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

And the next:

‘This proves exactly what I was saying. You can’t be trusted to live on your own any longer. You are a selfish, stupid old woman. It’s just this kind of childish behaviour that proves to me what I was saying was right.’

And the last:

‘Mother – I’m getting worried now – just call me.’

Selfish, stupid, childish. Iris didn’t believe she was any of those things but still it hurt to be accused of them. She sat again, leaning down to rub her aching feet. Was it selfish to refuse another’s demands? Childish to leave without giving a reason? She sat straight and took a deep breath. She knew she wasn’t stupid. She was resourceful and had done what she needed to do, that was all.

And Mother. When had Laura started calling her Mother, and in that tone? She used to call her Mummy, and when she was a little older, Mumsy, and when that became embarrassing in front of her school friends, Mum or Ma. But never Mother. It was so cold, so formal. No loving daughter called their mother Mother, surely.

She blinked away a tear. Charlie trotted over and licked her hand and then sat, his head cocked on one side looking for all the world like he understood what she was going through and was offering his sympathy. Iris realised with a jolt that he was her best friend these days; the one who was always there, who listened to her without judgement and who sat on her feet to warm them when she was cold. He was loyal and true. All she had to do in return was feed and walk him, give him a little treat once in a while. Their friendship was simple and straightforward, so unlike her relationships with her children, and yet she’d given them so much more than food and treats. Maybe she’d done too much for them and made them into the selfish people they were now. No, that wasn’t fair. Barry wasn’t selfish, or at least she didn’t think he was; he’d just slipped out of her hands and away on the tide of his life, leaving her behind in the wake. Laura, though, she was selfish. It was always about her.

She sighed. Too late to change anything, and what would she change anyway? She’d enjoyed doing things for her family; cooking nice meals, making the house homely so they were proud to bring their friends back. She’d thought it a point of honour she never had to ask for their help in the house, that she could do it all herself. She had been expected to do chores from when she was quite small; at six she was cleaning out the grate in the mornings, and by the time she was ten she was cooking meals and doing the laundry. Children did in those days. If she’d given Barry and Laura jobs to do, would they have grown up differently? She had thought it an act of love to do everything, but maybe she’d been wrong. Perhaps she should have thought more about it all those years ago. She hadn’t loved her parents any less because they expected her to help. In fact, now she thought about it, it had made her proud to be able to contribute. So maybe she hadn’t been such a good mother after all. Perhaps she deserved all she got – or didn’t get – from her children.

‘Oh, Reg,’ she said, looking at the photo of him on the table next to her. ‘If only you were still here I’d be able to face anything. Anyway, Laura would never have done what she did if you’d been around, so I wouldn’t be facing it in the first place.’ She turned the picture away from her as she did when she was angry with him for dying and leaving her on her own, only to feel guilty a moment later and lift it to her lips for a kiss. ‘Oh, Reg, you old bugger.’ She sighed.

Her shoulders slumped and she leant back into her chair again. She sat for a few minutes, letting her body sink into the cushions as if she was trying to disappear from her own living room. Living room – what a funny name for a place, as if you didn’t exist anywhere else, or you were more alive there than anywhere else. Well, here she was in her living room and she wasn’t ready to give up.

‘I’m just going to slip out for a while,’ she said. Charlie wagged his tail at her, got to his feet and looked towards the kitchen.

‘All right, I’ll feed you first,’ she said, and made her way to the pantry to get his food. He ran round in circles as if he was chasing his own tail the way he always did when she fed him. It always made her laugh.

‘Anyone would think you’d never seen food the way you carry on,’ she said as she put his bowl down and gave him a rub between the ears.

While he was eating, she went to her room and changed into a good dress, pulled a comb through her hair, powdered her nose and swiped a bit of lipstick at her lips. Then she called a cab for the second time that day.

Standing outside Barry’s house half an hour later, she wondered if she’d done the right thing. The downstairs curtains were drawn but soft light leaked round the edges. She looked along the street. There was no one about. Many of the houses were dark, their occupants not home yet. It was that sort of street, Iris thought. Young people who worked long hours in the city to pay for the houses they didn’t have time to live in.

She walked up Barry’s front path, noting the neat flower beds, the small patch of cropped grass. A place for everything, and everything in its place, as Reg would have said.

She