Break The Child: Chapter Twenty-One...2 Shoplifter

All the time she was talking I was leading her down the road and into our gate. ‘That’s what I want to know, Mum, he should be with you.’ And that’s when I saw that the front door was locked. ‘Oh mum, please say you’ve got a key.’ I knew she hadn’t and I didn’t have one because Mum said I wasn’t old enough, or responsible enough, to have my own key. I’m going to talk to Dad about it. I’m responsible enough to look after her, aren’t I?  I was just getting my phone out to ring dad and tell him that we were locked out when a police car pulled up outside the house. Dad had rung them to report Mum missing, again.

            I said that Mum was fine. And then I rang Dad to find out where he was and to tell him that the police were here, but he didn’t answer his phone because he was already on his way home. I had five missed calls from him, and I felt guilty. He must have been in a right state. And then the police got a call on their walkie-talkie. A bus driver rang in to say that he’d picked up a lady with no money. She seemed very confused, so he’d let her off paying, but he didn’t want her getting hurt and thought that he’d better let the police know. He was very kind and hadn’t started the bus up again until he’d seen Mum going into our gate. The police said that he was a good citizen.

            When Dad got home, a couple of minutes after the police arrived, we went inside and the policeman had to write a lot of notes and file a report and he said that it was the second time, in a week, that Mum had gone walkabout. Dad promised them that it wouldn’t happen again, but I don’t think they believed him. As they were going out of the door the policeman squeezed Dad’s shoulder and that made me want to cry because it was proper sympathy, not like the nosy neighbours who just want to talk about us.

            I made coffee and sandwiches. Mum was hungry and ate two big ham and lettuce sandwiches and then she asked if there was any pudding. I gave her the biscuit barrel and she scoffed loads before Dad took it off her. And then she threw up in the kitchen sink because she didn’t have time to get to the toilet.

            While Mum and I ate, Dad told me what happened. He said that his stomach was still churning and that he couldn’t eat a thing. They’d been doing the weekly shop in Asda. Dad said he only turned his back on her to look at something and when he looked back, she’d gone. He said that he wasn’t really worried; he figured he’d find her in one of the aisles somewhere. I told him that’s what happened to us when we went shopping. I asked him if he looked in the toy aisle first. I told him that’s where she likes to go. I felt like we were equals in this, not just father and daughter. I know stuff that he doesn’t, and I can tell him. After he’d wasted five minutes running around the store, he was scared stiff. He told the security men that she was missing, and they helped look for her, but not until they knew all about the dementia, and they closed the main automatic doors, leaving only a little door at the side for people to get out of. They put one man at that door in case Mum tried to leave.  Some of the floor staff joined in the search for her after Dad described what she looked like.

            It’s a good job the security men didn’t catch her because, when I hung up her coat, I felt that it was heavy. I found five tubes of Smarties in one pocket, and three Crunchie’s in the other. I can’t believe that my own mother’s a shoplifter. I showed them to Dad, and he started laughing. He said, ‘Can you imagine if she’d got caught?’ I could imagine it, only too well and I really didn’t see what was funny about it. Sometimes I feel like the grown up around here.

            Tonight, Mum was fast asleep on the couch and Dad asked if I’d be all right looking after her while he just nipped the stolen sweets back to Asda. He was going to leave it until tomorrow, but if they’d checked the security cameras and saw what she’d done, there’d be more trouble. I was nervous being left with Mum, but she didn’t wake up and Dad was only gone for ten minutes. He said that they were very good about it, but he said that the staff won’t forget and will be watching us like hawks in future. Dad says we’ll shop at Tesco next week, even if it is an extra three miles.

            The other day Dad had to go into work. Aunty Linda stayed with Mum. The Post Office staff laid on a kind of party for him because he was leaving. But it was only a glass of champagne and some speeches and boring stuff like that, so I didn’t miss anything good. They said that Dad had been a hard worker for nearly twenty-five years, and they gave him a watch. That’s tradition apparently, when someone’s been working somewhere for a long, long time they give them a watch. I suppose it’s a pun on time, to remind them of their time with the company.  That was nice, but what was even better was they’d had a whip-round and they presented Dad with a cheque for twelve hundred pounds. They said it was for us to have a family holiday.  I’m a bit mad because he knows how much I want to go to Disney World Florida, but Dad said that he couldn’t accept it because, with the baby coming, on top of the Dementia, we can’t go on holiday at the moment. Mum has to have a steady routine as possible. Dad tried to give the money back, but they told him to keep it and put it towards whatever he felt was best. So, he said that he would buy baby stuff with it. Everybody gave him a round of applause, and he was dead embarrassed. They told him that, if circumstances ever change, they will give him his job back without question. But Dad said that it was only words. What about the poor bloke that takes over from him, they can’t just chuck him out if Dad decides to go back, can they? And what could possibly change? Do they think that Mum’s going to die, or something? Dad promised me again that it’s not that kind of disease and that Mum’s going to live for a long, long time. Well, as long as she doesn’t keep wandering off like she did today, she will.

            My Mum’s a shoplifter. How embarrassing.