Kate had fallen asleep on the way over the Pennines, just at Mary�s favourite stretch of road, where at night the red snake of tail lights coiled alongside a white snake of headlights under the blackest of skies. And here she was part of both, coming and going at the same time, part of the endless light that cut the night, part of everything. It was still daylight now and the road was dull grey and busy beneath the howling eternal peaks.
Kate snored lightly and Mary glanced at her in surprise, she had never heard her snore. Kate�s firm mouth was slack and hanging open, short curly hairs were sprouting from a mole on her sharp little chin and her greying hair was uncombed at the back and stuck up in boyish tufts. Mary felt a twinge of discomfort, as if she had entered a room unbidden and captured Kate in a moment of indignity. As if reading her thoughts Kate opened her eyes and said �was I snoring darlin� dropping the g in her familiar way. It was an Irish accent, other people heard it but Mary never could.
�No, you were just having a nap�
Mary almost heard her say in her arch tone �Mary sweetheart, only old people nap, the rest of us fall asleep� But Kate didn�t say anything; she looked at Mary for a moment from those hooded pale blue eyes and nodded.
Mary talked and Kate drifted in and out of sleep. Mary couldn�t stop talking, if she did there would be silence and Kate hated silence. She depended on Mary to talk because if Mary stopped Kate might have to say something, so Mary talked till her jaw ached, all the way to Bolton.

Mary and her sister Anne had arranged this weekend for Kate, she had lived for some sad and happy years in a small village near Bolton when her Mum had still been alive and her father had worked as a cobbler. They drove out to the village that afternoon and Kate talked fluidly of her childhood memories and of her father carrying on his handlebars down the country lanes at such exhilarating speeds that she thought she was flying. Her younger sister had died in the village and people had said she was too beautiful to live, that God had taken her as an Angel because she was too innocent for the world. Her sister was called Patricia, but Kate called her Pat.
Kate stared out at the foreign place that had the same name as her village but remembered only her childhood. Anne and Mary glanced at each other and introduced new prompts, �Where is the chapel, what was the name of your street?� as if by memory exercises they could hold on to her, stop her slipping away into the blue confusion of a past without a present.
After two hours they went for some food and talked about the past, their past, Kate�s past, all things past, and Kate sparkled and joked and teased as if they were small children again, but it was Anne who paid the bill while Mary helped Kate to the car.

At Anne�s house Kate couldn�t rest, there was nothing familiar, nothing to hold her in the present and her mind wandered. She was confused by the absence of her favourite chair but she didn�t mention it,� if in doubt say nothing� she reminded herself even though she was quite bewildered when Anne insisted that they talk instead of watching telly.
Television was her solace, her escape from all things present, from the slipping away, she only remembered that she was slipping away when people talked to her, the way they projected each word with careful force as if they were trying to reach a distant audience. So she pretended to attend to the talk that slipped around her like a mischievous child and when she was sure she had understood she would say something she believed to be relevant. But the voices were loud and slow and grated on her nerves, she longed to stare at the telly and let her mind rest. At last she got angry and said �I�m not completely deef you know� Kate never said deaf as she knew she had been losing her hearing for years. Then she saw them exchange looks, oh those secret looks they exchanged, her daughters, so much a part of her yet so distant and devious, the things they had got up to, the mischief they had caused, and yet she was proud of their solidarity, of the way they never tattled on each other, of their secret pacts that excluded her, of their success.
These stick legged girls who had romped through her life like a rainbow on a grey day were exchanging glances as she lost her marbles and treading on eggshells so that she wouldn�t think that they thought that for an instant.
Happy in this thought Kate relaxed back in her chair and allowed their voices to wrap around her like an old familiar cardigan, but then a question or change of tone roused her and she was in a panic, where was she, where was Ron where was the dog and her chair, why was everything changed. Luckily Mary was in full flow and chatted away in that familiar voice and there was that little girl who followed her around like a relentless devoted pup, demanding love, demanding answers, certain that they existed. Kate relaxed, if Mary was there then her chair and Ron and the dog could not be too far away, she wasn�t completely lost.

Mary was watching Kate and trying to keep her safe, watching for that panic in her deep set eyes, for a sudden wringing of the hands, she hated the wringing hands.
Mary sometimes hoped that her Mum would suddenly turn and say, �Oh darling twas just a wee joke, I�m not really going dotty, ye can stop speaking in that loud voice to me now, cause I�m not completely deef either�
Once, as a child in Glasgow, she had been taken by her Mum to an Indian restaurant for dinner. Her family couldn�t afford restaurants; they couldn�t even afford a drink of tea in a caf� after Dad died, so the restaurant was an overwhelming and frightening experience. Mary felt she had been dragged from her world into a very different one where to her surprise Kate was very much at home. Mary watched reverentially as a smart waiter took their order, she could not be persuaded to speak as the quiet of the restaurant reminded her of church. The room was vast and dark and her legs dangled a long way above the floor, there were a confusing array of knives and forks and spoons on the table. She watched Kate's laughing eyes for instruction as she chose her cutlery and glowed with pleasure that her Mum knew what to do in a place like this. At the end of the meal when they went to leave Kate gasped and said �Oh No Mary, I�ve not got any money to pay� Mary felt her heart hammer in a mad panic, it was true, this place was too good for her, even for Kate and now they would be humiliated before the smart waiters with their hushed voices and respectful advances. They were rubbish people with no business in a place like this. Kate paid the bill and hee-hawed with laughter and said �Oh darlin it was only a wee joke, as if I�d do that to you� and then, seeing the terror and misery in Mary�s eyes said, suddenly serious �I�m sorry sweetheart, but they are only like you and me, the place might be fancy but they are just waiters doing a job, I just wanted you to take it less seriously but I shouldn�t have and I�ll not do it again Ok?� Mary relieved at having the money and so full of curry and joy that she thought she might burst said �Ok Mum�.

Kate lay on Anne�s bed and leafed through her paper, she found it hard to read as her mind wandered and the words refused to be read. Then she saw the book case and scanned the titles automatically, years of devoted reading unfolded as she ticked off the titles in her head, yes she�d read that and that. She frowned and rose from the bed, and that one and that one she listed growing increasingly angry. �These are all my books, Anne, why on earth have you taken all my books� she snapped at the empty room before setting about removing the books from the case and making a pile of her lost treasures on the bed. Suddenly the pile was too high and the books swayed then tumbled to the floor with a series of loud thuds. Kate cried out in fright as they fell around her feet before trying to bend to pick them up. �Damn this old body� she muttered as a sharp pain shot through her hip and down the length of her thigh causing her to groan. This reminded her to take her tablets and she was turning to find her bag when the door burst open and Mary and Anne burst in. Kate stared at them in surprise. They hadn�t knocked; surely they knew to knock at their age.
.
It took Mary and Anne a long time to convince Kate that Anne hadn�t stolen her books. She stared at them suspiciously but seemed to accept it; Anne would later find half a dozen hidden in a plastic bag under her bed and read the titles over and over.

They arrived at curry mile in Manchester at 6.30pm, spent the next half hour parking and another on choosing a suitable restaurant. The mile was a confusion of neon lights and exotic smells, people thronged the streets, traffic streamed up the narrow road and poured endlessly from junctions. Mary helped Kate cross the fast flowing junctions and negotiate the crowds while Anne scouted for a restaurant with spaces and a decent menu. Kate walked painfully slowly while Mary supported her, she had become small and light, her arm a butterfly wing in Mary�s hand and she gripped it as if Kate might be blown away by the smallest breeze. She scowled a path through the crowds, worried that someone might knock or bump her precious brittle charge, Kate chuckled and joked about their slow progress and commented on the carnival atmosphere of the place while Mary, in a protective fever, held her close ready to catch her if she should fall, and angled her free elbow at prospective jostlers.
She remembered how once, in Glasgow, jostling crowds had separated her from Kate, how suddenly she was alone in a place she didn�t know surrounded by knees and feet. She had turned in frantic circles on the spot searching for Kate before opening her mouth wide and roaring, tears of terror and desolation flooded down her cheeks and slicked her chin and then there was Kate, right beside her, laughing gently and using a perfumed glove to wipe away the tears. �I was here darlin, just here, did you think I�d gone and left you?� Mary nodded as she gulped back the tears. �I�m your Mum, I�d never leave you silly� she said as she slipped her gloved hand into Mary�s.

And now here they were side by side in a place they didn�t know and for a moment Mary�s throat tightened in pain as she looked down at Kate�s grey hair with its boyish tufts and the fragile hand that rested, gloveless, on her arm.

Kate joked with the waiters, forgot Anne�s son�s name who had arrived to join them for dinner, and insisted on a doggy bag for Ron. She ate every last piece of her own curry and collected Mary and Anne�s leftovers for the doggy bag, she broke her poppadum into small pieces and used it as a makeshift spoon on the pickle tray. Anne said �Mum you can�t do that, it�s unhygienic� but Kate just drew her one of those arch sidelong looks that had put them in their place for so many years and Ann�s son guffawed with laughter.
Then she insisted on two sherries and a long slow trip to the ladies, a good looking waiter helped Mary steady her up the steps and she flirted outrageously with him, people looked up and smiled as she trundled past as if she was in some way public property, someone they all knew and loved, the whole restaurants mother. And Kate nodded acknowledgements like some grand old Duchess passing among serfs.
Mary glowed with pride, even now Kate was still that beautiful woman, a woman of grace and confidence, and Mary wished that this moment could last forever, this moment when Kate was once again her beautiful, confident mother and she was, once again, her daughter.

Kate didn�t sleep that night, all night long she wandered round Anne�s house like a flimsy grey ghost. Where was the toilet? Where was her bed? Where was Ron and where was the dog? When were they going home?
At last in the still dark morning she fell asleep in the car on the way over the Pennines. The Kate from the restaurant was somewhere in there still, but she was being slowly engulfed by the terrifying creeping illness that she had feared all her life.
Mary remembered how she had promised to kill her if she got it; how she had sworn that she would never allow anyone to help her use the toilet. And she felt a gut-wrenching cowardice at the thought of keeping that promise, she wondered how Kate felt. Did she remember the promise? Did she still want her to keep it? And did she know she was ill?
Kate had always preferred to bury her head in the sand.
It seemed to Mary she had always been hiding, hiding and running. Her marriage to Ron was just another hidey hole, something to provide new cover now her daughters were gone, another identity to shield her from the world. But this time, Mary believed, she had hidden to well, too completely and couldn�t find herself any more. Or maybe Mary just preferred to blame Ron for the disappearance of her Mum, rather than ask herself why a woman who loved literature and politics, who explored new ideas and championed feminism in the eye bruising poverty of a council estate, married a man whose conversation made a shopping list seem exciting.

Kate was deeply asleep now, her chin slumped on her chest, funny how she could only sleep in the car. Whatever happened, whoever she was right now, Kate would not thank Mary for making it real, for asking that question, for closing the gateway to smoke and mirrors, she had always preferred the sand.

The traffic formed two coiling snakes into the distance, one red tail lights, and the other white headlights, brilliant in the ancient eternal darkness of the Pennine night. Mary longed to wake Kate, to show her this wonderful and terrifying sight, but Kate was snoring gently, creating a little blurry reflection on the black glass of the window.

It was light when they arrived at Kate�s house, Ron; her husband came to the gate with the dog as Mary helped her from the car.
�What did you get up to then Pat� he said, Ron knew her as Pat, the name she had adopted when she ran away from home. Kate�s brothers knew her as Dolly, their doting fathers� pet name for her. Mary and her sisters knew her as Mum; she had been all these people, a perfectly balanced concoction of a person who was slipping away from them all, whose separate identities where beginning to show as she slipped, exhausted, away from herself.
�Did you find your old house?� Ron said, his face crinkled with pleasure at her return.
�Don�t b