by Sue Welfare
Kate glanced up at them; she and Joe and Bill and Chrissie went back a long way. Although Bill’s taste in women didn’t appear to have improved significantly over the years.
‘Play nicely, you two. Just because Bill’s latest woman was gorgeous but – but …’ Kate winced; it was too late to pull out of the dive where she was headed. ‘Is there any way I can put this nicely?’
‘No need to pull your punches, she was decorative but deeply, deeply dumb,’ said Bill, taking another slurp of his beer. ‘Which was a real shame, because she was a lovely girl, but what I’m really looking for is a good woman. No, make that a great woman. Someone you don’t have to explain the punch line of every joke to. It was bloody terrifying being with someone so young, she treated me like this heroic super stud, someone who knew everything, in and out of bed, someone who had all the answers.’
‘Oh right, that’s it, rub it in, why don’t you,’ said Joe.
‘No, I’m serious. It was flattering being picked up by someone like her but not once I realised she was looking for a father figure. It was bloody awful, I totally felt responsible for her,’ and then he grinned, ‘although actually I thought that Chrissie was talking about me, not my choice in women. Anything else we have to do before we send off Madam’s application?’
Kate glanced back at the screen. ‘Not really, we just need a pseudonym now.’
‘Oh, this should be fun,’ said Joe in a voice that suggested it would be anything but.
‘How about Vulnerable Venus?’ suggested Bill after they’d tried out a few rude ones and a few clever ones and a few downright daft ones.
‘Oh please,’ said Chrissie, pulling a face.
‘It’s got a ring to it,’ said Joe.
‘And you can always change it later,’ said Bill. No one liked to say it but Chrissie’s laughter was getting more brittle with every passing second, it was time to wrap this up and eat, and so that’s what Kate typed in. ‘Vulnerable Venus.’
‘You don’t think this is a bit sad?’ Chrissie said, just as Kate was about to press ‘send’.
Bill shook his head. It was a very definite gesture. ‘It’s only another way to meet people. But like Joe said, just be careful. Then again falling in love is about chemistry and attraction and all that stuff you can’t possibly define on your shopping list.’
Kate looked at Bill and laughed, ‘Ohhhhh, my God, you are such a soft touchy feely bunny, Bill. It’s such a terrible shame you pair don’t fancy each other.’
And then Joe snorted, put his guitar down, and said. ‘And let’s face it, they can’t be any worse than the prats and no hopers that’s she’s picked up before.’ Before Chrissie could react, he continued, ‘Come on, for Christ’s sake, let’s go and eat. I’m starving,’ and so they did.
Later everyone was sitting around the kitchen table when they heard the phone ring. Nobody moved.
After three more rings it stopped and the hall door swung open.
‘Mum, it’s for you.’
‘Can you take a message?’ Kate said to Danny.
‘They said it’s really urgent.’
It was around nine o’clock, maybe half past. Half way through supper.
‘Nothing is that urgent. I’m not planning to deliver anything anywhere for anybody tonight,’ Kate said.
‘So, you want me to tell them that then, do you?’ snapped Danny. It was one of those family face-off moments. Danny looked a lot like Joe but with more hair. Same attitude.
They stared at each other for a few seconds, mother and son, and then Kate got to her feet. Clients really don’t like to be told the truth. ‘No’ does not appear anywhere in the Client-English dictionary. ‘Actually I’m working on it at the moment. I’m just waiting for agency to email more copy, more images, more bullshit,’ are just fine. Acceptable. ‘No’ is strictly a no-no.
‘Excuse me, folks, won’t be a minute. Bloody clients,’ Kate mumbled under her breath.
Except that it wasn’t a client. It was her little sister, Liz.
‘Kate? Is that you?’ The words were strung as tight as piano wire.
‘Yes, what on earth is the matter? Are you okay?’
‘It’s Mum. She’s had an accident.’
Kate felt an odd nip in her throat and then a great lurch of pain and panic in her solar plexus. ‘Oh God, what happened?’
‘She’s fallen over.’
Momentarily, the pain pulled back like a wave on a beach, replaced by relief, only to return an instant later, gentler but still raw. ‘Fallen over?’ Kate repeated.
‘She was coming home from the shops, I think, and fell down the steps at the back of the house. God alone knows how long she’d been lying there before they found her. It’s terrible. Anything could have happened. I mean, at her age. She’s getting frailer; when was the last time you saw her?’
There was a pause, well larded with guilt and any number of unspoken accusations. Kate leant back against the hallstand waiting for the next salvo.
The whole house smelt of curry. It hadn’t been a bad evening so far, a couple of beers and half a bottle of wine, and even Joe was starting to thaw out a bit.
‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, lying there, all on her own,’ Liz added, in case there was some possibility Kate might have missed the point. There was an even longer pause and then she said, ‘You know what Mum’s like, she won’t ask for help and she certainly wouldn’t ring up to let us know she had a fall. If it hadn’t been for her lodger, I probably wouldn’t have known at all. I told him that I’d ring you.’ Heavy sigh. ‘I wonder whether we ought to have a family conference. I’ve been looking at brochures for sheltered accommodation; if you can find the time to get up to Norfolk, obviously.’
The implication, of course, was that Kate was so busy in the fast lane that she never spared her poor old widowed mother a second thought. Kate glanced across the hall into the kitchen. The door was ajar, framing the supper party. The fast lane looked remarkably like a coffee advert, all low lights and soft autumnal tones. Behind the low babble of voices someone had put Gabrielle’s new CD on the hi-fi as a soundtrack.
‘So where did you say Mum is now?’
Bill was busy uncorking another bottle of red. Joe was holding court. Chrissie was looking pale and interesting.
‘The local hospital. They’re keeping her in for observation overnight. I’ve been over to see her, obviously. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay because of the girls, but she’s in plaster up to the knee and her face looks awful, dreadfully bruised, lots of stitches. It could have been very nasty. I thought you ought to know. I didn’t want to say anything to Daniel, didn’t want to upset him.’
Kate sighed. Presumably Liz had put on her best telephone voice so that he wouldn’t recognise who it was. There was that silence again, the one into which Kate guessed she was meant to leap head first.
In the kitchen, in the lamplight, Joe was rolling a joint while at the same time going on about how bloody terrible the parking was getting. The terrible dichotomy of hippiedom finally meeting middle age.
She stood still for a few moments after hanging up the phone; from upstairs Kate could hear the boys playing – the bass beat of Danny’s music overlaid with the ping-ping of a video game from Jake’s room. Where would they be when they got phone calls like this? Never mind getting married, giving birth, or signing up for a mortgage, the realisation that your parents don’t have the secret of everlasting life is the real ticket into adulthood.
Kate had been totally incredulous when her dad died. How the hell did that happen? How could it happen? He hadn’t even been ill. Part of her was still outraged.
Even after five years, the first thought Kate had whenever she thought about her dad was that he couldn’t possibly be dead, it had to be a trick of the light, he was there somewhere if only she knew where to look. He was just hiding, maybe in the next room, and along with a residual ache of loss was a terrible nagging frustration that he kept giving her the slip.
&n
bsp; ‘Who was that then?’ Joe asked, topping up his wine. ‘Not one of your clients again? You need to get them to ring in office hours, Kate. I’ve told you before. You’ve got this cosy cottage industry attitude towards business – boundaries, that’s what you need. I’ve always said that if you want people to consider you as a professional you have to –’
‘Actually, it was Liz. My mum’s had an accident. I’m just going to go and put a few things in a bag.’ For some reason saying it out loud made Kate feel shaky and weepy. ‘I ought to go and – well, just go and make sure she’s all right. Keep an eye on her. You know.’
‘You’re not going to drive to Norfolk tonight surely?’ Joe asked incredulously. ‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’
‘No, I don’t think it can, I’m not sure what sort of state she’s in – and I’ve only had one glass of wine. I’ll be fine. They’re keeping her in overnight. I want to be there for her, sort the place out, pick her up tomorrow. She can hardly come home to an empty house and Liz’s girls are still little –’
‘Of course you’ve got to go,’ said Chrissie, on her feet, instantly sober, and instantly supportive. She was always calm in a crisis, or at least always calm in someone else’s crisis. ‘We can see to everything here, can’t we, Joe?’
‘Well, yes,’ he began more hesitantly. ‘But I’ve got stuff to do; there’s some Yank flying in for a breakfast meeting tomorrow. I need to drop in to the office – I did tell you, Kate – it’s important.’ And then he looked at her. ‘And you said you’d be able to pick my suit up from the cleaners –’ He blew out his lips and shook his head as if all this had nothing to do with him. ‘And what about the boys?’
Kate stared at him.
Joe had polished off several glasses of Merlot. He had a patch of high colour on each cheek, like a Punch and Judy rouge spot, a little flush that only ever appeared in two situations: when he was drunk or in the first throes of post-orgasmic bliss; not something there had been a lot of just recently.
She felt a flurry of annoyance; she needed him to help her and here he was busy passing the buck before it had even landed. Joe returned the stare, obviously expecting her to come up with something that didn’t include him the equation.
Kate looked away first. In lots of ways Joe was a really good man. But recently they had been stumbling through the raw bickering no-man’s-land of some itch or other.
Forty-two and Joe was only just coming to terms with the fact he was never going to be Sting, that writing the odd jingle and helping out with the sound and light systems for corporate dos was probably the closest he was going to get to the big time or the bright lights of Wembley Arena, and that he was unlikely to be asked to guest at an open air concert in Hyde Park because some roadie had spotted him mingling with the hoi polloi, trying to blend in.
It was Kate who found a lot of Joe’s work – the radio jingles, anyway – and who’d introduced him to the guy who ran the light and sound company. They’d met when she was doing a trade show at the NEC in Birmingham and got talking. He had needed someone who knew something about sound, they had needed the money. How was it Kate could feel guilty about that? Because unfortunately somewhere down the line it had turned from a good thing into her fault; Kate felt as if she’d stolen something from Joe.
At the moment things between them were tense for no particular reason that she could define. But they’d been there before and would probably be there again. Kate had no doubt they’d sort it out; on the whole they were good together.
‘Danny is nearly fifteen, for God’s sake, he should be able to get himself and Jake up and stay out of trouble till you get home,’ Kate said coolly.
Joe didn’t look convinced. ‘I’ve got no idea what time I’ll be back.’
Across the table, Chrissie shook her head. ‘Oh please, Joe. This is an emergency. Jake and Danny can come round to mine. Robbie’s at home tonight. They’ll be fine. Now is there anything else you need?’
The question was aimed squarely at Kate but Joe was in like Flynn. ‘Any chance you can pick my suit up from the cleaner’s tomorrow?’
It didn’t take very long or very much to unravel what remained of the evening. Within half an hour Kate had packed a bag and sorted out Joe and the kids.
Chrissie, arms crossed over her chest, gathered a cardigan up around her shoulders. She leant in through the driver’s side window to say her goodbyes. ‘Now don’t you go talking to any strange men, and give me a ring as soon as you get to your mum’s. And don’t worry, there’s nothing here that we can’t handle between us.’
‘Thanks, Chrissie. What on earth would I do without you?’
‘Christ only knows. House train Joe maybe?’
Kate laughed. ‘Give me a break. I haven’t got that many years left.’
Chapter 2
M25, M11, A10: Kate’s parents’ house was in Denham, a small Norfolk market town a few miles inland from King’s Lynn, set on a rise of land high above the black rolling Fens. She could make it home in around two and a half hours, always assuming there were no major hold ups.
Once she was away from familiar streets, Kate stretched and settled herself in for the long haul home. The night seemed unnaturally dark outside the tunnel of lights. It was hard not to yawn. Hard not to let her mind wander. Resisting the temptation to rub her eyes, Kate tried to relax her grip on the steering wheel and settled into the drive.
Less than an hour up the road and already her neck ached with tension and tiredness and an odd nagging fear. Taillights like demon eyes headed away from her into the dark. Kate loathed driving on motorways, nervous of getting so caught up and so tangled in the system that she’d never be able to find her way out again. Which was one of the reasons she told herself, pulling up hard behind some moron with a death wish, why she didn’t get home as often as she would like, why she hadn’t been to see her mum in, in – in – was it months or was it closer to a year? Surely it couldn’t be that long?
Kate pulled a face, trying to add up the time. Work had been crazy, which had been good, they could certainly use the money. The boys had both had flu at Christmas so they hadn’t gone home then, they stayed in front of the TV, sniffing, sleeping and drinking Lemsips, but Kate and her mum had talked a lot on the phone. New Year’s Eve, Kate and Joe had gone to a party in a flat overlooking the Thames with some of the guys Kate freelanced for while Chrissie had kept an eye on the boys. But they always rang each other once a week, most weeks, Kate’s conscience protested. And besides Mum liked her independence; Kate always felt that Maggie – her mum – was busy making a new life for herself. That was it. Her own life. She’d raised her kids and moved on, got herself a part-time job, always sounded really chirpy on the phone. They loved each other but that was no reason to live in each other’s pockets, no reason at all.
Kate squared she shoulders as her argument steadily backed itself up. Re-run over and over again in her head it still sounded like a series of pathetically weak excuses.
The traffic in front slowed to a bad-tempered unpredictable crawl and Kate forgot just how long it was since she had been to see Maggie and concentrated instead on trying to stay focused and not let sleep seduce her.
It wasn’t that her mum ever complained, but Liz did. Frequently. Liz, who was married to Peter who did something incomprehensible in the City and who always did as he was told. Good old Liz, with her three perfect little girls, lived in Norwich, about an hour’s drive away from Denham.
Kate peeled a mint out of the packet on the dashboard. The accusatory voice in her head, the one that berated her for not caring, not ringing or visiting often enough, was hardly the best travelling companion she could have wished for. It sounded an awful lot like her sister on a bad day.
Kate crunched the mint into gravel, tuned in to Radio 4, and let it haul her through the long dark miles while the voice in her head carried on moaning about the play, the book, the news and the price of fish.
Just over two hours later Kate indicated a
nd pulled off the A10 and into Denham. Driving up towards Church Hill, slowing the car to a crawl, she looked out for the landmarks, etched deep on the retina of an older eye. The family house was up in the good end of town, up the long slow rise from the town centre, near the high school and the church. It was a big rambling Edwardian semi, faced with dark Norfolk carrstone and an over-abundance of Virginia creeper.
Kate vaguely remembered her parents struggling to make the move up there – it was a big step up in the world for them, marking some promotion that now, Kate realised, had changed their lives for ever, taking her dad off the shop floor and into management. She remembered the huge battered sofas in the big sitting room covered with Indian throws, and her dad out in the conservatory, rubbing down a table that her mother had found in an auction, remembered the whole make do and mend ethic of people trying to do better for themselves.
Glancing up at the handsome old house, Kate wondered whether Liz was right, whether the time had come to talk about selling up and getting something smaller. It was crazy keeping such a big house for just one person, particularly a person who couldn’t manage. She shivered; had it come to that already? Surely it hadn’t come to that yet?
Pulling into the drive, Kate struggled with the perpetual sense of déjà vu that inevitably preceded her arrival. Was she late? Would they still be waiting up for her? Had she forgotten to do or pick up something important? The sensation was fleeting but always left a peculiar bittersweet aftertaste.
Her car crunched over the gravel. Beyond the arc of the headlights the house was in total darkness. It wasn’t that late, a little before midnight. Here and there in the borders the magnolias glowed creamy white in the moonlight. Kate parked up under the laburnums. Which were poisonous. How many times had Dad told Liz and Kate that? The whole tree, every leaf, every single bud, every last flower just waiting to strike you down dead.