The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3047 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I mulled over what had happened at Marguerite’s and felt that it had probably been a waste of both our times. Nothing had come to mind that had answered any of the questions that had arisen in my mind which caused me to go there and I would probably have been just as well off by sitting in the car outside the cemetery and having a good cry for ten minutes.

It wasn’t Marguerite’s fault that she couldn’t answer the questions I couldn’t actually articulate and I wished I hadn’t bothered her, goodness what she’d think of me. I’d send her some flowers when I got home, it might not solve anything but it would relieve my guilt somewhat and perhaps make her smile for a few moments.

So intent on my thoughts was I, that I found myself parking my car in the driveway of my parent’s house instead of being halfway to Portsmouth. I had some milk in the car so a cuppa would be possible, so that’s what I did.

Sometimes I do wonder what is happening to my life or to me—it certainly isn’t quite what I’d envisaged many years ago. But what had I envisaged? I filled the kettle and after it boiled I made my tea and sat at the kitchen table and tried again.

What had I envisaged my life would be? I wasn’t sure. Back as a teenager, I did two things and neither involved squeezing spots. The first was work like mad at my studies because it distracted me from the second, which was wanting so badly to be a girl. I wanted it so badly, I could almost taste it. I knew I’d never be able to do much about it until I got away from home, and university would provide an opportunity for that. Quite what I’d do then, I didn’t know. I mean I knew there were people who’d changed over but I didn’t really know any of them or what to do or how to do it. There was also the irony that, although I wanted it all to happen yesterday, there was a feeling that I was only eighteen or whatever, so there was plenty of time.

My mother confused me by teaching me homemaking skills way beyond anything I’d need for a bachelor pad, yet she also betrayed me to my father the night he really beat me, possibly because I was cheeky to her. But I was twenty years old, an adult neither of them had the right to do what they did to me. Part of me resented that very much, it almost cost me my life—sometimes I wondered if it might have been better if it had, if the pills had done their job—then I’d not have had to struggle with all the dilemmas I’d had to deal with.

Then again, according to their book, if I had ceased to be, apart from the fact they’d have won, though it would have been a pyrrhic victory because they’d have lost their only child, but it might have been worth it to be rid of my weirdness. I hoped not. Even if I did it now, I could hardly ask them because they were supposed to be in Paradise or whatever and I’d be on a one way trip to hell. If they were with all their bible thumping friends, the alternative might sound attractive.

I felt a tear drip down my face and drop onto my lap. Why was I crying? Why? Because I felt lost. I’d been so wrapped up in my life and dealing with the problems of every waif and stray that crossed my path, I had no time to mourn my own loss.

‘To lose one parent is unfortunate, to lose both parents verges on carelessness,’ so says Lady Bracknell in Wilde’s wonderful satire. Had I been careless? It began to look like it, and in very short time.

I’d sort of reconciled things with my father by treating him as meanly as he’d treated me. He couldn’t fight back after his stroke so I bullied him—is that what I’d become, a bully. Having suffered at the hands and feet of them all my life, I became one and bullied my own sick father—I was a monster. No wonder social services had opposed my fostering children, they could see what I was really like.

Then having accumulated a dozen young people including two babies, what did I do but bully them too. Did I cause Danny to become a girl? If I did then I really am a monster. We should be free to experiment with roles and genders not be tricked or coerced into one or the other, which is probably what I did with Danny. That he survived the experience shows his mental fortitude, yet I didn’t dislike him as a boy and was disappointed when he opted to become a girl. God, this is so confusing.

I like to think I loved my children but do I? Or do they just provide me with an opportunity to role play a mother. Ha, that’s a laugh I don’t think. And what about the irony that I was preferred by two men who settled for someone who could be a mother only to each come to a tragic end. Okay, I saved Stella but was that only because I’d driven her to it in the first place. I don’t think I’m very nice, really.

It would be so easy on the way home, a powerful car lots of speed and a convenient bridge or if I went down the M5, I could drive through the crash barriers into the Avon Gorge—no way of surviving that. It would all be over in minutes and could look like an accident rather than suicide, so the girls wouldn’t have to live with the stigma, neither would Tom or Simon. I suppose they’d be upset for a day or two, possibly a whole week but Si would be free to marry a real woman and someone else could look after the dormice—they’re pretty well doing that already. Here I am risen to the dizzy heights of Professor of the faculty of science proving that the Peter Principle is alive and well and I’ve been promoted to the level of my incompetence, possibly even beyond it.

I drank my tea. If I carried out my plan I wouldn’t need to mourn, I’d be gone either to oblivion or hell, neither really worried me. What of Tom’s film? He’d find somebody else, I’m not irreplaceable, nobody is.

I washed up the cup and dried it. I had a plan and it was simple enough to carry out and should involve no one except the emergency services when they scrape my remains out of the river.

Picking up my bag my phone rang and I answered it almost by reflex. “Hello?”

“Mummy, where are you?”

“Trish?”

“’Course, who else? Look, me an’ Danni’s worried about you, we’ve both had really funny ideas all day. Are you all right an’ d’you want Danni an’ me to come and get you, wherever you are—it felt somewhere dark, d’you want us to bring lights?”

The tears were pouring down my face and for a moment I couldn’t speak, “It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m coming home and thank you for calling me.”

I might be a bully and a monster but someone appears to love me, so hell or oblivion will have to wait a bit longer; I’ve got children to bring up and films to make. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and set off for home.