CHAPTER ELEVEN: LOOTED
We are here a breath
And breathe into others.
And gone in a breath
To make way for another’s.
The bed she died on sits in the living room, exactly where it was when her body was taken.
The company meant to pick up the equipment keep changing the collection date. It frustrates me. There must be so many people in pain who need that fancy mattress.
The house feels creepy and cold. Healthy May sunlight pushes through the curtains, straining into the gloom. I open the windows – just in case her spirit is still trapped in this room.
‘There you go, Mum,’ I say, my eyes red. ‘It’s a bit nicer in here now, isn’t it?’
I’ve started the slow process of clearing the house of my things. D has been there a few times already, pulling together stuff of worth ready for the assessment.
Some sharp-suited strangers came around the house to tag anything of value between Mum’s and The Man Who Is Not My Father’s estate. They didn’t tag anything, aside from the car.
This house is full of low-value clutter.
The Man Who Is Not My Father hasn’t been told Mum is dead yet. Not that he would be able to understand.
‘Am I alright to nick one of your Coke’s, Mum?’ I say to the ceiling, grappling in the humming fridge.
Is she up there? Or is she still here, haunting the place? Which version of her is it, the Mum who loved her babies or the mum who abandoned them?
I’m upstairs on the loo when my younger brother D clatters through the front door, which is lucky because the “aaaoOOOUUUWWoo” he yells up the stairs makes me shit myself.
‘The hell you doing here?’ I demand, stumbling onto the landing. ‘I thought it was a ghost!’
‘Whee,’ he giggles, one of his many catchphrases from our childhood.
When I join him downstairs, heart still racing, he’s untangling a carpet shampooer.
‘Just a few jobs that need doing,’ he says, ‘Gonna have a rummage too.’
While he’s running the shampooer over the tatty living room and lobby, I grab a couple of binbags and head back upstairs.
‘Sorry about this, Mum,’ I mutter, ‘There’s a lot of stuff that needs chucking out.’
The amount of empty plastic margarine containers and Tupperware in this house is obscene. They’re in every room, used to hold a fistful of cosmetics or spare nails or coins.
Clover butter seems to be the favoured version. I even see a pot with a design I recognise from twenty years ago. It’s got random washer loops in it.
‘Mum,’ I say sternly to the ceiling, ‘I’m chucking this out. No,’ I can almost hear her getting pissy with me, ‘You’ve had it ages and you don’t need it now, do you? You know what they say: you can’t take your two-hundred I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter boxes with you.’
I fill an entire bin bag just with old plastic containers.
I hear D stomp across the lobby for the third time already, emptying dirty water and refilling the clean tank.
With one bag for stuff I want to take and another meant for trash, I wander into Mum’s bedroom.
It’s weird, looting the house. I feel like I’m in an especially dull version of Skyrim.
[WILBUR SMITH NOVELS
WEIGHT: 30 VALUE: 3]
[PLANTUR SHAMPOO (UNOPENED)
WEIGHT: 15 VALUE: 5]
[SOME WEIRD THING THAT ZAPS YOUR LEG HAIR FOLICES TO STOP IT GROWING
WEIGHT: 10 VALUE: 100]
[OLD DS CONSOLE WITH HIDDEN OBJECT GAMES
WEIGHT: 15 VALUE: CEX WILL GIVE YOU A FIVER FOR THE LOT]
[VERY DUSTY CORSET THING OH CHRIST I DIDN’T WANT TO SEE THAT
WEIGHT: 10 VALUE: 0 GET IT BINNED]
I wonder if the multiple drawers-worth of socks and underwear can be recycled. I even check the bras for my size. Then I feel weird and just pile everything into the trash bag.
I steel myself before opening her wardrobe. The smell of her falls over me, a million memories and feelings and anger and fear and regret and comfort and regret and comfort and longing for someone never there.
I’m not ready to throw out her clothes yet, but I pick through them for any I might like.
[WHITE SHIRT
WEIGHT: 5 VALUE: NOT MUCH IT’S FROM ASDA BUT IT’S CUTE]
[UGLIEST JUMPER I’VE EVER SEEN
WEIGHT: 15 VALUE: 0 SURELY]
[CASHMERE COAT
WEIGHT: 50 VALUE: 100]
I can remember Mum buying that long black cashmere coat for herself when I was thirteen. It really suited her. She looked so imposing and elegant with its tails swishing along behind her, stiletto heels clipping the pavement.
It still smells of her.
Knowing by Estee Lauder.
I shrug it on to my shoulders and button it.
It fits perfectly.
My big brother J and aunt T wandered from the mid-April chill into the sickly-smelling house at about 9am, while I was blithely attempting to catch up on sleep on the sofa.
‘Can you go down to the pharmacy and get your mum another prescription,’ T asked while I choked down coffee. ‘There’s a much stronger pain patch to give her.’
I was impressed how quickly the district nurse had sorted all that out. It had only been a couple of hours since she’d left.
‘Y’alreet?’ J nodded in my direction. As a chef, he was more than used to early mornings. He looked overly chirpy for someone who had taken a train and then a bus from two cities over.
T wandered in to say hello to mum, who was still groggy from the pain injection but shouting at Alexa all the same. J clattered about in the pantry. With the live-in carer moving in the next day, there was still a few things we needed to do to make the place safe.
‘I’m going to do something about the steps,’ J told me, brandishing a roll of silver duct tape.
The carpet on stairs was so worn at the edges, the harsh MDF poked through.
A few years before, duct tape had been haphazardly pressed over the split fabric in a hatch pattern, presumably by The Man Who Is Not My Father. When J pulled the old tape off, they left light patches of clean carpet.
I pulled on my jacket and grabbed my phone, As I left for the pharmacy, I heard J pulling the old tape off, and the fresh rip sound of new tape being put into its place.
I came back with the new pain patches in time for the morning carers to get it stuck onto mum – behind her left shoulder, specifically, where she wouldn’t be able to peel it off.
I caught a glimpse of her back as they placed it. Her shoulderblade looked about ready to pop through the thin skin. I could have hooked my fingers under them easily.
‘We might want to check the freezer for any out of date food,’ T said while she bumbled the Dyson towards the living room, cord wrapped around her arm, ‘In case we accidentally poison the carer.’
Valid point. I’d got queasy a couple of times risking some freezer-burned concoction on my caring nights.
I grabbed a bin bag and opened the tall freezer.
It was packed with fresh-frozen food; some still in original packaging bearing best before dates long gone, a lot in vac-packed bags scrawled with my mother’s handwriting. The day, month, year of their vacuuming.
The slim printer-like machine responsible for the vacuum packaging still sat on the granite worktop, pressed against the microwave. An enormous pile of vacuum packing bags waited patiently in boxes in the pantry.
Some of these frozen treasures were dated a good couple of years prior. I had no idea if this meant they were edible.
‘Hey, J,’ I asked the chef, swinging a vac-packed salmon into the room, ‘If it’s marked as being packed a good year and a half ago, is it still good?’
‘A year and a half?’ He was incredulous. ‘I wouldn’t risk it.’
‘What about meat that went out of date a year ago but was presumably frozen before-hand?’
He stared at me.
‘No.’
‘Right well, that’s most of the freezer then.’
I removed two large black bin bags - worth of expired food. The greatest hits included what looked like lamb’s neck, frozen two years prior, and various tempura prawns so freezer-burned they needed to be chipped out.
There was even more in the cupboards. I found cheese sauce granules from 2019. The Kenco I had been drinking every morning went off its best around two years prior.
‘Oh,’ I muttered when I read the date. ‘I thought it was just shit coffee.’
‘There’s a GP coming over to check the stoma patch,’ T said, rumbling through the kitchen to the bin with the Dyson dust canister. I stared at the contents, incredulous.
‘Is that just from today?’
‘Yep’.
The carpets were stifled with thick layers of dirt. When I wandered into the living room, I could see strips of slightly less dirty carpet where T had just taken the vacuum. But when I licked my finger and ran it along those stripes, it still came away dark.
‘EXCUSE ME,’ Mum yelled behind me, making me jump. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well can you NOT just STAND THERE. It’s annoying.’
I went upstairs to do a once-over of the bathrooms. I found a number of plants on the windowsill, mostly dead, covered in cobwebs.
One of them was still alive. I texted a photo to my dad.
‘Mother in Laws Tongue’ he texted back, matter of factly. ‘Looks a bit shagged.’
It was covered in dust. The soil was dry and coated in a foam of mold.
I took it downstairs.
‘Can I take this?’ I ask mum, brandishing it at the end of the bed.
She visibly scowled. Even at this stage, she refused to let any of her things be taken.
‘I’ll make it healthier,’ I added quickly. ‘It’s not doing very well.’
‘Put it over there,’ she pointed at a table by the TV, where a few other barely-alive plants stood. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it. I’m quite good at looking after plants.’
I had to bite my lip, but I did what I was told.
The GP was a handsome Asian bloke maybe in his late twenties, with soft complexion and a wedding ring. He clinically asked to examine mum’s stoma patch, but she was giddy. That was the effect of a good-looking bloke on her.
‘We thought the patch might be enflamed,’ T said as mum giggled at the poor man. ‘She’s been picking at it and it’s been leaking.’
He had a look. Mum grinned lasciviously as he pulled her t-shirt up. The toothless gums at the back of her smile had started to rot.
‘It looks fine,’ he said.
Isn’t it just terminal agitation? I thought. If she was picking at things, surely she’d go for her stoma patch too. She probably didn’t even know she was doing it.
‘Mwah. MWAH.’
Mum had taken her dinosaur water bottle in hand, and was bopping the doctor’s nose with its soft horn.
‘He’s giving you a kiss!’ She chuckled, face creased in laughter. The doctor, bless him, smiled and let her bop him.
‘Mum,’ I said at one point, ‘Please…’
‘Oh shut up,’ She snapped. ‘I’m having fun.’
The GP managed to peel himself away with a humouring pat on mum’s knee. As soon as the door closed after him, mum looked at me.
‘Oof,’ she said.
‘He was very handsome, wasn’t he,’ I said.
‘Sarah!’ She gushed, ‘He was bloody gorgeous!’
She was made up. The attention from a handsome young lad had perked her up no end. She cuddled her water bottle dinosaur, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Well,’ She continued, ‘I’m technically not single. But…oof!’
I glanced at her hand. She hadn’t worn a wedding ring, to my knowledge, since I’d come back into her life. And on reflection, I’d never seen her wear one at all.
She was still married to my dad up until a year before she married The Man Who Is Not My Father, when dad applied for a divorce to keep his assets safe. It was a case of signing a couple of forms. They didn’t even need to speak.
I’d never seen dad with a wedding ring, either. I know he still has his – poked away in a wooden box with some other keepsakes he doesn’t know I rifled through when I was a nosy teen.
‘I never really felt like I was married,’ He told me once, during a late-night heart to heart.
Dad knew Mum was mucking about on him - with my supposed biological father, and a couple other blokes - when he asked her to marry him.
‘I didn’t think too hard about it,’ he told me over coffee during one of my paternity-revelation-based meltdowns, ‘I knew she was traumatised, so I let it slip.’
Dad must have believed she wouldn’t do it again after she became his wife.
But only a few years later, he found a valentine’s card under his and Mum’s bed.
It wasn’t for him.
“What do you give a man who has everything?” the cartoon on the front of the card read. Dad folded it open.
“A big chopper!”
And under the punchline, The Man Who Is Not My Father’s block capital handwriting. Some sexual innuendo that Dad remembered word for word, but I have chosen to forget.
Dad’s world fell apart in that moment. He sat at the top of the steps and howled. My brother and I, toddlers, came to see what the fuss was.
Hurt people hurt people.
T had vacuumed the living room and lobby yet again, and filled the dust canister easily. It was obscene. No wonder I needed to use my inhaler.
‘How many layers of dust are there?’ I spluttered.
Mum and The Man Who Is Not My Father could have easily afforded a cleaner. There was no excuse. They had been living in a grotty misery for years, refusing to spend a penny, refusing to get medical help and refusing to reach out to family.
It was sad.
‘But they chose it,’ T said, matter-of-factly.
Well, they did.
‘LOUIS,’ mum called. I rolled my eyes and bumbled into the living room.
She was holding her phone up.
‘Look at these. Don’t you think these Korean princesses are beautiful?’
She used her index finger to scroll down through images of fresh-faced Asian women.
I was a little taken-aback. She wanted to show me something, not have a go at me.
‘Erm, I suppose so? They aren’t really my type.’
I thought for a split-second of explaining my sexuality to her. How I’m equally attracted to femmes as I am mascs, how I feel more masc then femme although I don’t look it, but I sometimes wonder if -
‘They’re so beautiful,’ she clips suddenly.
I stare at her.
For a moment, I’d seen her as Mum.
As someone to talk to about my deepest confusions. What am I? Am I a man, a woman, a femme, a masc, none of the above? How much of me is me, and how much is the PTSD? Mum, how do you navigate falling for and being in love with people and women and men and they and them?
She’d already tapped on to some other thing. A Wikipedia page about K-pop. She wasn’t reading or taking it in, she scrolled up and down as if her brain was detached from her body.
‘Can you get me toast with that cheese spread?’ She asked.
I nodded, folding away like a ghost.
‘She’s wanting toast and cheese spread.’
‘I’ll do that,’ T replied, ‘you sort yourself, you’ve got to get back home.’
‘Okay, she wants the toast cut into fingers though.’
‘Right,’ T rolled her eyes, and clipped the toaster on. ‘Go on, she’s having me help her with the Asda shop in a bit. You don’t want to be around for that.’
I absolutely did not. Helping mum log onto her bank account had been as long and torturous as an episode of Mrs Browns Boys, I certainly didn’t want to stick around for the extended cut.
I was in the dining room piling my clothes into my bag when my aunt stopped at the door, an untouched plate of toast in her hand.
‘Louis!’ She scolded, ‘You didn’t tell me she meant fingers cut in half!’
‘You what?’ I scoffed. Mum had been eating her toast cut into four strips for weeks. She was confused about that, now?
‘I know!’ T prodded at the air above the plate. ‘Aren’t you psychic? You should have known fingers means half fingers.’
I grabbed one of the bin bags full of expired food and dragged it out the back door.
The black bin was already overflowing.
‘It’s fine,’ I said cheerfully, ‘I can take them to a skip on my way home. There’s one on my route back.’ I didn’t know I was going to forget entirely, and drive about 50kg of old meat all the way back to Northampton.
T helped me take the two overflowing bags to my car boot. They were so heavy we had to drag them.
‘I’m off then,’ I told mum, poking my head through the living room door. T, who was sat on the footstool with mum’s tablet on her lap showing the Asda homepage, glanced at me somewhat dolefully.
Mum, who was mid-snark at her sister, looked at me with a softening face. The corners of her mouth dropped.
‘Okay,’ she said sadly, ‘When are you coming back?’
‘Should be next week.’
‘Okay, love.’
It still felt icky to have her speak endearingly to me.
And I recognised that look, too. From many, many years ago. If she wanted to manipulate you into feeling bad for her, she’d look up at you from hooded eyelids, eyebrows slightly curled up at the inner tips, bottom lip tensed.
Yes, she was being manipulative. But, oddly, for a nice reason. She wanted me to stay with her.
For a moment, the words “I love you” pushed against my teeth. But the pressure fell, and the sound dissolved back into my body, unsaid.
To be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever say it.
But I would eventually, the following week; when mum would be comatose and hours from death.
Thank you for reading x