The Farm Read Free Page A

You need to convince her to get help. I can’t help her. She won’t let me. Take her to the doctor’s. You have a better chance if she’s not worrying about me.’
    I couldn’t follow his reasoning.
    ‘I’ll call you when she arrives. Let’s work out a plan then.’
    I ended the conversation with my thoughts pinched between interpretations. If my mum was suffering from a psychotic episode, why had the doctors discharged her? Even if they couldn’t detain her on a legal technicality they should’ve notified my dad, yet they’d refused, treating him as a hostile force, aiding her escape not from hospital but from him. To other people she must seem okay. The airline staff had sold her a ticket, security had allowed her through airport screening – no one had stopped her. I started to wonder what she’d written on the walls, unable to shake the image that Mum had emailed me, showing Dad in conversation with a stranger.
     
    Daniel!
     
    In my head it began to sound like a cry for help.
     
    The screen updated; Mum’s plane had landed. The automatic doors opened and I hurried to the front of the barriers, checking the baggage tags. Soon the Gothenburg passengers began to trickle through. First were the executives searching for the laminated plastic sign with their name, followed by couples, then families with bulky luggage piled high. There was no sign of my mum, even though she was a brisk walker and I couldn’t imagine that she’d checked luggage into the hold. An elderly man slowly passed by me, surely one of the last passengers from Gothenburg. I gave serious consideration to phoning my dad, explaining that something had gone wrong. Then the giant doors hissed open and my mum stepped through.
    Her eyes were turned downwards, as though following a trail of breadcrumbs. There was a beat-up leather satchel over her shoulder, packed full and straining at the strap. I’d never seen it before: it wasn’t the kind of thing my mum would normally have bought. Her clothes, like the satchel, showed signs of distress. There were scuffs on her shoes. Her trousers were crumpled around the knees. A button was missing from her shirt. My mum had a tendency to overdress – smart for restaurants, smart for the theatre, smart for work even though there was no need. She and my dad had owned a garden centre in north Lon don, set on a slip of T-shaped land between grand white stucco houses, bought in the early 1970s when land in London was cheap. While my dad wore torn jeans, clumpy boots and baggy jumpers, smoking roll-up cigarettes, my mum selected starched white shirts, wool trousers in the winter, and cotton trousers in the summer. Customers would remark on her immaculate office attire, wondering how she kept so pristine because she’d carry out as much of the physical labour as my dad. She’d laugh when they asked and shrug innocently as if to say, ‘I have no idea!’ But it was calculated. There were always spare changes of clothes in the back room. She’d tell me that, as the face of the business, it was important to keep up appearances.
    I allowed my mum to pass by, curious as to whether she’d see me. She was notably thinner than when we’d said goodbye in April, unhealthily so. Her trousers were loose, reminding me of clothes on a wooden puppet, hanging without shape. She seemed to have no natural curves, a hasty line drawing rather than the real person. Her short blonde hair looked wet, brushed back, slick and smooth, not with wax or gel but water. She must have stopped off at a washroom after leaving the plane, making an effort to fix her appearance to be sure a hair wasn’t out of place. Normally youthful in appearance, her face had aged over the past few months. Like her clothes, her skin carried marks of distress. There were dark spots on her cheeks. The lines under her eyes had grown more pronounced. In contrast her watery blue eyes seemed brighter than ever. As I moved around the barrier, instinct stopped