‘Wake up! Wake up!’ I screamed at my mother in the bed next to mine. ‘Naomi’s baby has vanished!’
I made such a noise that I literally woke my father from the dead. When I noticed his corpse stir at the other side of the room, I begged it to settle again. I had enough on my plate ‘carenting’ my mother and looking after the baby that I had now lost. I refused to add another caring responsibility to this already-heavy burden.
I left the bedroom to hunt for the baby. My greatest fear was that the dog had plucked her from her cot and wolfed her down as a tasty breakfast. It was therefore with great relief that I found the dog in his basket in the kitchen, curled around the infant, with my tall, slim sister S keeping an eye on the pair of them.
Then I noticed the empty syringe on the kitchen table. My heart dropped: S was injecting again. Even worse, I could hear noises coming from the garage where a bunch of S’s tattooed druggie friends were partying (and probably wrecking the place in the process). I couldn’t bear to think of our sister J’s reaction when she heard about this.
By the time that I returned to the bedroom, my mother was up and dressed. She looked very glamorous in a black chiffon dress. I admired its sheer sleeves and tiny red flower decorations. I also noticed that my mother held some car keys in her hand.
Before we could stop her, my mother was at the wheel of the silver Volvo that I thought we had sold years ago. Neither I nor TPR could wrench control of the car from her, not even when we told her that she no longer held a driving licence and was uninsured to drive. Eventually – with the promise of an Americano – we persuaded her to stop in a café car park. There we grabbed the car keys from her.
Our next challenge was to work out how to return my mother to the safety of her care home.
Dreamaticus 