Page 9 of The Pieces of Us

She looks away from me, out of the window at the steady stream of people going places. I start singing – badly – but she doesn’t join in like she normally does. After the first chorus, she lowers the volume. ‘This was playing on Dad’s car radio the last time I saw him. He sang along to it too.’

And, just like that, the space between us has stretched.

‘You remember that? It was …’ I quickly do the maths in my head. ‘Six years ago?’

‘Of course I remember,’ she snaps, then softens. ‘Sorry. Yeah, I do. He told me only the most special people in the world have songs written about them.’

‘Well, your dad was right,’ I say softly, not voicing what I’m thinking, that she deserves so much more from her father than three and a half minutes of overrated indie rock.

I look at her nose, so striking in profile, her skin that turns golden brown after only a day in the sun.

If you had to place a bet, you’d put more money on her being Spanish than Scottish – genes can play cruel tricks on us in many ways.

I want to take my hand off the gear stick and give her knee a reassuring squeeze.

But I know I can’t reach her right now. I stare at the road ahead until the song is over.

‘Has Dad been in touch recently?’ I try to keep my voice casual.

‘Nope,’ she says. ‘Can we stop at the shop on the way home?’

By the time we’ve picked up a family-sized bag of peanut M I tease it out carefully.

She used to go to the hairdresser’s once a week for a wash and blow-dry, one of the few treats she allowed herself.

‘It’s worth every penny,’ she’d say. ‘Don’t have to do anything to it myself.

’ I took over Minnie’s haircare last year when going to the salon finally became too much for her.

If we do it on a good-mood day, she sits still to let me trim it every few months.

Finally she lifts her arms and lets me pull her out of the wardrobe, up on to her feet.

‘I think I’ll watch some television,’ she says, shuffling out of the room.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘No thanks,’ she says over her shoulder.

‘I’ll sort out some more of your things,’ I tell her, but she’s already out of the room.

It’s taking a while to unpack, partly because there’s simply not enough room for everything. At some point we’ll get shelves up, maybe move some furniture around. In the meantime keeping things tidy is the priority.

It doesn’t take long to stack her Argos catalogues in neat towers along her bedroom wall.

As far as unusual collectors’ items go, it’s probably not that weird.

People accumulate all sorts of crazy things.

I remember reading about a man who had a collection of unopened Coca-Cola bottles worth thousands of dollars.

Some of Minnie’s catalogues are from before she got ill, back when there wasn’t a communication glitch between her brain cells.

But it’s clear that her passion really ramped up a gear about six years ago, evidenced by eighteen copies of that year’s autumn/winter edition.

She was always a collector of things. ‘One person’s trash is another person’s treasure,’ she’d say. I once found a box of cinema stubs from the eighties in one of her kitchen cupboards. ‘Why the hell have you kept these?’ I asked her.

‘In case I forget all the films I’ve seen when I’m a batty old woman,’ she replied.

And we laughed and decided to watch Buster again for old times’ sake, because she was forty-six and we still had a few years before she would ask me, six times in one conversation, what Ruby wanted for her birthday, and I’d feel tiny spikes of anxiety piercing the skin all over my body.

During her last few months in her own home, it wasn’t just the stacks of catalogues and newspapers piled on the arms of chairs and every stair that created a hazard. Minnie had started to stockpile her medication just in case .

I open a large box of paperwork, sorting the contents into two piles.

The first is for photographs and relics I’m delighted to see but can’t believe she kept: a crayon drawing of a bird with an enormous beak, my name in childish letters underneath.

Postcards, mainly from her former Woolworths colleague and friend Ada: Blackpool, London, Majorca, Donegal, Florida.

I find one I sent her from Tenerife during the girls’ holiday that started my unforeseen journey to motherhood.

We’re having a great time! Cocktails are flowing, Lisa has burned her nose, ha ha! Don’t miss me too much – I’ll see you soon! XXX

The second pile is for things I’m not even going to ask whether she wants to keep. Takeaway menus. Instructions for a microwave she bought in the nineties. Christmas cards signed with names I don’t recognize. Faded receipts for underwear from Marks & Spencer, shampoo and hairspray from Boots.

I work methodically, enjoying the old photographs, the occasional reminder of my school-age artwork. More goes into the ‘to bin’ pile than anywhere else. Apparently Minnie has kept the receipt for every purchase she’d made over the last thirty-seven years.

The next document I lift out of Minnie’s haphazard collection is the last thing I expect.

As soon as my eyes land on the typewritten words on the first page, my body reacts in unfamiliar ways.

Every muscle feels taut, like an elastic band on the verge of snapping.

My throat is so tight my tongue feels like it’s taking up too much space in my mouth. My skin is clammy.

GLASGOW SOCIAL WORK SERVICES

CATRIONA McALLISTER

ADOPTION ASSESSMENT

I don’t think I’ve experienced real shock before.

Not when Tomás disappeared back to Spain three weeks after Ruby was born.

Not when Minnie’s consultant confirmed her diagnosis.

As difficult as those things were, I was prepared for them.

I stare at the page in disbelief, trying to rearrange the letters of ADOPTION into a different word, one that makes sense.

Finally I tear my eyes away and look around Minnie’s small room, at her catalogues, her nesting dolls, her photo gallery.

None of it feels the same as it did only a few minutes ago.

I make it to the bathroom just in time to empty the contents of my stomach into the toilet.