eleven

It was there, on the kitchen table. He was just putting the flowers in the vase, like Suzie had told him to do, when he spotted it. Everyone had been in such a hurry and a mess last night that they hadn't noticed. He picked it up and sat down.

Dear Marcus,

    I think that whatever I say in this letter, you'll end up hating me. Or maybe end up is a bit too final: perhaps when you're older, you'll feel something else other than hate. But there's certainly going to be a long period of time when you'll think I did a wrong, stupid, selfish, unkind thing. So I wanted to give myself a chance to explain, even if it doesn't do any good.

    Listen. A big part of me knows that I'm doing a wrong, stupid, selfish, unkind thing. Most of me, in fact. The trouble is that it's not the part that controls me any more. That's what's so horrible about the sort of illness I've had for the last few months — it just doesn't listen to anything or anybody else. It just wants to do its own thing. I hope you never get to find out what that's like.

    None of this is anything to do with you. I've loved being your mum, always, even though it's been hard for me and I've found it difficult sometimes. And I don't know why being your mum isn't enough for me, but it isn't. And it isn't that I'm so unhappy I don't want to live any more. That's not what it feels like. It feels more like I'm tired and bored and the party's gone on too long and I want to go home. I feel flat and there doesn't seem to be anything to look forward to, so I'd rather call it a day. How can I feel like that when I've got you? I don't know. I do know that if I kept it all going just for your sake, you wouldn't thank me, and I reckon that once you've got over this things will be better for you than they were before. Really. You can go to your dad's, or Suzie has always said she'll look after you if anything happened to me.

    I'll watch out for you if I am able to. I think I will be. I think that when something happens to a mother, she's allowed to do that, even if it's her fault. I don't want to stop writing this, but I can't think of any reason to keep it going.

    Love you,

                Mum.

    He was still sitting at the kitchen table when she came back from the hospital with Suzie and Megan. She could see straight away what he had found.

    'Shit, Marcus. I'd forgotten about it.'

    'You forgot? You forgot a suicide letter?'

    'Well, I didn't think I'd ever have to remember it, did I?' She laughed at that. She actually laughed. That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

    'Jesus,' said Suzie. 'Is that what it was? I shouldn't have left him here before I went to get you. I thought it would be nice if he tidied the place up.'

    'Suzie, I don't honestly think you're to blame for anything.'

    'I should have thought.'

    'Maybe Marcus and I ought to have a little talk on our own.'

    'Of course.'

    Suzie and his mum hugged, and Suzie came over to give him a kiss.

    'She's fine,' Suzie whispered, loud enough for his mum to hear. 'Don't worry about her.'

    When Suzie had gone, Fiona put the kettle on and sat down at the table with him.

    'Are you angry with me?'

    'What do you think?'

    'Because of the letter?'

    'Because of the letter, because of what you did, everything.'

    'I can understand that. I don't feel the same as I did on Saturday, if that's any help.'

    'What, it's all just gone away, all that?'

    'No, but . . . at the moment I feel better.'

    'At the moment's no good to me. I can see that you're better at the moment. You've just put the kettle on. But what happens when you've finished your tea? What happens when I go back to school? I can't be here to watch you all the time.'

    'No, I know. But we've got to look after each other. It shouldn't all be one way.'

    Marcus nodded, but he was in a place where words didn't matter. He had read her letter, and he was no longer very interested in what she said; it was what she did, and what she was going to do, that counted. She wasn't going to do anything today. She'd drink her tea, and tonight they'd get a takeaway and watch TV, and they would feel as though it were the beginning of a different, better time. But that time would run out, and then there would be something else. He had always trusted his mother — or rather, he had never not trusted her. But for him, things would never be the same again.

    Two wasn't enough, that was the trouble. He'd always thought that two was a good number, and that he'd hate to live in a family of three or four or five. But he could see the point of that now: if someone dropped off the edge, you weren't left on your own. How could you make a family grow if there was no one around to, you know, help it along? He was going to have to find a way.

    'I'll make the tea,' he said brightly. At least now he had something to work on.

They decided to have a quiet, normal evening. They ordered a delivery curry, and Marcus went to the newsagent's to get a video, but it took him ages: everything he looked at seemed to have something about death in it, and he didn't want to watch anything about death. He didn't want his mum to watch anything about death, come to that, although he wasn't sure why. What did he think would happen if his mum saw Steven Seagal blast some guys in the head with a gun? That wasn't the kind of death they were trying not to think about tonight. The kind of death they were trying not to think about was the quiet, sad, real kind, not the noisy, who-cares kind. (People thought that kids couldn't tell the difference, but they could, of course.) In the end he got Groundhog Day, which he was pleased with, because it was new on video and it said it was funny on the back of the box.

    They didn't start watching it until the food arrived. Fiona served it up, and Marcus wound the tape on past the trailers and adverts so that they would be ready to go the moment they took their first bite of poppadum. The back of the box was right: it was a funny film. This guy was stuck in the same day, over and over again, although they didn't really explain how that happened, which Marcus thought was weak — he liked to know how things worked. Maybe it was based on a true story, and there had been this guy who was stuck in the same day over and over again, and he didn't know himself how it had happened. This alarmed Marcus. Supposing he woke up tomorrow and it was yesterday again, with the duck and the hospital and everything? Best not to think about it.

    But then the film changed, and became all about suicide. This guy was so fed up with being stuck in the same day over and over for hundreds of years that he tried to kill himself. It was no good, though. Whatever he did, he still woke up the next morning (except it wasn't the next morning. It was this morning, the morning he always woke up on).

    Marcus was really angry. They hadn't said anything about suicide on the video box, and yet this film had a bloke trying to kill himself about three thousand times. OK, he didn't succeed, but that didn't make it funny. His mum hadn't succeeded either, and nobody felt like making a comedy film about it. Why wasn't there any warning? There must be loads of people who wanted to watch a good comedy just after they'd tried to kill themselves. Supposing they all chose this one?

    At first Marcus was quiet, so quiet that he almost stopped breathing. He didn't want his mum to hear his breaths, in case she thought they were noisier than usual because he was upset. But then he couldn't stand it any more, and he turned the film off with the remote.

    'What's up?'

    'I just wanted to watch this.' He gestured at the TV screen, where a man with a French accent and a chef's hat was trying to teach one of the Gladiators how to cut open a fish and take its guts out. It didn't look like the sort of programme Marcus usually watched, especially as he hated cooking. And fish. And he wasn't very keen on Gladiators, either.

    'This? What do you want to watch this for?'

    'We're doing cooking at school, and they said we had to watch this for homework.'

    'Au revoir,' said the man in the chef's hat. 'See you,' said the Gladiator. They waved and the programme ended.

    'So you'll be in trouble tomorrow,' said his mum. 'Why didn't you tell me you had to watch this tonight?'

    'I forgot.'

    'Anyway, we can watch the rest of the film now.'

    'Do you really want to?'

    'Yes. It's funny. Don't you think it's funny?'

    'It's not very realistic, is it?'

    She laughed. 'Oh, Marcus! You make me watch things where people jump from exploding helicopters on to the tops of trains, and you complain about realism.'

    'Yeah, but you can see them doing it. You can actually see them doing those things. You don't know for sure he's waking up on the same day over and over again, because they can just pretend that, can't they?'

    'You do talk some rot.'

    This was great. He was trying to save his mum from watching a man committing suicide for hours on end, and she was calling him an idiot.

    'Mum, you must know why I turned it off really?'

    'No.'

    He couldn't believe it. Surely she must be thinking about it all the time, like he was?

    'Because of what he was trying to do.'

    She looked at him.

    'I'm sorry, Marcus, I'm still not with you.'

    'The . . . thing.'

    'Marcus, you're an articulate boy. You can do better than this.'

    She was driving him mad. 'He's spent the last five minutes trying to kill himself. Like you did. I didn't want to watch it, and I didn't want you to watch it.'

    'Ah.' She reached for the remote control and turned the TV off. 'I'm sorry. I was being pretty thick, wasn't I?'

    'Yes.'

    'I just never made the connection at all. Incredible. God.' She shook her head. 'I'm going to have to get my act together.'

    Marcus was starting to lose track of his mother. Right up until recently he had always thought she was . . . not perfect, because they had arguments, and she didn't let him do things that he wanted to do, and so on, but he had never spent any time thinking she was stupid, or mad, or wrong. Even when they had arguments, he could see what she was on about: she was just saying the things that mothers were supposed to say. But at the moment, he wasn't getting her at all. He hadn't understood the crying, and now, when he had been expecting her to be twice as miserable as she had been before, she was completely normal. He was beginning to doubt himself. Wasn't trying to kill yourself a really big deal? Didn't you have long talks about it afterwards, and tears, and hugs? Apparently not. You just sat on the sofa and watched videos and acted as though nothing had happened.

    'Shall I put the film back on?' he asked her. This was like a test. The old mum would know he didn't mean that.

    'Do you mind?' she said. 'I'd like to see how it turns out.'