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‘Fucking laugh a minute. Greasy biker, lacks social skills, would NOT like to meet?’
Double frown now from Mum.
‘Oh, Mum, fuck’s sake!’
‘Gethin, please, stop swearing, will you?’
Deep breath. ‘OK, have I ever had a problem with how I was conceived?’ My voice strains with the effort of trying to calm it down. ‘You’re a lesbian who wanted a child, so you found a sperm donor. I’m not exactly complaining, am I?’
‘You always seemed proud to be different, I remember you telling people…?’
‘Maybe you were proud of being sooo alternative. To me it was no big deal.’
Mum shrinks back, like I’m about to slap her. I can’t seem to stop this coming on all aggressive. Something about this whole thing I just don’t need right now.
I lay the letter down as Mum does that sigh thing designed to get me, but I’m braced against its force.
‘It’s not just your conception that was important to me, but bringing you up to question things, to have an open mind, you know?’ she says quietly.
‘Until I chose to drop out of sixth form, is it?’
Mum bites her lip, all traces of lipstick gone now. ‘It’s just, you used to be so into everything…I find it hard, you doing nothing.’
She’s sounding close to tears, and this does pull me back. I refill our glasses and try to think what’s getting to me. I get a flash of this poster of hers by some 1920s German feminist. A collage jumble of heads and giant cogs with words like ANTI and DADA.
‘You know that Dada picture?’ I start.
‘Ah yes, the Hannah Hoch?’
‘There’s a tiny line of random people trying to dance their way out of the crushing machines and those, like, faceless robots.’
‘A bit like my dancing Greenham women pictures?’
‘You’ve surrounded me with those images, and I’m not knocking it…?’ I struggle to hold onto my point.
‘You had so many questions,’ Mum interrupts.
‘So why be surprised that I have a problem slotting into the shit world you taught me about?’ I try to keep my voice gentle. ‘As in the little people don’t get out, do they?’
‘They don’t give up, that’s really not what I taught you.’
‘You had hippies and punk and music that meant stuff…that faith that things could change? But none of it exactly made any difference, did it?’
Mum takes a big breath. ‘So, you lie down and do nothing? Stop wanting to know?’
‘No, it’s like TheMatrix. I choose the Red Pill, remember?’ I smile in a snap decision to pull away from this argument.
‘Just waiting for Trinity then?’ Mum says in a fair effort at lightening up.
I make a show of hopeful looking around, then shrug. ‘Oh well, can I have pudding instead?’
‘Blue Pill pudding?’
‘You reckon? I’m not eating Zion gunk on my birthday.’
I think about TheMatrixthing while scoffing sticky toffee pudding. Mum takes delicate mouthfuls of lemon parfait and I catch her shooting a glance at the sheet of paper. She looks up quickly with a guilty smile. Proper proper irritating.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to know how things actually are.’ I lay my spoon on the empty dish. ‘I get on at my friends for being pig ignorant, I hate all that.’
