by Lindsey Kelk
After applying roughly eighteen coats of mascara, slathering my new lip gloss all over my lips and throwing an optimistic toothbrush into my handbag, I left work on time, waving to Ted through his big, beautiful window as I went, and set off to meet Patrick.
He was standing by the railings on Southbank, all of London laid out behind him, and my insides seized up as he turned around and smiled. He wasn’t just there, he was there to meet me. On purpose. By choice. Ridiculous.
‘Hey,’ I leaned forward to meet him for a kiss.
‘You made it.’ Patrick’s face shone with a smile of his own as he cocked his head towards the cinema behind me. ‘Come on, I don’t want to be late.’
‘Late for what?’ I asked, anxiety washing over me. Had I got the time wrong? Had he sent another message I’d missed? And then I saw the tickets in his hand. ‘We’re seeing a film?’
‘Two films,’ he corrected. ‘It’s a Fassbinder retrospective. I was supposed to come with Carlton but he cancelled and I knew you’d love it.’
‘Really? A Fassbender retrospective?’ I was somewhat stumped. Didn’t seem like Patrick’s kind of thing. ‘As long as they’re not showing Shame because I saw that when it came out and I don’t think I could sit through it again, not for all the naked Fassy in the world.’
Patrick laughed and took my hand in his, pulling me through the throngs of people wandering more aimlessly up and down the South Bank. ‘Not Michael Fassbender, Fassbinder. Rainer Werner Fassbinder? The German filmmaker?’
‘Oh,’ I cleared my throat and nodded with great knowing. ‘That Fassbender.’
‘Fassbinder. Tonight they’re showing The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and The Marriage of Maria Braun.’
‘It’ll be great to see him on the big screen,’ I said, choosing my words very carefully. ‘I’ve never seen his films in a cinema before.’
This was all true, although it would be more accurate to say I’d never seen any of his films anywhere before. But lies of omission were allowed in the early stages of a relationship. If everyone practised nothing but radical honesty from the off, we’d have never made it out the caves.
I looked longingly at the stalls of books which lined the embankment outside the lobby as Patrick squeezed my hand and hurried me inside the huge concrete building. All of mine were still in storage. No room for literature in the shed.
‘What are you doing Saturday night?’ I asked.
This was the best way to do it, ask him outright at the beginning of the night rather than spending the entire evening worrying about his response when you had no idea what he was going to say.
‘Not sure, why?’ Patrick replied, showing an usher our tickets and grunting quietly when she told us the cinema was still being cleaned and we would have to wait in the lobby for a couple of minutes.
‘At least we weren’t late,’ I remarked, trying to sound as frustrated as he looked. ‘Anyway, about Saturday night.’
‘Do you want to do something?’ He gave me a smile that made me ache. I hoped The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant wasn’t a long movie. ‘There’s an exhibition of collages on at the ICA from this young American woman who was just sent down for murdering her best friend and I’ve been dying to see it. Apparently she used the same knife to kill her friend that she used make the collages. It’s very intense. Let’s do that then make dinner at my place. I’ll show you how to make real pad Thai.’
‘While that sounds fascinating,’ I started, holding his hand tightly to stop myself from gipping, ‘it’s Sumi’s birthday and I’m organizing her party. Will you come?’
He stared over my head, mouth open, response not fully developed.
‘Patrick?’
‘Eesh!’
He let go of my hand and clapped another man on the back in an official buddy hug.
‘Here for Fassbinder?’ the man asked, giving me a polite smile.
‘We are, we are,’ Patrick confirmed.
His friend’s eyes skittered back and forth between the two of us.
‘I’m Ros,’ I said, sticking out my hand towards him.
‘Ishai,’ he replied as he gave it a good shake. ‘Big Fassy fan?’
‘Huge,’ I confirmed. ‘The hugest.’
He and Patrick both laughed and I smiled. It felt like passing a test.
‘Right, well, I’ve got to get some supplies before they let us in. Can’t make it through a Fassbinder marathon without snacks to offset the emotional trauma,’ Ishai said. My heart sank: so this wasn’t going to be a spiritual companion piece to Jurassic Park. ‘Monica’s running late but she’ll be here in a minute. We should all get a drink after.’
‘We should, definitely,’ Patrick agreed, raising his hand to wave him off. ‘Good to see you, mate.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I called, wondering if we should also be stocking up on reinforcements. If I was going to be bored and/or offended, I should at least get a bag of Maltesers for my troubles. I glanced up at Patrick. ‘Do you want to meet them for a drink after?’
‘God, no,’ Patrick scoffed as the usher opened up the door to our screen. He rested his hands on my shoulders, walking behind me, leaving me Malteser-less. ‘Ishai’s fine but Monica I can’t deal with. She works in publishing which means she knows everything. She’s always trying to give me advice and it’s incredibly patronizing.’
‘Maybe she’s trying to be helpful?’ I suggested.
‘She’s edits children’s books,’ he replied. ‘She doesn’t understand literary travel memoirs in the slightest.’
It did, in fairness, seem as though Patrick’s chosen genre was somewhat niche.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the small screening room, following Patrick up to the second-from-back row, making our way to the two centre seats.
‘How is the book going?’ I asked as we sidled past the two men already situated on the end of the row. When someone approaches your row, you stand up, I fumed silently, you don’t shuffle your legs to one side and force me to slide my arse over your knees. Down with the patriarchy.
‘Ugh,’ he rolled his eyes and gagged. ‘Slowly. I really shouldn’t be out of the house. I should be chained to my computer until the end of time.’
‘Right, sounds tough,’ I agreed, wondering if he fancied being chained to me instead. ‘I got a date to record my first podcast with Snazzlechuff today. We’re recording it live at this thing called WESC in a couple of weeks.’
He took his seat and grinned as the screen glowed white in front of us. ‘I only understood about a third of those words and I’m a writer. You’ll have to explain it all to me on Saturday.’
‘So you’ll come?’ I whispered, shifting my inside voice to my inside-the-cinema voice. ‘To Sumi’s birthday?’
He turned his light blue eyes onto me, lit up in the semi-darkness.
‘I’m not saying no but Sumi doesn’t really like me, does she?’ he said. ‘Are you sure she actually wants me there?’
‘She’s desperate for you to come, they all are,’ I lied. ‘What makes you think Sumi doesn’t like you?’
‘Besides the Facebook message she sent me telling me to fuck myself up my own arse with a cheese grater the last time we were dating?’ he replied.
I pressed my lips together as I tried to come up with a positive way to frame that.
‘Well, you don’t have Facebook any more,’ I reasoned. ‘And she’s a lot more friendly these days.’
‘If it’s important to you, I’ll come.’ He lifted the armrest between us and wound his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in towards him. ‘As long as it’s OK with the birthday girl.’
‘It’s more than OK,’ I promised, sinking into my seat and resting my head on his shoulder and smiling. Future plans. Future plans with friends. ‘Thank you.’
He kissed the top of my head as the curtains parted, the movie began with everyone speaking in German and my heart flew so high, not even the prospect of four hours of subtitles could bring it down.
/> CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘What about this one?’
My mother stepped out of the John Lewis changing room, a big smile on her face and not a lot of dress on her body.
‘I love it,’ she said as she tugged the already plunging neckline so far south, I could almost see her caesarean scar. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s a beautiful colour,’ I replied, casting my eyes to the heavens.
If I’d tried to leave the house wearing the same frock fifteen years earlier, my father would have sent me out with a bin bag duct-taped to my body. It was nearly neon pink with slinky spaghetti straps that ran from her shoulders, all the way down her back until the fabric decided to at least have a go at being a dress, coming together just in time to cover her arse. It was Smirnoff Ice turned into an outfit. A dress that said ‘I give no fucks’ while proving that sometimes, just sometimes, it was necessary to give at least one or two.
‘It’s very slimming.’ She turned to the side and ran her hand over her stomach. ‘And your dad loves it when I wear pink. I’ve got this satin nightie teddy that’s just this shade.’
I squeezed the sides of my second giant iced coffee so hard the lid popped off.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said as she tested the limitations of the dress with a quick burst of the pony. ‘But do you really think it’s appropriate for a second wedding? I know it’s not a normal big-white-frock affair but it’s still a relatively formal occasion, isn’t it?’
Mum reached around to the back of the dress, scrabbling for the price tag and both her boobs fell out.
‘One hundred and forty pounds,’ she muttered. ‘There can’t be more than ten pounds’ worth of fabric in it.’
‘At most,’ I replied. ‘At the absolute most.’
‘You never like anything I like,’ Mum said as she hoiked herself back into the dress, jiggling her breasts back into place while I silently prayed to the goddess that my boobs would be as tenacious as my mother’s. ‘And it’s my party, I want to wear something fun.’
‘I know strippers are really having a moment right now but I don’t think that’s the look you should be going for at the vow renewal,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you try on that nice lace one I pulled out?’
Mum turned and looked at the very respectable periwinkle blue lace sheath I’d selected.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way but it’s hideous,’ she declared, snatching back the curtain to her cubicle in disgust. ‘The queen mother would think it was too frumpy.’
‘The queen mother’s been dead well over a decade.’
‘And she still wouldn’t wear it.’
The curtain flew open again, revealing a bright green mini-dress with balloon sleeves and a slit running all the way up to her left hip, rendering any and all underwear unwearable. Very early period J.Lo if early period J.Lo made her own clothes out of Muppet remnants.
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said as she paraded out the cubicle and proceeded to strike an assortment of poses in front of the mirror. ‘You’ve always been able to wear whatever you want and get away with it.’ I looked down at my eighteen-year-old jeans and dodgy trainers and wondered where she was going with this. ‘That’s because my generation fought for you to have that freedom, freedom we didn’t have!’
Narrowing my eyes, I finished my coffee. ‘Mum, you were a teenager in the seventies, not during World War One.’
‘Well, I wasn’t allowed to wear whatever I wanted when I was a teenager,’ she sniffed before lowering into a squat and attempting to twerk. ‘And when I left home, I went straight into teaching, which meant I had to dress respectably in and out of school. There would have been hell to pay if the head had seen me dancing at Park Avenue on a Saturday night, dressed up like a dog’s dinner. And as soon as I had you, I had to dress like a mum. What does that even mean, dressing like a mum? I’m sixty years old and I’m dressing for myself for the first time. And I like this dress.’
The fourth-wave feminist in me wanted to stand up and cheer but the eternal child just could not get over the fact that I could one hundred percent see my mother’s vulva.
‘Mum, I think you’re amazing and we should definitely be celebrating that,’ I said, trying very hard not to look at It. ‘But that dress just isn’t special enough. We need to find something that’s worthy of you.’
She gazed at herself in the mirror before casting a disparaging look at my choice of dress. ‘Your nana wouldn’t wear that blue frock.’
‘Is Nana coming to the ceremony?’ I asked, clutching non-existent pearls at the thought.
‘Christ, I suppose she’ll have to,’ Mum muttered. ‘Perhaps it’s not too late to call the whole thing off.’
‘We’ll get her drunk and make Adrian talk to her,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘She loves Adrian.’
My nana loved Adrian because my dad hated Adrian. It was simple family maths.
‘Everyone says you’ll feel terrible when your children leave home.’ Mum trotted back into her stall and drew the curtain with considerably less vigour. ‘Empty nest syndrome, they said. Thought your dad and I would be rattling around the empty house without a clue what to say to each other but to be entirely honest, Ros, we’ve never been happier.’
‘Jo was a handful,’ I nodded sympathetically.
‘Not just Jo,’ Mum replied with a pointed peek through the curtain. ‘Do you remember Avaline who did the accounts for your dad?’
I nodded even though I didn’t. No need to make the story a thousand times longer than necessary.
‘She went totally loopy when her youngest went off to uni. Left her husband, shacked up with a woman and started dressing head to toe in leather. Invited everyone at work to join her Facebook group for BSM, very awkward business.’
I sucked on my straw until my coffee was empty, frowning at myself in the mirror.
‘She was moonlighting for the British School of Motoring?’
‘No, not that BSM,’ Mum stuck a disembodied head out of the curtains. ‘Whips and chains and all that malarkey. There’s a club down on Swinnow Street that has swingers’ night on a Tuesday. You’d never know to look at it from the outside.’
My eyes grew so big, I thought they might fall out. If she’d just told me this story the moment I arrived home, I’d have offered to sleep at the bottom of the garden.
‘I’m sure you don’t want to hear it but staying married for forty years isn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially when thirty-two of those years are mostly taken up by keeping two other human beings alive every day.’
‘Also known as your children,’ I added. ‘Who you love very much.’
‘Of course we love you both,’ she replied from behind the curtain. ‘But that doesn’t make parenting any easier on a relationship. I gave up a lot for our family, Ros. I didn’t tell you at the time but I was up for a spot at Oxford when Jo came along.’
I guessed that this was the wrong time to suggest she should have known what caused pregnancy by the time she was forty-two. There really was no excuse for it, we had five TV channels and a satellite dish by then.
‘And what did your dad give up? Nothing. Most of my friends were celebrating their kids moving out and getting their lives back and there I was, being forced out of a job I loved to stay at home with a stroppy teenager and a gifted toddler, while your dad went mincing off around Europe on an awful lot of business trips.’
A horrible thought crossed my mind that I couldn’t keep off my face.
‘I do remember him going away a lot,’ I said, putting two and two together and coming up with a number I didn’t like the look of at all.
‘Everything is fine between me and your dad now but it wasn’t always. Back then everyone just assumed I’d give up my career to look after you girls while your dad kept doing whatever he wanted.’
‘You’re talking like it was a million years ago,’ I mumbled. ‘Jo’s only eighteen.’
‘Exactly,’ she said, emerging in he
r usual Prince of Wales checked trousers and a black silk shirt I would never again take for granted as long as I lived. ‘And don’t you forget it. As soon as we make an inch of progress, we write off yesterday as though it were ancient history. We’d all do a good deal better to remember what happened yesterday. It was this millennium, not the dark ages, and I was passed over for a job I was more than qualified for and was as good as promised, all because I went in to interview with a room full of men when I was six months pregnant. We tend to assume we’re entitled to the things we have, we rewrite history to make life easier for ourselves. It’s not the case, Ros.’
‘I know, Mum,’ I said quietly.
‘Your dad tried but he was never very good at the hands-on parenting,’ she said, straightening her hair in the big mirror. ‘And as much as he loves her, he never really knew what to do with your sister. She’s always been a handful.’
‘I knew it was Jo’s fault,’ I whispered into my coffee.
‘Because you were such a great help with her,’ she added with a lashing of unnecessary sarcasm. ‘None of it matters. Your dad doesn’t go on nearly as many business trips as he used to and we’re back on the right track. I just want you to know it wasn’t always easy.’
‘What about your work?’ I asked. ‘Do you think you’ll go back to it?’
She shrugged as she tucked herself in. ‘We’ll see.’
‘I think you should,’ I told her. ‘I hate that you had to give up something so important for us.’
‘And I’d do it again,’ she said, clapping her hands together. ‘Right, shall we attempt to find me a dress before it’s dinner time? Since you hate everything I’ve chosen for myself?’
‘You need a showstopper,’ I declared, filled with love and pride for my mother. It was much easier now I couldn’t see her areolas. ‘Something extra special.’