The Secrets of Married Women Read Online Free Page A

sit there in a frazzle, the passenger of an A1 Windows and Doors van that’s idling beside me catches my eye and winks. Next, his buddy is leaning over and doing the same thing, as though they’ve got a prolapsus of the eye muscles. I fix my attention straight ahead of me and do my utmost to tune them out. She’s going to be fine, I tell myself, because I think you have intuition for bad things happening and my gut tells me it’s not going to be this time. But still I worry because I am a worrier by nature. Even when I have little to worry about, I worry. I worry that they’re sleeping, eating, going to the toilet. That they’re warm, get fresh air, turn the oven off, close their windows at night, and don’t answer the door to strangers. ‘What you think we are?’ my dad will say. ‘A couple of stool pigeons?’
    ‘I think you mean sitting ducks,’ I'll grin at him, and he'll wheeze a laugh, his chest making a melody like a distant orchestra tuning up.
    My mother has had this condition for going on three years now. At first it was little things: she’d put milk in the china cabinet, ask questions we’d just given her the answer to. Then came the big one—she forgot it was Christmas Day. Now she gets it into her head that my dad is her brother who is molesting her. Dementia can have you perceiving things in extreme opposites.
    Somebody toots a horn. I register that traffic ahead is moving again. The two men in the van pull argh-she’s-leaving-us faces and wave like a couple of half-wits. I give them my women-are-the-superior-sex eye-roll then shift into gear. On the way, I ring Rob and sound off about how I’m really going to have to intervene and do something about my parents, and he comforts me and promises me we’ll think of something together.
    My mobile rings as I’m pulling up at their front door. ‘We found her! Jenny Barton found her in the bus shelter. You needn’t bother coming, we’re fine now!’ There’s a pause. ‘Where are you anyway, chucka?’
    He always calls me chucka.
    ‘Look out the window,’ I tell him.
    The curtain twitches. My dad’s eyes meet mine. ‘Oh,’ he says.
    I push back an overgrown rhododendron bush by the gate then walk up the path feeling a tad impatient and yet hating myself for it. My dad opens the door, near gleeful. ‘Guess what? Your mam gave Jenny a good hiding for bringing her home!’ My dad finds it funny that such a lady-like woman as my mother has taken to smacking people for the smallest of reasons. Then the smile disappears and he looks like he’s going to cry again. ‘Oh, Dad!’ I go to give him a big hug but he says, ‘Get off me!’ and swats at me, because we’re not supposed to be soft with each other in this family. The object of our near heart-failure is sitting prettily on the sofa, dipping Jaffa cakes into a cup of tea and staring bewildered at her fingers that keep ending up with nothing in them. Every time I come through that door I die a little, until she recognizes me, then I’m reborn. It’s called my reprieve from the inevitable. ‘Hello my bonny lass,’ she looks at me, benignly. My mother never was benign. Nor was she razor-tempered, like she can be now. I kiss the top of her fragrant head, unable to take my eyes off her, just massively grateful that she’s still here, powerfully aware that I must treasure each moment I have with her. I still disbelieve the change that this illness has brought about in her, and, as there’s no going back to the way she was, I sometimes think that if I stare at her long enough and hard enough I will somehow manage to preserve her, so she’ll stay exactly as she is and never get any worse. Because I dread worse. I dread it with an agony that fills every corner of my rib cage and pushes and pushes until it threatens to blow me apart into two pieces that will never be welded together again.
    She looks me up and down as though making her pronouncement. ‘Long skirts look very nice indeed…