by Lucy Diamond
All right, so there had been the small problem of Maisie’s unexpected appearance and the broken clay trophy, but she’d mended it now at least, and was sure Rick would be cool about the whole thing. What was more, the flat looked pristine, in readiness for his return. She had put a vase of sunflowers on the mantelpiece, tidied everything away and put a fresh sheet on the bed. That entire day she’d found herself feeling almost light-headed whenever she thought about his return. Giddy, even. (‘Sure it’s not an inner-ear infection?’ her colleague Alison had asked sceptically when Jo had voiced such dazed feelings. ‘I could have a look for you, if you want.’)
It was not an inner-ear infection, needless to say. It was happiness. New-found wealth and independence. The fact that she’d loaded up a basket in the Little Waitrose that lunchtime and bought steaks and champagne and a fabulously calorific banoffee pie for afters, and that she was here now, at the airport, all set to give her boyfriend a joyful surprise when he walked through Arrivals was proof of that.
Fancy seeing you here, she was going to say, all coquettish and pretend-nonchalant. She’d put lipstick on and everything, and planned to dash into the Boots in the main building just as soon as she got there, in order to squirt on some free perfume. I don’t suppose you fancy a lift into town, do you? she would ask, raising an eyebrow. Thought I could treat you to dinner later – my way of thanking you for having me stay all week . . .
‘Slick,’ Alison had pronounced approvingly when Jo had run this past her during a brief chat at the filing cabinet at the end of their working day. Then she’d wrinkled her nose, teasing, ‘Look at you, going all pink in the cheeks because your boyfriend’s coming home. Jo Nicholls, I never thought I would see the day.’
Nor me, Jo had thought. Nor me, Alison. But here I am, pink-cheeked and enjoying life, no longer saddled with a house I don’t want, no longer scrimpingly skint and, best of all, ready for some fabulous reunion sex with my gorgeous new boyfriend. She was going to stop worrying about rushing into things with him too, because . . . Well, because so what if she was, basically, when it made her feel this good?
Hurrying through the car park, she could feel cheerfulness sparking inside her. He’d be off the plane by now, heading for the Baggage Claim area, and then . . .
Her phone rang and her heart skipped a fluttering beat to see his name on the screen, as if she’d summoned the call with her own joyful thoughts. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘Just landed.’
She resisted the urge to tell him that she knew, she had an app – perhaps that was a shade too keen – and said, ‘Welcome back’ instead, a big smile on her face. Oh, she could not wait to throw her arms around him again!
‘So, about tonight,’ he went on, and she almost wanted to giggle, fighting the urge to tell him that she’d already planned it all out.
‘Yes?’ she said instead.
But then he sighed. ‘Listen, I know we said we’d see each other tonight, but I’ve just picked up a voicemail message from Maisie and she sounded really upset. Something about a broken . . . To be honest, I couldn’t hear very well. A broken trophy or something. Must have happened at school, I guess, but she seemed pretty tearful.’
An icy chill spiralled down Jo’s spine as the words sank in, and a vision flashed through her mind of Maisie’s smug, triumphant smirk. Gotcha. ‘Um . . .’ she stuttered, but nothing else came from her mouth.
‘She said she’d tell me the whole story later, whatever it is, but she really wanted a dad-and-daughter night. Would you mind if . . . ?’
‘Oh.’ Jo stopped dead in the car park, about one hundred metres from the airport entrance. Tanned people in big sun-hats were wheeling out trolleys laden with suitcases, a group of blokes in City football tops sang beerily as they headed the other way. ‘No,’ she managed to say. Maisie had got there first, she thought ruefully. Crying down the phone to Daddy, no less, pulling rank, stirring things up. Choose me, Dad, choose me! And how could he not? ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she said woodenly, visualizing the girl gleefully pouring out the trophy saga, embellishing it, no doubt, to make Jo look like some kind of hooligan who smashed up kids’ artistic creations for kicks. She should probably get her side of the story in quickly, she realized. ‘Actually, I think I—’ she began, but he was already speaking.
‘I mean, I don’t want to leave you in the lurch. What’s the latest with your flat – has it all been sorted? You’re not going to be stuck for somewhere to stay, are you?’
Jo cringed at the question. This was not how she wanted him to see her – ‘stuck’ and unable to cope without him; that kind of relationship would be veering straight back into marriage-with-Greg territory. ‘Of course not!’ she cried gaily, trying not to think about the steaks in the boot of her car, the champagne, the banoffee pie, which was probably starting to melt. Then she imagined him walking out of Arrivals and seeing her there outside the building – Jo? What are you doing here? – and she wheeled around on the spot, scurrying back towards the car. ‘Just let me know when you’re around, then. Okay, better go,’ she said before he could hear how defeated she sounded. ‘Bye!’
It was only when she’d hung up that she realized she hadn’t told him about the broken Best Dad trophy. Bollocks. Should she ring him back now, fill him in on the details? Send a quick text? Oh btw – the thing Maisie was crying about into your voicemail? It’s not a big deal, honestly, just an accident. All mended! Nothing to get mad about!
Oh God. She should have fessed up earlier, when it happened, shouldn’t she? She should have apologized in advance for being a clumsy house-guest, just got it out there in the open. Whoops, my mistake, sorry! Because now it looked really bad, him hearing it first from his daughter, rather than from the culprit herself. Like she was trying to hide it and get away with the breakage, like she was dishonest or something. Damn it.
She got back into her car, trying to talk herself round. Breathe, Jo. Chill! She was turning a small accident into a huge overblown saga. Let Maisie have her moment of melodrama, Rick would understand that these things happened. He wasn’t the sort of person who would turn against a girlfriend for a small pottery breakage. Was he?
Oh, shut up, brain, she said, as she searched around for the exit signs and began driving away. Just shut up, okay?
‘Joanna! I thought you must have dropped dead or something! No phone calls. No texts. I thought: either she’s in a huff with me for some crime or other I’ve supposedly committed, or she can’t be bothered with her poor old mother any longer. Just let me die in my galaxy of loneliness – you carry on without me, I was thinking. And here you are now, on my doorstep, when I’ve got Peter coming over in twenty minutes and I haven’t done my nails yet . . . Oh well, never mind, I suppose you’d better come in. Come on then, if you’re coming!’
If it needed saying, Jo and Laura’s mum, Helen, was not your average mother fodder. Opinionated and acerbic, with an enviable mane of red hair and even better legs, she had never been the cuddly sort of mum who would ‘there-there’ a person and assure them that everything would be all right. Helen was more likely to pour you a massive gin and assure you that the world was going to hell in a handcart, so sod it, you might as well get drunk together and go out in a blaze of kebabs and dancing.
‘Hi, Mum,’ Jo said wearily, holding up the carrier bag of slightly sweaty dinner-for-two shopping as she stepped across the threshold. ‘Um . . . I brought food?’
Following her airport rebuff, she’d driven dolefully to her flat in Hulme, thinking that maybe by some miracle Dennis, her landlord, had paid the electricity bill and that the power would be back on, but unfortunately this was not the case. Not only was there no electricity, but the fridge and freezer smelled heinous where the contents had thawed and gone off, the kitchen floor was a sea of dirty water, and she saw what looked very much like a rat’s tail flicking behind the dustbin – the combination of which was enough to send her straight back out again. Al
l the way round the ring road to the small terrace off Moseley Road where she’d grown up, in fact. Crawling back home to Mum, who was wearing a bright-orange mini-dress and fawn over-the-knee boots, an armful of bangles and half a ton of spiky black mascara.
‘Waitrose? Very posh,’ sniffed Helen, peering into the bag. ‘Oooh, fizzy wine, nice. Peter’s expecting a casserole, but never mind, I suppose there’ll be enough for three. Or I can send him to the chippy.’
What casserole? Jo wanted to ask, following her into the kitchen and seeing that the oven was off and there were no signs whatsoever of any food preparation. ‘Who’s Peter?’ she enquired instead, leaning against the worktop. ‘Can I stay tonight, by the way?’
‘Who’s Peter? Who’s Peter, she says,’ Helen scoffed, puffing on an electronic cigarette and rolling her eyes. ‘If you’d bothered ringing me, you might know. He’s my new boyfriend.’
‘Oh God.’ Now it was Jo’s turn to roll her eyes. She had lost track of her mother’s tumultuous love-life; it didn’t take a psychoanalyst to work out why she and Laura had both been attracted to safe, dependable men, when they’d grown up with a backdrop of ever-changing boyfriends falling for their mother like lemmings over a cliff.
‘Less of that, thank you,’ Helen tutted. ‘And yes, you can stay, but you’ll have to put up with the sounds of our lovemaking through the wall – just warning you now, so like it or lump it. He gets quite animalistic after a few tequilas, does Peter, so—’
‘Mum! Please. I don’t want to know!’
Helen cackled. ‘It’s not too late to pop round to the all-night chemist and pick up some earplugs,’ she said, elbowing Jo. ‘I’m kidding. We’re taking things slowly. No need to look like that! We’re only on our second date. I do have some standards, thank you very much.’
‘It’s your second date and you’ve promised him a casserole, which is . . . where?’ Jo asked, gazing around the room, as if a casserole dish might present itself with a little fanfare from behind a cupboard door.
Helen pulled the steaks out of the carrier bag and dumped them on the side. ‘Looks like we’re having steak, after all. I must have known you would turn up. A mother’s intuition is a wonderful thing.’ She cackled again. ‘Now quick, before he gets here: what’s up with you, and why have you knocked on my door with the ingredients for a romantic dinner and a face like a slapped arse? And don’t try and tell me otherwise, because I’m not a complete idiot.’
‘Well,’ Jo began and then sighed. Her mum had a way of getting straight to the heart of an issue, even when you’d rather not discuss it with her. She heaved herself up onto the worktop, legs dangling, just as she’d done when a teenager all those years before. ‘I’ve met this bloke . . .’
Helen put a hand up. ‘Stop! We need alcohol.’ She pulled the foil off the champagne and held it aloft. ‘Shall we?’
‘Mum, it’s lukewarm, it’ll be – oh, whatever,’ Jo said, as Helen twisted the cork regardless. The genie, like the cork, was well and truly out of the bottle now, and there would be no stopping her mother until every detail had been heard. ‘Yes. Okay, then. Fine. Thanks.’
Chapter Eleven
Half-term began with the punishment of an overnight trip to stay with India’s brother Nicholas and his Swedish wife Petra over in Southport, who thought they were it, just because they had a big house in Birkdale, the posh end of town. ‘I don’t know why you always get so uptight about going – he is your brother,’ Dan reminded India in an irritatingly mild-mannered way, while she was trying to get ready that morning. (This involved an emergency attempt to lose an immediate half-stone by wearing her one and only pair of Spanx, for which she practically needed haulage equipment to winch up her thighs. Oof. There.)
‘But you like your family, remember,’ she replied sourly, sucking in her stomach and turning sideways to inspect herself in the mirror. Nope. Not working. Not likely to fool anyone, either, least of all her eagle-eyed sister-in-law, who would spot the trembling rolls of fat forced up above the control pants and would give India pitying looks the whole time, as a result. She breathed out crossly and began peeling off the rubbery torture-wear again with a mixture of relief and resignation. Sod it, she’d just look porky then. She’d let her stomach hang out and be done with it. There was no point anyway trying to compete, belly-wise, with a woman who went for a five-mile run at six every morning, come rain, come shine, come hangover. (‘It makes me feel so alive,’ Petra had once sighed beatifically. Alive, indeed, India had scoffed in private. Personally she’d rather be alive and in bed at that time of day.)
‘And I like your family, too,’ Dan was saying, still with that same Mr Reasonable expression. He stuffed a jumper into his weekend bag, followed by – optimistically – a pair of shorts. Despite it being almost June, this was a bank-holiday weekend and therefore they could expect freezing temperatures and gale-force winds, if previous years were anything to go by. Perhaps some light blizzards to top things off.
‘Yeah, but . . .’ India sighed, tiring of the conversation. ‘That’s because you’re nice to everyone, while I’m just a horrible, bitter old shrew.’
Dan zipped up the bag and headed for the door. ‘Come on, Misery Guts,’ he said. ‘It’s only one night. And they’re not that bad. Let’s just get them hammered on their expensive booze and they might even lighten up for once.’
The last time they’d gone to visit India’s brother and his family had been for New Year, and on the way home, quiet and fragile, they’d been halfway back along the M62 when Kit had piped up from the back seat, ‘Mum, what’s a chav?’
Despite the queasiness of India’s hangover, her senses had flicked to red alert. ‘It’s a horrible, nasty word that snobs use when they’re looking down on someone who has less money than them,’ she found herself saying, with extra ferocity.
‘Why do you ask, Kit?’ Dan wanted to know, although India already had a pretty good idea.
‘Oscar said I was one,’ Kit had replied with shattering honesty, shrugging his skinny shoulders.
‘Well, you are,’ George told him, in the brutal sort of way that only an older brother can.
‘No, he is not,’ India had growled. ‘None of us are.’ Bloody Oscar, she thought, fuming. Nick and Petra’s son was eight, blond and pretty, the sort of kid you might see in a Gap catalogue, looking adorable. He was also, and India didn’t say this lightly about her own nephew, a complete and utter little shit. Every time the two families spent any significant time together, Oscar would always thug it up around Kit – pinching, punching, pushing. (‘Boys!’ Petra would sigh affectionately, not seeming to notice the way Kit grew quieter and quieter, pressing himself against India. Then, invariably, would come the bad dreams and wet bed, which was exactly what had happened at two o’clock in the morning on New Year’s Day, just as India and Dan had sunk into a drunken slumber. Hooray. Have some wet pyjama bottoms in a plastic bag. ‘Don’t tell Oscar, will you?’ Kit had begged fearfully, anticipating further misery ahead.)
A chav, indeed, she’d fumed at the time. Was that what they all thought? Her own parents, certainly, always made a tremendous fuss whenever they came to stay with her, fretting that there was nowhere to park on her street; and, goodness, would the car be all right round the corner like that; and really, when was she going to move out of this grungy end of Sale and get a proper house with a drive, and a nice back garden?
Maybe when a pig flies across the moon, Mum, India had had to resist saying through gritted teeth.
And here she went again, she thought now, as they turned onto the quiet leafy avenue where her brother lived: falling straight back into the same old well-trodden paths of inferiority, slipping into her part as Nick’s contrary little sister, or her parents’ wayward daughter, the one who . . . Yes, her. We don’t like to talk about that, though.
It was ridiculous, really. She was thirty-nine years old – she was nearly forty! – and still couldn’t escape the dictates of the role set down for her in childh
ood. Who even was she, these days? The wife of Dan, sure; the mother of George, Esme and Kit, yes. She had her place in the world in their noisy, messy home, and throughout her music classes. But then yesterday she’d stepped right out of her usual confines, rocking up at the Intensive Care unit at the hospital with a bag of nice new pyjamas and shortbread and some classic feminist novels in a carrier bag for Alice Goldsmith. ‘A friend of the family,’ she’d told the nurse, handing over the goodies, before walking back down the echoing corridor to her car, resisting the urge to run, fast, before anyone could start asking questions.
No, she hadn’t told Dan about it, nor Eve when she saw her at the school pick-up later, nor any of her other friends. It had been a secret sideways step out of her ordinary life. Was it wrong that she had experienced a prickling sort of frisson whenever she’d thought about it since?
Realizing that her brother’s smart modern house was looming up before them, she banished the thought hurriedly. Okay, right, best face on, she vowed. Today she would be sweetness and light, gracious and friendly; she would rise above absolutely everything and refuse to be riled. As Dan parked their old Volvo on Nick and Petra’s crunching gravel drive, India took a deep calming Pilates breath and reminded herself that she was relaxed. Really.
The Burrells all rushed out to greet them, Nick with a laughing Meg on his shoulders, Petra looking cool and stylish in a maxi-dress and bare feet, Oscar sporting a grudging expression, as if he’d rather not be mingling with the proles, thanks. Despite having packed jumpers and waterproofs, the air felt benevolently warm and India breathed in the sweet scent of the wisteria that dripped its luxuriant lilac blooms above the front door.