‘I’ve just had a chat with the psychologist,’ she said, ‘and your mother has given permission for us to pass on some of what she talked about with him. In fact, she wanted us to.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

‘She wanted you to know that she has PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, diagnosed years and years ago, but it was something she chose to keep from you while you were growing up. Unfortunately it has gone untreated since she was diagnosed.’

I frowned. ‘I don’t really know what to – did she say why she didn’t want to tell me?’

‘No. But sometimes it can be hard for people to talk about PTSD. People often don’t seek treatment until later in life because they feel so uncomfortable disclosing the trauma that caused it in the first place.’

I nodded. It made sense. It really did. When I thought of Mum, and the look on her face with Hessel – but I stopped myself there. I didn’t want to remember what I’d seen.

But I also couldn’t help feeling that this was all kind of beside the point right now. Or just another excuse. Because there was no point to me knowing that, no point to her even deciding to get treatment for it now, if she couldn’t be truthful about the other choices she had made around it.

There was a big fat elephant in the room, getting in the way of everything.

But then Geraldine said, ‘And she told the psychologist that she’s been abusing alcohol. Does that accord with your experience?’

Geraldine was watching me, waiting. It had never been spoken about like that. It had never been admitted out loud, so openly. I nodded. And I said, so quietly, ‘Yes.’

My heart was swelling. This thing. This thing that had always been there, that we all worked so hard to pretend was normal, to accommodate, to excuse, to hide. This thing was in the open.

‘So we’re hooking her up with some outpatient services near you,’ Geraldine was saying. ‘At least to begin with, and an AOD specialist counsellor as well as the psych services.’

‘AOD?’

‘Sorry, yes, Alcohol and Other Drugs. It’s best to tackle both her PTSD and alcohol abuse simultaneously.’

It was now something that could be talked about. The silence around it was cracked apart, it lay in pieces – if I could I would have stomped all over them. ‘I can’t believe she said that to the psych.’

‘It was one of the first things she said to him, apparently. That sort of willingness is a positive sign, but only a first step – giving up an addiction is a very difficult thing, slow going. It’s not something that ever really stops – you should know that, Anna, if you’re planning on being involved in her recovery.’

I felt hope. And almost at once I wanted to squash it. I’d hoped before. Hope is dangerous. When you hope, the letdown is always so much worse.