Penny Jordan - The Hidden Years

‘This way,’ he told her. Up ahead of them were the closed doors barring the way to the intensive care unit.

Sage shivered as he pushed open the door, an instinctive desire to stop, to turn and run, almost halting her footsteps. Somewhere beyond those doors lay her mother. Had she really asked for her ? It seemed so out of character, so unbelievable almost, and the shock of it had thrown her off guard, disturbing the cool, indifferent, self-protective shield she had taken up all those years ago when the pain of her mother’s final betrayal had destroyed her reluctant, aching love for her.

She shivered again, trying to recognise the unfamiliar image of her mother which the surgeon had held up for her. Surely in such extremity as her mother now suffered a person must always ask for whoever it was they most loved, and she had known almost all her life that for some reason her mother’s love, given so freely and fiercely to others, had never really been given to her. Duty, care, responsibility…they had all been there, masquerading under the guise of mother love, but Sage had learned young to distinguish between reality and fiction and she had known then, had felt then that insurmountable barrier that existed between them.

As she hesitated at the door, the surgeon turned impatiently towards her.

‘Are you sure she asked for me?’ she whispered.

As he watched her for a moment he saw the self-confident, sensually stunning woman reduced to the nervous, uncertain child. It was the dangerous allure of seeing that child within such a woman that made him say more brusquely than he otherwise might, ‘There’s nothing for you to fear. Your mother’s injuries are all internal. Outwardly…’

Sage glared at him. Did he really think she was so weak, so self-absorbed that it was fear of what she might see that kept her chained here outside the ward? And then her anger died as swiftly as it had been born. It wasn’t his fault; what could he know of the complexities of her relationship with her mother? She didn’t really understand them herself. She pushed open the door and walked into the ward. It was small, with only four beds, and bristling with equipment.

Her mother was the ward’s only occupant. She lay on one of the high, narrow beds, surrounded by machinery.

How tiny she looked, Sage marvelled as she stared down at her. Her once naturally fair hair, now discreetly tinted blonde, was hidden out of sight beneath a cap; her mother’s skin, so white and pale, and so different from her own with its decidedly olive tint, could have been the skin of a woman in her late forties, not her early sixties, Sage reflected as she absorbed an outer awareness of the tubes connected to her mother’s body, which she deliberately held at bay as she concentrated instead on the familiar and less frightening aspects of her still figure.

Her breathing was laboured and difficult, but the eyes fixed on her own hadn’t changed—cool, clear, all-seeing, all-knowing… a shade of grey which could deepen to lavender or darken to slate depending on her mood.

She was frowning now, but it was not the quick, light frown with which Sage was so familiar, the frown that suggested that whoever had caused it had somehow not just failed but disappointed as well. How many times had that frown marked the progress of her own life, turning her heart to lead, shredding her pride, reducing her to rebellious, helpless rage?

This frown, though, was different, deeper, darker, the eyes that watched her full of unfamiliar shadows.

‘Sage…’

Was it instinct alone that made her cover her mother’s hand with her own, that made her sit down at her side, and say as evenly as she could, ‘I’m here, Mother…’?

Mother…what a cold, distant word that was, how devoid of warmth and feeling. As a small child she had called her ‘Mummy’. David, ten years her senior, had preferred the affectionately teasing ‘Ma’, but then David had been permitted so much more licence, had been given so much more love… Stop it, she warned herself. She wasn’t here to dwell on the past. The past was over.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered softly. ‘It’s all right, Mother. You’re going to be fine…’

Just for a moment the grey eyes lightened and mocked. They seemed to say that they knew her platitude for exactly what it was, making Sage once more feel a child in the presence of an adult.

‘Sage, there’s something I want you to do…’ The words were laboured and strained. Sage had to bend closer to the bed to catch them. ‘My diaries, in my desk at Cottingdean… You must read them… All of you…’

She stopped speaking and closed her eyes while Sage stared at her. What on earth was her mother talking about? What diaries? Had her mind perhaps been affected by her injuries?

She stared uncertainly at the woman in the bed, as her mother opened her eyes and demanded fiercely, ‘Promise me, Sage… Promise me you will do as I say … Promise me…’

Dutifully, docilely almost, Sage swallowed and whispered, ‘I promise…’ and then, unable to stop herself, she cried out, ‘But why me…? Why did you ask for me? Why not Faye? She’s so much closer to you…’

The grey eyes seemed to mock her again. Without her knowing it, her fingers had curled tightly round the hand she was still holding.

‘Faye doesn’t have your ruthlessness, your discipline… Neither does she have your strength.’ The voice dropped to a faint sigh.

Beneath her fingers, Sage felt the thready pulse flicker and falter and a fear greater than anything she had ever known, a fear that overwhelmed anger, resentment, pain and even love poured through her and she cried out harshly, ‘Mother…no,’ without really knowing what she was crying out for.

Then she heard the light, quiet voice saying reassuringly, ‘I’m here, Sage. When you read the diaries, then you will understand.’ She closed her eyes, so obviously exhausted that for a moment Sage thought she had actually died.

It was the surgeon’s firm touch on her arm, his quiet words of reassurance that stilled her panic.

‘She wants me to read her diaries,’ she told him, too bewildered to understand her need to confide, to understand…

‘Sometimes when people are closest to death they sense what is happening to them and they dwell on certain aspects of their lives and the lives of those around them.’

‘I never even knew she kept a diary.’ Sage was speaking more to herself than him. ‘I never knew… She made me promise,’ she told him inconsequentially, knowing already that it was a promise she must keep. A promise she had to keep, and yet already she was dreading doing so, dreading what she might read…dreading perhaps confronting the truth and the pain she thought she had long ago put behind her.

As the surgeon escorted her from the ward, she cast a last, lingering look at her mother. ‘Will she…?’

Will she die? she wanted to ask, even while she knew that she didn’t want to know the answer, that she wanted to hold on to the hope…the belief that because her mother was alive she would live.

She had often heard people say that there was no pain, no guilt, no awareness of life passing too quickly more sharp-edged than when an adult experienced the death of a parent.

Her father had died while she was a teenager, his death a release to him and something that barely touched her life. She had been at home then. Her father, because of his poor health, had never played a large part in her life. He was a remote, cosseted figure on whom her mother’s whole life pivoted and yet somehow someone who was distant from her own.

Until today she had thought she had stopped loving her mother over fifteen years ago, her love eroded by too much pain, too much betrayal—and she had decided then that the only way to survive the catalyst of that betrayal was for her to forge a separate, independent life of her own.