"It's because of your father, isn't it? We hardly see him now," said Winnie. "He isn't very nice."
But Maureen didn't want to know. She didn't want one more scrap of information for her subconscious to build nightmares around. "Mum," she said, trying to stick to the point, "it pains me to see you, do you understand?"
Winnie pressed her hankie to her mouth. "How do I pain you?" she said, as her face crumpled. "What have I ever done?"
"You know fine well."
"No," wept Winnie, "I don't know fine well."
"How could you have him back in your house after what he did to me? I'll never understand that. I know you don't believe me but if you even wondered about it-"
Winnie took a deep wavering breath, snapped her wrist out and slapped Maureen's arm. "At least phone-"
"Don't fucking slap me, Mum!" shouted Maureen. "I'm an adult. It's not appropriate."
Winnie began to sob, making Maureen into the sort of person who would shout unkind things at her crying mother. She had promised herself peace from this but here she was, falling into the old traps, playing the bad guy again, coming to hate herself on a whole new level.
"We don't see him anymore"-Winnie struggled to speak through convulsive sobs-"and Una's angry and George won't speak to me… I miss you, Maureen. I don't want you to not see me."
Maureen wondered at Winnie's resilience. If Winnie had set her mind to world domination she could have done it. Unhampered by the twin evils of manners or empathy, Winnie could railroad an acre of salesmen into charity work if she set her mind to it.
"Mum," she said softly, "I don't want to see you for a while and that continues to be true, whether or not you're all having a nice time together."
Winnie clocked the condition. She looked up when Maureen said it would only be for a while and looked away again. She blew her nose and narrowed her eyes at Maureen. "Don't you tell me what to do," she said, hope twitching at the corners of her mouth. "You're still a cheeky wee besom. And I'll slap ye if I want to. I could take you in a fight any day." She looked at the spilled meat, scattered and trampled by passing feet. "Are ye sure ye won't have a slice?"
Maureen started to smile but her eyes began to water and she had to breathe in deeply and blink hard to stop herself crying. It was good news: they weren't getting on, he had nothing to keep him here, no reason to stay. Winnie took off one of her mittens and played with her hankie, pulling at the corners, looking for a dry patch. The wedding band George had given her was loose on her finger. Winnie was losing weight; her skin looked thin and a watery gray liver spot was developing on a knuckle. Maureen reached out suddenly and held her mum's hand, cupping it in her own, trying to hold the warm in. The wind blew freezing tears across her face like racing insects. "Mum," she breathed. "My mum."
They stood close, looking at Winnie's hand, chins trembling for love of each other, crying for the pointless sadness of it all.
"I can't stand this," whispered Maureen.
"Me neither," said Winnie.
But she meant the moment and Maureen meant her life. Winnie reached up to Maureen's face, dabbing at her wet ear like a drunken St. Veronica, letting her fingers linger on her cheek.
Maureen sniffed hard, dragging the cold air up to her eyes, waking herself up. "Is he going back to London, then?"
"Don't think so," said Winnie.
"Who's keeping him here?"
Winnie tutted at her. "No one's keeping him here," she said. "He's got a flat, a council flat, in Ruchill." She pointed over Maureen's shoulder to the horizon, to the jagged red-brick tower of the old Ruchill hospital.
Maureen could see it from her bedroom window. She dropped Winnie's hand. "What the fuck did you tell me that for?"
Winnie shrugged carelessly. "It's where he is."
"I don't want to know anything about him and you come here and tell me he lives near me?"
Winnie knew she was in the wrong. She tugged her mitten back on and pressed her face up to Maureen's. "Did it ever occur to you," she said, "that the rest of us know him as well?"
"What?"
"It's not all about you," shouted Winnie. "He's their father too. Don't you think they wonder about him? Don't you think I wonder?"
"Wonder?" shouted Maureen. "You stupid cow! D'ye think I was committed to a psychiatric hospital suffering from pathological wonder?"
"Don't you cast that up to me." Winnie held up her hand. "Your breakdown wasn't just about him. You were always a strange wee girl. You were always unhappy."
They hadn't seen each other for five months and although Maureen vividly remembered how angry her mother made her, she had forgotten the sanctimonious bulldozing, the utter disregard for her feelings, the vicious kindness and blind denial of what Michael had done.
"Think about it, Winnie," she said, talking through her teeth, the fury reducing her voice to a whisper, "think about what he did to me. If it wasn't for him I'd never have been so unhappy. If it wasn't for him I'd never have been in hospital. I'd have gone on to a real job after my fucking degree. I might be happy, I might be married. I might even have the nerve to hope for children of my own. I might be able to sleep. I might be able to look at myself in the fucking mirror without wanting to scratch my fucking face off." She was out of control, shouting loud and crying in the street. Art students stole glances at her as they came out of Mr. Padda's with their newspapers and lunchtime rolls. "And what did he sacrifice all of that for? For a fucking tug."
Winnie had never believed in the abuse and had never flinched from saying so before. But this time she pursed her lips and clasped her hands prissily in front of her. "Is that all you want to say?" she said, grinding her teeth and looking off into the middle distance.
Winnie was trying to listen. She was actually trying, and Maureen had never known her to do that. Not when they were children, not when they were adults, not even when Maureen was in hospital. "Mum, that man and the memories and stuff. I know what he did. He knows he did it too."
Winnie looked nervously around her. "Do we have to discuss this here?"
"Does he ever ask for me?"
Winnie swallowed hard and looked away. She muttered something into the wind.
"What?" said Maureen.
"No," said Winnie quietly. "He never asks for you. Ever. It's as if you were never born."
"How likely is that, Winnie? Doesn't it make ye wonder?"
Winnie couldn't think of an answer. It must have bothered her terribly. She looked angrily over Maureen's shoulder. "I'm sick of this," she said.
"Why did you tell me he lives there? God, am I not troubled enough already?"
"You can't blame me for that-"
But Maureen was backing off into the street. She leaned forward in case Winnie missed anything. "Stay away from me," she said slowly, pointing at her mum's soft chest. "And stop phone-pesting me when you're steaming."
"If I was that bad of a mother," Winnie shouted after her, "how come none of the rest of them had breakdowns?"
The vicious morning frost had numbed Maureen's ears before she was two hundred yards down the hill. She turned a corner and the wind ambushed her, parting her eyelashes. She stopped and waited at the lights, staring at the patchwork tar on the road. The nervous cars and buses jostled one another for road space, speeding across the twenty-foot yellow box, afraid of being left back at the lights. If she threw herself into the road she'd be killed instantly, a five-foot jump to an eternity of peace and no more brave plowing on, no more shouting over the storm, no more nightmares, no more Michael. She thought of Pauline Doyle and envied her.
Pauline was a June suicide. She had been in psychiatric hospital with Maureen. Two weeks after she was released, a walker had found her dead under a tree. Maureen couldn't stop thinking about her. Her thoughts kept short-circuiting straight from worry to the happy image of Pauline at peace on the grass in springtime, oblivious to the insects crawling over her legs.