Read Someone Else's Life for Free Online Page B

and night, and care workers rallied round, but I was the only one there twenty-four-seven. The only one watching my mother slipping away. The only one witnessing what might happen to me.
    What I thought might happen to me.
    But she knew it never would .
    The thought comes like a burning scythe through my chest as I stare at the grab-bars, the child-locks, her chair—things that have haunted my future—things that I’ll never need— and she knew! All that time she let me believe I was at risk, and all the time she knew!
    I grab a pair of scissors from a child-locked drawer and dive at the chair, screaming as I stab the sharp blades into it again and again, slashing and hacking at its wipe-clean surface, leaving great gashes bleeding foam. I hate this chair so much . I hate its carefully padded limbs, its folding backsupport, its urine-proof coating. So practical. So functional. So ugly and terrifying and waiting for me—my destiny. Well, not anymore! I shove the chair onto its side, kicking and wrenching at it with all my might until finally an arm snaps off, sending me slamming painfully into the wall, but I don’t care. Never again, never again will anyone sit in it, rely on it, succumb to it.
    My eyes scan the room greedily, searching for more targets; then suddenly the front door flies open and a man bursts in, wielding a cricket bat.
    “All right, you—” Steve stops when he sees me. “Rosie?”
    “Rosie?!” Sarah pushes past him. “Rosie! What on earth are you doing?” Her eyes take in the savaged chair, the scissors. “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine.” I stare at her coolly, the scissors cold and hard in my hand, blood pounding in my temples.
    “We heard all the noise and thought”—she glances at Steve—“I thought it was burglars!”
    “Well, it’s not,” I say. “So you can go.”
    Sarah glances at Steve and pats his arm. “You go.”
    He frowns. “You sure?”
    “You too,” I tell her.
    “Off you go.” Sarah smiles at her husband as he leaves. “I’m staying.”
    “There’s no need.” I grit my teeth. “Just go.”
    She folds her arms and meets my gaze evenly.
    I explode. “ What do you want? ”
    “I don’t want anything.”
    “Then get lost! Just get lost! This is my house, and I don’t want you here, you and your lies—you make me sick! You’re just … you’re just …” My eyes fill with tears. “You’re just like her !”
    “Rosie—” She reaches for my arm.
    “Get off me!” I wrench away. “How could you? How could you?!” I glare at her, rage pumping through me. “For eighteen months I watched my mum suffering, watched her slipping away, watched her dying  …” My eyes flood. “Always fearing that I could have it too, that someday that could happen to me . But it couldn’t, could it? It was never going to happen to me— because she wasn’t my mother! ”
    “Rosie—”
    “And all the time she knew! Eighteen months, and she never thought to mention it, to let me off the hook? Oh, by the way, Rosie, you can’t have Huntington’s . That’s all it would’ve taken—one simple sentence to erase a life sentence. Eighteen months! And if she hadn’t got pneumonia it could have been longer, couldn’t it? It could have been years and years —and would she ever have told me?”
    “Rosie,” Sarah begins, flustered now. “Rosie, she didn’t know—”
    “Oh, I know she didn’t know! I didn’t know. You didn’t even know she had Huntington’s, and you’re a nurse, for God’s sake! But once she was diagnosed she should have told me—how could she not? How could she sit there in that hideous chair knowing I’d never inherit the disease and not tell me? What did she think I’d do? Leave her? How could she be so selfish?! ”
    “Rosie, stop it! Rosie—she didn’t know!”
    “She did! She knew there was no chance of me ever getting the disease, and yet—”
    “No, Rosie, she didn’t!” Sarah grabs my wrists, her eyes intense.