Chapter 21

She was little and thin and wild these days. She’d gone. It was easier for Tab to think of her as gone, because…because the woman in the ward wasn’t Mum. He could remember Mum giving him extra Sugar Puffs cereal on weekends as a little kid, and saying not to listen to Nana’s grumbling because she was a nasty old bat, and helping him with his reading homework, and making up stories for him about all these gods and the little things they controlled, like videos and luck and rainy Sunday mornings. Even when she’d started to go crazy, she’d been Mum. Somewhere inside.

He couldn’t see Mum anymore when he came to visit.

He’d been coming less and less.

“She’s been doing well,” Jon said from the floor. “The medication’s working better now, and she’s not putting up so much of a fight. She’s started talking about getting out into sheltered housing.”

Tab nodded. She wouldn’t. Or if she did, it wouldn’t last long.

“It’s hard,” he said eventually.