Page 66 of The Mother-in-Law

But she continues to shake. I grasp her shoulder and bring her into the house. Something isn’t right. She stares at me, her eyes wide and vulnerable. I take her other shoulder, about to ask her what’s wrong, when her knees give way. I catch her and lower her to the floor.

‘Tom?’ I call. ‘Tom? Are you here?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, starting to sob. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy . . . It’s Tom. It’s my darling, Tom.’

‘Tom has MND,’ Diana says. ‘Motor neuron disease. It’s—’

‘I know what it is,’ I say. I remember the ice-bucket challenges a few years back, people dumping ice water over their heads to raise money and awareness for MND. Clearly it was successful, as before that I’d never heard of it.

‘Tom has suspected something wasn’t right for a while, but he kept it to himself. It’s all crystal clear in hindsight. His muscle cramps. Weakness. His handwriting is worse than Archie’s. His drooling.’ A tear slides down her cheek, but other than that, she’s regained her composure. ‘I always found it so adorable when he drooled. Little did we know . . .’

Diana and I are sitting in the good room. Diana holds a cushion in her lap and fiddles with the little bits of gold thread woven through it. ‘The MND won’t affect his intellect, but it will strip his physicality from him until he is no longer able to express his intellect. Until people are speaking to him like he’s a child and he’s powerless to tell them that he’s not deaf.’ Another tear slips down her cheek. ‘But I’m not going to let them do that. No one will speak to him like he’s an imbecile. He will have me.’

Diana brushes the tear from her cheek and gives a little nod, as if this fact pleases her. And likely it does. She may not have any control over Tom’s illness, but she has control over how he is treated and she’s going to make sure he’s treated well. Diana is someone you want on your side. Perhaps that’s the problem. I’ve never felt like she has been on mine.

‘What can I do?’ I ask.

Diana gives a hopeless little shrug, the saddest shrug I’ve ever seen. She blinks slowly, hugging the cushion to her body. She looks so fragile I want to grab a throw rug and wrap it around her shoulders. I’ve never wanted to do this to Diana before.

‘Diana—’ I start as my phone begins to ring. It’s Ollie. ‘Sorry, I’d better get this. It might be about Harriet.’

‘Don’t tell him, Lucy. Please don’t tell him.’

Diana looks at me and it’s as though her soul has returned to her body, the sharpness has returned to her eyes. She’s on. It makes me feel sad and also strangely privileged that she let her guard down with me, even just for a few seconds.

‘Okay,’ I say.

She turns her head away as if to give us some privacy.

‘Ollie?’

‘Harriet’s awake,’ Ollie says. I hear her babbling in the background and maybe it’s the news of Tom’s illness but my need to have my daughter in my arms is so fierce it takes my breath away. ‘I thought you’d want to come.’

‘I do,’ I say. ‘I do want to come. I’ll be right there.’

‘Thank you,’ Diana says as I put the phone in my purse. ‘Tom really wants to be the one to tell the kids.’

It’s funny hearing her call Ollie and Nettie ‘kids’. But perhaps that’s how a mother always thinks of her offspring. I wonder for a moment whether that’s at the root of all our problems.

I sit in Diana and Tom’s good room, but this time I’m in on the secret. Nettie and Patrick sit next to each other on the overstuffed couch, upright, to attention. Ollie and I sit in the armchairs, facing each other, and Diana and Tom sit side by side opposite Patrick and Nettie.

‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ Diana asks and we all shake our heads, eager to get to the point of tonight’s family meeting. I know Ollie assumes it’s about what happened to Harriet. I haven’t been able to tell him otherwise without admitting what Diana told me about Tom, and I don’t want to do that. For one thing, I think it’s Tom’s right to tell his children this. For another, it’s the first time I’ve had Diana’s confidence and I’m determined to prove that I can keep it.

I watch Tom, in the armchair, looking for symptoms of his MND. As far as I can see, he is healthy. As for his gentle slur, it’s something I’ve become fond of, and always attributed to the fact that he is usually on a scale between tipsy and drunk.

‘All right I won’t mince words,’ he says. ‘We all know I’m here to tell you something, and you’re probably feeling like it’s something bad . . . which I’m sorry to say, it is. I’ve been diagnosed with motor neuron disease, which you’ve probably heard of. It’s the disease everyone was doing that ice-bucket nonsense for a few years back. It’s otherwise known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Anyway, it’s a degenerative disease affecting the nerves in the brain and spinal cord that tell your muscles what to do. Eventually the disease will progress to the point that my muscles will weaken, stiffen and waste. I won’t walk or talk properly, I won’t be able to eat or drink very well, even breathing will be difficult.’

Tom speaks quickly and he sounds mildly irritated, but I know it’s just because he feels off-kilter. He’s always the one in the family that smooths things over, makes problems go away. It would be killing him to be the one creating problems this time.

‘Anyway, it is what it is, and I’ll make the best of it,’ he says. And then he doesn’t say anything.

Nettie’s and Ollie’s reactions surprise me in that they have precisely no reaction at all. No movement, no sharp intake of breath, just a rhythmic blink, a second or two out of sequence. Patrick brings a hand to his mouth, rests his chin on his thumb.

‘Will you die?’ Nettie asks finally.

‘I will die, yes. As will you, your brother, your mother, Lucy and Patrick . . . all of us will die. But I will likely be the first one to go. Probably in the next five years. Maybe even in the next year.’

Diana reaches for Tom’s hand.