Fiona Gibson - The Woman Who Upped and Left - A laugh-out-loud read that will put a spring in your step!

‘Oh yes, your mother married the coal man.’ Her pale eyes glint with interest.

‘Well, she’s never married him, but they still live together …’ As far as I know , I add silently. Mum’s communications have been pretty sporadic over the years. She doesn’t have a mobile, or even a landline at her cottage deep in the Welsh valleys. How can you keep in contact with someone who really doesn’t want to be contacted? While I have written to her, sporadically, over the years, Mum is never prompt with a reply, and she doesn’t own a computer. I can count on one hand the times she’s seen Morgan, her only grandchild.

The first time, a few weeks after he was born, she arrived a little dishevelled at our tiny terraced house in York; the journey from Wales had apparently involved numerous changes of bus. Brian didn’t come with her, and all she would say was that ‘it’s not his sort of thing’. What isn’t? I wanted to ask. Meeting your grandchild, getting to know your daughter or accompanying you on a trip? I barely knew Brian. With his coal-dusted face and gruff demeanour, I’d always stayed well out of his way when he delivered our coal, and couldn’t quite see his appeal.

On her visit, I noticed Mum had swapped the nondescript catalogue clothes she used to wear for a raggle-taggle ensemble of washed-out T-shirt, an unravelling cardi and batik-printed trousers that hung loosely on her skinny frame. She brought with her the potent scent of patchouli and woodsmoke, plus a charity shop sweater for Morgan with a penguin appliquéd on the front. When I asked whether Brian was still in the coal business, she replied vaguely, ‘Oh, he’s just doing this and that.’ She seemed terrified of holding Morgan, and even Vince, who’s pretty generous about most people he meets, jokingly remarked that Mum was ‘a bit of an oddball … I can see where you get it from, Aud.’

Subsequent visits have been brief and a little tense. Mum has always been armed with numerous excuses about why I can’t visit her in Wales – ‘We’re doing the place up, it’s good for me to get away’ – and four years have slipped by since I last saw her. I miss her, of course. I especially missed her when Morgan was young, and I wanted to pick up the phone and ask her, ‘Why is he screaming, d’you think? And how d’you wean a baby? I mean, what do they eat ? He spits out everything I give him!’ Of course, I couldn’t do that and, over the years, as I found my feet as a mother and needed her less, I began to accept that this was how things were. At least, how she and I operated. I have never understood why she has never wanted to be a proper grandma to Morgan. When he has a child – years from now, obviously – I’ll be muscling right in.

Mrs B tuts. ‘Yes, you did tell me about that. Dreadful situation …’ She presses her thin, pale lips together and shakes the newspaper at me. ‘Anyway, this is an easy one. Even you’ll be able to get this. “Briefly dying caterpillar mocks snow”, nine letters …’

‘Really, it might as well be in Mandarin …’

She emits a withering laugh as I gather up scissors and pin cushions from the sofa. It strikes me that an unhealthy proportion of my life is spent putting things away. It’s not that Mrs B – or I – care about everything being neat and tidy. I just don’t want her impaling herself on an embroidery needle. ‘Did you have the rest of that lentil soup for lunch today?’ I ask.

‘No, I threw it away.’

I blink at her. ‘Really? Was there something wrong with it?’

‘It was very bland.’ She gnaws at the end of her pencil.

‘Oh.’ I clear my throat. ‘I could make carrot and coriander for tomorrow, if you’d prefer that, or maybe mushroom …’

‘Hmm, I’m not sure about that …’

‘Or leek and potato?’

‘Ugh, no.’ She shudders visibly and fills in a clue.

How about tomato and horse testicle? I pause, knowing I’m being played with.

‘Just ask whoever’s coming to bring me some tinned ones tomorrow,’ she mutters. ‘I find they have more taste.’

‘Fine,’ I say, fixing on a bright smile. ‘Look, it’s lovely and sunny outside. Would you like to sit in the garden?’

She nods, and her face softens; Mrs B adores her garden. So I help her outside, taking her arm to guide her – she is a little unsteady on her feet – where she sits on the bench in her favourite shady spot. The lupins are looking especially lovely today. Paul has a knack for planting which makes everything seem so casual and effortless, yet the colours merge together beautifully. Before I worked here, I had never realised that gardening is a real art.

While Mrs B browses the newspapers I make her favourite dinner: cod with mashed potatoes (she prefers her food to have no colour at all, maybe that’s what was wrong with the soup) and carry it out to her on a tray. She is happy to sit out until the evening starts to chill, and I persuade her to come back indoors. As I rattle through my evening tasks – a bit of light housework, helping Mrs B into her seated shower and shampooing her hair – a single thought keeps darting through my brain. I’ve won £ 5000!

‘Make sure you wash out all the shampoo,’ she remarks, folding her skinny arms over her naked body as I rinse her with the shower attachment.

‘Yes, Mrs B.’ Apart from a Noddy eggcup in a colouring in competition, it’s the first thing I’ve ever won!

‘And the conditioner.’

‘I will, Mrs B. I do always rinse you very thoroughly, you know.’

Can’t wait to tell Morgan! How shall we celebrate? The offy’ll be closed by the time I’m finished here …

‘Well, my head was itchy the other night. I couldn’t sleep because of it. Clawed myself half to death …’

‘Maybe your scalp’s a bit flaky?’ I suggest.

‘In all of my 84 years I’ve never had a flaky scalp!’ she barks, as if I’d mooted the possibility of syphilis. God, she is especially crotchety today. I could murder a drink. Surely there’s something at home, a bottle of Jacob’s Creek lurking in the cupboard or maybe some brandy left over from the Christmas cake …

Having dried off Mrs B, I help her into her peach cotton nightie and sheepskin slippers and lead her slowly from the downstairs shower room to her bedroom on the ground floor. It used to be a dining room; these days, Victoria, her carers and the occasional tradesman are the only people who ever venture upstairs.

Once she’s tucked up in bed, I bring her a cup of strong tea and two chocolate digestives, plus her toothbrush and a small bowl of water, for post-biscuit cleansing. I once suggested she snacked a little earlier so her teeth could be attended to in the bathroom, rather than in bed. You’d think I’d suggested she scrub them with the loo brush. ‘ This is how I like to do it,’ she retorted. So I wait patiently as she waggles her toothbrush in the water and try not to reel backwards as she spits violently into the porcelain bowl.

I hand Mrs B a flannel so she can dab at her pursed mouth, then tuck in her sheet and satin-edged blankets – she regards duvets as ‘a silly modern invention’ – and click off her main bedroom light, leaving just the orangey glow of her bedside lamp. This room smells rather stale, despite my obsession with airing it as often as possible. The bowl of pot pourri sitting on the glass-topped dressing table probably stopped emitting scent in about 1972. Yet when I’ve suggested replacing it she has scowled and said, ‘It’s fine as it is.’ I pause and glance back at her. She seems even tinier now, like a Victorian doll – the ones that look fragile and a little a bit scary – in her queen-sized bed. Her face is pale, almost translucent, her hair a puffy white cloud on the hand-embroidered pillowcase. As I see her so often, perhaps I don’t notice all the changes in her. However, it has struck me recently that she is becoming more frail, and that the arm to steady her in the garden is no longer just a precaution, but entirely necessary. ‘Anything else you need before I go?’ I ask.