The Train, Sarah Bourne [dark books to read .txt] 📗

and scarf thinking how nice it was to make someone happy, how easy to make them feel appreciated. She took a deep breath and opened the sitting-room door. Her father turned to her and gave her his lopsided smile. He’d been a good-looking man until he started having strokes. Now one side of his face was frozen, forever unlined, and the other, by comparison, looked like it had aged twice as fast as normal as the skin slid towards his jaw and sagged there, empty, useless flesh. A thin line of saliva dribbled from his mouth but he seemed unaware of it. Her mother sat in her chair, a table clipped in front of it so she couldn’t wander. She had a pack of cards in her hands and was shuffling them over and over again. She had loved card games. Not the highfalutin bridge, but whist and canasta. No one could beat her until she started getting forgetful, couldn’t remember what cards she’d played. It used to frustrate her, and she’d throw the cards in the air with a scream of anger. Now she was content just endlessly shuffling them.

Clare watched her for a moment, this shell of a woman who had once been funny, intelligent, caring. She was the kind of mother who still sent Easter cards when no one sent them anymore and remembered birthdays and anniversaries. Clare had taken it all for granted at the time, but in the last few years she’d missed them.

‘Did you have a good day?’ Her question was for both of them, though she didn’t expect an answer.

‘What’s for tea, Mummy?’ asked her mother.

‘I’m not your mother, I’m your daughter,’ said Clare.

Her mother straightened, sitting taller and put the cards down. ‘No one told me. I think I’d know if I had a daughter.’

Clare sighed. Her father closed his eyes. The left one drooped and didn’t close completely. It looked red and sore and Clare reached for his eye drops.

‘Here, Dad, let me put these in for you.’

‘Oh, Clare, you’re good to me.’ Tears welled in his eyes making the drops redundant.

‘I had good news today,’ she said.

Her mother started shuffling the cards again, her father wiped at the tears running down his cheek. ‘I have earned a bit of money from my writing.’

She looked at her parents, neither of whom had responded. She tried again, louder. ‘I said, I have received money from selling my books.’

‘That’s good, dear,’ said her father. ‘What are you going to do with it? You deserve a holiday, that’s what. You’ve always wanted to go to Scotland, haven’t you? Why not go there for a day or two?’ He started crying again and wiped angrily at the tears falling down his left cheek. He’d been labile since the last stroke, crying at the drop of a hat, getting angry over nothing. There was no telling what he’d do next.

‘No need to cry, Dad.’

‘I’ll miss you, though, you know that. You’re all we’ve got.’ He put a hand out to grasp hers, and she squeezed it gently.

‘I’m hungry,’ said her mother.

Clare felt a lump in her throat and a vice around her ribs. She stood holding her father’s hand, counting her breaths until she’d managed to subdue both sensations.

‘I’ll start dinner.’ She sighed and went into the kitchen.

Marion had left a pot of soup on the stove and there was a loaf of bread on the side. Clare heated the soup, cut the bread and buttered it, got out the plates, bowls, spoons, served up and put it all on trays. All the while pushing away any thoughts other than what she was doing. She focused entirely on organising dinner, noticing that one bowl was chipped (I’ll have that one), and one of the spoons hadn’t been washed properly (she rewashed it and dried it on a clean tea towel).

She went back into the sitting room and put her father’s table in front of him, tucked a napkin into his collar and brought him his dinner, making sure the spoon and the bread were on the right side for him to feed himself. Then she went back to get her mother’s.

‘I don’t want it,’ she said as Clare put it down in front of her.

‘Come on, it’s lovely lentil soup.’ Clare’s voice was bright, encouraging as she offered her mother a spoonful. Her father slurped his slowly.

‘I want my birthday cake,’ said her mother. ‘It’s my birthday, you know.’

Clare tried to smile at her mother, but her jaw was tight. ‘Cake after soup. You know the rules.’

Her mother shut her mouth and turned her head away.

Clare let out a long, slow breath. She was exhausted, her earlier elation spent.

‘Just one mouthful,’ she tried to cajole her mother, but she wasn’t having it. Quick as a flash, she upended the bowl on the table. Clare had to clench her fists and bite her tongue so as not to lash out.

Hot tears of frustration ran down her cheeks.

‘It’s burning me,’ shrieked her mother, lifting one leg after the other as if she was trying to run.

Clare mopped up as much as she could with paper napkins and went into the kitchen to get a cloth. She knew it wasn’t burning her mother, it was only tepid, but she couldn’t be bothered arguing.

‘Are you okay for the moment, Dad? I need to get Mum changed.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

Clare pulled the table away from her mother’s chair and held out her hands. ‘Up you get, Mum, let’s get you into dry clothes.’

‘I’m not going anywhere with you. You want all my possessions and you’re not getting your hands on any of it, I can tell you that for nothing.’ She clutched the sides of her chair with bony fingers. ‘And tell the ugly old man there to get out of my house. My husband will be home soon for his dinner and he won’t want that goblin here.’

By nine o’clock, Clare had managed to get both of them