by Fiona Gibson
‘Well,’ he pauses and gives me a quick look, ‘it’s really about you and Hamish, isn’t it? You’ve booked the church and that’s not going to change …’
‘… And I can help you find another venue,’ I add. ‘I’ll start tomorrow.’ This is beginning to feel better. I beam silent thanks to Stu and the kids for being so calming and kind. Although Cam and Amy can’t resist gently teasing their grandma, they’re good kids really.
‘… It might even turn out for the best,’ Amy adds, filling her glass with orange juice.
Mum’s mouth tightens. ‘I’m not sure how.’
‘Well,’ Stu offers, ‘a huge do like that might’ve been intimidating for some of your guests.’
‘D’you really think so? Oh, I wouldn’t want that.’ She gazes at him across the table that he set, very prettily, with a small jar of flowers picked from our terracotta pots.
‘Yeah,’ Cam chips in. ‘People might feel awkward in a huge mansion …’
‘… A low-key party will be more intimate,’ Stu adds.
‘Hmm, perhaps you’re right.’ She smiles at him. ‘This is delicious, Stu. I do wish Lorrie had learned to cook.’
Amy’s mouth twitches as she catches my eye.
‘It’s just fish and salad,’ he says nonchalantly.
‘Just! You’re so modest. Oh, I do wish you were coming to the wedding, Stu. You’re virtually part of this family. You really should be there!’
He shrugs, feigning deep regret. ‘I know, and I’m sorry, but you know I’m going to Venice …’
‘Couldn’t you go to Venice another time?’ She tips back her wine.
‘It’s my sister’s fortieth birthday party,’ he reminds her. ‘Sorry, Marion, but I don’t think I’d be terribly popular with Dawn if I didn’t turn up for that.’
Mum sighs heavily as if Dawn had arranged her date of birth to coincide with the wedding, purely out of spite. ‘I just worry, you know,’ she adds, ‘about Lorrie having to come to the wedding alone.’
‘She won’t be alone,’ Amy points out. ‘She’ll have us.’
‘Yes, I know, but …’
‘We’ll look after her, Grandma,’ Cam says, for which I could hug him. ‘And anyway, Mum’s been dating, haven’t you, Mum?’
The traitor! How dare he?
‘Have you?’ Mum asks, eyes wide.
‘Just, um, this website thingie I joined,’ I mutter.
‘Oh, you’re getting a man off the internet?’
‘You make it sound like ordering a new suitcase,’ I say with a strained laugh.
‘Well, if it’s come to that, I suppose it’s better than nothing. You’re not getting any younger, you know. Not far off fifty …’
‘Thanks, Mum. I do realise that, I see myself deteriorating a little bit more every day …’ I place my cutlery on my plate, appetite depleted. ‘Anyway, I tried it, it was an utter disaster and I’ve now suspended my account.’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Cam’s face falls.
‘After all the work we did,’ Amy exclaims, as if I’m a child who’s just crayoned on a freshly painted wall.
‘Yes, well, I gave it a go, didn’t I?’ I eye the wine bottle greedily and distract myself by getting up to clear the table.
‘She gives up too easily,’ Mum mutters as the kids and I carry the plates and dishes inside. ‘That’s her problem.’
In the kitchen, I lean over the sink for a moment, watching Mum fawning over Stu – ‘that meal was restaurant quality!’ – and looking as if she’d dearly love to wriggle onto his lap and kiss him.
I carry out the cake Stu made – an impressive chocolate and orange sponge – which sends Mum into such raptures (‘So moist!’) she barely registers Cam and Amy making their excuses to leave. So keen are they to escape – Amy to her room, Cam to a party in Hackney – they even turn down the offer of a slice.
The air has cooled now. Mum lights up a cigarette. ‘You know what I’m really annoyed about?’ she remarks.
‘No?’ I ask, sitting down beside her.
‘Hamish. I just feel so … let down.’
‘But he couldn’t help the storm,’ Stu points out reasonably, ‘and all the damage it’s caused …’
‘No, I realise that, but he did say I deserved a dream wedding after everything I’ve been through …’ Oh no. She’s reached the half-a-bottle maudlin stage, and her eyes glisten with tears. I catch Stu’s eye across the table. ‘Don’t know why I’m even bothering with him,’ she continues, waving her Silk Cut. ‘I should just be on my own, pleasing myself. I mean, look at you, Lorrie. You don’t have anyone and you’re … all right.’
I stare at her wine. ‘Yes, well, being single does have some things going for it.’
‘Just don’t think I have the energy left,’ she burbles on, topping up her glass and slopping some onto the table where it drips down through the curly wrought-iron gaps. ‘I’ve always had to do everything myself after your father left, and it was such a struggle sometimes …’ But you ended it! I want to protest. You said Dad was lazy, unmotivated. You told me, as a little girl, that your own mother had said you could have married better … I remember the last picture Dad posted on Facebook, deeply tanned and encased in wetsuit, his arm clamped around Jill, who clearly thinks he’s the greatest thing alive.
‘Mum, you did fine,’ I say, touching her hand with its outlandish engagement ring: a chunky diamond with rubies all around it.
She sniffs. ‘Glad you think so. At least I was there, wasn’t I, Lorrie, and not in Australia? Always there for you …’
‘Yes, of course you were.’
Another swig of wine. ‘Not like working mothers today …’
And what’s that supposed to mean? ‘Mum, plenty of mothers work. In fact, most do. It’s normal. It’s not 1957—’
She rounds on me, cheeks flushed, a cake crumb stuck to her bottom lip. ‘Did you have to work, though? I mean, did it really make that much difference?’ I stare at her, stuck for words. ‘Shop girls can’t be paid that much,’ she adds.
I am vaguely aware of Stu’s expression changing from feigned interest to one of concern. ‘Well, I managed, Mum.’
‘Oh, yes, and of course you have Stu here now. That must help.’ She pats his thigh and he flinches.
I clear my throat. ‘Of course it does, but I don’t really see what your point is, Mum. Yes, ideally I’d probably have chosen to do something part-time when the kids were younger but I needed to earn—’
‘Rather than being there for your children?’ she cuts in.
And that’s it. That’s the point at which I bang down my glass of fizzy water on the table and leap up, knocking my chair which hits the table and causes my glass to tip over and roll off and smash onto the stone flags.
‘Oh, Lorrie!’ She gazes down as if it were precious antique glassware.
‘Mum, you know why I work!’
‘All I was saying was—’
‘Who d’you think keeps us? Who pays every bill and takes care of two teenagers who’ll hopefully go to college or university and will need supporting through that, and God knows how I’ll manage—’
‘Lorrie, it’s okay!’ Stu jumps up, feet crunching on broken glass as he rests his hands on my shoulders.
I shake him off, aware of my eyes filling with tears. ‘What were you saying, Mum? Please tell me, I’m all ears—’
She stares at me, open-mouthed. ‘All I meant was … children like being with their mothers most of all.’
Stu frowns. ‘Marion, I don’t think that’s completely fair …’
‘Never mind, Stu,’ I cut in, turning to Mum. ‘I’ve worked,’ I add quietly, ‘because I’ve needed to. Because I’ve been on my own …’
‘Well, I was too!’
I stare at Mum’s face, a mask of self-righteousness with her frosted blue shadow, lashings of bronzer and shimmery peach lips. Mum is glaring at me, mouth pinched. I’d like to think she’s just worked up about the slate quarry and the silly Jac
obean dress rather than having any real contempt for the way I’ve chosen to live my life. ‘Mum,’ I say, as calmly as I can manage, ‘remember, you were the one who split up with Dad.’
She taps a pearly pink nail on the table. ‘That’s just splitting hairs. It was supposed to be a temporary thing, to knock some sense into him …’ It certainly did that because he never came back … ‘You have no idea what it was like, having no support. It was terrible for me!’
‘But Dad did send us money,’ I snap. ‘Why are we having a contest over who’s had it the hardest here?’
‘Calm down, Lorrie,’ Stu murmurs.
‘No, I won’t calm down! Why on earth should I?’
‘… Barely gone five minutes and he met that woman,’ Mum mutters. ‘That Jill. That naturist …’
‘She’s a naturalist,’ I correct her. ‘It means she studies plants, wildlife, that kind of thing. In fact she specialises in botany. A naturist is someone who likes wandering about with their clothes off …’
‘Splitting hairs again!’
My heart is hammering in my chest. ‘You don’t seem to realise how insensitive this is, considering what happened to David—’
‘Well, I’m just saying—’
‘Yes, but Dad didn’t die, did he? I mean, he wasn’t killed by a car?’
‘He might as well have been,’ she shouts after me as I storm towards the back door, colliding with Stu’s prized pot of nasturtiums.
I barge into the house, wondering why I always rise to the bait where Mum’s concerned – despite trying my damnedest not to – and whether I will ever stop missing David so much it hurts.
Chapter Eleven
I perch on the edge of my bed and glare at the array of La Beauté products crammed onto my bedside table. Products I should be thinking hard about in preparation for the meeting tomorrow, and writing enthusiastic notes about – ‘a beauty boost from within!’ – but which could now be tubs of goose fat for all I’m inspired by them.
I flop backwards and stare up at the ceiling, realising how petulant I’m being: me, the bona fide grown-up around here with the regular job, the extensive knowledge about cream vs powder blushers and willingness to be open-minded about conceptual art. I hope to God Amy had her headphones plugged in while Mum and I were arguing, as is her custom these days. I’m surprised they haven’t had to be surgically removed.
Mum and Stu’s voices drift up from the garden. Hers is alternately coquettish and whining, his a placatory murmur. I am hugely grateful to him, as someone needs to be on Booze Guard with her now. She’s had quite enough. We’ve had all the familiar stages – maudlin, self-pitying, verbally aggressive – and who knows what might be next? Lunging at Stu and licking his ear? Pushing him onto the geranium trough and trying to straddle him? I stretch out on my bed and take a few deep, calming breaths, momentarily wondering what Cam and his mates are doing now and wishing, for just a moment, that I was his age – seventeen – but then, I’d still be recovering from being dumped by Antoine, possibly having just snogged Stu under the stairs and barely being able to look him in the eye for weeks afterwards.
That kiss was pretty heady-spinny if I remember rightly, but was never referred to again because we were mates who lent each other records, tapes, books. If friends happen to snog each other drunkenly at a party it’s just brushed off afterwards as if it never happened. Occasionally I’d sense a frisson if we’d had a few drinks on a night out, but a few weeks later Stu started going out with Diana Cresswood, a grumpy girl with spiky hair who seemed to regard me with suspicion, and I had to pretend to be all interested when he played me the mixtapes she’d made him. From then on, there was no hint of anything other than us just being mates.
Mum’s laughter drifts up – high-pitched and tipsy – and I shuffle to the foot of my bed so I can peer down to the garden. They are both still sitting at the table, deep in conversation; it looks like she’s recovered from our little altercation.
Although it’s nearly ten and dark out there, the outside light illuminates the garden very prettily. For years it wasn’t a garden at all, but a yard where David would smoke the occasional ciggie, or we’d shove the odd broken chair or bookshelf. Following his death, I pretty much forgot it was there. Then last September, when Stu moved in, I began to see it for the tawdry dumping ground that it was. David had been gone for six years. It was time to move on and get our outside space together. ‘It’s a real suntrap,’ observed Bob, who’s not averse to a spot of gardening himself. Together, the three of us painted the bordering brick walls white, lifted a row of concrete slabs and dug out the earth to create a flower bed. We filled terracotta pots, with Bob advising on the varieties that would provide maximum colour all year round. I bought the ornate wrought-iron table from a junk shop, plus four charmingly mismatched cafe-style chairs.
‘I don’t understand why she acted like that!’ Mum’s voice cuts through the night air. ‘Was it something I said?’ Stu is explaining something – I can’t catch it, his gravelly voice doesn’t carry like hers – then he gathers up the glasses from the table and makes his way, followed by Mum, back into the house. He could receive a Parsley Force call at any minute; I really should go down and rescue him and, besides, I feel ridiculous now, sitting up here on my own like a flouncy teenager. Her insensitivity over David now seems less significant than her implication that I am living some kind of sad half-life without a partner. Or maybe it’s not Mum at all. Am I just still feeling prickly about Ralph’s call – the image of him panting in the loos proving hard to banish from my mind? Or perhaps I’m stressing about the work conference tomorrow? Nothing to worry about, Nuala insisted. Isn’t that the kind of thing people say precisely when something awful’s about to happen?
‘Lorrie?’ Stu calls up from the hallway. ‘You okay?’
I emerge from my room and peer downstairs sheepishly. The two of them stare up at me. ‘Er … hi. Yes, I’m fine.’
Mum purses her lips. ‘Stu’s kindly offered to take me home.’
‘Oh. Are you sure, Stu? What if you get a work call? I’m happy to—’
‘Honestly, it’s not a problem,’ he says quickly. ‘Me and Bob want to go over a few things with the business anyway, so I’ll stop off at his place afterwards. I’ll be virtually passing your mum’s.’
I have to say, I am hugely relieved to get out of being trapped in the car with her again tonight.
‘He’s taking me on his motorbike,’ Mum adds with a note of pride.
‘Will you be okay?’ I make my way downstairs towards them.
‘I said I’d take her in the car,’ Stu starts, ‘but she really wants—’
‘I’ll be fine on the bike. I do have a sense of adventure, you know.’ She turns away stiffly as I go to hug her.
I clear my throat. Mum will never apologise, and I’m loath to end the evening on a sour note. ‘Look, Mum,’ I start, ‘I’m sorry about storming off like that. I know it wasn’t very mature of me. It’s just, when you said—’
‘No, it wasn’t very nice, Lorrie, but let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’
‘I’ve just had quite a lot on recently,’ I add.
She nods, choosing not to enquire what that might be, and turns instead towards Stu. ‘D’you know, I’ve never been on a motorbike before. I’m a little nervous …’
‘Don’t worry,’ I murmur. ‘Just cling onto him very tightly.’
‘Oh, I will!’ she titters, virtually melting with pleasure as Stu fixes the strap of his spare helmet beneath her chin. ‘Don’t go too fast now, Stu,’ she adds. ‘That’s a powerful machine you’ve got there, and I’m precious cargo …’ Funnily enough, her angst over Lovington Hall’s Grade One listed status seems to have faded, such is the soothing effect of my housemate’s presence.
‘Bye, Mum.’ I go to kiss her chardonnay-flushed cheek, which she offers grudgingly.
‘Amy,’ I call upstairs, ‘Grandma’s leaving now …’
She appears, dutifully,
and plants a kiss somewhere near my mother’s ear.
‘Bye, Grandma. Nice to see you.’
‘Bye, love,’ Mum says vaguely as Stu pulls on his biker jacket. ‘Ooh, look at you,’ she cries, ‘all macho in your leathers!’ And out they stride, with Mum virtually shimmering and Amy scuttling back upstairs, leaving a trail of mortification behind her.
I stand in the doorway, watching as my mother clambers onto the back of Stu’s bike, jamming her arms around his waist and her thighs tightly against his hips. Rather belatedly, I remember the alcohol issue. ‘Stu, is it okay for Mum to ride pillion? I mean, she’s been drinking …’
‘She’ll be fine,’ he asserts.
‘It’s not as if I’m driving the thing,’ she trills as I wave them off, as if they are my children heading off on a fantastic adventure. Mum lets out a whoop of delight, clearly fancying herself as Marianne Faithfull in Girl on a Motorcycle as they speed away.
Back inside, to blot the vision still lingering in my mind, I load the dishwasher and prowl around the house, gathering up the small items Cam and Stu – but mostly Amy – leave scattered in their wake: shoes, jotters, hairbands, T-shirts, the odd sock, tiny packets of chewing gum with one or two pieces left in, a crumpled piece of paper with GINNY BENSON quince jelly, half doz quail eggs, white truffle oil, pule cheese scribbled on it in Stu’s jagged script. It strikes me that I have never eaten any of these things. I don’t even know what ‘pule cheese’ is. I guess the types whose shopping lists read ‘teabags, bleach’ just go out and buy the stuff themselves.
It’s Ginny Benson I’m thinking about as I carry an armful of Amy’s bits and pieces upstairs to her room. Ginny Benson with her quails’ eggs, who, I’m certain, isn’t reminded by her mother that she isn’t getting any younger, or that she’s probably messed up her children irreparably by going out to work.
I step into Amy’s room. ‘All right, Mum?’ She smiles tentatively. She is lounging on her bed, long legs stretched out, in the black vest top and tracksuit bottoms she favours for sleeping.
‘I’m fine, love. I’m off to bed, though. This big work meeting’s happening tomorrow so I really need a decent night’s sleep.’