Songs For Your Mother
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Three months later
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
September, almost six years later
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
November, two months later
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgements
Songs for Lauren
Tangle (Mark Warner)
Fleeting memories (Mark Warner)
She Sleeps in the Afternoon (Mark Warner)
Fahrenheit (Tom Benjamin)
Looking for you (Gordon MacMillan)
She looks like Vivien Leigh (Gordon MacMillan)
Modern Door (Gordon MacMillan)
English skies (Gordon MacMillan)
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Songs For Your Mother
Gordon MacMillan
This is for Katie, Aidan, and Kenzie
Prologue
This is not how I saw my life. I want to say that right at the start just in case there’s any misunderstanding later.
When I wrote my Letter to My Future Self in high school, it did not include giving birth as a single mom while waitressing in a vegetarian restaurant. I definitely missed that part out, and yet here I am.
Josie gives my hand a squeeze for which I am beyond grateful. Other than to pee, she hasn’t left my bedside since I entered the delivery room, almost nine hours ago, which I can tell you is a long time to stare at white walls with next to nothing on them. In the brochure, they call it a ‘luxurious birthing suite’. They’ve totally oversold it.
‘You’re doing great,’ Josie says. ‘You’re doing great.’
I look at her, exasperated. I wish she would stop saying that: it’s grating on my nerves.
‘Stop saying that,’ I say.
‘You told me to just “keep saying you’re doing great” no matter what happens,’ Josie says.
‘We’ve been here for nine hours. New record please.’
‘You’re almost there, right?’
Josie turns to the labour nurse standing next to the midwife and the doctor who is delivering my baby.
‘She’s right, Lauren, you’ve almost gone the whole nine yards, a little more,’ the doctor says, and I can see from her eyes, peeking above her mask, that she’s smiling. ‘Keep pushing.’
I want to tell her that I am pushing, and I’ve been pushing for hours, only now I am exhausted and want it all to stop.
‘Remind me why I am doing this again?’ I ask.
Josie shakes her head. ‘I told you like a million times already, I have no idea, but you’re doing great.’ And she gives me a big fake cheesy smile.
‘Josie,’ I say testily.
‘You know I am joking,’ she says.
‘No jokes, and don’t let go of my hand.’ I blow at a clump of hair matted to the side of my mouth, and it will not budge. It takes Josie to brush it away.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘As you asked, you’re doing this because you’re about to give birth to a beautiful baby boy, right doc?’
‘Josie’s right, focus on that, as baby is on the way, keep pushing,’ the doctor says.
‘Maybe you’re also doing this,’ Josie adds, ‘so one day you can give some British guy the surprise of his life, and a huge bill for child support. At least that’s my sincere hope.’
When Josie says this, I forget where I am, and I lose myself in memory. I ask myself the question that has been rattling around my brain for the last nine months, as I went through this alone.
Why didn’t he come back? I was so sure he would. Right from the start, it felt like something real. It was one of those rare moments in life when you meet someone who you know, in your heart and in your bones, that you want to be with. You want to hold onto them for as long as you can and not let them go. I suppose what I’m saying is that if there is such a dumb thing as ‘the one’, then he was it.
Chapter 1
Heavenly Californian sunshine streaks through the glass of the motel windows as motes of dust turn in the yellow light, reflecting on the TV as a grainy-looking 1980s teen movie plays.
Sitting on one of the room’s two single beds, I watch a tall guy in a trench coat standing there with a ghetto blaster held aloft. He’s blasting out a song, and a girl is looking out of the window adoringly. That’s it, and the credits start to roll. There aren’t any words. He’s made his declaration, and I love the idea of a big statement like that. It makes me think that songs are our poetry, that they are the soundtrack to our romances, to our first kisses and our break-ups. As I’m watching this, the door opens, and Will steps back into our motel room. He glances at the screen and before I get the chance to challenge his encyclopaedic pop culture knowledge and ask ‘What is this movie called?’, he provides the answer. He does this all the time. It’s informative but annoying.
‘Say Anything, Cameron Crowe. Try doing that with a Bluetooth speaker. No one will ever look that cool again standing outside a girl’s house declaring their undying love,’ says Will.
Will’s words spark a fleeting sense of loss.
‘It’s depressing that we will never have our ghetto blaster moment,’ I say.
‘I’m not sure the female population is going to mourn the passing of the ghetto blaster serenade, classic move that it was. Besides, I thought bad poetry was your go-to?’
I throw my hands in the air and shake my head. You write poetry for a girl one time at university, and you are never allowed to forget it. Has the world not moved on?
‘It was one time, and she loved it,’ I say.
‘I’m messing with you. I know she did,’ Will says.
I can almost hear him say ‘Much good it did.’ And he’s right. After three years, the girl in question, Sara, turned to me one day over breakfast and said ‘I’m going to Australia,’ pausing to add, and as if it needed saying: ‘On my own.’ It’s like the poetry stopped working. There’s a valuable life
