Free Starlight Peninsula by Charlotte Grimshaw Page B

trouble, because she knows how damaging it was to her. And our mother, she wants to regale the kid with that stuff. She used to encourage Carina to rebel at school, too. It was always, Did the teachers really say that to you? That’s bad. They’re right fascists. And then she’d tell everyone how badly behaved Carinawas. Carina still gets our mother’s old friends coming up to her, saying, Is your daughter as difficult a girl as you were?’
    Eloise pressed on, feeling how absurd it was to be talking like this about her mother — at her age .
    ‘The Sean situation. My mother seemed sympathetic at first, but she started to introduce a line about how I had to accept that men have affairs. She told me about men she knew who’d gone off with younger women and never come back. She talked about ageing, wear and tear, how time ruins us. She said my husband’s new girlfriend must “give off a strong charge”, whatever that means. I started to think it was a trip for her, that I was in the down position.’
    Klaudia nodded, making notes.
    ‘I’m here because it’s all got too much. I told you about Arthur. He died. Then I married Sean, then he left, and just after that happened I had to confront the fact that my mother wasn’t supportive. The marriage was my safe haven and when it was gone I had no base, no defence.’
    Eloise paused. Klaudia would now say, Come now, this is paranoia, hysteria. Your mother cares for you deeply.
    ‘Sometimes I think she really dislikes me.’
    She waited to be corrected.
    ‘Sure,’ Klaudia said briskly. ‘From what I’m hearing, we’re talking at least ambivalence.’
    Eloise blinked. ‘Ambivalence?’
    ‘It’s family dynamics. Jealousy. Competitiveness. Perhaps she is narcissistic. Were you your father’s favourite child? Or perhaps your sister was?’
    ‘Ambivalence?’
    ‘Let’s call a spade a spade.’
    ‘So, I should go away feeling even worse than I felt when I came in? I thought this was supposed to make me feel better. Now you want to tell me I’m not imagining it, she really does dislike me?’
    ‘Possibly. But at the end of the day, it’s her shit not yours.’ Klaudia’s tone softened. ‘Somewhere deep down, she probably knows she messed up. So. I want you to learn to have empathy for the child you once were.’
    ‘Christ.’
    ‘I am German, so I am blunt. Excuse me. You tell me about walking all day. I think you have been walking away for a very long time.’
    ‘I met a man who told me I should confront things. We were a bit drunk at the time, or I was. I’m drinking rather a lot, by the way.’
    Klaudia laid down her pen. ‘Okay, sure. We’ll come to that. But perhaps the walking is a metaphor for escape. You have reinvented yourself in order to escape bad things that have happened in the past. There was the mother who was clearly ambivalent. The partner who so sadly died. You reinvented yourself to escape these blows, and now, with this fresh situation, you feel the old terrors are jumping out at you all at once.’
    ‘Well, it’s been bleak …’
    ‘You need to look back and find some empathy for that unloved child …’
    Eloise pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. ‘I’m starting  to feel like I need a drink.’
    ‘Ah yes. Drink. How many units a day, please, and what time do you start? In the morning?’
    ‘Never until the sun’s over the yardarm.’
    Out there in the bright garden the old woman was using a hose, the water spooling out in beads of silver. A sudden gust flipped the leaves of the flax, making the spears shine. Eloise was surrounded by light and silence.
    ‘It’s a beautiful garden.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Perhaps my mother doesn’t mean any harm. Perhaps she’s just a simple, honest person who blunders, tactlessly says the wrong thing.’
    ‘You say she’s interested in literature. She understands fiction — character, motivation, subtleties. If she understands these things, how can she be so