Alien Summers and Invisible Women by Elaine Robertson

The long hot summer of 1976 was some summer. It was the complete opposite of a normal Scottish summer, more like the kind of weather you would get abroad, though we had never been abroad to know for sure, we just had a vague idea of shimmering heat and constant sunshine, exotic, different. Here, the sun shone high in the blue sky all through the long bright days while the nights were stifling and muggy. Thick black tar melted and bubbled up on the roads, the dark, bitter smell hung in the air, we could taste it at the back of our throats, no wind nor even a hint of a breeze to blow it away. Pavements and sand on the beaches that we tried to escape to smouldered and scalded our tender bare feet. The blazing sun scorched the grass, turning it straw like and reddened then burnt our pale Scottish skin. Our blood flowed hot and fast through our veins like boiling lava, like nothing we had ever experienced before. There was no rain, it seemed as if it would never rain again, the brilliant sky refusing to allow clouds to sully this picture perfect blue.

In the middle of this spectacular summer my dad sat me down early one morning and told me that my grandad had passed away in the night. He had gone to Heaven, I was not to be sad because he was looking down, watching over us all the time. I loved my grandad. I missed him. I was sad but accepted what I’d been told. What puzzled and troubled me was what no one mentioned. My mum changed. My gran disappeared. Someone was still there who looked a bit like my gran. But it obviously wasn’t her. My gran was small, tiny, as all grans were then, but this new person seemed smaller, slighter, folded up into herself. She had always felt comforting, cosy, now she was cold all the time. She had been smart, quick, lots to do, to take care of, her sensible shoes beating out their speedy rhythm. Now she moved slowly, if at all, robotically, only when one of us asked her to do something, as if we were puppeteers and Gran was the poor wooden puppet. My gran’s dark, curly hair was now unbrushed, unwashed, with stripes of bright white at the roots. Her keen grey eyes lost their sparkle, their focus. Now she never looked right at me but off into the distance. Her eyes were pink and puffy, circled in black as if someone had taken a marker pen and drawn thick dark circles around them. Her voice had always been quiet yet clear and strong, getting her point across succinctly, making sure we got her message. Now she barely spoke and when she did it was in a strange croaky whisper as if the sound of her voice pained her. Her familiar smell had disappeared, the warm scent of soap, floral cleaning products and the comforting sweet scent of home baking, of vanilla, was gone, never to return. No more home made soup, steak pie, jam sponge for us. The next time I would taste home baked Victoria sponge would be when I married and tried to impress my new husband. Gran’s normal uniform of smart skirt and jumper topped by one of her familiar floral pinnies, frilled all around the edges, wrapped around and tied neatly in a bow at the side, disappeared. She had no need for the pinny, no need to cover her clothes during cooking or cleaning, she had stopped doing any of that. Now she wore her new uniform, all black, always, dark, harsh, different.

So I stopped going out to play in the sunny days that followed. I stayed in the shady indoors and watched, trying to work out what was going on, trying to concentrate and put the jigsaw pieces together to see the whole picture. For the first time in my life I broke a rule. My fear of what was happening to my family outweighed my fear of being caught and being in big trouble. I summoned up all of my courage and climbed up to look in the bathroom cabinet that I was not supposed to go near. There I discovered a pill bottle with my mum’s name on and Valium written beside it. Now I had to keep on looking, thinking, trying to work out what had happened to Gran. It scared me, this change. It was as if she had lost her ability to be a gran, or even to be a person. All she was able to be was a widow as she faded from us. I didn’t understand it. I puzzled through that whole hot summer. Eventually I reached my conclusion. My gran had been abducted by aliens and a poor robot imitation returned in her place.

The short summer of 2023 was some summer. Some days were warm, promising more, hinting at sunshine and heat. Others would start off summery, warm and bright, hopeful, before suddenly, as if we were watching a film and the scene was changing abruptly, without warning, autumn would arrive, cold, windy, driving rain, blue sky suddenly grey, Scottish summer. Then summer stopped in the middle of July. My husband died.

I went into shock, denial, something. I kept going at first. I got up each morning, washed, dressed, did things, like I used to. I took in beautiful floral arrangements that were kindly delivered, thanked each delivery person, stopped myself shouting, swearing at them to take them back, they’d come to the wrong place, these white scented flowers did not belong here, this was a mistake. Everything was a mistake. But I was polite. I was normal. Until one morning I wasn’t. The same thing happened to me as had happened to my gran all those years ago. I woke up, tried to get out of bed, found I could barely move my body. It had been replaced by something heavy, immovable. I dragged myself up, shuffled through to the kitchen, made a cup of strong bitter black coffee, slumped down. I drank it without smelling or tasting it. That’s when I realised that everything was gone. Everything had been taken, stolen, from me. My husband, my brain, my heart, my soul, my confidence, my capability, my present and my future. All I had left was just enough awareness to know how much I hurt, how much I had lost, how much I wanted back.  So much of me had gone that I felt like only a tiny, smashed scrap of me was left. And I was left staring into the huge black hole, an abyss, that was my present and my future. With no idea how, if, I could cope with it. Now, at last, I understand what really happened to Gran.

Illustration by Laura Darling