The Mother

The mother of the sisters had begun dying in June, although they were not aware, and thought she would be able to creak along for another twenty years having a bad gut. They would be visiting her in a smelly retirement home which someone’s husband would resentfully pay for. She had however got secret cancer.

Look, said Ronnie to her mother, everything that is wrong with you would fit into a walnut. If you would stop with eating the wild blackberry jam, you would be healthy again in a week. This is what the doctors told Ronnie, that it was a sort of an abscess. Thin walls, seeds, inflammation.

Kate had always felt suspicion there was more danger there. She had not until this point been interested in taking her mother to the doctor but now she felt it would be the proper thing to do. Babe had never been intereted either – it had always been Ronnie. Now it would be Ronnie and Kate. They would alternate. The doctor would know that the mother was well-looked-after by multiple children, not just slaved over by one dutiful soul.