We Were On a Break

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘Why, do you know someone with a nice bum and a Ferrari?’

  My mum, the relationship guru, blushed into her cup of tea and I reluctantly let myself wonder if she was right. I had never had to explain myself to Adam; I’d never had to be someone I wasn’t. Out of the seven billion people on earth, how many would have taken the day off to hold my hand through my wisdom tooth surgery and told me I looked beautiful when I actually looked like a deranged gerbil? How many would have flown me all the way to Budapest to introduce me to a wombat on my thirtieth birthday? And how many would still stroke the edge of my ear until I fell asleep every night, even after three years? None of them, because none of them were Adam.

  ‘Your generation has made the world a very big place, Olivia,’ she explained. ‘And I don’t know if that’s always a good thing. I was very relieved when you came back home after university – I was worried you’d run off travelling around the world or something, because you always had that mad streak in you and between you and Abigail I wouldn’t have put any sort of escapades past the two of you.’

  ‘I didn’t move home,’ I reminded her, pulling myself upright. ‘I never moved back into the house, and I started work as soon as I graduated, you know that.’

  ‘I meant came back to the village,’ she replied, pulling the loose thread out of my shirt altogether. ‘All I ever wanted for you was to see you settled and happy. That might not sound very exciting, but in this day and age, it’s not a given.’

  ‘I am happy,’ I said, realizing as soon as I spoke that it wasn’t entirely true. ‘Or I thought I was. Now I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Mum tucked the loose thread into her jeans pocket.

  Hmm? That was the best she could do?

  ‘What would you have done differently?’ I asked, struggling to imagine my mum as anything other than my mum, reliable, predictable Lesley Addison, baker of cakes, mender of socks and village authority on the best time of year to plant your daffodils. ‘If you had the chance?’

  She took a deep breath in through her nose and looked up at the crack in my ceiling. ‘All kinds of things,’ she said, her soft smile turning wistful. ‘I would have liked to have travelled more but hopefully there’s still time for that. I think I would have liked to have had a job – I feel quite odd to have reached my age without having done something.’

  ‘I thought you were happy not working,’ I said, thinking of Cass and Chris and Gus. ‘I didn’t realize.’

  ‘I was happy taking care of you,’ she said with a quick touch of my knee. ‘But once you started school things got very boring, very quickly. I did consider a few things but it’s hard to get started when you’re in your thirties and you’ve no experience at anything other than raising a child. All the qualifications I got in college were out of date by the time you went up to secondary school and your dad was a bit funny about me doing anything in the village.’

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  ‘Funny how?’

  ‘He didn’t want me to work in the old supermarket when it opened.’ She arched an eyebrow at the memory. ‘I don’t think it’ll be news to you that your dad can be a bit of a snob.’

  It didn’t feel like the right time to point out that more than a few of his snobbish tendencies had rubbed off.

  ‘And we had always planned to have more children but we couldn’t, so that was that.’

  She brushed nonexistent crumbs from her lap as though she hadn’t just dropped a massive truth bomb in the middle of my living room.

  ‘You couldn’t have more kids?’ I asked quietly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we couldn’t,’ she said quickly. ‘We don’t really know why. Your dad didn’t want to do the tests and I didn’t want to go through the rigmarole of doing it the doctor way anyway, so that was that. But yes, I do wish I’d found something worthwhile to do with my time. Although I don’t feel too badly about it when I look at how well you’ve turned out.’

  ‘Really?’ I allowed myself to be distracted by the rare, seemingly genuine compliment even while I processed her confession. This was all a lot at once. ‘You could still get a job now, Mum. You could do a lot of things.’

  ‘All I want to do now is get your father out of that white coat and into his swimmers.’ She took a deep drink of tea and rattled her neatly filed nails against the mug. ‘He’s worked very hard his whole life. It’s time he did something for himself, for both of us actually. It’ll be nice to turn the light out and know he’s not got to rush out and take care of someone’s silly rabbit in the middle of the night.’

  ‘I’ve got so much to look forward to,’ I said, my expression grim. Rabbit call outs were the worst. There was hardly ever anything you could do for a rabbit.

  ‘If you and Adam have as happy a life as me and your father, you’ll have done bloody well for yourself,’ she replied, flushing at her own uncharacteristic light swear. She would have died if she’d heard the way I talked to David and Abi. ‘And whatever is the matter between the two of you, sort it out. From what I can tell, it’s terribly easy to walk away from things these days with your Tinders and Grindrs and the like but nothing worth having was ever easy and that is a fact.’

  ‘Mum!’ I was truly shocked. ‘Do you even know what Grindr is?’

  ‘I’m fifty-five, I’m not dead,’ she said, draining the dregs of her tea. ‘You see all sorts on Loose Women, Olivia. All these couples breaking up at the first sign of trouble because they think there’s something easier around the corner – but easier does not endure. Easier is not worth the time of day.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to sort it out?’ I asked, keeping my voice light, my eyes on my bare toes.

  ‘Then he’s a bloody fool.’ She stood up and kissed me on the top of my head before reaching for her coat. My ironing pile tumbled to the floor and Daniel Craig raced out from under the mess, a pair of knickers looped around his neck. Mum tightened her mouth again and shook her head. ‘I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I gathered everything up in my arms and dumped it on the settee. I would totally do it before the christening.

  ‘Talk to your dad about the surgery,’ Mum said, glancing out the window at the weather before belting her mac. It was still raining. ‘Talk to Adam about whatever is going on and get that button sewn back on your shirt, if you even know where it is.’

  ‘Life’s too short to worry about missing buttons,’ I said, throwing my arms in the air. I had no idea where it was. ‘Isn’t that what this whole chat was about?’

  ‘This chat was about listening to your parents from time to time,’ she corrected. ‘Every so often, we might have something useful to tell you.’

  ‘God forbid,’ I replied as she saw herself out, shaking out her umbrella and closing the door behind her.

  Resuming my position on the settee I looked at her lipstick-stained mug and wondered. What would I regret when I was sixty? The photo of me and Adam and my beloved birthday wombat stared down at me from the wall. What stories did I want to share with my daughter? Daniel Craig pranced indignantly out of my bedroom, still wearing my pink thong around his neck. I reached out to pull it away but got nothing but a swipe of his paw and a high-pitched yowl for my troubles.

  ‘Keep them then,’ I said, settling back down and closing my eyes. ‘You weirdo.’

  Because I didn’t have enough to worry about without a three-legged cross-dressing cat called Daniel Craig giving me grief.

  23

  Easy does it, I thought to myself, concentrating on my footing with Abi and David close behind me. The steps up to the village church were steep and irregular and my heels were too high for the job at hand. I really hadn’t taken the practicality of stilettos versus ancient stone steps when I’d chosen my outfit that morning and the last thing I needed was a visit to A & E. Actually a couple of hours in the Queen’s Medical Centre might have been preferable to an afternoon with Adam and the family Floyd. I considered asking David to push me, but I was worr
ied he might do it.

  Chris’s car rolled around the corner and David tapped out a drumroll on his knees.

  ‘Here we go,’ I said, watching as Chris leapt out of the car and began gesticulating wildly at a man holding a fancy-looking video camera while a tiny woman in a Pokémon T-shirt wielded a giant boom mic, twice her own height.

  ‘Oh god, I forgot,’ Abi groaned. ‘Cass told me he’d hired an independent film-maker to document the first year of Gus’s life. He’s convinced it needs to be recorded for posterity.’

  ‘Given that he’s almost guaranteed to grow up to be a Bond villain, I’d have to agree with him,’ I said, pushing my sunglasses on top of my head. I couldn’t sit around waiting for Adam to arrive, I was going mad waiting. I needed something to do. ‘I’m going to give Cass a hand, I’ll see you inside.’

  ‘Tell Chris I do not give him permission to use my likeness,’ David said. ‘We’ll be up here, waiting.’

  ‘Liv!’ Cass exclaimed, resting the basket on the back seat as I tiptoed back down the stairs. Gus was still fast asleep in his basket, oblivious to all the commotion around him. ‘You look beautiful, godmother.’

  ‘That’s funny because I feel like balls,’ I said with a smile, kissing her on the cheek. ‘You look amazing.’

  ‘Do you like my earrings?’ She tilted her head so that the chunks of ice glinted in the afternoon sun. ‘Chris gave them to me this morning. Aren’t they beautiful?’

  ‘All right, Liv,’ Chris waved to me over the top of the Jag.

  ‘Hello Chris,’ I said flatly. ‘What a very interesting tie you’re wearing.’

  Unable to choose a single colour to celebrate the occasion, he had decided to wear all of them at once. That or Gus had thrown up on him on the way here. He looked down at his tie and back at me, not amused.

  ‘It’s designer, you wouldn’t understand,’ he sniped as I turned away. ‘Actually, I was just wondering something about you. How come you cancelled your date on Friday?’

  I turned back in slow motion. Chris was all teeth, a self-satisfied crocodile of a man, while Cassie offered nothing but a thin-lipped wince. Gus blew a spit bubble from his basket and I silently agreed he had the most appropriate reaction.

  ‘You told him?’ I asked in a half-whisper. ‘What happened to sisters before misters?’

  Cassie’s mouth opened and closed and Gus laughed at her goldfish impression before punching himself in the head and bursting into tears.

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’ She ducked into the car and picked up the baby. ‘I asked him to ask his mum to babysit and he asked why and Gus was crying and I was trying to do ten things at once and it just came out. I’m sorry. What does it matter? You cancelled!’

  If she thought using the baby as a human shield was going to deter me from violence, she was very wrong.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  I turned to see Adam pushing his way through the gaggle of well-wishers at the bottom of the steps to the church. Knowing I was going to see him and seeing him were altogether two separate things. As he stood in front of me, shielding his eyes from the sun, we looked at each other. It had been so long since we were in the same place and here he was, not six feet away, and all I wanted to do was touch him. The magnetic pull of habit wanted me to kiss him but my uncertainty about everything made me back away. He frowned at my mini retreat, still not moving, still not speaking.

  ‘Ah, I see we have everyone here.’

  Reverend Stevens appeared at the top of the steps in front of the church, beaming in his bright white smock with a rainbow-coloured scarf draped around his shoulders. He clasped his hands together and smiled down at us all, four arseholes and a baby.

  ‘What a beautiful day we have for it.’ He let his glance rest on each of us in turn and his smile slipped down into a frown. ‘Oh dear. Is everything quite all right?’

  ‘Good afternoon, reverend,’ Cass sang, sailing up the steps with the baby. ‘Everything is wonderful. Chris, come!’

  Chris heeled, running after her with his videographer closely behind, only pausing to throw me and Adam the kind of shade Abi could only dream of.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Adam said, rubbing his eyebrows madly as a herd of christening guests rushed us.

  He looked stunning, hair still shining with its Mexican highlights, his skin tanned and even. We had inadvertently matched, my deep blue dress complementing his navy suit, and as every second passed it became harder and harder not to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he really was there.

  ‘No,’ I shook my head stiffly. ‘Not here.’

  He studied me for a moment before turning to take the stairs two at a time. I forced myself to follow on uncertain legs.

  ‘David,’ Adam nodded as he passed my friends. ‘Abigail.’

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ Abi promised, David flipping both middle fingers at Adam’s back. They flanked me on either side and pulled me through the door. We didn’t burn up on entry so that was a good start. ‘Don’t worry about a thing, no one would make a scene at a christening.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ I replied. ‘Random question, is there enough water in that font to drown someone?’

  They shuffled into a pew three rows from the front and I continued on alone, until I found my seat beside a stony-faced Adam. Not exactly how I’d imagined him meeting me at the end of the aisle but as long as we got through the next hour unscathed, I was prepared to consider silence a good result.

  The church filled up quickly. Chris had predictably invited the entire village, despite barely even knowing the names of his neighbours, and as with any sort of social event, they had all turned out. My mum and dad sat with Chris, Cassie and the rest of her family across the aisle, leaving me stranded with Liv on the other. She looked beautiful. Her sky-blue dress was the same colour as her eyes and I wondered if she’d realized how well we matched. But it didn’t matter how great she looked, I was still struggling to get past the Tinder thing. I needed to hear her side of it; break or no break, enough was enough. I had a right to know what was going on.

  ‘That’s a very nice suit, Adam,’ her mum commented as she reached our row, the organist bumbling through something that sounded suspiciously like ‘When Doves Cry’. ‘Is it new?’

  ‘No, he’s had it ages,’ Liv answered, absently leafing through the Bible in front of her before looking up, startled. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’ve had it ages,’ I replied, while Liv concentrated hard on her programme. ‘I like your hat, Lesley.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She reached up to make a faux adjustment to the cream puff attached to her hair and smiled. ‘Hopefully I’ll get some more wear out of it soon.’

  ‘Mum,’ Liv warned.

  ‘Olivia?’ she replied with a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘We’re starting,’ she said, inching away from her dad up the pew. They hadn’t spoken since he’d sat down. Something was clearly up and it was so frustrating not to know what. ‘Shush.’

  The rims of Liv’s eyes were red and I was surprised that my first and only instinct was to reach over and hold her hand. But I didn’t. I hated to see her cry and I hated knowing that I was most likely the cause. Unless she already had a new boyfriend who was responsible? Miserable and confused, I picked up my own programme of service and rolled it up into a tight cylinder.

  The vicar stood in front of us, up on his platform, and I pulled at my tie, loosening it ever so slightly. Two weeks ago we were in Mexico. I’d been awake all Saturday night, running through everything I wanted to say to Liv the next day, counting down the hours until my grand proposal. And now, here we were, not speaking, barely even able to look at each other at our godson’s christening.

  The vicar, whatever his name was, rattled on about the grace of our Lord and Saviour, the rest of the congregation occasionally making agreeable noises, while Gus protested loudly in Cassie’s arms. When they asked us to be godparents, we’d agreed we wouldn’t christen our children for christ
ening’s sake but that we would support them if they chose to do it later in life. I wondered what Jane thought about christenings. I didn’t even know if she was religious. She could worship an alien in a volcano for all I knew.

  I looked over at Liv, her blonde hair shining, her hands shaking as she held her order of service and felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with the buggered roof the vicar had already rattled on about for ten minutes. If she was seeing someone else and we were over, that meant I was well within my rights to make a move on Jane, but sitting there with Liv I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less.

  ‘Parents and godparents?’

  I looked up to see Gus’s other godfather, Cassie’s cousin, sliding out of his seat and Liv already standing, urging me up with wide eyes. Shuffling sideways, I followed her up to the front of the church, took my place next to Cass and my brother, tightening my tie until it choked me.

  ‘Parents and godparents,’ the vicar began, a weighty, sombre expression on his face. ‘The church receives this child with joy.’

  I looked down at Mingus in his fluffy white frock. He didn’t look very joyous. He looked like he’d rather be flat on his back in a nappy full of his own filth.

  ‘Will you pray for him, draw him by your example into the community of faith and walk with him in the way of Christ?’

  ‘I will,’ Cass, Chris and Cassie’s cousin, whose name I just could not remember, replied in unison.

  ‘Uh, yes?’ Liv said. The closest Liv had ever come to the way of Christ was the soundtrack to Jesus Christ, Superstar and we both knew it.

  ‘Um.’

  Everyone turned to look at me.

  ‘Yeah? Yes? I do.’

  Liv and Cassie rolled their eyes at exactly the same time while Chris mouthed the word ‘wanker’. At first I thought it was ‘wake up’ but the subtle hand gesture down by his hip confirmed otherwise.

  I inhaled sharply and tried to concentrate. Perhaps Jane had been a test, I thought, staring at the stained-glass window. I didn’t know much about religion but I knew there were tests, tests of faith. Maybe Jane had been sent to test mine. And she was tempting, there was no doubt about it, but when it came down to it, she wasn’t Liv. She was the girl I wanted to shag in the nightclub toilets when I was twenty-five but she wasn’t the girl I wanted to wake up next to every morning for the rest of my life. So what if the business went tits up? Liv wouldn’t care. If she’d stood by me the summer I’d decided to grow a moustache, she would weather any storm.