For almost twenty years, Alice has driven this way at least once a week. Every day for the past twelve months, she's called in on her way to and from work. Reflexes are funny like that; they catch you out when you should know better.
Alice takes the next left, doubles back and continues the short drive to work. At the office, she's wobbly at first, when someone touches her shoulder. It's been two, maybe three weeks, she's lost count. Someone's been working at her desk – there are discarded scraps of paper everywhere. She picks one up and smoothes it out – the message to 'call Togo' is not meant for her. She recognizes the handwriting but can't be bothered to remember whose it is.
She takes a break for a cigarette, though she doesn't smoke. She has to cadge from her friend, Wayne. That means conversation, but she knows she can do it.
'All right, Alice?' he asks. She cups her hands around the lighter, touches his fingers for a moment. The first touch since...
Now everything will be measured in firsts: the first day, the first week, the first time she can talk about it, the first anniversary. A whole year of firsts to get through.
'Don't feel bad Alice. You know none of it was your fault.'
But that's not how she feels. Her head is still full of the wrong sort of memories. She tries to replace them with the good ones, the happy ones, but the bad ones force their way back in every time.
Alice makes herself eat lunch with the others, at the sandwich shop across the street, just like she always did before. But she doesn't say a word; she just eats and pretends to listen while her mind is rusting away on memories. She eyes the beaten metal table and the greasy thumb-prints on the chrome chairs.
'I need some air,' she says, and shoves her chair back. She walks away, stealing 5 minutes from her employer until she reaches the cathedral, anchored by a black and gold fence in the middle of city centre traffic, and sits on a gravestone in the sun.
She'd known there was something wrong, though she couldn't really have known - it was only a feeling. She left work 5 minutes early, but even if she took a whole month off, it wouldn't have made any difference. She was too late right from the start. How was anyone to know the disease was eating away, in places they'd never even dreamed to look?
When Alice put her key in the lock that day and pushed the door open, the house was different. Her mother, upstairs in her bedroom, was talking to someone.
'It's only me, Mum.' It wasn't that unusual for her to have visitors, but most people called first, so Alice could let them in. Her mother couldn't get to the door any more. For the past week she hadn't been able to stand on her own.
Just yesterday morning, Mum had made Alice mad, by slipping to the floor just as Alice had got her from the commode to the bed.
'Stand up, Mum. All you have to do is hold on.'
'I can't help it.' Alice caught her wiping away a tear as she pressed the alarm button that dangled from a white cord around her neck.
'Why did you do that?'
'Because you can't lift me.'
'I could do it, if you helped,' she was about to say, but the voice from the call centre blasted out through the alarm pendent, stopping her from making it worse.
Alice made her way up the stairs to her mother's bedroom.
'Who've you got with you?' she asked before she rounded the corner at the top of the stairs. In the dressing table mirror, she could see her mother talking to an empty wall. Alice stared; her mother stared back, then carried on incoherently mumbling.
'Come on, Mum, there's only me here.' Alice's mum stopped talking and watched her for a moment.
'Tom, Tom!'
Tom was Alice's brother. He'd emigrated two years ago.
'He's in Australia.'
Her mother started to cry. 'But he said he'd be here. I have to go soon.'
'Where are you going?'
Alice's mother stared at her. 'To the toilet, of course.'
Alice handled her roughly, the second time she gave her mum a slap, though her mum wouldn't have felt it as anything more than a touch.
'You haven't even done anything, you stupid woman.'
She had to leave the room. If only she had a cigarette, or someone to call for help. But by the time the doctor arrived, her mum had gone.
At the funeral she'd refused to cry, refused to give into the blood pounding round her brain until she thought it would explode. Her body shook when she sat listening to the lady vicar talk about her mother's life. She did a good job, even if she did get her name wrong.
Alice rose from her seat when the vicar gave her a nod. She'd written every word herself; without embroidery, she'd done justice to her mother. There was no option for tears, she'd just be strong like her mother was when the cancer invaded her brain and took her over, for those last few hours.
She has no choice now - like she's joined a club her mother had put her name down for on the day she was born. Only she had no idea what being a member of this club would entail, and now she's in, there's no going back.
As her mother got sicker, Alice loved her even more. Sometimes so much she could hardly bear it. That's why those last few hours would fester in her memory.
She longs for the day when she'd think of her mother and feel happy, not guilty. She just can't quite imagine it, yet.
CHARLOTTE BRONTE - Jane Eyre
SALMAN RUSHDIE - The Moor's Last Sigh
MARGARET ATWOOD - Wilderness Tips
