The post slid silently through the letterbox, briefly wearing the halo of the weak morning light, before the metal cover snapped closed on its optimism.

I picked up the post and the newspaper, that had arrived earlier. Idly scanning the war-torn headlines as I dropped them onto the table before I put the kettle on and let the dogs out. Watching the dogs roam lazily around like garden drunken ice-skaters. Noses firmly pushed into the ground, inhaling the impudent scent of the garden’s nocturnal visitors.

With a mug of tea in my hand, and the dogs now at my feet, I reached for the post.

ADVERTISEMENT

Setting aside an unwelcome Visa bill, and an envelope wearing a stark image of a wide-eyed child appealing for lifesaving funds, I eased open a small package. My name and address written in an unfamiliar hand. An unseasonal robin, left over from a pack of Christmas stamps no doubt, placed neatly in the top right corner.

It contained a simple card. One sold in a pack of ten perhaps, blank for any occasion. A small fishing boat on the calm waters of an unnamed harbour. It opened to reveal a handful of faded square photographs that spilled onto the oak kitchen table. Sepia images of a serious, dark-eyed woman and a gappy-toothed blonde-haired child. Landing on top of that, a baby in a knitted christening robe, and an older ponytailed school-girl posing in front of a pretend library, her hair pulled so tight it made her eyes water, made my eyes water.

‘She loved you very much,’ the third husband of my recently dead mother wrote. His writing shaky, his resolve firm.

I knew she was dead.

The news coming to me through the nasal, northern tones of my distant, Christmas card-exchanging, cousin.

‘I’m trying to get hold of your brother,’ she said, ‘His mum…umm, your mum…umm, Mary died this morning.’

‘I’ll text him’, I said, letting her off the awkward hook of dysfunctional families – a lifetime of practice.

I texted my brother, the one who had lost his mother.

“Thanks,” he replied, with the emoji of an over-sized yellow thumb. “I’ll let you know what’s happening.”

No one could accuse us of being overly sentimental.

I made more tea, there is always tea. High days, holidays. Births, deaths and marriages. The kettle goes on, the steam rising, forming a speech bubble of all that will remain unsaid.

Unsure of what to do with these images of my former self and my long-estranged – and now-dead – mother, I did what all good Generation X babies would and posted it on Instagram.

Not looking for sympathy.

Although maybe I was.

The kettle goes on, the steam rising, forming a speech bubble of all that will remain unsaid

True to his text, my brother kept me updated. Sending amusing descriptions of acrylic-skirted grave-side neighbours, and photographs of badly made sandwiches. Anything but mum-talk.

He screenshotted the funeral service.

She had two children, it said, and there I find myself. Nameless and blameless. Child number two.

I dropped the innocuous-looking card on the table and pushed back my chair.

Unsettled, now I moved away from the photographs, my mouth dry, my eyes wet.

Death wasn’t the airbrush I had thought it would be. The hope, the what-ifs and maybes of a love that should have been but wasn’t, dying with her.

The memories that I had buried when she was alive, came alive now she was buried. Disturbing my nights, upsetting my days, my teeth aching from the loss of that which I never had.

I kept the photographs, surprising myself by finding an old silver frame for the faded image of the dark-eyed woman and the small blonde-haired girl with the gappy smile.

It sits quietly on the bookcase, beside the photograph of my aunt and uncle, and the two golden retrievers that they loved like the children they never had.

Loved in the way my mother could never love the children she did have.

I look at it when I dust the shelves. I handle it gently, not sure it would stand anything more robust. The love it frames is fragile and easily lost.

But it’s there.

She loved you very much.