She didn’t recognise me. To be fair, I had changed a lot in the last 12 years; it’s called growing up. Still, having planned the encounter, she should have been prepared.

As I opened the gate, she smiled and asked if I knew a girl called Teresa.

‘It’s me,’ I sighed. ‘Mother, it’s me.’

‘I thought it probably was.’ She could never bear to be caught out. ‘But there seems to be…’ She waved her hand in front of her face as if batting away cobwebs.

‘Your eyesight giving you jip?’ I asked.

‘No, no, nothing wrong with me.’ Her old defensive tone was back.

‘Really? Well, I can’t imagine your teeth are in great shape, is that what they feed you, candies?’

A baffled expression went across her face. ‘My teeth are fine.’

I got the keys out of my bag and stepped round her to get to the main door. ‘Coming in?’

I’d dreamt about this moment for years, literally, and I would always surface from the dream berating myself for my behaviour, for talking to her like it was ordinary and for showing no surprise at seeing her. I would lie in bed, the dream sense of her fading into the surrounding darkness, thinking: why didn’t I hug her? I knew that for all my gruffness what I really wanted was for her to hold me, as she used to when I was a small child and she was the safest thing I could grasp in a distinctly rocky world.

She got to her feet and started to follow me up the steps. ‘Mum, pick the wrappers up, why don’t you?’

‘They’re not mine,’ she said.

‘You’re impossible,’ I said, slotting the key in the lock and shooing her through the door, before scooting back down the steps to chase candy wrappers around in the wind.

I was doing it again, acting like her parent and then resenting it, when what I wanted was to make the most of this visitation, and not get dragged into our old ways. After all, I would likely never see her again.

My flat was one of three in a converted Georgian house and my mother had traipsed up the staircase to stand outside my front door as if she knew just where to go, even though I’d only been living there a year or two. I supposed it was no more peculiar than her materializing in the first place. I followed her up the stairs, scrunching cellophane wrappers in one hand and picking up several more, which had appeared in her wake, with the other.

‘Mum, you’ve got to stop dropping these wrappers,’ I said, as I opened the door to my flat. She looked non-plussed.

I dumped my bag on the sofa and indicated she take the armchair under the window. ‘I don’t know about you, but I need a coffee.’ The after-effects of the drink were catching up with me and I needed to sharpen my mind, not fall asleep on the sofa like I had been doing most afternoons. ‘Can you drink coffee?’ A silly question, she’d been eating candies, presumably she could drink too.

Why was I doing this, carrying on like normal? Why couldn’t I stop wasting time and sit down and talk to her, say all the things I’d so often longed to say? And not just the bad. Yes, there were still accusations - twelve years of absence didn’t erase everything - but I’d had time to consider and appreciate my mother in a new light, and I wanted to tell her so. But she was acting like this was normal too, nothing about her indicated anything unusual.

I hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, waiting for her response to the offer of coffee. More candy wrappers had appeared around her feet like brightly coloured confetti. I looked at her, examining her face for the first time since she’d arrived. Her dark hair was cut short to frame her face - the way I’d seen in photographs from her youth - and her face looked younger too, much younger than when I had last seen her lying in that hospital bed. And not the smoothing out of age that came when the muscles in her face had slackened, but skin that glowed with youth. She looked younger than me.

‘Your flat looks nice,’ she said. ‘Did you make those new curtains yourself?’

I stood still. A tingling spread throughout my body. By rights the tingling should have started five minutes ago when I first found her lounging on the stairs outside, but she was right the curtains were new - they’d been a lockdown project - but how did she know that? My legs quivered and I plonked myself down on the arm of the sofa. ‘Have you been here before Mum?’

‘What a funny question.’ She arched an eyebrow.

‘Is it?’

‘You know it is. Why wouldn’t I have been to my own daughter’s flat before?’

‘For starters, you didn’t even recognise me when I came along the street. Why do you think that was?’

‘I did. I did recognise you.’

‘You asked me if I knew someone called Teresa, how is that recognizing me?’

She didn’t answer, just sat with a look of perplexed concentration, as if trying really hard to puzzle something out. She seemed vulnerable, like a child. Which reminded me of how she’d appeared when I got to her hospital bed: unconscious, curled on her side like a baby. I had held her hand and sung to her, now I reached out and took her hand again. It was solid but soft, the skin didn’t have a wrinkle. I could tell she was on the brink of tears, like a lost child. ‘Mum,’ I said ever so gently, ‘I haven’t seen you for twelve years.’

Her eyes looked frightened as they met mine. She shook her head.

‘Mum, you do know you’re dead, don’t you?’ I said.

1

WINTER 1963

It is very cold in the kitchen. There is no gas fire, only the stove, and as the night creeps toward morning the coldness solidifies, the room becoming like a large refrigerator. Eleanor does not feel the cold. When she washed up after the children had been settled for the night, she had boiled water in the kettle, not for her own comfort, only better to get the grease off the dishes and pans. To ensure everything was orderly and clean for the morning.

She has been pacing back and forth crying for some hours. She does not want to do this thing. She argues with herself, interrogating her reasoning, her feelings, but the voice comes back at her, resolute and clear.

As the early hours of the morning approach, desperation rises and there is no one to quell it, nothing to relieve the building tension. She picks up a knife at one point and imagines drawing it across her skin, sees the bright red droplets that would flower on the surface, but it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough. It will only leave scars for everyone to see, another thing to cover, another thing to hide, and it will not permanently excise this feeling. There will be more nights, more days to drag herself through. The solution must be permanent.

She finds masking tape in the kitchen drawer and adds it to the tray of milk and bread she has already prepared. Slowly she makes her way up the stairs and quietly opens the children’s bedroom door. They are both soundly asleep. The baby on her back, arms flung carelessly above her head, the older girl, Cassandra, curled on her side, one hand beneath her chin. Eleanor watches the Cassandra’s. Her eyes flicker beneath the lids, the skin luminous in the light from the street. She cannot watch for long. She places the tray beside the bed and takes a deep breath, telling herself it is for the best. The very best.

The room is icy, outside the snow has lain for months, yet she releases the catch on the sash window and pulls the top pane down. The wood whines in protest and Eleanor quickly turns to check her children, but their steady breathing continues.

She tucks the blankets in close around Cassandra and kisses her forehead. The baby has thrown her covers off her top half, so she carefully rearranges them, securing them tightly under the cot mattress before kissing her youngest. She picks up the masking tape, glances back at the window, hesitating for a second before turning steadfastly away and softly closing the door.

Now she has reached certainty she is calm. A weight of responsibility has been lifted. The decision is final.

Carefully, so carefully, she uses the tape to seal the gaps around the bedroom door. She neatly rolls two towels and barricades them against the foot of the door to ensure there is no free flow of air to the room.

She moves now as if in a trance. Matter of fact. Resolute. Watching her feet go ahead of her down the stairs as if they belong to someone else. Her hand she observes as if from a distance as it slides down the banister.

She looks methodically around the kitchen one last time. The washing-up has been dried and put away. The table is clear. Her letters have been posted and her note taped to the perambulator in the hall. Her manuscript is carefully ordered and waiting neatly on her desk.

The floor is clean, but cold as she kneels with the last towel in her hand. She removes the oven shelf - metal shrieking against metal - and slides it down the side of the stove. Rolling the towel to make a small pillow she positions it carefully on the bottom of the oven. Her hand finds the dial and pushes whilst twisting. She can never remember if there was a slight hissing sound.

WITNESS

My mother says he was strangling her. My father he was beating her to death. My mother says I witnessed it. My father that my presence halted it. My aunt, who was living with us at the time, says I slept through it all, never knew a thing. My brother never talks about it.

__________________________________________________________________________

My Mother runs, runs, runs. Through the street, in the dark. She has no shoes. She has no coat. It is wintertime. She runs through the town. The pavement is gritty beneath her feet, bits of gravel work their way between her toes. Occasionally she stumbles and stubs a toe. She runs. The air is cold, it hits her lungs like shock, and she gasps for breath, from the running, in the night, in the winter, yet she doesn’t stop.

My big brother Joe knows where she’s headed. He’s only eleven, but he’s a good cross country runner and he follows her through the night as she makes her way across town.

___________________________________________________________________________

My mother is applying mascara and eye liner in the hallway mirror. Her tongue juts out a tiny bit as she concentrates, but she's an artist and her hand is steady. I watch with fascination as she transforms her everyday-pale-fringed-eyes like a magician. No lashes become long lashes, lying dark against the skin. Now it's not my mummy looking back at me in the mirror. The imposter smiles before slipping her silky nyloned feet into the grey heeled shoes with the pearl shaped buttons that I like to clop about in. She pulls on her coat and moves to leave, but I grab the rough tweed fabric and plead with her not to go.

She picks me up and squeezes me. 'I won't be long. You'll be asleep before you know it,’ she says, and hands me to my aunt.

‘No!’

But she opens the front door and eases it shut behind her.

The pub is smoky, dark and filled with men smelling of sweat, cigarettes and the malty tang of bitter. My mother hesitates.

‘No Rory?’ shouts Connor, a friend of my father's.

She would like to shout across the room that Rory’s in London. With his mistress. As usual on a Friday night. But she just shakes her head.

'What'll you be having?' Connor asks, waving a fiver in the air.

___________________________________________________________________________

Two hours later and four steps out of the pub and a voice calls: ‘Shall I be walking you home?’ It is Connor. She stumbles and they link arms as they walk through the chilly night. When she shivers he puts his arm around her.

He finds her attractive. Feeding off this and the alcohol she hardly ever drinks, she feels attractive. It’s been so long since she felt this way, since she felt alive. She never notices how she feels these days. She is a woman under water, barely surfacing for air. The beating of her own heart and the water buffeting her eardrums muffles the squabbling of the children, her husband’s affairs and the relentlessness of work. But in this moment she feels alive because the rest of the time she feels dead. She can’t remember how long she's felt dead, perhaps that’s what dying is like, you don’t notice until you come back to life. She certainly can’t remember the last time she felt like she does now, walking through the cold night air laughing and smiling.

My father promotes the idea that my parents' marriage is an open relationship. He likes to ask my mother whether she finds other men attractive, and if so who? And when? And where? My father loves a bit of interrogation.

My mother says nothing. She prefers to remain submerged. When my father visits his mistress Mother only hears the roar of water in her ears. Once, when they were younger, she made a fuss, went round to some woman's house and screamed at her. Now she knows better. When Father starts banging on about her and other men Mother says nothing. She closes her eyes.

___________________________________________________________________________

They reach the gate to the garden and Connor moves to kiss her. She looks into his eyes and thinks in that careless, alcohol induced way – ah why not? Why not? – and they kiss. A drunken fumble. His mouth tastes of tailor-mades and beer. Meaningless enough, nothing will come of it, but still she enjoys this kiss. This single kiss. She is tempted to linger, but a car’s headlights hit the house. She pushes past him, and pulling her coat around her presses through the ivy to make her way across the frosty garden towards the back door.

___________________________________________________________________________

The landing is dark, but the child can see the glow of light coming from downstairs. She wants her mother. She takes one stair at a time, feeling the edge of each one with her toes. Bit by bit, one rough threadbare carpet step at a time.

The front door bangs making her jump. She hesitates, listening to the footsteps as they pound along the passage. She glimpses her father’s shape through the bannisters, but he doesn’t see her. She stands holding her breath, trying to hear above the thump of her own heart. She hears the back door closing followed by her mother’s chalky soft voice. So on she goes.

The back room is dark but the hatch to the kitchen is a glowing rectangle of light. She can see her mother leaning against the back door, her hands reaching behind her grasping the door handle. Her face is shiny and red. The child wants to go to her, but he is standing by the cooker and his face is dark, fists clenched by his side.

Her mother is speaking. ‘It was nothing, a silly kiss. Why would you care? Move over, I’ll put the kettle on.’

But he doesn’t move. His brow furrows. ‘Why would I care? Why’d you think I care?’ he steps forward.

‘Well, where have you been tonight?’ She laughs, it isn’t her normal laugh it is high pitched, a bit wild. She takes a step forward, but has to steady herself against the door. She sways a little.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Says her father.

‘What’s that got to do with it, he says? What’s that got to do with it?' Her mother leans toward him, steadying herself against the counter. 'Every bloody Friday night you and her. But me? I’m not even allowed to go for a drink and have a little flirt with someone?’ She bangs her hand against the counter in rhythm to the words. ‘What are you doing home so early anyway, had a lovers tiff?’

‘Kissing isn’t flirting,’ he says.

‘Well you’d know all about that.'

His voice is low, quiet. ‘Are you sleeping with him, Alex?’

‘Me? Sleeping with him? No.’

‘Don’t lie to me, I can always tell when you’re lying?’

‘Well you evidently can’t. Sleeping with him? God!’ She laughs again, but it's not a happy laugh. ‘When would I have the chance? It’s the first time I’ve been out in a year. Did you think we did it in the street?’

___________________________________________________________________________

My brother is standing alone in the courtyard calling up to the window where he knows his mother is. The red brick building looms large above him. He looks so small standing there in the darkness. My mother is up there but she does not come to the window.

Standing in his pyjamas with a jumper pulled over and bare feet in plimsolls, Joe is screaming for his mother. He starts to shake from the running and shiver from the freezing air that is turning the sweat icy on his skin. He begins to sob.

She hears him.

The friend, who has been woken in the night to urgent banging on the door, watches her. The boy’s voice is distant but distinct, even through the glass.

‘I think I should let him in,’ she says. ‘He might wake the girls.’

My mother looks up. The marks on her neck are growing into deep bruises. Her hands clasp and unclasp a mug of tea. The skin beneath her eyes is feathered with dissolved mascara. She shakes her head from side to side. When she envisages my brother calling for her what she sees is my father’s face, furious and determined. She starts to shake.

'Tell him to go home,' she whispers.

___________________________________________________________________________

My father still believes he was justified. He tells me this years later. If my mother is a woman under water then my father is a kaleidoscope – one twist and the whole picture changes. 'You don't know what she’s really like,' he calmly informs me years later. 'She was sleeping with a variety of men.' He can make you believe what he’s showing you is reality, but it’s all done with mirrors. He shifts positions so skilfully, now he is the victim, the damaged, the betrayed and she the perpetrator.

___________________________________________________________________________

He gets her round the throat with his hands. ‘You whore,’ he spits in her face, pushing her down onto the floor with just the power from his hands around her throat. She crumples backwards like a wilting flower and her head slams against the cold linoleum. His face above hers is concentrated fury. She can feel his breath. He's been drinking too, whisky. She tries to beat her fists against his chest, but they are small in comparison to him, an impotent child railing against a parent. He lifts her by the throat to bring her back down so that her head again cracks against the floor. Sparks explode in her head.

She can’t get any words out. She can’t get any breath in. Sound roars in her ears. You've done it now, she thinks looking into his determined face. She closes her eyes.

‘What are you doing to my Mummy?’ says a voice.

She feels the pressure decrease. Starts coughing. Opens her eyes.

Their daughter is standing in the doorway in her nighty.

My father looks at me, then down at his hands, sees his wife and releases her.

He does not move as he watches my mother, quick as she can, scrabble onto her hands and knees and lunge for the back door. She crawls out onto the cold, damp step, scraping her knees on the metal lip. Coughing and choking, she drags herself to her feet, stumbles through the dark soft garden and out onto the hard, lit pavement.

She starts running.

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You cannot see the walls of my glass cage

You think: she walks, she talks, what can the problem be?

You cannot see the energy that drains from every cell just to sit and speak

The rope strung tight that every sound sets jangling

The Tsunami of poison rising ready to sweep

The closing of the window

You cannot see the umbilical cord that tethers me to my bed

Nor how like an embryo I am flayed and unable to survive for long in the outside world

You cannot see the Death’s-head moth that hovers over me

Fluttering its wings against my breast

Before coming to settle its massive furry head upon my chest

I cannot see electrons circling a nucleus

I cannot see the thoughts forming in your head

I have no evidence of your feelings beyond your words

No one yet has precisely defined the moment between alive and dead

Because of that, are all these things just phantasies?

I hear the footsteps of my daughter

Her laughter echoes like the ghost of a family I once lived amongst

Gone is my agency

My lived-full-life

I wait and wait for the ink licked fingers that press me down to one day let me go

19 Days Afterwards

The world did not come back to her slowly. Light and sound broke in. Metal clanked. Voices ran back and forth too close to her ears. A hand clutched her upper arm and another pressed on the back of her head.

‘Just going to turn you, Mrs Hughes,’ a voice said, and she felt her body fall away from her and the pain in her head explode the red-tinged light, pressing at her eyelids, into a bright white which burst inside her head.

She opened her eyes but nothing changed, white simply extended as if into eternity.

Damn, she thought, I was counting on no afterlife, and her thoughts seemed slow and echoey in her head.

She tried to speak but her mouth was dry and the sounds she made were not words. Footsteps, brisk and business-like sounded and the whiteness turned to blue, before a voice which matched the steps spoke: ‘Finally, Mrs Hughes. People were beginning to give up on you.’

The blue came into focus. It seemed familiar, a textured fabric cinching cloth tight to a body. Her eyes found a gleam of metal and she recognised a nurse’s belt. Sylvia Plath groaned inwardly, I wish they had, she thought, I wish they’d all given up on me.

THIS IS THE OPENING PAGE OF MY NOVEL DARKNESS & LIFE I WILL PUBLISH THE NEXT CHAPTER WHEN I HAVE 100 FREE SUBSCRIBERS - THANK YOU FOR READING