I was seething, our breakup had not been down to anything I’d done and fuck him for calling me a snob. It was basic decency on my part. Who the hell was going to stick with someone who couldn’t stay faithful? That wasn’t what I was about, and Jared was definitely not the kind of man I was going to stay with because, as my mother had said, he was a good lad. I didn’t need a guy, especially not one like him. He’d cheated, our split had been amicable, and I’d thought he’d understood why we couldn’t continue. Cheating was an indiscretion I couldn’t blindly sweep under the rug. If I was with someone, I was all in, just like I had been with Jared. Loyal to a fault, that was me, and I’d never asked for impossibilities, simply respect. He hadn’t given it, so we couldn’t continue to be together. Why was that so difficult for him to understand?
“I said I was sorry. You don’t need to keep being a bitch about it.”
Aghast at his comment, I bucked upwards, almost pushing him from the bed. Jared came down harder, pressing his face in close to mine. He said nothing, looking deep into my eyes, then grinned before moving away again. In that moment, I saw a different man to the one I’d known for years. He was intimidating, not something he’d ever been before, I hadn’t thought he’d had it in him. I was truly worried about his next course of action.
“Get out,” I whimpered, barely concealing the tremble in my voice. “Don’t dare come in here uninvited again.”
He tutted, then got up and left without a single word while I clutched at the covers tighter, wondering what the hell had come over him. Peering at the clock, I groaned, noting it was barely past eleven. Nowhere near enough sleep, now I was awake and rattled, there was no chance I could fall back over. I’d be knackered at work later. Wonderful.
Up I got, shoving on an old pair of ratty sweats I wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing outside, then stood in front of the mirror trying to tame the bird’s nest on top of my head. Jesus, how much did I move around when I slept? I looked tired, exhausted even, the pink in my hair washed out and as dull as the hue on my face. Taming the hair was easy enough, hiding the dark smudges under the eyes not so much, there wasn’t much I could do about the lack of sleep either. While I pulled a brush through the tangles, I sighed at the state of it, making a mental note to scrape up the loose change I’d saved in a jar under my bed, and buy a natural coloured dye. I was sick of the pink.
My ex-boyfriend was no longer in the flat when I ventured out into the living room. Mum was in her usual recliner, another goddamn bottle tucked into the side of the chair, bony fingers wrapped around the neck like it was her lifeline.
“Jared buy you that shit?”
“He’s a good boy.”
Huffing, I plopped down on the sofa opposite her. “Don’t send him in my room again. I don’t want him in there, Mum.”
“Jolie, love. Pull the stick out of your arse. He’s a decent boy, you could do a lot worse. ‘Bout time you settled down and stopped carrying on in those bars you go to.”
“I got to work, not carry on.”
“I didn’t raise no slut for a daughter!”
I couldn’t take much more of this, at the rate she was going, I’d be sitting opposite her in my own shitty, brown recliner and drinking away my sorrows at the same rate she did. Can’t beat them, join them, right? What choice did I have but to get on with it and be the reasonable, sober one? It was me and her, that was it, the sum total of our family. Was it too much to ask for a single day without having to listen to the venom she spat at me?
Leaving her to it, I went about my day. For once, I rallied against my better judgement and left mother to fend for herself, deciding to be the terrible daughter she proclaimed me to constantly be. It would be worse when she found out I was going to the doctors later that afternoon to see if I could get her some help. She wouldn’t accept it, of course, but I had to try.
For twenty minutes I pleaded my mother’s case to a locum who showed little sympathy and had trouble stifling his bored expression, like he’d heard it all before. He explained there was little I could do, little he could do, and that an individual could only be sectioned under the mental health act if they were deemed a danger to themselves or others. He warned it was also a rare occasion this applied to people like my mother, a psyche ward not viewed in any way as helpful. Sectioning was not an avenue I was comfortable going down, so I tossed it aside immediately. There were referrals, if she’d come to the practice to get checked over but waiting lists were a mile long and a person had to want to make themselves better. My mother didn’t. Content to wallow in whatever bottle she could, I knew I was flogging a dead horse. Bar a trip to A&E, there was nothing I could do, harping on at her would be like talking to a brick wall, I’d been doing it long enough and knew the consequences.
I ended up leaving the practice feeling despondent and inadequate, the trip to work lost in a daze while I racked my brains for a solution that seemed like an impossibility.
Friday night at Caulder’s carried
