in her house yet.’
Five horrendously awkward minutes later, we were perched on two benches like emissaries from rival armies trying to broker a peace deal. I was so grateful in that moment for Toby and the time he’d taken to cut the grass and tidy up the borders. I’d hastily filled a jug with iced water because if I’d put the kettle on, Nicky would have yelled at me, and we were all in need of cooling down.
‘You did get the last few postcards?’ Mum asked, with horribly fake brightness. ‘I wanted to keep you updated.’
‘Yes. Did you get ours?’ Nicky asked, her tone even jollier.
There was a moment of confusion before Mum cottoned on to the sarcasm. ‘I loved seeing all the Facebook updates. That was a very thoughtful gesture.’
‘In 2020, you went four months without any contact,’ I said, the first time I’d properly spoken. ‘The world had turned upside down, and after you finished the cruise we had no idea what was going on.’
‘You knew I was in Spain,’ Mum said. ‘Literally nothing was going on. I had no news to tell.’
‘And you didn’t think to phone, or message? You didn’t wonder whether we had any news?’
‘We thought you might have died of Covid in some backwater hospital,’ Nicky said, her flat tone the biggest clue that she was hiding a tornado of emotions. ‘We sort of hoped you had. It felt easier than you simply not giving a crap.’
Mum jerked back in astonishment. ‘How could you think I didn’t care? I’m your mother. I thought about you all the time. And you knew why I had to go…’
‘Why didn’t you ever comment on our posts?’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘You never phoned on Isla’s or Finn’s birthdays, letalone sent a present. You barely acknowledged that they even existed.’
‘Plenty of parents move abroad when their children are adults.’ Mum was starting to bristle. ‘I spent twenty-seven years pouring out every last ounce of strength, love and energy into fifty-three children?—’
‘But notyourchildren!’ Nicky cried in exasperation, her blank façade disintegrating. ‘Then you abandoned us. And Dad. You didn’t even have the guts to properly separate, just left him dangling. What did he do to deserve that?’
‘I hardly abandoned you.’ Mum looked askance. ‘You were settled and sorted with jobs, your own families… Adults with your own lives. You surely can’t begrudge me some time to recover mine. I had a breakdown. I needed to recover. And I’m not going to discuss your father, who I’m sure has more than made up for me spending some time away.’
‘When you left, we might have been sorted,’ I snapped, incredulous that she was arguing about this rather than expressing how sorry she was. ‘What about two months later when Brayden walked out on me and our two tiny children to shack up with another woman? You don’t think I could have done with my mum at least sending me a sympathetic text then?’
‘Oh, darling! Brayden left you? You never posted about that.’ Mum pressed a hand against her cheek in shock.
‘On a public Facebook page? Of course she didn’t!’ Nicky sprang up and started striding up and down the patch of lawn, waving her arms about. ‘We also didn’t post about my cancer scare, or the four miscarriages, the last one of which has left me with zero hope of ever becoming pregnant. We didn’t share that I’m a partner in a GP practice, or that Libby is living with an eighteen-year-old lad and his daughter. That Isla has anxiety attacks, and her brother likes smacking people over the head with random objects. Or how Libby has been lost –lost– hidingaway in this decrepit cottage for years now, and I’ve been too busy hiding from my own problems to help her. We needed you! Not to look after us or even babysit your grandkids if you’ve really had enough of children, but, I don’t know, just to share some of your amazing advice, or listen to our problems, say you’re proud of us or… give us a damn hug!’
All three of us were crying now. There was only one time in Franklin history when that had happened before, which inevitably prompted my next statement.
‘Don’t pretend we’re being mardy about you needing some time away. Five years without being able to call you is beyond bonkers. It’s downright cruel. And the only explanation is that you’d been waiting since I was sixteen to punish me for sabotaging the future you really wanted. A five-year sentence. Which is fine. If you had the decency to admit it. But what’s totally not fine is that you punished Dad and Nicky, too.’
There was a stunned silence. Nicky came and sat beside me again.
