4. Mabel

M y favourite breakfast foods were, according to my father, posh ridiculous ones. Like poached eggs and smashed avocado on grainy toast. While I had grown up on shop-bought white bread and discount supermarket marmalade, the years had gifted me a more refined palate, and as I stared into my parents' bare fridge, I once again sighed loud enough that my father stomped his feet.

He was sitting at the kitchen table with his tablet, staring angrily at me from his usual throne, also known as the one rickety kitchen chair that still had a padded seat.

"We don't have any fancy food, you know this," he grunted before taking a loud slurp from his no doubt stone-cold cup of tea.

He wasn't angry at me, not even for sneaking in and borrowing the car, then running around the house like a headless chicken for the past week. He hadn't even grumped at the fact that I had discreetly moved myself back into my childhood room and filled the hallway with all my belongings.

But I was angry at myself, because I should have known better than to put myself in this situation in the first place, and my mother making noises through the night had kept me awake, adjusting her pillows and talking to her, hoping she would settle down and for once let my father have a good night's sleep.

None of us slept. Because that was life with the Donovans.

My mother was completely lost to dementia and illness, bedridden with a team of carers who came in to tend to her needs. Dad did everything else, and I did what I could, always feeling inadequate and overwhelmed.

"Thanks for letting me rest," came from the kitchen table, a nice acknowledgement of my pottering around through the night.

"You know I don't mind helping," I said quietly. "She's my mum too."

"She doesn't react to any of us. Sometimes I think she does. I sit there and hold her hand for a bit and look for…I know there's nothing there anymore. But what else can I do?"

It hurt my heart to hear him speak like that, but there was nothing anyone could do. I'd been a late only child. My parents had run their company, and I had been taught everything from the ground up. We'd been a team. Always.

Until we weren't anymore and everything had crumbled because without my mum's steady hand and calm temper we'd had nothing left.

And yet, here we were, once again, a unit of three in a crumbling council house in the most southwestern of the South London suburbs, rough and ready and full of the modern world's failings. The well-kept road I'd grown up at was still here, but it was full of bins and rubbish and weeds and cars, knocked-over garden walls and skips, loud music and kids on bikes, someone shouting in the distance as my father reached over and closed the window behind him.

"So, Ma-belle. What's the plan?"

"Ma-belle," I parroted back with a smile. "I'm not a child anymore."

"Still, a beautiful creature you are, though." He grinned, motioning for me to sit down next to him. "You're always going to be ma belle ."

An old joke. A term of endearment. It should have made me feel calm and loved. Instead, all I could think was that I wanted a poached egg and a nice cup of coffee. My normality back.

"I'll go shopping later." I sighed, reaching for my father's teacup and draining the cold liquid he'd left over.

"Hey," he protested.

I didn't care. I'd make him another bloody tea. "Dad, tea is better hot. Toast is better fresh. Marmalade is better when it actually has oranges in it."

"Tea should be drunk cold. Toast should be buttered when cold. And marmalade is marmalade, whatever it says on the label."

This was our usual petty argument. We disagreed on most things. But still.

He put the tablet down. "What's eating at ya, kiddo?"

Like he didn't know.

"Nowhere to live. Insurance not paying out. I hate my life. And I need a new job."

"Same, same," he agreed. "How's Mark?"

"He's good, Dad. Still being a dick."

"Your mother would wash your mouth out with soap if she heard you talk like that."

"Mum would smack your hand if she saw you smearing grease all over that tablet."

"She would, wouldn't she?" He smiled. We still had memories, some very good memories, of a life that was now almost grotesquely different. "Now, Mabel. Serious talk. I know I say it every time you come and visit, but I'm getting tired of it now. What's going on? Properly going on?"

He knew me far too well.

"Same old." I was tired. Still no coffee. "Honestly, the flat was just the tip of the iceberg."

"You make an honest living." Dad was proud of me. I knew that.

"I think I need to move on."

"Amen," Dad muttered, his attention back on the tablet. "Your talents are wasted pouring wine and dancing around, serving people that overpriced stuff you call food."

"I think you may be right there." I pulled my fingers through my hair, still thick on my head, thank God. A thinning hairline would just about finish me off. "Dad…it's time for me to find another job."

"You need a place to live first. And anyway, what are you on about? You have a job. Just need to make it full time."

"I need a job that will pay me enough to afford the rent. My sewing doesn't."

"Mabel," Dad said sternly. "That's because you don't even try. What's the plan here?"

"Want me to let the carers in?" I motioned out the window at the care team who'd just pulled up.

"Don't deflect. They have their own key. Make their own tea. I just sit here like part of the furniture in my own home."

"Well," I said softly. "We've talked about it. A care home. A smaller flat. A different life for you."

"Mum would hate that. She's in her room, where she belongs."

"And you sleep on the sofa because there's no space for you in your own bedroom anymore."

See? We argued. About everything. In quiet, civilised voices. But I knew most of the care managers by name, as they called me almost daily to complain about everything from my Dad moving things and being grumpy, to him arguing with their guidelines and refusing to cooperate with any changes. My mother really needed to be in a care home, to have access to better equipment, daily physiotherapy and a higher level of medical care to manage her complex needs.

Dad knew this. I knew this. And yet…

I sighed loudly and got up and made tea. As with everything in my life, I couldn't change a thing. Everywhere I turned, there were barriers and locked doors. When I tried to climb them, I inevitably got knocked down. And now in my forties, I felt so incredibly trapped by my own limits and walls, all of it self-inflicted.

I had no savings, no future, no partner. Everything I owned that hadn't been deposited in the skip outside my former overpriced flat was, as my father again pointed out, deposited in the hallway where my mother's care team were now loudly swearing trying to get past my belongings.

"Mr Donovan, can the hallway please be cleared so we can access our patient?"

I sighed. So did my father. It made us both smile, a brief gust of air in the gloom we usually possessed.

"I'll move it," I said quietly.

"Put it in the garage, then we'll sit down and figure this out, Mabel. Because no child of mine is going to move back home in their finest years. I won't have it. This godforsaken dump of a place is nowhere to build a future. Not for you. Not for any of these young folks. You're going back to the city where you belong. We will find you some fancy-pants place to live. After you make that tea, of course."

"Of course, Dad," I smarmed and flicked the kettle on.

I still got nothing of any substance done. Instead, I sat next to my mother, watching her chest slowly rise and fall. There was hardly any difference in her being awake to being asleep. She sometimes made noises when she was awake, mostly due to her being uncomfortable. But for now, she was clean and dry and freshly tucked into her large medical bed with her head slightly raised.

She still didn't respond to my caress of her face, the way I combed her hair or my voice as I gently asked how she was.

A stupid question that would never get an answer.

"She's fine." Dad said, shuffling through the door and taking his place in the armchair by her feet. "She's relaxed. I can always tell from her neck muscles. The way her head lies against the pillow."

Sad observations, but this was the life we lived.

"Good," was all I could say, wringing my hands. I felt so incredibly useless. I always did.

"You know, Mabel, one day she simply won't wake up, and for her, that will be a blessing. For me? It will be a different way of life. And for you, it will be a weight off your shoulders."

"Don't talk like that, Dad."

"It's the truth. Mum wouldn't have wanted this. We just don't have a choice. She will decide when it's time."

"I know," I whispered.

"Do you remember that evening? In the shop?"

"What evening?"

"The time I caught you with that school uniform skirt."

I liked this. How Dad would change the subject and tell me something that would make me laugh, although it had been incredibly traumatic at the time. Some family with teenage daughters in my parents' wedding dress shop, trying on bridesmaid dresses, a discarded school skirt… I'd picked it up and held it over my hips, then twirled like a ballerina, around and around in front of the mirrors. I'd thought I was alone. I obviously hadn't been since my father had been standing behind me in the doorway, his arms folded.

I'd expected to be scolded.

"You were just ten years old," he recalled, "but you already knew exactly who you were. It was no surprise to me or Mum. We knew. And we loved you. We've always loved you, just the way you are."

"I know." I had to smile. "You offered to get me a skirt of my own."

"I did. And then you wanted to hem it and take it in so it was nice and fitted like the other girls wore them. Short. All the way up your bum."

I laughed at that. He wasn't wrong. Mum had bought me new school uniform every summer. From that year onwards, it had always included a skirt. I'd never worn it to school, but I had treasured those skirts. I loved how they made me feel when I wore them at home. Happy memories.

"You did a good job raising me," I said quietly. He needed to hear it. "I had a good childhood. I was loved and accepted and cherished. All things I needed."

"You're still loved and cherished. Don't you forget that."

Dad looked at me over the rim of his glasses. Smiled gently.

"I know, Dad."

"And don't worry about me and Mum. This is our life now. I might have thought we would spend our golden years cruising the Mediterranean and exploring Greek islands, but instead, we're doing this. Playing Wordle and drinking tea. And enjoying brief visits from our beloved child."

"Brief visits." I snorted. Yeah. Because I was not going anywhere fast.

"Brief visits," Dad repeated. "I'm on spareroom.com. I already have four places favourited, and you need to book viewings. Like, yesterday."

"Dad." I sighed. He was right. I hated that he was.