Don’t take them off thank you

very much for your Cadbury’s

Roses, thank you very much, thank

you very, very, very, very, very,

very, very, very much.

The water!

He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and never

and never–

Do you have to?       Too hot, too hot, too hot

cheap soap, white tiles

This is not a hospital

there are no trees          this could be

anywhere   and

3 October 1997

Karen

The bedside clock is ticking. Already five past seven. The toilet flushes and I hear her shuffling back across the landing. I can’t leave it like this. Mum’s bed so crowded with stuff I don’t even know where to start. The girls from college will already be ordering drinks and garlic mushrooms, letting the waiter remove the extra setting. They’ll wonder where I’ve got to for all of five minutes and then carry on regardless. I start lifting piles of clothes and tipping them straight into the washing basket. It’s like she hasn’t put a load on for weeks. Overdue library books, talcum powder, unopened charity letters and Alex’s latest school photo un-mounted and already creased at the corners. I feel the dread seeping in. There’s no way I’m going to make it now.

The room smells stale. Worse than mine did the time she unearthed the mouldy lunchbox from under my bed at the end of the summer holidays. She stands in the doorway and I can’t even look at her. I look at a photo of Dad on the dressing table instead. It’s hard to see him through the dust.

‘He’d be ashamed,’ I say, ‘if he could see you.’

She narrows her eyes. ‘You’ve got no right to move my things.’

‘You shouldn’t have let it get this bad,’ I say, sorting the post into a pile and balancing it on the windowsill, ‘it’s not healthy. And where on earth have you been sleeping?’

She moves towards me and snatches the photo off the bed.

‘Careful!’ I say, ‘it’s creased enough as it is.’

She holds it to her chest, facing outwards so that I can see the bottom of Alex’s chin through her fingers.

‘You’ve got no right to interfere with my life,’ she says, ‘not when you’ve made such a fine mess of your own.’