The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

insignificant.
But her attention to the radiator had been growing in frequency as the weeks
had passed, and I thought I needed to say something.
    ‘What are you doing, mum?’ I asked, gently.
    Her cheeks flushed red in embarrassment, and
she shook her head but did not reply: she looked as though she had been caught
doing something she shouldn’t, something that was to be kept secret even from
me.
    ‘What’s wrong with the radiator?’ I asked.
    ‘Nothing,’ she said.
    ‘Then why are you talking to it?’ I said, trying
not to make the question sound like an interrogation.
    She shook her head again, and said nothing.
    We continued to watch television that night,
programme after programme. Out of the corner of my eye I would secretly watch
her move her head ever so slightly towards the radiator, and smile. She would
whisper something I couldn’t hear, and then suddenly turn back to the TV if she
thought I was watching. It became a game between us: could she talk secretly to
the radiator more times than I could catch her?
    In the end I had to get to the bottom of
this.
    ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with
the radiator, mum?’ I asked.
    She shook her head again.
    ‘Go on, tell me. I won’t tell anyone else,’
I whispered. I think by now this radiator game had become a fascinating battle
of wills.
    ‘She’s asked me not to!’ exclaimed mum, with
tears filling her eyes. ‘When you give your word to someone, you should always
try and keep it.’
    ‘Who’s asked you not to say anything?’ I
said.
    Again she shook her head.
    ‘You can tell me, mum,’ I urged.
    ‘The little girl in the radiator,’ she said.
    I thought about this for a moment.
    ‘Why doesn’t she want you to tell anyone?’
    After a long silence, in which mum seemed to
be weighing a problem in her mind, she turned away from the television to face
me.
    ‘Because she’s all alone in there,’ she
said, the tears springing from her eyes. ‘She’s trapped and she’s frightened,
and I don’t know how to help her.’
    I went across the room and put my arm around
her. She sobbed into my shoulder.
    ‘What can I do to help?’ I whispered.
    ‘You’re not supposed to know,’ she sobbed.
    ‘Tell her you’ve told me,’ I said, ‘and tell
her I can be trusted not to tell anyone else. Tell her I might be able to
help.’
    Mum nodded and wiped her eyes, but continued
to face the television. Then I saw her turn her head, and have a long
conversation with the little girl in the radiator. I pretended not to notice.
Then she turned back to me.
    ‘She says it’s all right for you to know,’
said mum, quietly.
    ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘How can I help her?’
    ‘You could let her out!’ cried mum, and the
tears came again.
    ‘Tell her, I said it’s okay, she can come
out,’ I replied.
    We hugged again.
    Mum put her hand on the lukewarm radiator
and began to whisper to the little girl trapped in there.
    Eventually she looked back at me. ‘It’s not
that simple,’ she whispered.
    It’s funny how easily you can get caught up
in another person’s delusion, especially if you happen to live with them. After
that night, I found myself talking to the little girl in the radiator with mum
on many occasions. We would have three-way conversations, mum, the little girl
and I, although the little girl never once spoke directly to me, always
addressing me through mum.
    I have no idea whether this practice was
good for my mother’s mental wellbeing or not. A psychiatrist might say that I
was strengthening the delusion by playing along with it, but what was my
alternative? If I told mum there was no little girl living inside the radiator,
that a child could not possibly be trapped inside a hot water system two inches
wide, she would have thought I was either too blind to see or too insensitive
to care; the delusions of Alzheimer’s do not require logic in order to grip
their owner and hold them fast. The little girl was trapped in