Now, under the shower, my confidence had taken a hit, and I was licking my wounds. I didn’t want to wash the smell of Yannick from my skin, erase the memory so easily, yet I could do nothing else. This wasn’t me, nor was it the way I lived my life. Washing down, a tear slipped from the corner of my eye as I thought about how foolish I’d acted, how I’d thrown myself at a man I didn’t know, and now, I couldn’t get out of there quick enough.
It was too difficult to hold a conversation, to explain myself, as I quickly dressed while Yannick lay on the bed looking sinful and with not a clue. It was time to leave, so leave I did without so much as an explanation, hurrying from the hotel with my head down, embarrassed.
Thankfully, my Tube routes from the hotel in Kensington were on the night schedule, running early Sunday mornings, and were quiet. I could have used my tips and cabbed it home, but I wanted to travel the city for a while before I walked back into the nightmare of my own four walls. The few other people I shared the carriage with, reminded me we all had our own lives to live and we really never knew what our neighbour’s story was. I could have had it worse, of that I was fundamentally aware, but it didn’t make my personal circumstances any easier to swallow.
Half an hour of travelling and lamenting over the mistake I’d just made, with my boss of all people, and I was more than ready to collapse into bed. I trudged the many flights of stairs and paused at the front door, with my key in hand, resting my head against the scuffed wood. A minute to gather my resolve, that’s all, then I slipped the keys into the lock and entered my hell.
Something was off. The second I closed the door behind me, I knew. A subtle smell I didn’t recognise tainted the hallway, the light still burning in the living room. I hadn’t thought to search the windows from the street below to see if she was still up.
“Mum?” I called, inching up the hallway, my hand trailing along the wall, steps soft on the carpet underfoot. Into the living room I went, stopping in the middle of the room, hand flying to my mouth as I gagged. Dropping the bag from my shoulder, I sank to my knees and let out a pitiful cry.
“No.” Peering at the recliner, my eyes were not playing tricks on me. “Please, God. No.”
But yes. There was no mistaking the corpse of my mother who sat in the chair in the corner, thick globs of sick down the front of her chin and chest. Her skin was a sickly pale yellow-grey colour, her mouth hanging open, eyes thankfully closed. Had she choked on her own vomit? Christ. My stomach rebelled a second later, and I leaned to the side, bile splashing onto the carpet next to me. Five minutes or more, I stayed bent over not daring to look up until I was finished expelling what little I had in my stomach. Weak and trembling, I slashed my hand across my mouth, then wiped my chin with the bottom of my tank top. Blindly searching around for my bag, I emptied it out and snatched up my phone.
I stayed on that floor, never taking my eyes from my mother, only moving when I heard the loud knock at the front door, the ambulance service waiting for entry. I didn’t know why they’d come, I’d said so on the phone, it wasn’t like they could save her life; she was most definitely dead. There was no bringing her back, she’d finally had her last drink, and it had done nothing but put her in an early grave.
A paramedic took me by the elbow and gently nudged me into the kitchen. “You all right, love? Is there anyone we can call for you? Family?”
Shaking my head, I wracked my brains thinking who I should or could call. It was just me and her, an unlikely couple who despised each other, there was no one to care, no one else. Now it was just me, and her dead body in the room next door. Too much to process. The last twenty-four hours crashed in on me suddenly and I burst into tears, the paramedic gently wrapping her arms around my shoulders. She kindly let me hold on to her until I got a grip on myself and was able to temper my emotion enough to deal with the situation.
“It’s always a shock,” she murmured. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”
A stranger was showing me more kindness than my mother had in years, and there I was, crying for her, tears falling rapidly for a woman who had been a lost cause for as long as I could remember.
“You need to call someone, anyone.”
I ended up calling Carol and apologising profusely for disturbing her. She wouldn’t hear of it, asking if I wanted to go to her place, which was how I ended up at Carol’s at seven thirty on a Sunday morning, the policeman who’d attended with the ambulance service kind enough to take me there. Protocol, he’d said. I didn’t know and didn’t care as long as I was away from the flat. Away from my mother’s dead body. She’d been an alcoholic, and whilst she may not have drunk herself to death, she’d certainly succumbed to the effects. As her daughter, I’d failed her, staying there just hurt too much.
Carol handed me a glass with neat vodka in the bottom. “Drink,” she pointed.
Without hesitation, I did so, hardly feeling the usual burn that accompanied straight spirits. I was truly numb. Inside and out.
“Take
