‘I was getting an apple and I saw her with the medicine bottle. She had her back to me and was measuring it out into the small plastic spoon, then tipping it into a plate of casserole. Then she stirred it in. I remember being puzzled because whenever I’d had medicine, she’d just given it to me straight from the spoon. I must have made a noise because she swung around and I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was panicked, then she became angry, really angry. I asked her what she was doing and she just looked at me with the apple in my hand and told me to put it back – it was dinner time and I shouldn’t just help myself without asking.’
Ellie took all this in. ‘Did she still give me the food?’
‘Yes. Well, I assumed so. Later, when she said goodnight to me in my room, she told me it was a special medicine. Just for you. I said I thought it was the normal one, you know, the one I’d have too if I got a temperature or something, but she said I’d been mistaken. It was something the doctor had prescribed just for you and you wouldn’t like the taste so she put it in your food. And I wasn’t to tell you or you wouldn’t eat your dinner and then you wouldn’t get better.’
‘Did you believe her?’
‘I had to. What else could I have thought? I was a child myself.’
‘But this was years ago. Maybe you didn’t understand – you were young. Maybe itwassomething the doctors prescribed,’ said Ellie.
Abby shook her head, took a deep breath. ‘I heard something on the radio back in the spring. About mothers harming their children. It reminded me of what I’d seen all that time ago. And I started to think about it. I called Mum, confronted her. She tried to deny it of course. Said you were sick and needed the paracetamol. It was pretty clear she was lying – she got so flustered, and it just didn’t add up. And there was your constant sickness, the diarrhoea, your confusion, your yellowed skin. I kept on at her and so then she tried to play it down. Said it hadn’t happened that often. Sometimes she would give you enough medicine to keep you off school, but she was careful not to make it too much. She said she didn’t want you to have any long-term damage.’
It was almost too much to hear. ‘What?’ Ellie asked, anguished.
‘She was worried about liver damage,’ said Abby. ‘I know, I know, it seems nuts. So Mum would make you ill, then she’d reduce the dose a few days before you saw the doctors so they couldn’t trace it. I checked it out online. Seems if any overdose is staggered over a long period, paracetamol tests are impossible to interpret and they can be normal.’ Abby sighed. ‘Mum insisted I never say anything to you. I thought you had a right to know and she should tell you herself. She rang me a few days before your trip out here, pleaded with me again not to say anything.’
Ellie was silent as she took it all in. A lump was stuck in her throat and it was a while before she could talk.
‘I was ill for another two years. Until I was eight. Is that how long she was giving it to me?’ She was suddenly flooded with memories and didn’t see Abby glance away awkwardly.
‘God, the sickness,’ continued Ellie. ‘That’s what I hated the most. The nausea. I would dread it. And the missing out. I always felt like I’d just be watching everyone else have fun, feeling like the outsider.’ Her voice cracked. ‘The only thing that made it remotely bearable was having Mum. The way she looked after me. I felt like she loved me so much.’
‘She did. You know that you were her favourite.’
Ellie scoffed. ‘Funny way of showing it.’
‘She doted on you. Trust me, I remember. It was always about you.’ Abby paused. ‘I know it’s hard to understand but I think she needed you. Couldn’t stand it when you started school and left her alone.’
‘All kids leave their mothers when they start school!’
‘I know but...Dad had also left her. And her parents. I asked Grandma once why Mum never came on the visits with us. She said Mum had betrayed them and it wasn’t something she could forgive. Did they ever speak to her again after she ran off with Dad?’
Ellie shrugged but she didn’t think so. She wanted to know for certain, wanted to ask questions that would take away some of the shock. She wanted to ask her mother. Ellie was suddenly overwhelmed with a crushing sense of abandonment as she realized she’d never know the whole truth.
My mum hurt me.The thought kept on going round and round in her mind. And yet the loss was almost unbearable; Ellie couldn’t reconcile the two different people in her head: the one who’d deliberately made her ill with the one who’d been so supportive, who’d encouraged her when she was low – right on into adulthood, even as Abby was racing ahead in life. Her mother – that beautiful, wonderful woman who’d been by her side her whole life – was dead, and it was her fault.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Abby.
‘What for?’
‘If I’d said something, told a teacher or something...’
Ellie stiffened. As much as she wanted to lay some of the blame at Abby’s feet, she couldn’t really. She had to remember that Abby had been a child too.
‘You were only nine. You couldn’t have understood.’
‘I was then,’ said Abby quietly.
Ellie looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I saw her again.’
A deep, sickening feeling was nestling in Ellie’s stomach. ‘When?’
‘Two years later. When I’d just started secondary school. When you were eight.’
Ellie’s mouth dropped open. ‘You what?’
