made a life out of casting the spotlight back onto others.
What I’m about to do would horrify her.
But she’s never left me alone without explanation.
Knowing what’s out there has made her hyper-cautious,
made her a great note-taker and note-leaver. On the bathroom mirror, on my bedside table, on the kitchen bench:
Love you.
Take care.
Call me?
It’s been twenty-eight whole hours since her last
message went straight to my voicemail. There had been
a minute of static, threaded through by the sound of a
moving car, maybe the rumble of a man’s voice on the
radio? Afternoon noises. Just a mistake message left by
her hip hitting her bag, or something inside it shifting
and speed-dialling me by accident.
I’ve searched everywhere at home, looked under every
stupid trinket and scuffed article of furniture, rifled
through her sacred cabinet of futures foretold, and found
nothing to say where Mum is, or what she could be doing.
I have a photographic memory for words—I could sit
down and write out the whole of page 52 of Chemistry
Matters! right now—but Wednesday, the day I last saw my
mother, is an immediate blank. Which means she never
said where she was going or I would remember. I would.
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