Youre not my family anymore
Mum, Ive brought Lucy round, Tamaras voice echoes from the hallway, pulling Nina out of her study notes. Ill pick her up this evening, Im running late.
The front door clatters shut. Nina leans back in her chair and rubs the bridge of her nose. A moment later, her mother enters holding her niece. Three-year-old Lucy blinks sleepily.
Again? Nina asks.
Valerie only nods, lowering the child to the carpet. Lucy pads over to the bed, clambers up with practiced ease, and reaches for the bedside table. She grabs a crumpled colouring book and a box of pencils, tucking her legs beneath her as she settles in. Not a word its a well-rehearsed routine.
Nina stands and follows her mother into the living room. Valerie is already pulling her work bag from the cupboard, checking inside.
Mum, Nina begins, Im in my final year at uni. My dissertations due in three months. I need to study, not
Tamara needs help, Valerie interrupts. Her marriage was a disaster, you know that. Now shes trying to sort her own life out. You should understand.
She can sort out whatever she wants! Nina hisses, keeping her voice low so Lucy cant hear from the next room. But why is she always palming off her responsibilities? Its her child, Mum. Hers!
Valerie finally looks up.
Thats enough, Nina! I need to get to work, she says, zipping up her bag. The little ones your responsibility.
Nina wants to argue. To say its unfair, that its too much, that shes got a macroeconomics exam in two days and her thesis still unfinished. But she sees the look on her mothers face: pointless.
She just nods.
Valerie leaves, and Nina walks back to her room. Lucy is colouring a unicorn purple, tongue sticking out in concentration.
Auntie Nina, look! Lucy holds up the page. Isnt it pretty?
Its beautiful, Lucy, says Nina, sitting on the edge of the bed and shoving her notes to the far corner of the table.
The day drags on endlessly. They draw, watch cartoons on Ninas laptop, then Lucy asks for food, so Nina makes her pasta, trying to read her textbook propped up on the kitchen table. The words blur; nothing sinks in. Lucy spills Ribena across the tablecloth. Later, shes overtired and fretful, refuses to nap but wont play either. Nina walks her around the flat, humming whatever comes to mind, until the child finally nods off on her shoulder.
By evening, Nina feels completely drained. Her book lies untouched, still open at the same page.
Tamara turns up around seven. Nina opens the door, rocking a drowsy Lucy in her arms.
Come on, love, Tamara scoops up her daughter. Right, were off.
And shes gone. No thank you. No how was she.
Nina is so tired of it all.
Two months pass the same way: Lucy arrives unannounced, Tamara vanishes, Nina juggles revision with babysitting. She still manages to defend her dissertation, though she spends long nights hunched over it while her niece sleeps next door.
Then Tamara meets Peter. The whirlwind begins: flowers, dinners, gushing about how Peter is nothing like her ex. Three months later, Nina stands in the registry office watching her sister beam in her white dress, arm in arm with a broad-shouldered man who gazes at her adoringly. Valerie dabs her eyes, delighted. Lucy twirls in pink near their feet. Nina claps with everyone, wondering if Tamara will finally settle, if the family can breathe at last.
Soon after, Tamara gives birth to a baby boy, Toby. Nina visits the maternity ward with flowers and blue balloons, cuddling the tiny bundle, believing her sisters finally found her happy ending. Peter looks the proud father. Lucy proudly tells everyone shes a big sister now. For eight months, all is idyllic.
The call from her mother catches Nina at work, in the thick of a quarterly report. Valeries voice is frantic. Peters been having an affair. Tamara found messages. Rows, accusations divorce.
Nina sits at her desk, clutching her phone, massaging her forehead. History is repeating itself with alarming clarity only now, there are two children. Tamaras coping even worse this time. She turns up at her mums, red-eyed, dumps the kids, disappears to clear her head, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.
Nina can only watch as her own life slips further and further away from her.
A year passes. Nina gets promoted, barely pausing to celebrate. Tamara meets Andrew, and its all on repeat: flowers, trendy bars, glowing talk about how hes nothing like the others. The third wedding is smaller, just close family. Nina sips fizz and thinks, Itll just get worse.
Valerie rings on Ninas lunch break. Nina is in a café opposite her office, poking disinterestedly at a salad, running through a shopping list in her mind.
Nina. Her mothers voice crackles with a nervous mix of excitement and dread. Are you sitting down?
I am. Whats going on?
Tamaras pregnant.
The silence hangs over the table, tangled with coffee and strangers chatter.
Twins, Valerie adds. Identical twins.
Nina just stares at her salad. Rocket leaves blur into a green smudge. Four. Tamara will have four kids by three different fathers. And when the next marriage ends because why wouldnt it end all those children will end up back with her and her mum.
Nina, do you hear me? Valeries tone sharpens. Hello?
I hear you, Mum, Nina says, pinching the bridge of her nose. Tell Tamara congrats from me.
She hangs up before her mother can reply, sitting motionless, staring at her dark phone screen. Her appetite is gone, hollowed out entirely.
Nina gets home around eight, exhausted and numb. Valerie sits in the kitchen with a cooling mug of tea. The moment Nina enters, she starts talking fast, words tumbling over each other as if shes worried she wont get a chance to finish.
Nina, Ive been up all night thinking. How can she have twins? Thatll be four kids, and if it falls apart again you see what shes like! Always men first, the kids come second, and then what? We cant manage, Im not getting any younger, my blood pressure is all over the place, youre working full-time, how can we possibly cope?
Nina silently hangs her bag by the door and stands by the table, refusing to sit, looking down at her mothers greying hair, the dark circles under her eyes, the anxious fingers gripping her mug.
Mum, she says, and Valerie stops, halfway through her rant. I want to go. Another city.
Valerie freezes, staring at Nina as if shes suddenly started speaking Welsh.
I cant do this anymore, Nina says quietly. I cant build my own life while always picking up Tamaras mess. Ive done enough, Mum. Ive sacrificed enough my time, studies, relationships, career. Im done.
Valerie opens her mouth, but Nina holds up a hand to stop her.
Ill take you with me, if you want to get out too. Well start again somewhere new. If youd rather stay, I get it. But I am leaving, with or without you. Because Im tired of raising Tamaras children, Mum. Yes, I love them. But theyre not mine. Theyre not my responsibility.
She breathes out, like dropping a rucksack of bricks shes dragged for years. Valerie says nothing, gazing past her to an invisible spot on the wall, her thoughts impossible to read.
Nina waits a minute, but her mother doesnt speak. So Nina goes to her room, lies on her bed fully dressed, staring at the ceiling. Her heart thumps in her throat; her palms sweat. Shed finally said it aloud the truth shes been hiding for months.
She doesnt sleep until dawn.
When she wakes, she finds a folder on the kitchen table. She recognises it: the folder where her mum keeps the flats deeds, left to them by her nan years ago. Nina flips through the paperwork, not really understanding why her mother dug it out.
Well sell, comes the voice from the doorway, and Nina jumps.
Valerie stands in the frame, pale from a sleepless night but weirdly steady, like shes made a monumental choice and is clinging to it.
Well give Tamara her legal third, Valerie says, coming to the table, the rest well use to buy a small place in another city. We dont need much.
Nina looks at her mother in disbelief. She wants to check shes heard right. But then Valerie meets her eye and in those tired eyes Nina sees the same exhaustion thats been eating her alive all these years only Valeries been hiding it better, or maybe Nina simply hadnt wanted to see.
She hugs her mother tightly, squeezing her eyes shut against her shoulder. Valerie hugs her back, stroking her hair like she used to when Nina was little.
Well get out of here, love, she says softly. Thats enough.
They sort it all in two months: quietly efficient. Find a buyer, pick a flat in a city two hundred and fifty miles away. Small two-bed in a block of flats nothing special. Nina secures a transfer with her company. The whole time, neither of them breathe a word to Tamara.
They only tell her on the final day, when the boxes are stacked and train tickets are tucked in a bag. Tamara bursts in thirty minutes after the phone call, huge at seven months pregnant, face red with fury.
What are you doing? she yells, not even bothering to kick off her boots. Youre abandoning me? Now? With twins nearly here?
Nina holds out her an envelope Tamaras legal share from the flat sale. Tamara snatches it, peering in, her face twisting further.
What am I meant to do with this? she snaps, tossing the envelope to the floor, £20 notes scattering on the lino. I need help, not handouts! Dont you understand how hard things are?
Theyve been hard for five years, Tamara, Nina replies. Were exhausted.
Exhausted? And what, you think Im on holiday? Tamara spits. Two kids, a third on the way?
You chose this, Tamara, Nina says. Now its our turn.
Tamara looks to her mother for support, but Valerie averts her gaze, fussing with her bag.
Youre not my family anymore, Tamara seethes, snatching up the envelope with shaking hands. Either of you.
She storms out, and Nina and Valerie exchange a glance. Neither says a word. Nina swings her bag onto her shoulder. Valerie lifts her suitcase. They go out, lock the flat for the final time, and head downstairs.
The train leaves in an hour. Nina sits by the window, watching the platform slip away, streetlights and scruffy tower blocks blurring past. Valerie dozes beside her, utterly worn out by packing and that last call with Tamara.
The city melts into the distance, taking with it the endless arguments, years of minding other peoples children, all that crushing guilt and those impossible obligations. Nina leans back in her seat and, for the first time in years, breathes deeply and freely. The future is a blank page.
As the train carries them on, Nina closes her eyes.
