Leaving has always been a trigger for me. Because . . . you guessed it! Mum. From around the time we were eight, leaving was always her threat. It might have been in response to something we said or did – like being ill or being stressed about a test at school (not that we ever admitted to either, we’d learned by then that we weren’t allowed to have troubles of our own). Sometimes, it was for no reason at all.
‘Looking a bit glum today,’ Mum would say. ‘If everything is so bad, maybe I should just leave? I’m obviously making your life terrible.’
I knew I shouldn’t, but every time she threatened to leave, I cried. Real throat-clogging tears, the kind that came from the depths of my soul. A couple of times, I cried so hard I vomited. Make no bones about it, I was terrified of Mum. I dreamed of her being kinder, more loving, more like other mothers. But I never, not even once, dreamed of her leaving.
‘What are you crying about?’ she’d snap. ‘I thought you’d be thrilled to have me gone.’
She’d act like she was frustrated, but I think she liked it when I cried. The tears validated her, made her feel worthy. When, after the drama, Mum would agree to stay, I would count it as a victory. I assumed it was my devotion to her that was keeping her around.
But the older we got, the more volatile she became. It didn’t take long before Mum’s moods began to dictate my day. And it didn’t matter what she was feeling – whatever it was, I was terrified. If she was happy, I was terrified I would ruin it. If she was unhappy, I was terrified she’d blame me. If she wasn’t around, I was terrified that she had left for good. Any other mood, and I was terrified she was dreaming up some new way to be cruel.
One of her favourite things was to mock me about food.
‘Back in the kitchen, Rosie Round?’ she’d say whenever possible, a playful look in her eyes. ‘You know what they say: a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.’
If I had the audacity to look even slightly upset by these comments, she’d say I was being too sensitive, which, in Mum’s eyes, was an unforgivable thing to be. It was before I was diagnosed with diabetes, and I was constantly hungry and thirsty. I tried not to eat too much and I certainly didn’t want to do anything to invite Mum’s criticism, but I couldn’t help it. Inevitably, I would end up right back in the kitchen. It didn’t matter that Fern ate as much as I did, Mum never said a word to her. Once, I asked her why she never said anything to Fern, and she shrugged as if it was obvious: ‘Because Fern can afford to eat what she wants, she has my metabolism.’
She was right; Fern was a clone of Mum physically. They were both tall and the kind of skinny where a stray elbow could puncture flesh. Fern also had Mum’s hair, a crowning glory of tumbling honey-coloured waves. It felt unfair to be twins with her. Next to Fern, I felt like a frumpy interloper, even before Mum decided to point it out.
On our ninth birthday, there was another blow-up, this time over a cake Mum made us from the Women’s Weekly cookbook. Mum made us a fancy cake every year – yet another of the contradictions that was our mother. It was a source of great pride for her; she loved anything that made her feel like a good mother. It was always a big production: selecting the cake she wanted to make, shopping for the ingredients, looking for tips and tricks. That year, she decided it was going to be a unicorn cake – the most difficult she’d attempted. In the lead-up, she’d been to three different shops to find the right cake tin and yet another to get the icing and the gold edible horn. It was a nice time for all of us, not because Fern and I cared much about the cake, but because Mum’s mood was always buoyed by the cake-making.
As usual, we weren’t allowed in the kitchen while she made the cake, we were only invited in for the exciting ‘reveal’ when it was done. The unveiling was Mum’s favourite part. We were required to squeal with joy, thank her profusely and ask a million questions about how she did it – even Fern seemed to understand how we were to act. On this birthday, we performed our roles with aplomb and Mum seemed very pleased, which in turn meant I felt torn between being happy and being terrified that something would happen to mess it up.
After we sang ‘Happy Birthday’, Mum took a photo of Fern and me in front of the cake before I was dispatched to get plates. Peering into the cupboard, I agonised over whether to use the ‘good’ plates or the plastic for so long I was sure Mum would snap at me, asking what the heck I was doing. When I finally produced the good plates, she merely nodded her approval. The relief was so great I went weak with it.
It almost went off without a hitch. Almost. But when I reached for my piece of cake, I felt Mum’s cold finger poking me in the stomach.
‘Not too much now, Rosie Round!’
