This place would purify our bodies, soothe our souls. We’d be soaked and stroked, massaged and mentored in methods of healthy living. After five days here we’d return to everyday life happier, more balanced human beings. Our worries would evaporate.
Wind whistled a lullaby down the valley on our first night as we slid between 1,000-thread counts of indulgence and slept like stones.
It’s hard to write about what happened that night except to say it’s one of the strangest events of my life. I’ve never been particularly psychic, and yet . . .
Before dawn I woke to the sound of wooden blinds slapping against the window. The wind had worked itself up into a tantrum and the air was hot and restless. Rolling over to find a more comfortable position, I became aware of a human figure sitting in a chair across the room. It was – of all people – Mum.
My chest melted at the sight of her. Even though she’d died several years earlier, she seemed very much alive, her eyes blazing with love as she looked at me. In front of her a black cat kept galloping impatiently across the floor, moving too fast for me to figure out if it was Cleo.
Aware that this encounter with Mum might be short, I seized the chance to ask her some questions. The cat zigzagged across the room, as if urging me to hurry up.
‘Is there a God?’ I asked, feeling sheepish for being so unoriginal.
‘Yes,’ Mum replied matter-of-factly.
‘Have you met him?’
‘No,’ she answered, with a tinge of regret.
‘I miss you so much!’ I cried, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of loss.
Mum had never liked it when people felt sorry for themselves. I’d sobbed like this once when she was dying and she’d just turned her head on the pillow and stared out the window at her camellias.
She began shimmering around the edges, her body melting away in the chair.
‘What should I know?’ I cried, desperate that she was going to disappear.
‘Good comes from good,’ she replied before smiling enigmatically and vanishing.
Last thing I saw was the cat’s tail melting into the shadows.
Getting back to sleep was impossible. It seemed melodramatic to tell Philip the moment he woke up. I waited till we’d showered and were on our way to an organic vegetarian breakfast. Philip has a surprisingly open mind for someone who works in a concrete tower.
‘Was it a dream?’ he asked as we wandered past the tai chi meeting point.
It’d felt more real than a dream but that was all I could call it.
‘What do you think it meant?’ he asked.
‘Maybe it’s about the book,’ I said. ‘If I keep writing from my heart, I think Mum was saying it could do some good – not just for me, but for other people as well. There was something really urgent about it, too. Mum and Cleo were telling me to hurry up and finish it. They don’t want me to waste time.’
The prospect of running out of time hadn’t occurred to me before. It was something I was about to confront.
Inner Terrorist
Mothers and daughters share jeans and genes
Five days and nights without coffee was enough for me. A detox headache drilled through my forehead. The moment we arrived back at Shirley I scurried across the road to Spoonful. Slurping my first latte of the day, I was grateful to be toxic again.
Winter had crept in while we were at the wellness retreat. Trees had shaken off the last of their leaves and stood shivering in their underwear against the pale blue sky.
I’d booked in to have a routine two-yearly mammogram a few days after we got home, but with Lydia due to fly out to Sri Lanka the day after the appointment it had moved to the bottom of my priority list. I’d lifted the phone a couple of times to cancel. Now I was back working on the Cleo book, worrying myself to distraction over Lydia and scouring the web for wedding venues, there was hardly time for hypochondriac check-ups.
The young doctor who’d done a breast examination a couple of months earlier had confirmed everything was fine and when I asked for a referral to the breast clinic, she’d said I hardly needed to bother. I could just as easily sign up for the government-sponsored programme. It would mean a longer wait but the service was free.
I was about to accept her suggestion, but something stopped me. Instinct, maybe. Or one of the mood swings women my age are famous for. The doctor wasn’t my regular GP and too young to understand the torment of middle-aged hormones. Besides, if I didn’t have the mammogram now, I’d end up having to do it later, which would be more of a pain. Still, when I’d insisted on the breast clinic the GP had scrawled a referral with the level of enthusiasm I reserve for vampire movies.
Unless you’re wired for photographic recall it’s almost impossible to remember what you were wearing on a certain day. Some days are so devastating, however, the brain stores away irrelevant details. I recall, for instance, exactly what I was wearing the afternoon Sam died – a khaki skirt and matching shirt with a red trim. Ugly, but it was the 80s.
I also remember what I wore to the breast clinic that day in July 2008. To be honest, clothes are a source of frustration. I try to make an effort with my wardrobe. Sometimes, if a shop assistant gives the illusion of being helpful and isn’t a complete liar, I can be talked into buying a few bits and pieces. I might even wear them for a day or two.
But my wardrobe inevitably gets whittled down to one pair of pants and a couple of tops that look okay and don’t pinch in too many crevices. As long as they match the footwear worn the last three years in a row this, regrettably, becomes my uniform.
The weather was so cold on the morning of my appointment I dragged out my ankle boots with the wedge heels. They were so old I couldn’t remember if I’d bought them the first time they were fashionable, or during their retro rebirth. The new velvet black pants compensated for scuffs and stains on the boots. As for the green shirt with embroidered shoulders in homage to John Wayne, it was the only thing I could find that was half ironed.
Anyone who’s had a mammogram, or in fact any examination involving women’s bits, knows to wear a skirt or trousers and a top that can be easily removed. It gives you negotiating power to keep at least half your clothes on. The John Wayne outfit was ideal.
I tried on the red hat that makes me look exactly like my mother. From what I can remember my grandmother had one a similar shape, a female version of the Homburg favoured by Winston Churchill and Colin Farrell. There aren’t many hats that suit the facial features of the females in our family, with our prominent noses.
There’s something comforting about the thought of hundreds of forebears wearing the same hat shape through the centuries. No doubt my daughters, after experimentation with berets and floppy brims, would eventually do the same. I no longer minded looking like a carbon copy of Mum. Did this mean I’d finally grown up? A grey day could’ve done with a splash of red. But a hat meant hat hair. I put it back on the wardrobe shelf.
After scanning the obligatory trashy magazines in the clinic waiting room, I was summoned by the radiographer. ‘Relax,’ she said as she lined me up for the mammogram. ‘Stand naturally. Not quite there. A little to the right. Put your shoulder down. Relax. (Couldn’t she stop saying that word?) Move forward. Drape your right arm over the top of the machine. Hold that handle. No. Move back. That’s it. Relax,’ she said, flattening my right boob between the equivalent of two paving slabs and running a garbage truck over them. ‘ Take a breath. Don’t move. Now hold.’
She repeated the ritual three times and bustled back five minutes later apologising, saying the images were underexposed and we’d have to do them again. I was surprised she was so incompetent. Alternatively, she could’ve been faking incompetence to lull me into a false sense of security. Soon after, she shepherded me into the ultrasound room.