But she didn’t wake up, and her hands were cold, and Yaz was clawing at me, begging me to wake mum up.
“Ricky, do something, help her, Ricky, wake her up, please Ricky, wake her up…!” she gabbled endlessly, and I couldn’t, I tried but I couldn’t wake her up, and my heart was sick with fear but I couldn’t rouse her and I didn’t know what else to do…
I grabbed Yasmin’s arms and held her still long enough to speak to her through my fear and anguish.
“Call Shari, get her here now, please Yaz, get hold of her, I don’t know what to do, help me…” I blubbered, past all real thought, with only fear, huge and unmanageable, left inside me for my mum.
Somehow, after fumbling and dropping her phone a half-dozen times, Yaz managed to call Shari, but then she broke down, and all I could do was shout down the phone at her to come home now, mum needed her, please hurry, please…
Shari arrived at a dead run, she threw herself on mum and kissed her cheek, rubbed her hands, called her endlessly, the desperate, raw panic adding an edge to her voice, while we waited for the ambulance, but to no avail. When the paramedics arrived, they quickly took stock of the situation, but all their equipment failed to register anything, no heartbeat, no pulse, no brain activity, nothing. When the lead paramedic called it, and told Shari that they’d agreed the time of death as almost three hours earlier, not long after we’d all left for work, in fact, her scream of anguish nearly deafened me, while Yaz collapsed sobbing into my arms. I was trembling with reaction and loss and in no better shape than Yaz, but I had to be strong for her, Shari was an island of grief, isolated and tense, as they carefully wrapped mum and put her into the ambulance, then she climbed into the ambulance to go with mum to the hospital.
The paramedics were professional but kind and sympathetic with it, leaving the paperwork with Yaz and me, and an apology that, because mum hadn’t been under the care of a doctor when she passed, they would have to report her passing as an unexplained death, which meant there would have to be a post-mortem, when we arrived at the hospital the bereavement aftercare team would walk us through what came next, and liaise with the people who would help us through this.
I was only half-paying attention; all I knew was that mum had died alone, that she’d been alone when she’d needed us most, that there was no-one with her to hold her in her last moments, and the guilt was rampaging and shrieking huge and terrifying inside me; she’d died alone, if I’d been with her, maybe I could have got her some help, and that was the thing that hurt most deeply; that maybe I could have done something if only I’d been there for her, but now I’d never know. They’d taken mum away, my mum had only just become my mum and she’d been taken from me, from us, she was dead, and what did we do now, she was our everything, what happened to our family now?
*****
I called a cab and Yaz and I made our way to the hospital. Shari was waiting for us, they’d taken mum away and started the process for getting the post-mortem underway, not something any of us wanted to consider, but the bereavement counsellors sat us down and told us what came next. I was barely paying attention, and Yaz was completely out of it, while Shari sat, completely expressionless while the people talked at us, but what they said was just background noise and made no sense to me; I’d never been in this situation before and I was in pieces, as was Yaz, and I only vaguely remember them calling us a cab and arriving home.
Once we got back indoors, Shari’s control evaporated and she began crying hysterically, Yaz was in no better state, and I didn’t know what to do to try and soften the edge of this nightmare, all I could do was hold my sisters and cry with them and want my mum back.
We passed the rest of the day in numb silence; I didn’t know what to say, and both Yaz and Shari seemed lost in their own world, they drank whatever I put in front of them, ate mechanically, looked at me with blank, unseeing eyes, and just drifted through the rest of the day silent, noiseless, not making even the merest sound to break the ringing silence. I had never felt so alone; the two people I loved most in the world had retreated into a shell and I wasn’t allowed in, I was grief-stricken with no-one to share it with, and I really thought I would go mad with the loss I felt and no-one to help me through it.
By the time it got dark they still hadn’t moved or made a sound, just stared unseeing, so I led both girls to their rooms, sat them down on their beds, pulled off their shoes and made them lie down and covered them, still fully dressed, with their coverlets, tiptoed down to my room, and cried myself to sleep.
*****
Waking that first morning was the worst thing I’d ever experienced; for the first few seconds I was at peace, then memory came flooding in, and with memory came pain, and loss, and deep, crushing sadness; our lives had changed forever, she was gone, and what happened to us now? The house was still silent, sombre, and there was no sign of Shari or Yaz, so I wandered around aimlessly, at a complete looses end. Eventually, I found myself staring at the couch in the sitting room, at the place mum had passed away, the seat cushions and throw cushions still in disarray where first the three of us and then the paramedics had tried to revive mum. I began straightening them up, when Shari spoke behind me.
“What the hell are you doing? How dare you, how fucking dare you!!?”
I spun around and she was standing there, her face a mask of fury.
“You don’t touch anything in this house, you got it? My mother’s dead because of your bastard piece of shit father, your whole fucking family killed her, you piece of shit, and you have the sheer fucking effrontery to go touching …? Get out! Get the fuck out of my house, Mummy would still be here but for your fucking father, and now you go touching her stuff? I never wanted you here, mummy took pity on you, you pathetic fucking nobody, she took you in like a stray dog and now she’s dead and you’re still here, so get out!”
Her eyes were blazing with hate, that bullet hardness I’d seen only once before, also directed at me, and I knew then without a shadow of a doubt that she’d never really forgiven me for anything, that I was nothing to her except something to blame and hate.
“We gave you a home and all the time we were harbouring a fucking snake, I was right all along, I knew this would happen, you’re a piece of shit like your piece of shit father, you wormed your way in here and made us trust you, and now she’s gone and it’s all because of your dogshit family. Get out, now! You came here with nothing, that’s how you leave, get the fuck out, go die somewhere far away, I hope you do, your family did this to us! You heard me, you don’t belong here, get the fuck out of my house!”
I was rocked back by the blast of hate coming from her, and the venom in her voice, and horrified at what she was saying; that this was what she really thought of me, what she’d always thought of me. Tears pricked my eyes as I turned to run downstairs to my room (although according to her it wasn’t ‘my’ room, it was just a kennel they’d kept a stray dog in) and get my jacket, she wanted me out, it was her house, I had no choice, I had to leave.
She was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, her face twisted with hate.
“Don’t you ever, ever show your face here again, you understand?” she gritted, “This is not your home, and you’re not part of this family, your family are killers and fucking losers, so Get. The. Fuck. Out! Now!”
She stalked over to the front door and yanked it open, pointing outside.
“Get out!”
I was almost out the door when I heard Yaz scream.
“Ricky, no! Where are you going, no, come back here, don’t leave!”
I turned to her and shook my head, trying to say everything I was feeling, but I didn’t need to, because suddenly she was hugging me, holding me around the waist and pulling me, dragging me, away from the open door.
“No, you can’t go, we need you, I need you, please Ricky, don’t listen to her, stay here, stay with me, please!”
“I have to, Yaz, this is not my home, and I have to leave!” I choked out, and Yaz turned her tear-stained face up at me, crying and babbling at the same time.
“You can’t go, don’t listen to her, this is your home, we are your family, you’re one of us, and we need you; mummy loved you, she wanted you, she loved you too, you’re my brother, this is your home, this is your family, please don’t go, please don’t leave me!”