Every Seven Years by Denise Mina

I AM STANDING on a rostrum in my
old school library. An audience of
thirty or so people is applauding, I
am smiling and mouthing “thank you”
and I know that they all hate me.
    The audience looks like people I used
to know seven years ago, but less hopeful
and fatter. Actually, they’re not fat, they’re
normal sized, but I’m an actor. We have to
stay thin because our bodies are a tool of
our trade. A lot of us have eating disorders
and that creates an atmosphere of anxiety
around food. The applauding audience
isn’t fat; I’m just London-actress thin,
which is almost-too-thin.
    I look down. The rostrum is composed
of big ply board cubes that fit together. We
are standing on five but the corner one is
missing; maybe they ran out of cubes, or
one is broken. It’s like standing on a slide
puzzle, where one tile is missing and the
picture is jumbled. This seems hugely significant
to me while it is happening: we’re
in a puzzle and a big bit is missing. The
whole afternoon feels like a hyper-real
dream sequence so far, interspersed with
flashes of terror and disbelief. My mum
died this morning.
    There is no chair on the rostrum, no
microphone, no lectern to hide behind. I
stand, exposed, on a broken box and justify
my career as a minor actress to an audience
who doesn’t like me.
    There are about thirty people in the audience.
Not exactly the Albert Hall, but
they are appreciative of my time because
my mum is ill. She’s in the local hospital
and that’s why I’m back. It has been mentioned
several times, in the introductions
and during the questioning. So sorry
about your mum.
    Maybe pity is fueling the applause.
Maybe time is moving strangely because
I’m in shock. I smile and mouth “thank
you” at them for a third time. I want to cry
but I’m professional and I swallow the
wave of sadness that engulfs me. Never
bitter. My mother’s words: never bitter,
Else. That’s not for us. My mum said life
is a race against bitterness. She said if you
die before bitterness eats you, then you’ve
won. She won.
    A fat child is climbing up the side of the
rostrum towards me. He can’t be more
than four or five. He’s so round and wobbly
he has to swing his legs sideways to
walk properly. He comes up to me and—
tada!—he shoves a bunch of supermarket
flowers at my belly without looking at me.
The price is still on them. He must be
someone’s kid. He’s not the kid you would
choose to give a visiting celebrity flowers,
even a crap celebrity. He turns away and
sort of rolls off the side of the platform
and runs back to his mum.
    He pumps his chunky little arms at his
side, leg-swing-run, leg-swing-run, running all the way down the aisle to a big
lady sitting at the back. Her face brims
with pride. He looks lovely to her. She’s
just feeding him what she’s eating; she
doesn’t see him as fat. I’m seeing that. I’m
probably the only person in the room who
is seeing that. Everyone else is seeing a cute
wee boy doing a cute wee thing.
    It’s me. Bitterness comes in many
forms. Malevolent gossip, lack of gratitude,
even self-damaging diet regimes.
Today bitterness is a tsunami coming
straight at me. It’s a mile-high wall of regret
and recrimination. Broken things are
carried in the threatening wave: chair legs
and dead people and boats. And it is coming
for me.
    My mum died. This morning. In a hospital
nearby. My mum died.
    This is going on, this stupid event in a
dreary public library on the island where I
grew up. At the same time an alternate universe
is unfolding, the one where I am a
daughter and my mum is no longer alive.
    I love cats. On YouTube there’s an eight-minute montage of cats crashing into
windows and glass doors they thought
were open. It went viral; you’ve probably
seen it. Lots of different cats flying gleefully
into what they think is empty space,
bouncing off glass. It’s funny,