Page 6 of The Second Chance Bus Stop

London

On the bus home Mum insists on standing until a seat becomes available all the way in the back. I try, in vain, to get her

to take a priority seat that’s in front of us.

‘I don’t have a walking stick, do I? And my pregnant days are long gone. Only used that seat during those nine months with

you. But boy, did I use it then, pushed my middle out as soon as I found out and cupped it,’ she says.

‘It’s okay. Sitting in a designated seat isn’t a sign of weakness, Mum.’ But she keeps her eyes averted from me, and I can

see there’s no point.

Giving up, I follow her to the very back of the bus. Huddle next to her like I’m a kid again.

But I’m a twenty-nine-year-old man, and this shouldn’t be my life.

I allow myself a moment to think about where I was three years ago.

Making a sweaty morning commute in a shirt that still smelled of ironing-spray mist, going to an office with people who weren’t in need of round-the-clock care, other people to email to say, ‘Hope you had a nice weekend’ and ‘Thank you for the below.’ I always had plans, was always hours or days away from the next event or meet-up or sponsored half marathon.

I spent too much money eating out and stressed when I’d forget to text my girlfriend during the day. I had a life.

I haven’t been back to the area where I used to work. Avoid the whole length of that Tube line in case I run into someone

I used to know whose life has progressed and didn’t just halt one October like mine did. I wonder what the owner of my favourite

lunch place thinks, if they asked about me or just assumed I dropped dead one day, never to be seen again. I’ve kept renewing

my Office 365 subscription out of principle, even if the only time I’ve used Excel since leaving my job was to make a medication

timetable for Mum last year. At ￡7.99 a month, I feel I’m still part of the club.

Now here I am in coffee-stained sweatpants, and the day’s only excitement is an outing to pick up another prescription. When

my girlfriend finally left me, she kept the friends, the car and the libido. I was left with Mum, her Clio from 2001 and the

only climatic experience I can imagine coming from a cheese fridge-raid at midnight.

Mum stretches her legs out in front of her, leans her head back so that the tip of her chin points in the driver’s direction

and closes her eyes. I want to catch her whilst she’s still making sense, whilst she’s a hundred per cent here, not when she

checks out for the day and all that’s left is a shadow. I lean my head towards her, bending my neck in a curve to reach the

top of her head, where I rest my cheek. Feeling guilty for letting my mind wander, for thinking of where I might be if I wasn’t

here. Because of course I’m here. There’s nowhere else I’d choose to be.

‘Are we going to talk about it?’ I ask.

Her eyes flutter open. ‘ It being...?’

‘ It being you being mistaken for a homeless person and identified by social services. It being you escaping the house to sit at that bus stop on the corner of Hornton Street once again.’

‘ Escape implies I have been kept prisoner. Am I a prisoner, Blade? I thought you maintained that I am not confined to the house or

living in the absence of freedom.’

I sigh.

‘No one is trying to restrict your freedom. We’re worried about you.’ Somehow we has more authority than I , but of course, in reality there is no one else. A cousin who lives in Australia and sends a Christmas card that always arrives

after New Year because of the postal service. We implies there is someone behind me, nodding at my words and carrying some of the weight of it all. Not just me and Mum, alone.

‘I have that button they gave me,’ Mum argues.

‘Yes, the one you mistook for a direct line to my phone. Concierge service.’ Mum had called up the emergency on-call nurse

asking to have her heating turned down and could Blade please bring a glass of water? For someone who wants to maintain her

freedom, she can be astoundingly dependent.

‘What’s it matter anyway? By the time they come I’ll be dead already. In which case it won’t matter. I’ll be damned if my

last action in life is pressing an emergency button. Asking for help. That is no way to end a life.’

This is a top contender for Mum’s headstone inscription. I’ll be damned if I ask for help. It’s right up there with the location of the bus stop if she carries on like this.

‘You haven’t answered my question. Why did you go there?’ I try again.

‘Blade.’ She says my name so sharply it sounds as if it’s a razor, my namesake. ‘You cut through my heart like a sword. I

couldn’t call you Sword, could I?’ That is the one-line full story of how I got my name.

She has opened her Thermos, the one I prepared for her before I headed to the gym since she shouldn’t be handling the kettle anymore, and takes a sip of her tea as if the sheer mention of my name means she has to fortify herself.

She licks her thin lips where a trace of bright red lipstick is still visible on the edges.

I wait for the verdict : too milky , too sugary , did you make this with the compost ground? But it doesn’t come.

‘Have you ever felt drawn to something so strongly you simply can’t resist? Like you can only be you in that particular instance,

and if you don’t go there you may well die an early death?’

Well—no. Unless you count the times McDonald’s or a late-night kebab has pulled me in with its magical powers at two in the

morning. Maybe that’s my problem? I have no pull anymore; I’m just drifting through life, following after Mum, in a blur of

love and guilt.

‘Mum. It simply can’t go on like this.’

‘It will go on until I find him.’

Here we go again. Sven . Tall, blonds and strong, a boyfriend Mum has lusted after since she got her diagnosis three years ago.

‘He didn’t turn up. He told me to wait for him there, and he never turned up.’

‘It’s called ghosting in today’s society.’ Like many of us moderns, Mum is convinced something happened to him. That he’d have met her there against

all odds and must have been prevented by some terrible force beyond his control.

‘He loved me.’

‘He left you.’ I’m not usually this harsh. I have to remind myself to treat her gently when she gets like this. I remember

reading leaflet after leaflet on what to expect with her diagnosis. She may find obsessions, and they may be rooted in the past as her dementia progresses. Wasn’t it the fact she’d wandered off here that had alerted me that something was wrong in the first place?

‘You can’t leave someone if you never turn up. In fact, non-arrival is the very opposite of leaving,’ she responds.

‘Fine—he never turned up.’

‘Something happened to him. I was sure of it then, and I’m sure of it now.’

‘Mum, you looked for him. For years. You waited and waited. I tried to find him online—do you remember? Isn’t it time to move

on? To let it go ?’ She looks at me as if I’ve suddenly given her an idea. Somehow I don’t think I’ll like this idea, whatever it is. Mainly

because I know that however frustrated I feel, the love for my mum is stronger, fuelled by a realisation that I will have

to let go one day, and until that day I need to do and be everything.

‘Fine. I’m ready to make a deal. It involves letting you go. To Sweden.’

I nearly bloody spit out my water because the idea is so absurd. I can’t even make it to the gym most days because I’m needed

to ensure Mum is safe. The time I used to be able to squeeze out of the day, fifty minutes when she watches TV after lunch,

is rapidly slipping away from me too. Sweden is a different country, which would require a flight, a suitcase and a valid

passport to get to. Something I haven’t had the need for in a long time.

‘And why exactly am I going to Sweden?’

‘Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? I can’t go myself, can I? You don’t like to talk about it, Blade, but my condition is progressing,

and there are some things I want clarity on before that happens. I need you to find Sven.’

She leans back in the seat as if the conversation has now ended, eyes half-closed again. I press grubby red button because

our stop is next.

‘Find him and I’ll move into any care home you want. Even to that hideous one in Berkshire where mindfulness is a core subject.’

I sigh. She sighs. The bus sighs as it stops at a light.

‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed you browsing and leaving information packs around the house.’

We turn the last corner before our stop, and the words slip out of me before I realise what I’m saying.

‘Fine. You have yourself a deal, Mum.’