1.
June, 1998
KATE
‘You look pale. You need to eat more.’
My tone is firm and disapproving but she shrugs and looks away as a familiar grip of despair clutches my stomach. She was always thin and small in stature, but every time I come here, she looks sicker and sicker, and I sleep less and less in return with worry.
‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she says, flicking back her wispy brown hair and avoiding my eye, playing with the fine gold chain around her neck. I’ve never known her without that chain, yet never took the time to ask why it was so special. Someday I’ll remember to. ‘It’s so hard to get used to the food in here but I’ll manage. You know what I’m like about my own cooking.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
I don’t believe her, so I pile up a mountain of crisps, fruit and a Snickers bar from my oversized straw bag.
‘Your favourite,’ I whisper.
‘It is. Thank you.’
She grips my hand and squeezes it so hard it hurts a little, but I haven’t the heart to admit so.
‘I’m really enjoying the course,’ I say with a burst of enthusiasm, trying to brighten her up a little by shifting the focus from her eating habits in this hellhole to my nursing degree out in the real world. ‘I’ve just another few days before we break for summer, but I’ve the auxiliary job in the hospital to keep me going until we start again in September.’
‘That’s nice.’
I casually loosen from her grasp when I can and I play with the visitor’s card around my neck, the presence of it against my student’s blue uniform feeling as if it might choke me.
She nods and looks away, flicks her hair again, and I know what’s coming.
I know she can only absorb so much of what I tell her about real life before she quivers and breaks down in a flurry of panic and guilt and everything in between. She is like a hollow eggshell; a heartbreaking opposite to the fierce campaigner, the vocal activist and the role model I looked up to all my life.
‘That’s really … that’s really good to hear, love,’ she whispers.
Her lip trembles. Her chin wobbles.
‘And I still come home to the girls most weekends when I can,’ I remind her, keeping my end of the promise we made and talking so that she doesn’t have to. ‘We’ve developed a bit of a routine where I help out with the wee one to give Maureen a break, so nothing to worry about, just like I promised you. Nothing at all.’
She stares so hard at the table that separates us that her eyes might bore a hole in it eventually.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘What on earth would we do without you? Thank you, Kate.’
If someone was to sum up my life lately in a sentence it would be just this from her always:What on earth would we do without you?I sometimes wish they could do without me more, but I know this isn’t going to last for ever and for now we just have to keep going. We have to keep paddling towards the future when this will all be a distant memory and we’ll laugh at how good it feels to be normal again.
It’s quite cold in here, just as I knew it would be, so I wrap my navy cardigan around me a little more tightly. The room is vast and green like a hospital, but with a distinct air of suffocation and the force of control that seeps from its shiny walls and echoing corridors. She is lost here, in an alien world full of rigid routine, where complex characters from all walks of life move around, some riddled with regret and sorrow for their actions, others dead behind the eyes with denial, stunned with shock and horror at howthey ended up here in the first place. Others strut around, their steely complexion fuelled by conviction, ruling the roost as days and months tick by in this bubble-like existence.
‘If you can just hold on—’
‘But this wasn’t meant to happen!’ she hisses, wringing her hands and glancing around to see who is watching.
‘I know that,’ I whisper. ‘We all know that. Don’t let this place break you, Mum. You’re going to be home soon and we can put all this behind us.’
She smiles, but I know it’s an empty expression just to please me. She is right. This wasn’t meant to happen. There isn’t a violent bone in my mother’s body but her profile and position made her an easy target for local paramilitaries to hide guns and drugs on her property, determined to keep a conflict going as the rest of us plead for peace.
Years of civil protests on the streets had gained her a reputation for speaking up and speaking out, yes, and her voice for equality and justice through a dirty war drew attention her way and ruffled the feathers of many, but to link her with a political crime she didn’t commit that sucked the blood right out of her, leaving her almost soulless and broken for months now was heartbreaking for us all.
The end was near, though. If she could just stay strong for another short while, this would all be over soon.
