The Telling by Jo Baker Page B

the doughy gummed bit of baguette, and Cate’s drooled-on fist andperfect thoughtful clear wet eyes. I found an image of me at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, staring out of the window at the squirrels as they raided downstairs’ bird table. But it was from the outside; I could see myself sitting there, hunched over one of our blue mugs, my head turned to look out of the window, and I don’t know if it was true. But while I was filling my trolley with the usual stuff, and turning up where I needed to be, and doing the things that needed doing, and finding my way home again—so long as Cate was happy and thriving—there seemed no need to talk about it, no need for anyone to know about the dark space. The blanks I couldn’t fill in.
    This time I surfaced looking at the bookcase, thinking how the wood grain seemed almost rippled, like sand where the tide has pulled away. I had no notion of what led up to that moment, or what should follow next. I was aware of the pressing need to pee, and grasping on to this sensation as if it were a rope that would haul me up, I was on my feet and heading for the bathroom, and pushing at the bathroom door.
    I sat, my head in my hands, and peed for ages. I washed my hands and the soap was veined with grey. I ran a bath. The tap coughed, spluttered, poured scalding water. I tipped Mum’s Radox into the water, swirled it with a hand. There was a dead spider plant on the windowsill. The papery transparency of the leaves was beautiful. I picked one off and rolled it between my fingertips. The room filled with steam, the window veiled itself in condensation. I sat down on the edge of the bath to take off my boots. I shivered; a deep muscular shiver, my teeth gritted together. There was a trail of dried mud across the bathroom floor. I remembered the drizzle. The scramble through the woods.Getting back. I looked down at my feet: same boots. Same jeans stuck with dry mud. Same jumper.
    “Jesus.”
    I’d not dealt with these basic, animal needs. I’d not noticed my own discomfort. Perched on the bath’s edge, steam rising around me, I bit at the skin beside a thumbnail, tearing away a tiny strip, leaving the flesh bright and oozing. My whole body was clenched tight with cold and fear. What was happening to me?
    The bath was so hot that my nerves misfired, and for a moment the water seemed cold, almost freezing. I eased myself warily into it, onto my knees, and my skin flushed up, almost scalded. I slid my legs out from underneath me to sit, wincing at the heat, and then slowly, carefully I lay down, sweat salty on my upper lip, and it was almost painful.
    My scar looked awful in the water. It flushed up bright pink, bulged at the right side, where the join is not quite right. The water cooled, and I lay on, till it was the temperature of blood. I could only feel its heat by stirring it, by bending a leg, by lifting a hand, by shifting myself higher and then sinking lower in the water. The air was colder than the water. I couldn’t bring myself to get out.
    If something’s broken, you fix it. If it’s torn, you stitch it up. But you always know the mend is there, ready to tear again. You can feel its rawness.
    —
    I dressed in clean dry clothes and sat down on the bed, my back against the wall, the street window to my side. I was looking at my hands. I felt too fatigued and apathetic to do much else.The skin was dry and cracked from housework and the weather and the bathwater and neglect. It had already thinned across the backs, tendons rising to the surface like rock through eroding soil. I pinched it; it didn’t spring, it seeped back into place. My hands have become my mother’s hands.
    The stack of bags and boxes in the next room. The daffodils fading in the pewter jug downstairs. The soap by the sink worn to a sliver by cupped palms, cracked and hardened by disuse. It all needed sorting, dealing with, finishing. But first I had to claw my way back towards the beginning, to find a