"It's your birthday, and however much you'd like to forget the fact, I did actually give birth to you," Janet said as she entered Bella’s office, clutching a Lidl carrier bag to her chest.
The room felt smaller the moment she stepped in. The office window gave out onto the narrow street, sunlight falling across stone walls—two of them covered floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves. A large desk stood between them, its surface scattered with scripts, Bella’s photos pinned on one wall, Simon’s theatre posters on another. Bella stayed seated, her hands flat on the desk, letting her mother hover in the middle of the room as though unsure where she belonged.
"Yeah. Well, that's what you say anyway. I’ve always secretly guarded the hope you’d nicked me as a baby from someone rich and famous and it was only a matter of time before they caught up with you," Isabella said, her sarcasm a defence mechanism honed over years of put-downs and comments designed to hurt.
"Silly cow, you really are a silly cow. Always have been."
"Thanks, mum. Those are words a daughter cherishes hearing from her mother. Particularly on her birthday."
When Simon had called out “Your mum’s here!” a few minutes earlier, a shudder had run down Bella’s spine. As she went to greet her mother, she couldn’t help wondering why this woman persisted in playing a part in her life. A woman with whom she had absolutely nothing in common with. A woman who represented everything she had never wanted to be. Bella had spent her whole life posing herself the question “What would mum do now?” and then doing the exact opposite.
"What brings you here? My birthday isn’t for another week. Surely you haven’t got the date wrong," Bella asked as she gave her mother a cold peck on the cheek. That was about as warm as it had ever gotten between them. Affection had always been low down on the list in their family. Bella made sure she was going to shower her daughter Sunny with affection.
"How old are you today? I’ve lost count," Isabella’s mother asked, true to form.
"I’m still twenty-five years younger than you and always will be. What’s in the bag?" Isabella asked.
"Oh, nothing much. A present."
"Got a sale at Lidl, have they?"
"Lidl’s beneath you, isn’t it?" Isabella’s mother reacted quickly. Any sign of Isabella getting too big for her boots, looking down on her working-class origins or thinking she was better in any way than her mother, was quickly leapt upon.
"It’s not an ornamental toilet with a penis that pops out of it, is it? Oh no, that was Simon’s present last Christmas. Is it one of those T-shirts with something funny about being fifty on it?"
"Ungrateful bitch, always have been," Isabella’s mother said, half hurt, half enjoying their game of abuse and reaction.
"So you keep saying," Isabella snapped. "Leave it on the desk, I’ll hold on to my excitement and open it when it’s actually my birthday."
"Please yourself," Janet said, dropping the bag on the desk before lowering herself into the rocking chair in the corner. The chair creaked against the wooden floor, a sound that seemed to settle into the silence between them. That woman in her mid-seventies, with shoulder-length, badly cut brown hair, 1970’s glasses, and a triangular cat-like face, a steely look of determination in her hazel eyes, was obviously there to stay. Why? Duty? Nothing else better to do? Slight guilt at deciding to go away with her latest boyfriend on her daughter’s birthday?
"How did you feel when you hit fifty? Presumably, you do now admit to being over fifty?"
Janet refused to answer. Bella turned to look out of the window, her reflection ghosting in the glass over the quiet street below.
"Your buttocks are sagging," Janet couldn’t help saying as she watched her daughter stand in the window’s light.
"Yeah, thanks, I had noticed. And you’re pleased about that, aren’t you? You’re relieved. At last, your daughter’s lost all her tight skin and freshness and doesn’t make you feel like such an old hag."
"I’ve never felt like an old hag."
"And flirting with my boyfriends to prove to yourself that you weren’t old. Are you still going to deny it?"
Isabella’s mother smiled to herself.
"I never flirted with your boyfriends," she said. "They flirted with me."
"You’re not going to pull that one out again," Isabella reacted just as her mother had intended. "Even if it’s true, which is doubtful to say the least, is it something to proudly announce to everyone, as you always loved to do at any family gathering? ‘Isa’s boyfriends fancied me more than they did her.’ God, is that my future? Competing with my daughter over her boyfriends and getting them to flirt with me so I can make myself feel better about getting older?"
"You’re not going to dredge all that up again, are you? What next? Here we go."
"No. I am beyond anger and settling scores. I really don’t care any more. I have come to terms with what you are," Isabella said, meaning it.
For a moment, Bella let her eyes move over the office—the desk between them, her own photos on the wall, Simon’s posters of his plays pinned nearby—a reminder of the life she had built apart from her mother.
What the hell did it say about Bella that after years of avoidance, she had actually come to live in the same little lost village in the middle of nowhere in South West France? What had made her follow this woman who had moved there on a whim with a French plumber whom she had since dumped, as she had dumped all her previous men, including Isabella’s Italian father? This woman who had seen her daughter as a possession she could do what she liked with, had dressed her up like a pretty doll in front of her various boyfriends to show what a great mother she was, and then, behind everyone's backs, had screamed in her face and given her a whack when she didn’t do exactly as she was told?
Perhaps Bella had seen it as a way to kill the ghost. After years on the run from her mother, she had come back to confront her and prove how little she meant to her. Like a victim of crime meeting their aggressor face-to-face. Some of the fear and loathing deflated and you could go on with your life.
As her mother took off her glasses and gave them a wipe, Isabella wondered if she hadn’t seen some moistness in her eye. Was she mildly upset and actually showing some vulnerability? Or were her eyes just watering from stone dust fallen from the walls? For a moment, Isabella felt compassion for this once sparkly-eyed woman who hadn’t coped with life very well.
As she put her stern glasses back on, Isabella, not quite knowing how to end this little get-together, turned to her mother.
"Look, mum, I would say you could stay but… I’ve got some work to do."
Her mother still, to that day, hadn’t accepted that Bella worked. The office in their house was Simon’s office. Anytime Bella had ever shown her any of her work (and she had soon learnt not to) it had been looked down upon or worse—and more commonly—completely ignored.
But over the years, fury and frustration and pure anger and the need for some sort of retribution for this woman’s atrocities had been replaced by pity, mixed in with a bit of shame and leftover love.
Was this what all children ended up feeling for their parents? Was it inevitable? Was this, despite all her efforts, what Sunny would end up feeling for Bella? Tolerating her when she came to visit, avoiding certain conversations, waiting for her to go and then, when she had gone, feeling a mixture of relief and sadness?
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