Free Charlie by Lesley Pearse

overlooking the harbour, yet despite the many vases of flowers it still had a nasty sickly smell and it was very hot.
    Sylvia was propped up into a semi-sitting position, but she didn’t even turn her head as Charlie approached. Even from a distance her sullen mood was obvious.
    ‘Hullo, Mum!’ Charlie said cheerfully, bending to kiss her mother’s cheek. ‘I brought you some flowers from the garden. Mrs Melling made you some cakes too.’
    Charlie thought her mother looked ghastly. She was haggard, her skin yellowish and her eyes dull. Her hair was so greasy it was stuck to her head with rat’s tails around her shoulders, but worse still, it was as though all the years of constant smoking and eating too little had finally caught up with her. Her mouth was puckered by tiny lines, her neck was scrawny. Charlie doubted if any of their old neighbours would recognize her as the glamorous blonde from ‘Windways’.
    As Sylvia said nothing, Charlie put the bunch of flowers and the small tin of butterfly cakes on her locker. ‘It was a surprise to find you’d been moved! How’re the legs today?’
    Sylvia turned her head slightly towards her daughter. ‘My legs are hurting like hell. This ward is hell too. And I don’t eat cake. I’d have thought you’d at least remember that!’
    Charlie gulped. She was tempted just to turn around and walk away, but she didn’t quite dare. ‘I didn’t like to tell Mrs Melling you don’t eat cake,’ she replied instead. ‘I thought it was kind of her, besides I’m sure some of the old ladies in here who don’t get visitors would appreciate them.’
    ‘You get more like your father every day,’ Sylvia snapped. ‘Always the smart answer. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here now.’
    ‘Look, Mum, do you have to be so horrid?’ Charlie pleaded with her. ‘I know what happened was terrible, our life has been turned upside down, and it looks like it’s going to get worse unless Dad comes back soon. But I’m not responsible for any of it, so please don’t take it out on me.’
    ‘But you’ll be all right,’ Sylvia sniffed. ‘You can get a job, move away from Dartmouth if you want to. I’m a cripple now. I’ll never walk again, everything I own is about to be taken away from me. I’ve got nothing to look forward to, I won’t even be able to look after myself, I might as well be dead.’
    Charlie thought that was all true, but she didn’t think an adult should wallow in self-pity. ‘I’ll look after you,’ she said, pulling up a chair and sitting down beside the bed. ‘And if you make up your mind that you will walk again, you probably could. So we might lose the house, but we’ll get somewhere else. Why don’t you let the nurse wash your hair, put your makeup on again and do your nails?’
    ‘Do my nails!’ Sylvia shrieked, making several of the other patients sit up and look round. ‘You want me to do my nails and put makeup on after what has happened to me?’
    Charlie was horrified. Right from a small child she’d been taught by both her parents never to make a scene in public. She couldn’t believe that her mother would change the habit of a lifetime, even if she was in pain.
    ‘Please don’t show yourself up, Mum,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘I only meant it might make you feel better if you looked like your old self.’
    ‘You’re as cruel as your father,’ Sylvia hissed at her, blue eyes blazing. ‘Do you know what that bastard’s done? He’s robbed us. Cleaned us out, every last penny. All I’ve got is about a hundred pounds in my savings account. There’s nothing left for your school fees, nothing even to pay the electric or gas bills. He’s off with another woman, making a new life for himself. He hadn’t even got the guts to tell me he didn’t want me any more. Will putting makeup on make that go away?’
    ‘I don’t believe he’s gone off with another woman,’ Charlie said indignantly.
    ‘How would you know?’