Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Tears crawl down my face and I wipe them with my sleeve.

  ‘Ah,’ Lucas looks down, and brushes a tear away himself.

  ‘There’s a post-credits sequence too,’ I say, picking up my whisky. ‘I was so traumatised, I had a panic attack in my end of first year exams and never went back to university. It was Dad who really wanted me to get that degree. Even now I flinch when I see photos of people in their mortar boards, Mum and Dad either side. I had been so sure that was something I’d have. Wrong again.’

  ‘This is so brutal. I’m so sorry.’

  We sit and listen to Keith snoring.

  ‘You said you and your dad were close, right?’ Lucas says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then your dad knew you loved him. And he loved you. Tell me this, if he were here, if he could have another five minutes, what would he be saying to you? Would he be saying – “I can’t believe you were mad at me last time I saw you?”

  I think about it, and shake my head.

  ‘No, exactly. He’d be saying, I’m so sorry I let you down at the end. But you don’t need his apology. And he wouldn’t need yours.’

  This is so insightful and sensitive that I barely have words.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you so much for saying that.’

  Lucas looks at me intently.

  ‘This happened when you were eighteen?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah. Eighteen. My first term at university, the winter.’

  At first, I could swear that the age lands as significant to him. And just as quickly, the suspicion passes, and I think: wait, was that not a flicker of recognition? But someone straining, trying to place you because you’ve attained a new significance?

  ‘A few months after we finished sixth form,’ I say, chancing my arm.

  ‘That’s a tough age to have the rug pulled from under you,’ Lucas says.

  ‘So much so. You barely know who you are yourself, you need your parents to carry on being themselves.’

  ‘Sure. I don’t think I knew who I was or anyone else was until about twenty-five. Kind of nice, that innocence, in retrospect.’

  Are we speaking in code?

  ‘Oh, speaking of cheating men,’ I say, to move things on more than a desire to discuss it, ‘You were right about Robin. He ran into my parents in a supermarket and did a number on them about his devotion to me. It means he already knew I was working here when he came in.’

  ‘Jesus. I can’t say I’m surprised though.’

  ‘Do you know, I’d assumed it was chance he met my parents and he’d not be staking Waitrose out, and right as I’m telling you, I’m not so sure.’ I pause. ‘He thinks he can do things in name of this love for me, which is fictional horseshit.’

  Lucas says: ‘Georgina. It might not be true, but be careful. Something I’ve learned is people do much worse things to you in the name of love, than they ever do as your enemy.’

  On my journey home, dark streets scrolling past my window, I turn these words over and over until I am not sure if I am imagining a look of total understanding that passed between us as he uttered them. Something shifted between Lucas and me tonight, I’m just not quite sure what.

  30

  The resolution with Geoffrey is a non-resolution, an impasse, rather than a truce – he won’t apologise, I won’t apologise.

  I’d be quite happy never to see the Tizer-haired old walrus as long as I live, but it’s problematic if I want any sort of relationship with my mum. And that weekend, a social occasion comes up where I have to choose if I’m going to boycott: Esther’s Sunday lunch.

  I wrestled with various evasions or outright refusals and then thought, why should he get to still go to things like that, while I behave like the outcast? Sod him.

  Esther suggests I arrive half an hour before official kick-off so that it’s my feet under her dining room table when they arrive, as a symbolic gesture, and I gratefully do as I’m told.

  Unfortunately, both of us forget Geoffrey is the sort of nightmare guest who thinks turning up forty-five minutes before he’s been invited is an act of conspicuous efficiency, as opposed to wildly inconsiderate. His shiny new reg Volvo is squatting on the drive like Mr Toad’s chariot when the taxi drops me off.

  It irks me so much that Mum is a passenger in this, both literally and figuratively. I hope I’m never in a marriage where I don’t feel I can say: No we’re not setting off an hour early so our hostess has to grit her teeth and miss the shower she’d planned, sit back down.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, in the living room doorway, as Milo singsongs, ‘Hiiiiiii, Auntie Georgina,’ back.

  Geoffrey sullenly throws his cava down his throat without looking at me or speaking, while Mum and Mark say hello.

  An unusually antsy Esther bustles off to get me a cava and I sit down. Mark says: ‘How’re tricks?’ and we make small talk. I can see Mum’s mind whirring as she tries to find a topic that is both relevant to the company and totally neutral.

  I could tell her, from my time with Robin, that if your partner makes your social life much harder for you, you might have picked the wrong partner.

  ‘Here she is, right on time! Look at that, Esther,’ Mark says, standing up, as a mobility adapted van sweeps into the drive.

  ‘It’s a miracle, the care home must be on fire,’ Esther says, as Nana Hogg emerges on to the gravel. With much fanfare and exertion – by others – she’s put in a wheelchair and conveyed into the house. She announces her preference to be on the sofa, which displaces a clearly displeased Geoffrey, much to my delight. She gets her knitting out, mauve hedgehogs of soft yarn, and starts clacking away with the needles.

  Mark says to me: ‘That’s a lovely idea about taking flowers to your dad’s grave on his birthday with Milo, by the way. I’ve got time off and I think Esther can take leave too?’

  ‘Yep. The teachers say Milo can have the day off school,’ she says.

  ‘Patsy and Geoff, you’re very welcome to join. We’re thinking of heading there for one, and having a spot of lunch after?’

  Mark’s guileless decency is actually a fiendish weapon here. If I was saying this, it would have side to it. Mark is genuine. It makes Geoffrey look all the worse.

  ‘Hnph,’ Geoffrey says.

  ‘I’m sure we can come along,’ Mum says, embarrassed.

  ‘Why?’ Geoffrey says, rankled.

  I’m bug eyed. Is he really going to be a git about this, with an audience? This is unexpected. He’s so furious about me, he’s not able to do the greasy backhanded routine. It’s war.

  ‘It would’ve been his sixty-fifth birthday,’ Mum says.

  ‘He’s not there though, is he.’

  An awkward, shocked silence, soundtracked only by the clink as an on-edge Esther totters around, refilling glasses.

  ‘In the sense he’s not going to rise up out of the ground and start offering us carrot cake?’ I say to Geoffrey, the first moment we’ve spoken. He looks suitably revolted that I’ve dared. ‘This is a blow, I had no idea.’

  ‘There’s no need to go,’ Geoffrey says, turning back to Mum, ignoring me.

  ‘She can go if she wants,’ I say.

  ‘You are nothing but a troublemaker, and should pipe down,’ Geoffrey says. Back to Mum: ‘You shouldn’t go because he was an awful old philanderer and the whole thing’s a sham. Just tell them no, Patsy. Enough. They’re old enough to hear it.’

  Wow. He’s doing what he did to me, with an audience. I already know Mum must’ve known. But did Esther know? I glance at her and she’s looking startled, in my direction. I can’t tell if she knows and she looks equal parts baffled and concerned.

  Milo says: ‘What’s a Fillunder?’

  ‘YOU’RE AWFUL,’ Nana Hogg suddenly says, to Geoffrey, ‘An awful man.’

  All heads turn. In the excitement, I’d forgotten she was here and I suspect everyone else had too.

  ‘Nan!’ Mark says.

  ‘Stop ordering her around,’ she prods a knitting ne
edle towards me, ‘Like you order her around,’ a second knitting needle prod at Mum.

  Bloody hell, Nana Hogg is phenomenal.

  Geoffrey has gone purple.

  ‘I’m not going to stoop to insulting an elderly lady, however—’

  ‘I’ve seen your like before. My friend Margie’s husband Hamish used to make her and the kids eat bread soaked in beetroot juice while he had steak and spent his pay packet down the bookies. You remind me of him. A nasty sort.’

  ‘Nana, you really need to stop …’ Mark says, desperately.

  I start quietly laughing. I’m not trying to be outrageous but I can’t help myself. It’s bloody brilliant.

  ‘On what possible basis are you calling me a bad husband?’ Geoffrey says to Nana Hogg.

  ‘You’re a bully. Let her go to her husband’s grave.’

  ‘I’m not stopping her.’

  ‘You literally just told her not to go,’ I say. ‘And slagged my dad off. And called him a philanderer.’

  ‘Yes and I wonder which of his children takes after him.’

  My mouth falls open.

  ‘Don’t you dare speak to my sister like that,’ Esther says, surprising us all. This has turned into a bloodbath, a one-set stage play. Mum is like a statue, eyes wide. Mark’s aged a year in minutes.

  ‘Nothing wrong with enjoying a bit of slap and tickle,’ Nana Hogg says. ‘If I still had her physique I’d be putting myself about a bit too.’

  ‘Right, that’s enough,’ Geoffrey stands up, makes a fuss of collecting his jacket from the coat stand in the hall. We listen to this, Mum motionless. Her instinct is to side with Geoffrey, yet even she’s got qualms.

  He lets himself out and sits in his car, fully visible through the bay window, engine running, passenger side door thrown open ready for Mum to obediently scuttle out after him.

  ‘Should I go out and speak to him?’ Esther says to Mark, and even Mark shrugs.

  Nana Hogg knits serenely through it.

  ‘Mum,’ I say, turning to her. ‘Don’t do as he says. He’s been a bad shit. Let him sweat on it for a night and go back tomorrow.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Esther says.

  Mum looks at us, looks out of the window at Geoffrey, chews her lip. He slams the door shut, the tail-lights blaze, and with a squirt of gravel, he goes. Mum says the very last thing I’d expect.

  ‘Georgina, have you got any cigarettes?’

  31

  We stand quivering with cold in Esther’s garden, smoking menthols that Esther managed to unearth from the back of a cupboard. Being unable to provide Mum with Marlboro Lights is not a way I thought I’d fail her.

  ‘I’m so sorry you had to find out about Dad like that, Gog,’ Esther says, gripping her elbow.

  ‘Oh, Esther, I knew,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know you two knew. How did you know each other knew?’

  ‘I saw Dad with her when he was supposed to be at Graham’s. I was with my friends and he was coming out of Atkinson’s, they were holding hands. I came home and told Mum. I was about ten.’

  That long.

  ‘I knew anyway,’ Mum says. ‘From almost the start. He thought he could come home smelling of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and I wouldn’t notice. Silly sod.’

  ‘How did you find out?’ Esther says to me.

  ‘I caught Dad …’ Hmm. Best still be careful, ‘making plans to see a woman on the phone, the first weekend I was home from university. We had a huge fight about it, right before he died. I thought I should keep it to myself. Given Dad was gone anyway.’

  ‘Here’s us, thinking we had to keep it from you, at any cost. You were always so close, you had Dad on a pedestal. We didn’t want to knock him off,’ Esther says.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, frowning. This is an adjustment, the idea they protected me.

  Mum blows smoke out in a long plume. It’s so bizarre seeing her with a fag. I knew she dallied in her twenties, but she gave up when she got pregnant with Esther and never started again.

  ‘Grace, her name was. They were on and off for ten years. Met her at work. Wouldn’t give her up,’ Mum says. ‘She never married so was there at his beck and call.’

  ‘Well. What utter bastardy,’ I say. ‘To you and her. I don’t like what she did but I bet she thought they were in love and Dad might leave.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d think that way,’ Mum says. ‘I thought you might blame me, for making him unhappy.’

  I love my mum, but sometimes it does seem incredible we share DNA.

  ‘Why on earth would I blame you? It’s not your fault if he cheated on you.’

  Mum nods. ‘I’m still glad you didn’t know. Caused a lot of tension for you, didn’t it?’ She nudges Esther.

  Esther nods, scuffs her shoe on the ground. ‘It was hard to see him in the same way.’

  I readjust my perception of Esther’s teenage hauteur, her exasperation with me and my closeness with Dad, and some of the slammed doors.

  ‘Why is Geoffrey spraying the information around all of a sudden?’ Esther says. ‘What gives him the right? All we said was we were going to the grave, not erecting a statue.’

  ‘He gets jealous, I think,’ Mum says.

  ‘Of a dead person,’ I scoff, and then consider I might be something of a hypocrite, given the sensations I felt looking at the late Niamh.

  ‘I know he can be difficult, but I have to be careful, girls. He’s the one with the finances.’

  ‘Mum, loads of equity in that house is yours,’ Esther says. ‘You’re not powerless. Tell him to sort himself out.’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s easy but you can’t let him walk all over you.’

  ‘We’ll back you up, Mum,’ I add.

  ‘That’s very kind but you’ve both got lives to lead of your own, I can’t be a burden.’

  ‘You’d hardly be a burden!’ I say, suddenly feeling tearful, like I can’t quite swallow around the lump in my throat. I can’t remember a time when it’s felt so sisterly between the three of us.

  ‘Always a spare room here,’ Esther says, clasping Mum’s shoulders.

  For the first time, I feel the true uselessness of my skintness. I am not the same sort of help myself, whether I like it or not.

  ‘We should go in, the food’s ready,’ Esther says, with a look at Mark who’s waving through the kitchen window.

  Mum catches my sleeve, as I stub my fag out under my boot.

  ‘Georgina, about your dad. He never gave up his Saturdays with you, for her. I took some comfort from that.’

  This makes me feel gratified and confused and guilty and sad, all at once.

  When we’ve finished the passion fruit mousse, Mum says no thanks to a coffee and I know, I already know what’s coming next. She sensibly waits until Nana Hogg is snoring in an armchair and unable to offer input.

  ‘Esther, thanks for the offer of staying but I think I’m going to go home.’

  Esther’s brow furrows. ‘Are you sure?

  I want so much to be some assistance, and not always have to defer to my capable sister, who spent so many more years of her childhood shouldering the fact of my father’s affair than I did. When I was tripping happily with him from cafés to curry houses.

  ‘Yes, absolutely sure. It’ll have blown over and I will tell Geoffrey his response was excessive.’

  Good luck there.

  ‘If you’re sure,’ Esther says.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How about we share a taxi, Mum?’ I say. Mark tactfully gets up to clear the plates and I say, more quietly: ‘Why don’t you go in, make sure everything’s alright and you’re not going to have a barney? And text me. If you want to come back out and go home with me, wait for it to cool down, you can.’

  Mum nods, embarrassed, and I think that we’re doing what is called normalising. We’re talking in the language of managing an abuser. I’m not one to pine for a boyfriend to look after me, but right now it’d be so
good to have someone to share this with. To have my back, and by extension, hers. To be a team, the way I know Esther and Mark are.

  I call a cab and we gather our things. Mark hustled Milo off to bed early and we don’t want to wake Nana Hogg. I’d like to give her a medal though.

  By the doorway, Esther catches me.

  ‘Thanks for this, Gog. I wish she’d stay, but …’

  ‘I read somewhere that leaving someone like that is a “process, not an event”. It was never likely she’d have an epiphany. Like you say, we need to stay around her and let her know she’s not alone with him.’

  Esther gives me a tight hug and I linger in it, feeling small, and made of pink fluff.

  When we pull up at the mansion in Fulwood, I remember Geoffrey’s principal appeal to my mother – it’s a beautiful house, a cavernous Victorian semi made from that burnt toffee-coloured Yorkshire stone. It has deep steps leading up to the stained glass front door that seems designed to lodge in childhood memories.

  It is still an ogre’s prison, however. I turn to Mum, put my hand over hers. She must find this reversal excruciating. I’ve never been the greatest at accepting concern myself, after all. Luckily the driver has Magic FM on loud.

  ‘It’s no problem to wait. I won’t go until you text me.’

  She kisses me on the cheek and pats my hand.

  The front door closes behind her. The hallway light flicks on beyond.

  Seconds later, my phone pings.

  Night darling! X

  I can tell by the speed of the response, she didn’t wait to speak to him before she told me she was alright.

  What parts that is made up of pride, recklessness, fatalism or optimism, I can’t tell.

  32

  A bad workman blames his tools, or in my case, her material.

  The ‘Worst Date’ tale instalment of the second Share Your Shame competition is tonight, and I’m angsting over my lack of them. I’ve had weeks to prepare and yet in the midst of family dramas and trying to work out where my head is with Lucas, I’ve spectacularly failed to come up with anything. Nothing quite like crashing and burning in front of friends, family and colleagues to keep a girl awake at night.