It haunted me more and more that I couldn’t remember her. Sometimes when I was home alone and it was very, very quiet, I’d try. I’d sit with my eyes closed and allow my mind to wander. I had flashes, bits of impressions and snapshot-like memories. Blurbs of a woman standing at the side of a bed with her cool hand pressed against my hot cheek or a woman in a red jacket walking briskly down the street pushing a pram. I could almost hear her, “Come along, Silvia! Faster, Darling! Quit splashing in puddles! Your baby sister can’t get wet like we can!”

It always left me with a sigh. Was it even her? I couldn’t be sure. No matter what I did, I couldn’t see her face. I knew what she looked like in photos, so I knew I‘d recognize her if I could only just see her.

I’d talk myself all together out of thinking it was her I remembered. It may not have been. It may have been Gran, whom I did remember. Gran had taken care of Lucy and me so much after Mummy died. The truth was that I would probably never even know. I had only blurry images and ideas, but nothing concrete. I remembered some of the things I did after she was gone. I remember being told that she was with the angels. I didn’t really know what an angel was, so I several times a day I’d go to the window and sit, watching for a car to pull up and have the angels leave her off. I remembered writing a letter and sticking it in the letter box at Gran’s. It was addressed to heaven and I had asked for God to send my mother home. If he couldn’t, I asked for him to give her a drawing that I had enclosed.

I had no one I could ask about her other than my father. My mother had been an only child. I knew of no cousins on her side, or of any great aunts or uncles who still lived. It was apparent that I was going to have to speak to my father if I wanted to know anything, but I was afraid to do it. The thought of breeching that gap with him, of actually inspiring a response, sent me into convulsions.

He had never reacted to anything. Not when I did something bad as a child, not when I succeeded in school, not when I ran away and got married under-age or graduated university or had babies. He’d made the required phone calls, shown up for the required visits, given the appropriate congratulations and simply left. But the subject of my mother had been very different. I remembered him after she died. Him, sitting in the living room with his head between his knees, sobbing. I remembered him sinking to his bottom in the grass at the cemetery on a rare visit. I remembered creeping out of my bedroom one night, very late, to find him in the kitchen with a female friend of my mother‘s, a thick glass of brandy in his hand, and I’d asked in a whisper if Mummy was ever coming home.

He looked at me and made a hard face. His eyes narrowed and he glared. He looked at me as if he hated me, like he’d have slapped my teeth out of my mouth if I had been standing any closer. Then he turned from me and gave the same look to the refrigerator.

“Get back to your bed! “ The friend said harshly, making a move toward me as if she was going to strike me, “Stop talking your nonsense! Leave your father alone!”

I spun and ran back to my room I accidentally slammed the door behind me. Lucy, four months old, howled for a moment. I heard my father go to her and the friend mumble something about damning me for my stupidity.

I hid under the duvet. That was when I understood what dead meant. That was the moment when I knew she was never coming back. That was the moment that the innocent little child that was me ceased to exist. It was the moment that I stopped trusting my dad. I knew to never ask about her again and I never did. His response to my question had made it very clear that she was a subject better left untouched. Anything I might have remembered as a child slowly faded from my mind.

But there were still traces of her. When I was eight I found a woman’s tortoise shell comb in his dresser as I was putting away his pants. He saw it in my hand and froze in the doorway. His face draw back as if he’d been stabbed. The silence that followed left me with a horrible sense of shame as if I’d done something terrible, yet I had no idea exactly what it was.

And so my mother became a stranger to me, someone who had left me before I had the chance to know her.

My own children were grown and gone. From time to time they’d phone me, each of them, and we’d chat. The whole time somewhere in the back of my heart there was an ache that hadn‘t been there when they were small. After all those years, after having raised my own children, I finally had time to realise what my mother and I had lost. It was each other. I finally had time to miss her and mourn her passing the way I should have when I was a child.

Time passed and I still said nothing to my father. It was Oliver who sat with me at night and listened to my frustration, who didn’t call me mad for crying over a woman who’d died so long ago that I couldn’t even remember her.

“You lost somebody, Sweetie,” He’d say as he smoothed back my hair, “You lost somebody you loved. Maybe it happened a long time ago, but it still happened. In a way, it’s good that you’re finally sad about it. I’m glad that there was enough of a bond there that you can feel that now, all these years later. It’s safe to feel it. You’re safe. It means that she loved you as well…more than you knew…so much that a part of you is still mourning her, yeah?”

Lucy and I went to visit our father in the spring he was turning seventy. He had rang her and asked us to. He said it was important. Both of us knew that something was occurring, but neither of us knew what. He was waiting in his house for us when we arrived in the afternoon. He looked frail, drawn. He seemed short of breath and had a woman who was flitting about the house. He had never mentioned her to either of us, so, naturally, Lucy asked if he had a girlfriend.

He laughed softly and shook his head, “No,” He smiled, “Felicity is my nurse.”

He explained much too calmly that he was in third stage kidney cancer. Lucy and I sat in our chairs in stunned silence as we listened to him prattle on. It was only the one kidney, he told us, and there was no evidence that any cancer had spread. There were plans to have it removed. With luck they’d get it all in one swoop. Without luck, he’d die quickly, possibly even on the table.

Lucy and I stared at each other. Finally, she spoke, “Daddy! What’s the odds you’ll have luck?”

He laughed again, oddly happily, “About 10%,” He told her. “Don’t look so frightened, Lucy! It’s certainly dismal, but I’m having it removed, so there’s at least a chance! If I didn’t, I’d be dead in a couple of months. I’m opting for the surgery!” He leaned back in his seat, “I’m a Scot, after all! I won’t go down without a fight!”

I phoned Oliver later and told him the news, too stunned to feel any emotion. He didn’t have much to offer on the subject. Oncology was not his speciality. We ended up talking about taking a trip to Paris later in the season, just for fun. Just the two of us. He made me laugh like he always did. How odd, I thought. I was fifty-one years old, lying in my old bed in my old bedroom, whispering to Oliver Dickinson on the telephone, covering my mouth so my giggles wouldn’t wake my father. Life truly does repeat itself.

As we said goodnight, he promised, “I’ll ring you up as soon as I’m done with work. At lunch, maybe, if I can.”

I thought of the boy who worked at the flour mill in Newtown who always rushed to phone me after work. I wished he were rushing to catch a train instead to see me just like he did then. But I didn’t say it. Instead I sighed, “I love you, Ollie.”

“I love you, Just Silvia. I’m glad you’re not hurt or ticked off.”

“No, Sweetie,” I laughed softly, “I’m just fine.”

Lucy and I stayed in Edinburgh, in the house we’d grown up in, while Daddy prepared for his operation. The day he had it we were at the hospital. It took several hours. Lucy cried here and there, paced the halls, phoned Alexander so often I thought he’d tell her to stop, but he never did. I didn’t feel quite so anxious. I sat on the couch in the waiting room and drank coffee from a paper cup while I read a book. On the surface I am sure that I appeared removed, but the truth was that I felt far from it. I wanted that man to live. Not so much because I loved him so much I couldn’t imagine life without him or because, like my sister, I valued life in general so highly. I wanted him to live because I still hadn’t gotten what I wanted out of him yet. He still hadn’t told me about Mum.