White Lies by Jo Gatford

so often, trying to divide her attention between me and my chaperone. It’s a careful balance, and one she negotiates well: don’t make the patient feel like a child, but ensure that any important information is retained by the one with a properly working brain. I watch her and nod without listening, trying to keep my expression as neutral as possible because after our last appointment Angela said I looked at the doctor like I wanted to kiss her.
    My straight-faced response has always failed with Angela, ever since she discovered brown blood in her knickers and rushed to tell me because her mother was at work, and she didn’t seem to think it mattered that I didn’t share her body parts. The pain must have shown clearly on my face as I rummaged through the basket in the bathroom that contained Lydia’s products and creams for things I didn’t normally investigate.
    Angela took Lydia’s stance on embarrassment: it’s something that only applies to other people. “We talked about it at school,” she told me. “They gave us free tampons but I don’t have any left because we threw them all at the boys.”
    I nodded, not trusting myself to answer. I passed her a pad and a tampon of every colour I could find. “You know what to do?”
    “Mmm hmm. They gave us a booklet too. Thanks, Peter.”
    Nod. “And you know what it all means? Uh…
It?
”
    “It means I can have babies now.”
    “You’re twelve, you’re not having babies yet.”
    “Yes, but it means that I
can
.” She laughed at me gently, elated – part of the great women’s club at last – blushing with the happy knowledge that tampons were no longer just surplus missiles to be launched at the sniggering boys in her class, to make them squirm with the same uncertainty and discomfort I felt fifty-odd years on.
    It didn’t get easier. I reacted in much the same way when she did, in fact, have a baby ten years later. I was the first to know then, too. Lydia was dead and I was alone again, navigating the terrifyingly familiar territory of being responsible for children I wasn’t prepared for.
    I studied the rays of sunshine on the ultrasound and gave an emphatic nod.
    I took Clare in my arms the day she was born and pressed my face against her blanket to blot away the tears I pretended I wasn’t crying.
    I walked her up and down the hall while she wailed out her colic.
    I watched her cobalt-blue eyes roll ecstatically as she breastfed, the little dimples of her inverted knuckles pawing at her mother’s necklace, a lazy smile on her lips.
    I remember this. I remember all of it, in blossoming, flaring Technicolour, and yet there are times when I don’t recognise Angela’s face.
    I have a pencil in my hand, a blank notepad on the desk between me and the doctor and I cannot recall what has just been said.
    She asks me to copy a picture of interlocking shapes, and I fail, just like last time. She asks me to remember three words: chair, blue and blackbird, which I am to repeat back to her at the end of the consultation and I am able to do so. I am told that there is a difference between two apparently identical pictures and asked to spot it but I can’t. I am not embarrassed. I am not upset. I am filled up with a vacancy that is not unpleasant, because it is not anything at all.
    Angela is troubled. She’s spent too much time around people losing their minds, I know. She can anticipate how it’s going to go, how it’s going to end, except this time she’s the relative and not the nurse. Or she’s both, which is twice as awful. I cannot comfort her and I don’t want to try.
    The doctor writes out an appointment card, explaining to Angela about a new set of exercises which will help to maintain as much memory function as possible, intermittently blinking kindly and regretfully at me. I jerk to my feet. By the time they react with echoing repetitions of “Peter? Peter?” I am already out the door and down the corridor, and even though Angela catches