"What have you got there?" I ask, glancing at the floral monstrosity in her arms.
"Curtains," she says.
I nod. I don't have time to ask what the hell she wants with curtains.
"I’ve got to get going. See you later, okay?"
"Okay."
"And don’t piss Dan off. He has to be in work by lunchtime today."
"I know. I checked his schedule."
"Where on earth did you find his schedule?" I ask.
"Oh, he left his bag open on the window ledge. Baby went in and got it out."
"The dog just picked up Dan’s work diary out of his open bag?"
"He may have tried to chew a few other things first, but I don’t think he did much damage. Dan hasn’t said anything yet."
Oh great. Even more for Dan to be mad about. "That’s because Dan hasn’t been downstairs since last night, has he?"
"Well, he shouldn’t just leave things lying around."
"I thought you said it was on the window ledge?"
"It was."
"It wasn’t just lying around then, was it? He’d put it up out of the dog’s way."
"Oh, Baby can get up on the window ledge."
"I’d appreciate it if you didn’t let him. It’s varnished wood, you know. His claws will scratch it."
"I thought it looked a bit scratched anyway."
"That’s probably because Pussy keeps sharpening her claws on it."
"Well, she’s a cat."
"So take her scratching post back when you go, will you? Dan and I are quite fond of our window ledge and would really like it to stay un-destroyed."
"Fine," she says, sulkily.
"And don’t go reading through other people’s diaries, it’s not nice."
"It was just there. Baby had it in his mouth."
"Baby shouldn’t be up on window ledges taking things out of people’s bags, and you shouldn’t have looked in it. You could have just taken it out of the dog’s mouth without reading it."
"But I wanted to know when he was working this week anyway."
"So you should have asked him."
"He doesn’t like me, he probably wouldn’t have answered."
"He would have answered. And he does like you. He just thinks you don’t like him."
"I don’t."
"Gee, I would never have guessed."
CHAPTER 45
When I get home after work that night, I briefly think that maybe I have entered a parallel universe, or gone back in time to the nineteen seventies.
Then I realise that the curtains currently up at our windows are the same floral monstrosities that my mum had in her arms when I left this morning.
"Mum!" I yell. "Where are you?"
"Surprise!" She cries, jumping out from behind the sofa—the sofa with a floral throw on it and two fluffy cushions.
"What is going on here?"
"I did a little redecorating. Do you like it?"
"No, I do not," I say instantly, then pause to take a look around. I take in everything. The green and brown flowery curtains. The throw on the sofa that almost matches. The fluffy, pink cushions that clash like nothing else on earth. The pictures on the wall—two hand painted countryside scenes and three photographs of cats with silly hats on. A framed picture of Baby and Pussy wearing matching outfits is on top of the TV. The glass doors of our DVD cabinet reveal that it is now a book cabinet. I walk over to inspect the titles. They’re not even our books. War and Peace, some John Grishams and Catherine Cooksons. I look around in horror.
"Do you like it?" Mum asks.
"I hate it!" I yell. "How could you do this?"
"You two don’t read enough. You watch too many of those silly DVDs, and you really should read more, so I thought I’d give you a kick start."
"I don’t want a kick start," I say. "I want my things back."
"Just give it a while, Mackenzie. I know it’s a shock but it’ll grow on you."
"It won’t grow on me. How dare you wait until Dan and I are out at work and then redecorate our house? You don’t live here!"
"But I thought I was doing you a favour…"
"How could you be doing us a favour? You watched Dan and I decorate this place not six months ago. How could you possibly think that we wanted it redone to your taste? You don’t live here, mother. You’re going home tomorrow, just as soon as the building inspector has gone."
"Insurance surveyor."
"Whatever. You’re going home, and I’m going to fix this place."
"But—"
"But nothing. Where are my things? Where are our DVDs and our curtains and our Roy Lichtenstein painting? Because if you’ve thrown them out, I’ll… Well, I don’t know what I’ll do. And you better not have knocked nails into our walls, because we only had one picture up, not five."
"Yes, but it was so ugly."
"It was a Roy Lichtenstein," I say exasperatedly. "How dare you just waltz in here and move everything you don’t like? This is not your house!"
"I was just trying to help."
"Where are our things?"
"Don’t worry, they’re in the spare room. I didn’t throw anything out."
I throw my hands up in the air and make an infuriated sigh. I run upstairs to the spare room and nearly trip over two paint cans on my way.
"Why are there two cans of paint on my landing?" I yell.
"I was going to paint when you were at work tomorrow," Mum says, coming to the bottom of the stairs.
"But it’s hideous," I hold up a paint can and read it. "It’s Apple White. It’s fucking off-white. It’s not even a proper bloody colour and you were going to paint our living room with it?"
"Yes," she says. "Then it’ll look just like mine."
Arrrrrrgh!
"I don’t want it to look just like yours. Yours is horrible. It’s a nightmare of bland colours and clashing out-of-date accessories. Why on earth would I want my place to look anything like yours?"
"You don’t have to insult me, Mackenzie."
"And you don’t have to take it upon yourself to redecorate my living room."
I feel a little better when I’ve been in the spare room and seen all our things piled high on top of Dan’s junk. I don’t think she’s done anything permanent. I just thank my lucky stars that she didn’t have time to paint the walls today as well. I can’t believe that my mother would do this to us. I can’t believe that she might actually be deluded enough to think that Dan and I want our living room—our house—to look just like hers.
I change into some old clothes in our bedroom and go back downstairs with my own curtains, lampshades and cushions in my arms.
"Right," I say to her. "Now we’re going to undo this mess."
"But it took me all afternoon."
"I don’t give a damn how long it took you. How could you have the audacity to change our room—our room, mind you, not yours—around without even asking me or Dan first? It’s ridiculous. So, no Mum, I don’t care if it took you three years. It’s going back to how it was when I left this morning right now."
"Fine," she huffs. "But I wasn’t aware that I’d brought you up to be so ungrateful. You haven’t even thanked me for trying to help. I thought you had better manners than that, young lady."
"Oh, I am ungrateful. I didn’t want my living room altered. And you were going to paint? Paint? Something permanent and not undoable? I obviously have better manners than you, because I would never go in to someone else’s house and do permanent damage to their living room."
"But this colour is so awful."
"It’s dark purple. The dark purple that Dan and I chose. It’s a solid, block colour, not some hideous shade of white."
"But it’s so dark."
"It’s not dark, it’s just not white with a hint of something. It’s a real colour."
"Humpfh."
"Don’t humpfh at me. How would you feel if I bought a can of black paint and came round to your house while you were teaching yoga and repai
nted your entire living room, and took all your photos of Baby down and replaced them with retro art prints?"
She shrugs, obviously unaware that there is something wrong with redecorating your daughter’s living room to your own tastes.
"Don’t shrug at me," I say. "You’d hate it. You’d be horrified to find your hint of lilac white living room suddenly painted black. You’d be upset if I came round and took your flowery curtains down and replaced them with luminous orange ones. You’d hate it if I took all your Catherine Cookson books away and filled your cabinets with Star Wars DVD sets. Wouldn’t you?"
She shrugs again. "I suppose I might."
"You’re damn right you might. And yet you think it’s okay to come round here and do it to us. You’ve lost your mind."
"I thought I was doing you a favour."
"But you know Dan and I decorated this place. You know how lucky we were to get a landlord who didn't mind us redecorating."
"I was trying to say thank you for letting me stay here."
"For one thing you don’t have to thank us, and for another, you could’ve just bought us a box of chocolates or something, like a normal mother would do."
"Are you saying I’m not a normal mother?"
"Not exactly, no."
"You’re not exactly saying that or I’m not exactly normal."
I shrug. "Either."
"I was only trying to help."
"You can help me take these horrible curtains down for a start," I say. I clamber up on to the window ledge and make a start pulling the gruesome things down. "Actually, on second thoughts, I can manage this. You can take that dreadful thing off my sofa and put our twenty quid cushions back on, please. And then you can take those horrible pictures off the wall, and take your books back home."
"Um, the picture thing might be a little difficult."
"A little difficult?" I stare at the things in horror. "So, what did you do? Bang nails in to my wall and make a mess?"
"Oh no, I never bang nails in. I’m always scared I might hit a water pipe or an electricity wire."
Come to think of it, the pictures do look kind of flat against the wall.
"Okay, so what did you use?"
"Some of that No More Nails stuff."
"We don’t have any of that stuff. We ran out last week when Dan tried to fix the back door."
"Well, I may have improvised a bit."
"A bit?" I ask. "What the hell did you use?"
"Superglue."
"Superglue? To put pictures on the wall?"
"Yes," she nods. "Genius, huh? I bet Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen never thought of that."
"No, because he’s not that bloody stupid."
"I thought it was quite clever. It stuck well."
"Yes, and how do you propose that we get it off?"
"I didn’t think you’d want to get it off right away."
"Well, I do," I say, angrily. "I want it off right now. Dan is going to be really mad if he comes in and sees this shit."
"Dan should be able to control his temper."
"Dan can control his temper, but you’ve just ruined a room that took us weeks to get the way we wanted it. And now we have five awful pictures superglued to our walls."
"Four. One is on the nail that your horrible picture came off."
"It’s a Roy Lichtenstein. And it’s not horrible. It fits in perfectly with the room. Unlike those appalling cat things. How do you propose we get them off?"
"White Spirit?"
"I’m not pouring White Spirit down my walls, it’ll take the paint off."
"You’d be better with wallpaper."
"I prefer paint. It comes in nicer colours."
"This purple is dreadful."
"But we like it. Which is exactly the point, seeing as we live here. You don’t."
"Humpfh."
"You’ll have your own kitchen to decorate soon, isn’t that enough?"
"But the builders will be doing that."
"Yeah, but you’ll get to choose the colour scheme and the materials and everything. It’ll be fun to do that. And you can leave our place alone."
"I can’t believe you don’t like my curtains," she mutters, turning her attention to taking the throw off the sofa."
"I’m just glad you left our bathroom alone."
"I was going to do that on Wednesday."
"No! Don’t you dare touch it. Don’t do anything to any room in this house. Ever."
"Relax, I was only joking. I like your bathroom. It’s a nice shade of pink."
"It had better stay that way."
CHAPTER 46
"Explain something to me, baby," Dan says when he comes in from work that night. "Why are there four big craters in our living room wall?"
"My mum tried to redecorate. Don’t be mad at her, she thought she was helping."
"What did she do to the wall?"
"She superglued some horrible pictures to it."
"It looks like she used our living room as a bomb testing site."
"Just superglue. And the holes in the wall are kind of my fault. I couldn’t get the pictures off so I tried to split the superglue bond with a knife and pull them off at the same time, and… Well, as you can see, some of the plaster came out too."
Dan sighs.
"Don’t worry, I’ll buy some Pollyfilla tomorrow and fill them in."
"Why on god’s green and verdant earth did she use superglue?"
"Because she doesn’t like to bang in nails and we were out of No More Nails."
"So, what else did she do?"
"Oh, nothing permanent. At least, not now I’ve persuaded her to take the paint back to B&Q."
"You’re kidding me."
"I wish."
"I told you it was a bad idea to have her stay here."
"What do you suggest I do, Dan? I can’t just throw her out on the street. And she’d be here twenty times a day to use our kitchen anyway."
"Yeah, but she wouldn’t repaint the living room. Probably."
"Don’t stress about it. She’s going home tomorrow anyway."
"Yeah, and I’ll believe that when I see it."
"You see," I say as we lug her three suitcases back down the road towards her house. Actually, I should rephrase that—as I lug her three suitcases back towards her house while she walks Baby on a lead and carries Pussy in her cat carrier. "I told you the insurance guy would be fine. The builders are coming next week, and now you can move back in to the comfort of your own home."
"Your sofa is very comfortable."
"I’m sure your bed is even comfier."
"But I don’t have a kitchen."
"You can use ours any time you need it. You even have a key. Which I want back straight away when your kitchen is done," I add. "I’m not having you bursting in to our house unannounced all the time, not after yesterday's debacle with the living room."
"How was I supposed to know that superglue bonded with plaster so well?"
"Yeah, so well that the plaster comes off instead of the superglue. And I’m fairly sure that it says ‘do not use on plaster’ on the tube."
She shrugs.
When we get through the door, I lug the suitcases upstairs.
"I don’t like Pussy and Baby being here with all this muck," Mum says when I come back downstairs. "What if they go into the kitchen?"
"They’re not stupid," I say. "I’m sure they won’t."
"What if they do? I can’t even shut the kitchen door because it’s half burnt away."
"Animals can sense things like that," I tell her. "They’re not going to want to go walking around in that mess any more than you or I do."
"Pussy likes to explore."
"It’s just your normal kitchen, she won’t need to explore it."
Mum doesn’t reply, but I can tell that she knows I’m bullshitting her. It’s not that I want to make her move back in to her own place when she obviously doesn’t want to be here with the kitchen in the state it’s in, but her livin
g with us is really putting a strain on my relationship with Dan. And she’s only been there four days. There’s no getting around the fact that she has to go back home, and fast.
"Well," I say, a little too brightly. "I’ll leave you to go and get settled in. I do have to go and re-fill four holes in my living room wall, after all."
"Sorry about that," Mum says. "And thank you for having me for so long. Tell Dan I said thank you to him as well."
"I will," I say, feeling a little guilty because she obviously doesn’t want to be left here. "And you know where we are if you need us. Any time at all. Just come on down, or give us a call. And pop in to use the kitchen any time you want. All your food and stuff is still in the cupboard there."
"Thanks," she says quietly.
"See you later." I leave, feeling guilty.
CHAPTER 47
"You see," I say to Dan when he flops into bed that night after work. "I told you she’d go home today."
"Yeah." He nods. "I have to hand it to you, Mac. I really didn’t think you’d pull that one off. I thought she’d be here until the builders were through."
"Yes," I say. "What was that part about me being right and you being wrong?"
"Fine. You win." He grins. "You were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry. Did you get that? Do you want me to say it again so you can record it?"
I laugh. "I love you," I tell him, hitting his shoulder gently.
"I love you too, baby." He jumps on me and starts nuzzling my neck.
"Leave it out, Dan," I say. "Let’s just lie here and enjoy the peace and quiet. Listen to that. There’s no dog whining and no cat pulling up our stair carpet. Pretty good, huh?"
"Yeah," he says. "And now your mum has gone and you still won’t have sex with me."
"I’m just not in the mood, Dan," I say. "I’m knackered. I didn’t finish mixing the Pollyfilla until ten o’clock tonight. And that was after dealing with my mother all day."
"Whatever," Dan says.
"I’m serious. I’m exhausted, and I have to get up early tomorrow. If I take one more day off work, Jenni is going to fire me."
"I thought you wanted to be a matchmaker."
"I do. But it doesn’t just happen by snapping your fingers. You have to build up a client list and generate good word of mouth and all that bollocks. And so far my client list consists of two non-paying test subjects and an old guy who bought me a cup of coffee."
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