Little Miracle by Kate Kerrigan

Author:Kate Kerrigan [Kerrigan, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784974879
Publisher: Head of Zeus

19

Grace

My head was very sympathetic, and I was able to negotiate the rest of the summer term off work. Despite that, I didn’t see Mum for almost a week. I just couldn’t stomach it. I called her every day, just to assure myself that she was still alive, but the whole incident with her new friend Brian and my irrational craziness in putting that file together was making me feel physically sick. So I went to the cinema a couple of afternoons, and tried to keep myself busy so that I didn’t have time to think about it. When I did think about it, I became one of two things; paralysed or confused.

The paralysis was worse of the two because it was just pure, undiluted fear. Nothing complicated about it, just the reality hitting home that my mother was going to die.

Being confused was marginally better than being in paralysis, but it was a close race. It came from the part of me that was determined not to give up on my mother: the survivor, the optimist. Why should she die just because she had cancer? People survived cancer. There was no reason to give up hope yet. The biopsy had diagnosed Stage IV but the MRI scan was far from definitive and it was not until they operated that they would know how far the cancer had spread. Ovarian-cancer patients had a 35 per cent chance of survival and cell growth was slower the older you were. There were loads of survival stories on the net. Loads. Mum could easily be one of those women. Her treatment programme had not even been decided on yet; in fact the whole ‘terminal’ angle, when I stopped to think about it, was probably hyperbole that my mother had picked up from horrible Shirley. Mum needed positive energy around her and it was my job to provide her with it. We didn’t know anything for certain yet, which was surely a good thing? Or not. It could, of course, be much worse than they thought and she could have only weeks left. So then the paralysing fear would kick in, and I would find myself having to force myself into the basic machinations of getting washed and dressed, as if I was running a marathon through treacle, until the activities and arrangements of my day took over and helped me temporarily forget.

On the sixth day, I called Mum’s house a couple of times and there was no answer. When there was no reply by lunchtime, I managed to talk myself down from a state of panic, got in the car and drove over there. I let myself in and called out. No reply. I went straight to the kitchen, where I found a note which read ‘Gone to post office then might pick up a few bits and bobs in town. Back 4-ish.’

It wasn’t addressed to me specifically, and perhaps because it didn’t contain any appalling, earth-shattering, devastating information I took it upon myself to have a rummage around in her kitchen drawers.

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