The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman Read Free Book Online

didn’t have to think about my mother having a mysterious sex life any more. Not that she let me see her getting dressed up to the nines and going out dancing and drinking cocktails, flirting and whatever else I didn’t know about. And Mumnever brought men home when I was there, not once, not until Greg. He was the very first man she had wanted me to meet, and I really hadn’t wanted to meet him. It’s no wonder their romance all came as a bit of a shock to me. But I know there have been men, and I know a few of them must have happened when she and Julia were ‘letting their hair down’ and ‘blowing off steam’. Once, she said to me that we never had to talk about our love lives unless we really wanted to, and we never have. Not even when I met Seb – not even when I fell so much in love with him that it hurt me to breathe whenever I wasn’t with him. I never talked to her about him, or my feelings. Perhaps I should have, because if anyone could have understood, it would have been Mum. If I had, then telling her everything that has happened since Seb, because of Seb, would be so much easier. Now, I’m afraid that the moment when I can confide in her and she can, well, just be my mum, has already passed. I’m afraid that soon when I walk into a room where she is waiting, she won’t recognise me, or she will forget what I’m for, like she did with the steering wheel.
    But Mum smiles at me now as I walk into the staff room. She is clutching a large bunch of supermarket flowers. ‘Look!’ She wields them at me, cheerfully. ‘Smell-nice things! Aren’t they pretty?’
    I wonder if she’s noticed that she’s lost the word ‘flowers’, but I don’t mention it. Gran always corrects her, and it seems to make Mum cross, so I never do. I do wonder if ‘flowers’ is one of the words that have gone for good, though, or if it willcome back. I’ve observed that sometimes the words come and go, and sometimes they’re gone for good. But Mum doesn’t notice, so I don’t tell her.
    ‘They are lovely.’ I smile at Julia, who’s grinning broadly, determined to keep things light.
    ‘It’s been ages since a man sent me flowers,’ Mum says, burying her face in the petals. ‘Julia, we need to go out on the razz again, get some hot man action.’
    ‘You’ve got the hot man action,’ Julia says, not missing a beat. ‘You’re already married to the fittest man in Surrey, darling!’
    ‘I know,’ Mum says into the flowers. Although I’m not entirely sure she does – at least for a second or two, anyway. Once, until very recently, Greg made her so happy that he lit her up like one of those Chinese paper lanterns Mum had the guests set free at their wedding. Back then, she would glow from the inside out, floating above the world. And yet now, Greg, their love, their happiness, their marriage, comes and goes in her mind, and one day I suppose it too will be gone for good.
    ‘Shall we be off, then?’ I say, nodding towards the door. There isn’t really a reason to go right away, except that I can’t bear to prolong this final moment of the job Mum loved so much. When she walks out of here, she’ll be leaving behind something that defined her. And the longer she stays, the harder it will be.
    I also know that today, or tomorrow, or the day after,Greg and Gran, or maybe even Mum, will notice that I still haven’t gone back to uni, and then it will all come out. And everyone will have an opinion and something to say. And I don’t want that. I don’t want all the secrets and mistakes that I have so carefully managed to keep close for so long to suddenly just spill out everywhere, in one big bloody mess, because then it will be real and I am not ready for it to be real. It’s really terrible but the truth is, when Mum got her diagnosis, just as I’d returned for the summer break, I was relieved – relieved to have a reason not to tell. And that’s the thing, that’s the thing that’s doing my head in. I