She fled from the ladies’ leaving Loretta to follow behind, and desperately hoping that the threat of leaving home would persuade her mother to keep her secret. When she reached the other girls, they all looked up at her expectantly.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Crystal.
‘Nowt. It’s just Angie. She works the beat. She can be a bit of a pain but she’s harmless enough. I’ve told her she can join us. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Crystal.
‘We’ll soon put her straight if she starts anything,’ cut in Ruby.
Amber managed a half-hearted smile then watched her mother as she waited at the bar before staggering across the pub to join them.
‘This is Angie,’ said Amber once her mother had joined them.
The other girls shuffled their seats around to accommodate her and Crystal smiled amiably.
‘Yes,’ said Loretta. ‘Old Angie the prostitute. That’s who I am.’
56
February 2016
Loretta’s pulse was rapid but weak, confirming Amber’s suspicions that all was not well. She remembered how she had been in the pub – coughing uncontrollably until Sapphire had slapped her on the back. But Amber had been so preoccupied about Kev that she had barely noticed. Guilt ate away at her when she recalled how she had been eager to get off to her client meeting before her mother became a drunken menace.
Loretta’s eyes opened and she tried to speak again. Her breath was shallow, and Amber could hear it rattling in her lungs. She was now fully awake, but her eyes were cloudy, and her pupils were like pinpricks.
‘I told you not to go to work, you silly cow!’ said Amber. Although her words were stern, her voice cracked with emotion.
‘I didn’t go,’ said Loretta. ‘I got a taxi back here.’
She paused to get her breath back and Amber put a hand to her head, which felt hot to the touch despite the room being chilly. ‘Jesus, you’re burning up! How long have you been lying there?’
Loretta wheezed. ‘Dunno. I didn’t stay in the pub long after you’d gone. I didn’t feel so good.’
‘OK. I’ll get you a duvet and something to bring your temperature down,’ said Amber rushing out of the room.
While she looked for the things, Amber also switched the heating on. Her mother may have been burning up, but she knew that the chilliness in the house couldn’t have been good for her chest infection. No, it was best to let her sweat it out.
Fortunately, Loretta always kept a supply of paracetamol for hangovers, so they weren’t difficult to find. It wasn’t long before Amber was back in the room with the tablets, a glass of water and the duvet off Nathan’s old bed.
‘Mum, I need to sit you up so I can give you some paracetamol,’ she said.
Amber knelt and reached over, putting her hands under her mother’s arms to lift her. As she did so, the pungent smell of stale whisky hit her, and she recoiled. But this time she couldn’t walk away and, as she picked her mother up, she noticed something else. She was light and easy to lift. In fact, she was all skin and bone, and she coughed and wheezed with the exertion as Amber lifted her. Why hadn’t she noticed before just how frail her mother had become?
She managed to get her to take the tablets then she put her back in a comfortable position, wrapping the duvet around her.
‘I’m too bloody hot,’ Loretta complained.
‘You’ll cool down in a bit now you’ve had the paracetamols, but you need to keep warm because of your bad chest. It’s bloody freezing in here. I’ll get you a damp cloth to hold to your head. That should help to bring your temperature down.’
Amber raced to the kitchen and brought back a cold compress, holding it to Loretta’s forehead. She knew that her mother should really be in bed, but she was far too weak to manage the stairs. As she looked at her pallid complexion and cloudy, red-rimmed eyes and listened to her laboured breathing, she realised that this was more than just a bad chest. She strongly suspected that her mother had pneumonia and she deliberated over what to do about it.
It was too early to ring the doctors or go round to the neighbours’, but Amber felt that Nathan should know that their mother was so ill. She half hoped that he might also provide some moral support when she told him just how unwell their mother was.
‘Mum, I’m just going to ring Nathan,’ said Amber. ‘She placed her mother’s hand on top of the cold compress. ‘Hold that there while I make the call.’ Then she took out her phone and tried to stand up. ‘I need to let him know you’re ill.’
Loretta reached out a scrawny hand. ‘No, stay here. Never mind him. I need to tell you something.’ She paused to catch her breath.
Amber knelt back down next to the sofa and watched her mother take a deep juddering breath as she raised her head and prepared to speak again.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘For… everything. I was a bad mother.’ Amber wanted to reassure her that she was wrong. But she couldn’t so she let her mother carry on between gasps of air. ‘I did what I had to do to make ends meet… I was wrong too… it wasn’t Nathan… you were the special one… always you.’
Loretta’s head sunk back onto the pillow and she closed her eyes, exhausted. For some time, Amber stayed where she was, watching her mother’s chest rise and fall and listening to her croaking lungs. She took hold of her hand and felt tears stinging her eyes.
Once she had watched her mother fall back to sleep and taken a moment to calm herself down, she got back up off the floor and walked into the hall. She needed to ring Nathan. They hadn’t heard anything
