– Well, the laparoscopic investigations continue, sighed Tilda. We’re coming up to the tenth anniversary of the start of that. I’ve got more keyhole surgery booked for March, but in the meantime the doctor who deals with my connective-tissue question is taking long leave. And d’you remember that polyp I told you about?
It was after Hannah was diagnosed with Crabbe’s Block that Tilda’s health problems came into their own. Internal organs, usually. Nothing visible. It was only when Hannah was head-hunted into Head Office’s Munchhausen’s Department that she realised her own mother counted as a classic seeker of attention. Munchhausen’s by Proxy, to begin with. Then the real thing. The Liberty Corporation, it dawned on Hannah, had known about her Munchie mother from the start. That’s why they’d recruited her.
She wasn’t offended. She was pleased to have been spirited away from home like that. Pleased to have been given a role.
As Tilda continued the story of her latest medical adventures – the scheduling of appointments seemed to be a key feature – Hannah looked round at the neat fuchsia’d borders of the tram station. The pressed rubber chips of the platform felt different under her feet, as though they were full of packed energy.
– Anyway it’s my kneecaps now, finished Tilda. The plastic’s fatigued.
– I don’t remember it like this, said Hannah. Something’s changed.
– Well, what d’you expect? Tilda ducked into her buggy and gripped the little steering wheel.
It made her even smaller, Hannah thought, like a toddler in a pretend car.
– St Placid’s had more makeovers than any other city, Tilda said proudly, starting the ignition. Even we can’t keep track!
But it wasn’t a makeover thing – it was something else, something less tangible than a revamp, Hannah thought, oddly aware of a springy feeling underfoot as she trailed her mother’s electric buggy on foot down the residential streets past rhododendron hedges, mail-boxes, and tidy lawns dotted with miniature wells, windmills, and bird-baths with plastic ivy. Water features were big this year, and lawn furniture with pop-up parasols. The lavender smell gusted out from the gas pumps. It seemed more potent than usual, as though it were fighting a competing perfume from a rival source.
Tilda’s ground-floor apartment comprised a box shape within the larger box of the block itself, which was painted in variegated pastel shades. Inside, Tilda had chosen lilac as a theme, to complement the lavender. Here the smell seemed more voluptuous and luxuriant, like a bath-house.
While Tilda fussed in the kitchen with her little percolator, Hannah glanced around the living-room. Her mother’s latest craze was for Japanese flower-arranging, and the occasional tables were cluttered with cut palm leaves, wires, secateurs, dried-out sticks and other Ikebana accoutrements. On the shelf by the CD rack was a hologram of Hannah as a child, clutching a Marilyn doll in one hand, and in the other, a plastic monster, a gorgon with multiple heads. The small face overwhelmed by glasses, the pale eyes not meeting the camera’s stare.
– You probably can’t even remember what it was like before, said Tilda, returning to the living-room with the coffee and re-arranging her flowers, a big bouquet of blue irises and orange tulips. See? They’re in Liberty colours. That’s a nice touch, isn’t it?
– What? asked Hannah. The heat in Tilda’s apartment was already making her sleepy and confused.
– You can’t remember politics. D’you still drink it black? You were barely an adult. All that incompetence. I can’t believe we put up with it. Look at the Americans. Look at the mess they’re in. Then she lowered her voice and whispered proudly – Have you seen how jealous they’re getting?
She reached for a plastic box, with twelve individual drawers. Pill time. She had labelled the little drawers neatly, in felt pen.
– You remember I phoned the Hotline when the neighbours were making all that noise with that idiotic mixing desk?
Hannah forced her eyebrows to make a questioning shape.
– Gone.
Tilda arranged a row of five pills before her, then poured a glass of spring water. She gulped the first pill, swished it down with water, and covered her mouth to give a small ladylike burp.
– Gone?
– Transferred. The second and third pills. – The rep was on to it straight away. Next day, literally, they were gone. They were borderline Marginals, he said. He said you were right to call us, Mrs Park, it’s people like you who enable us to do our job, and on behalf of all of us at Libertycare, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you personally.
Hannah recognised the wording. The Hotline used it.
– I’m a satisfied customer, I told the rep, Tilda went on. You can guess how I’ll be choosing!
Through the triple-glazed window, a clutch of fit seniors jogged by in masks and pastel track-suits, goldfishing laughter.
– HRT trash, snorted Tilda. That’s my tax dollar. I’ll fix us lunch, shall I? I ordered the Gourmet Special, two minutes in the microwave. They do me a daily delivery, with my knees.
It was a platter for two, with plastic knives and forks: something white with plenty of fat and carbohydrate, and sprinkle-on vitamins from a sachet. Comforting.
– Breaded turkey escalopes, Tilda said after they’d finished it. With cauliflower dauphinois.
Hannah pictured a bird in the shape of the country called Turkey, flattened like a lumpy pancake.
– Can they fly? she asked Tilda abruptly.
– I think they’re like ostriches, said Tilda, after a moment. Talking of which, Chunky Choo-Choo on tomorrow’s three-thirty at Mohawk. Fancy a flutter? You can borrow my code. You need to watch her form though, she laid an egg on the track last season!
She laughed, throwing her head back, then looked at Hannah and stopped smiling. She sighed – a small, pained exhalation. In the silence that followed, Hannah had a sudden, sinking sense of what was coming next. She could almost see the words forming themselves in her mother’s brain.
– I don’t know how someone like you ends up as a psychologist.
Hannah folded her arms, pulled back from the table.
– I’ve told you before…
– Well, I don’t understand the difference. Psychologist, statiwhatsit. You need to know about people for that, don’t you? Don’t you? And you’re hardly what I’d call a people person.
There was no real point in replying. Slowly, Hannah pulled at one of the elastic bands on her wrist, then let it snap sharply against her skin. It hurt.
– Industrial psycho-statistician, said Hannah.
She looked away from her mother, out through the window at the rhododendrons and the camellias. Go, she thought. Go now. Escape. Out. Clouds freighted with the beginnings of rain.
– You don’t need people. I’ve told you. It’s all on paper. Or on screen. Or on CD ROM.
She took the elastic band off her wrist and swiftly scrunched her wispy hair into a little ball. With the elastic around it, and bits sticking out, it sparkled like nylon hay.
– So what are you working on now then?
– It’s confidential, said Hannah, reaching for her mask. Using the inhaler was a tactic she’d adopted in childhood, to gain – quite literally – breathing space. Sometimes the need was genuine, and urgent, but often, with Ma, it was more complicated.
– You could give me the gist, Tilda reproached her plaintively.
Hannah felt a flash of anger. Her mother always did this.
– Just Hotline duty, she said reluctantly.
– Oh really? asked Tilda, smiling. It’s a lovely service! I get special rates.