Time flies when you’re having fun, they say. But they are wrong. The week – this one short week in my life—had felt like a life in it’s own right. Friday dawned, recollection flooded through me, and with it a dull ache the like of which I had never felt before. Would I feel like this now, every morning, forever?
‘You’re up early,’ Jonathan commented as I pattered around the bedroom, opening cupboard doors and inspecting their contents. I would wear my blue suit. Conservative. Sombre. But with my pink blouse. Drug u Like would approve.
‘It’s my interview today.’
‘Interview?’ He rolled over in bed.
‘Yes,’ I said, stupidly grateful for his absence of memory. His lack of interest. I was stockpiling shots of guilt-vaccine. The better to make all the guilt go away. I didn’t know what to do about the pain. ‘My interview for manager. It’s at eleven fifteen.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he mumbled. He had elected not to go into the surgery until after lunch and was obviously intent on staying in bed for a while. He squinted across at the alarm clock. ‘But it’s only seven.’
I ripped the cardboard packaging from a new pair of tights.
‘I know. But I’m going into work first. I have to make some extra copies of my CV.’ I had to do no such thing. I simply had to get out of the house.
He grunted and nodded, eyes still half closed.
‘You haven’t forgotten you’ve got to go and pick up that Wagner CD from Spillers, have you? I promised Bob I’d have it here for him when they arrive. D’you know if they managed to get it in OK?’
I didn’t. Bob and bloody Androulla. Whatever else I needed in my life right now, it was not them for the weekend. I nodded.
‘No. But I’m sure they will have,’ I said.
He smiled sleepily. ‘Well. Good luck, then.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks.’ Though I wasn’t sure what he was wishing me luck for.
The offices now occupied by Drug U Like inc. were in a tall mirrored building just outside Crawley, in one of those business parks where fountains spewed chilly spray over architecturally sculpted arrangements of neatly clipped grass. I pushed the revolving door open and walked across similarly shorn acres of pink carpeting to where a trim receptionist, dressed uncannily like me, smiled a welcome from behind her desk.
Nick had sent me another text message, wishing me luck and saying I didn’t need it, and telling me he didn’t know how he was going to function without me, that he was hurting, that he was sorry, but that he understood. Then N for Nick, and seven capital X’s in a row. I had stood in the car park and counted each one.
There were two other applicants for the post, one of them a guy I was on nodding terms with and who was senior optom from a smaller branch in Croydon, and the other a woman who was a manager from somewhere up north who had moved down south with her husband’s job and was looking for a transfer. And me. Who had moved to somewhere else altogether and who was looking to find her way back. The receptionist put a tick against my name and directed me to the eleventh floor.
Strangely, I was not in the least nervous.
Which was presumably why I got the job.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Russell, handing me my drink and genuflecting flamboyantly. Sweetly, they had both demanded that I go with them to the pub for a celebratory drink. He tipped his head. ‘Are we going to have to call you ma’am now?’
‘Absolutely!’ said Ruth, who was almost as pleased for me as if she’d got the promotion herself. How selfless and precious her friendship was. I was so glad she wasn’t going to leave.
I sipped at my drink and tried hard to pretend I was as happy about my promotion as they both presumed I’d be. Well, not both, really. I had already told Ruth I intended to stop seeing Nick. She’d thought I was crazy. But then, she would.
We hadn’t stayed long celebrating at the pub, however. Russell was off to the cinema with his latest acquisition – a girl from cosmetics, of whom Ruth violently disapproved.
‘Really, Russ,’ she’d chided him in the pub car park. ‘She’s barely out of school!’
‘She’s nineteen!’ he protested.
Ruth sniffed. ‘A very young nineteen.’
Russell pulled his shades from his jacket pocket. ‘And I’m a very young twenty nine,’ he said, putting them on.
‘You said it,’ said Ruth. She seemed to have it in for poor Russell tonight.
He swung his keys from his hand. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Ruth hitched the strap of her handbag on her shoulder and sniffed.
‘It means it figures, Russ. Obviously way too young to handle a real grown up woman.’
Russell pointed his key fob and unlocked his car. He looked Ruth up and down. ‘What on earth makes you think I’d want to?’ he said.
And then I went to Tesco. Where I wandered, sightless, up and down the aisles, gathering the things I’d need for the weekend. Jonathan, thankfully, wasn’t in when I got home.
‘He’s gone off to his tennis club committee meeting,’ Kate informed me as she helped me unload the shopping. She was glowing, her tan setting off her luminous young skin, her spangly black jeans like a starscape themselves. ‘He said to remind you about the CD. Oh, and Debbie rang to say if you got a moment she’d be really grateful if you could do a bit of work on the Electra costume, because the zip’s gone again and she thinks it might be better if we use hooks and eyes instead.’ She patted my wrist and grinned. ‘I said you would, of course. Oh, and I nearly forgot. Morgan rang as well. About meeting up with you or something? Wanted to talk to you, anyway.’
‘What about? Did she say?’
Kate shook her head. ‘I think she was hoping you’d be able to go up next week. Something about her dress fitting ? I told her I didn’t think you’d be able to, what with my show and everything. She sounded a bit off about it, but no surprise there. She’s been a right rat bag lately.’
So why had she not met up with me and my mother last week, then? ‘Oh, come on, Kate,’ I said. ‘She’s just stressed, that’s all.’
She pointed at me, suddenly. ‘Why’ve you got that suit on, by the way? Not like you to get all poshed up.’
‘I had my interview.’
‘Oh, yes! Of course you did. Sorry. Did you get it?’
‘I got it.’
‘Wicked, mum.’
She gave me a hug and my eyes filled with tears. Whoosh. Just like that. This was no way to live.
I drove her round to Amanda’s and let her happy chatter soothe me. Then back, under a violet sky, along the very same lane where I’d first met him all that time ago. I slowed up on the accelerator. So long ago now. Yet the twin furrows that had been made by my tyre tracks were still there, where I’d made them. Two muddy dips in the flower flecked grass.
I was crying properly by the time I was back in our lane. Still crying as I pulled frozen prawns from the freezer. Still crying while I stood and marinated the meat.
I poured myself a Pimms. Well, I’d been promoted, hadn’t I? And then a glass of amaretto while I finished off the cheesecake . And I cried into that as well.
Chapter 24
Bob and Androulla. Bob and bloody Androulla. I should have seen the writing on the icing on the cake.
Saturday evening in the jolly Matthews household. Saturday evening and a jolly dinner party in the jolly Matthews household. What fun. And we had got on to the wedding, of course. Androulla was big on weddings. I don’t think she ever really got over the trauma when her own progeny, Richard, decided to get hitched. A boy I remembered mainly for his exhibition burping (and who was now a gingery thirty something and a biscuit wholesaler in Leeds) he had zipped off with his girlfriend and got married on the sly with two council workers as witnesses. So I should have realised Androulla wasn’t going to let this one slip by her. We were never not going to talk about the wedding.
‘Oh, dear. That is a pity,’ she said in saccharin tone
s while perusing the order of service. The latest in a long line of perusals. She had been perusing, tight lipped, for most of the evening. She had already perused most of the contents of Morgan’s wedding file, from the cake (a bit modern?) to the fireworks (a touch pretentious?) to the pew allocation (Sally, really – tinkling laughter – the Pattersons at the front?). She peered at me over the grapes Bob was passing to her. ‘A pity you didn’t think to consult me about the service first, Sally. I could have told you about the hymn.’ Hymn? Consult? What was she on about now? ‘Shame on you Jonathan,’ she went on, frowning at him. ‘How could you forget about the hymn?’
Jonathan, ruddy from too much port already, slurped from his glass and shrugged.
‘Oh, I’ve kept well out of it, Andy’ he muttered. ‘Am keeping well out of it.’ He and Bob exchanged a grimace.
‘Good man,’ said Bob.
‘What about the hymn?’ I said.
‘Praise My Soul, of course,’ she finished, putting the sheet back in Morgan’s plastic file and closing the popper with a snap. She laced her fingers together. ‘Praise My Soul The King of Heaven. Did you never think to mention it, Jonathan?’
He looked non-plussed. ‘Er, nope,’ he replied.
‘Mention what?’ I persisted, growing irritated now.
Androulla smiled sweetly at me.
‘That we’d always said it would be the one Morgan would have on her wedding day. It’s rather special, you see.’
‘Special?’ This sounded ominous.
‘Well, perhaps it’s not for me to say (which meant it was). I’m only her Godmother, after all. But you remember that conversation, don’t you Jonathan? When we were down in Cowes? Of course you do, darling.’ She twittered for a moment.
I looked hard at Jonathan. ‘Cowes?’
‘Er, vaguely,’ he said.
Androulla drew her one-hair-wide eyebrows together. ‘Vaguely? Tut tut. How could you have forgotten? Tut! Still, I suppose it’s not for me to – ‘
A lot of tutting for someone who was so busy supposing she should shut up about it. ‘What’s not for you to say, Androulla?’ I interrupted.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just seems a shame, that’s all. If you’d only given me a ring, Sally, I could have stopped you before you went and – well. Never mind.’ She looked like she was minding very much, however, her shrivelled lips now pursed in disapproval.
‘What about it?’ I said again. ‘What about Praise My Soul? What’s the big deal about Praise My Soul?’
Androulla sniffed. And put on her ‘well I didn’t want to make a point of it but now you’ve made me’ face. She was very good at those.
‘Well, it’s just that it was Tricia’s favourite, you see. She’d had it at her wedding, (she looked simperingly at Jonathan), as did her mother before her, and her mother before her. It’s a tradition in the family. We’d always said Morgan would have it too, of course. Tricia used to tell me how much she was looking forward to…well, you can imagine how much it matters, can’t you? That Tricia will still be able to look down upon her daughter and…well. As I say, I do feel it would be remiss of us not to respect her wishes.’
Remiss? Looking down? Upon? Wishes? Oh, please. And this tosh from a woman who, to the best of my knowledge, had not set foot in a church since her best bloody friend’s funeral. And silly me. To imagine we’d not get round to talking about Tricia. You should have consulted me indeed. I was getting unimaginably, dangerously cross with her now.
‘Oh, well,’ I said, rising from the table. ‘Can’t be helped. Morgan’s chosen now. Immortal Invisible and Love Divine.’
But Androulla was not to be deflected from her cause.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘But at that point she wasn’t aware –’she paused here, to roll her eyes heavenwards. I could feel my knuckles clench around the plates in my hand. ‘– just how much it meant to her mother, was she? Hmm, Jonathan? Yes?’ She pulled her napkin from her lap and smiled at me. ‘But don’t worry. I’ll have a word with her.’
‘Androulla, ‘I said levelly. ‘There’s really no point. The hymns have already been chosen.’
‘Well, that’s as maybe, Sally. But I still think Morgan should be made aware, don’t you? I mean, who are we to deny her the chance to pay tribute to her mother’s memory?’
I am not one of life’s arguers. I am Mrs non-confrontation personified. I am a negotiated settlement on legs. Or at least I thought I was. Being in love with Nick Brown, I have decided, has done curious things to my temper.
The pasta fandango I could cope with. My fault. Silly me. I should have realised Androulla would be on some twitty prohibitive diet or other. She had made ludicrous unscientific exploitative diet – sorry – health management regimes a career. The no-wheat nonsense. The dairy embargo. Wasn’t that what homo-sapiens ate? She’d have me boiling up nettles for her next. And how long, I conjectured, before she started paying visits accompanied by portable oxygen and a tube up her nose?
The pillow debacle I could cope with also. Who am I to come between a woman and her stuffing preferences? And it’s no bother really to drive off into Crawley to replace my shoddy guest bedware with duck down and goose.
But I could not cope with this. I could not.
‘By which you mean me, I take it?’ I said, with a quickening pulse. I started gathering up cutlery. ‘Anyway, it’s academic. Everything’s already with the printers.’
Androulla leaned behind her and scooped up her handbag from the floor.
‘Now you’re being silly,’ she said, as if I was five. ‘Anyway, I don’t doubt they’ll be able to change it. Leave it with me. I’ll have a little word with Morgan in the morning and then I’ll get on to them for you first thing on Monday. I’m sure we’ll be able to sort everything out. Do you have their number to hand?’
A little nuclear warhead exploded somewhere inside my head.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t have their number to hand. And you don’t need it anyway, Androulla, because I don’t need you to ring them.’
‘But –’
‘But nothing,’ I said, slapping the lid down on the butter dish. ‘The hymns have already been chosen.’
I was being completely unreasonable. Of course I was. Why the hell shouldn’t Morgan be given the opportunity to change her mind about her hymns? It was her wedding wasn’t it? It was pathetic of me to dig my heels in like this, and yet, curiously, it was that very knowledge that drove me on. For this was not about hymns. It could equally well have been the pillows. This was about us. And she knew it.
Two pink spots appeared on her leathery cheeks. ‘Now you really are being silly,’ she said, refusing to meet my eye now, and still rootling in her bag for a pen. ‘It’ll be a terrible shame if –
I could feel a violent heat in my own cheeks. ‘A shame if what? If I don’t let you turn Morgan’s wedding into a memorial service? A shame if I don’t let you hijack the day? Tell you what. Why don’t we just go and dig her up and have done with it?’
Everyone’s mouths dropped open. Jonathan winced. I was being outrageous and cruel but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. ‘Why not, eh? Eh? Tell you what. How about if I just don’t turn up at all. Then I’ll be out of the way and you can erect a little Tricia effigy and make a speech about her after the toasts. Would that suit? I’m sure you’d do a fine job, Androulla.’
I banged the four cheese plates on top of one another and stalked off to the other side of the kitchen. Why oh why hadn’t we eaten in the dining room? At least then I’d have a reason to escape.
‘Well, that’s lovely, I must say,’ she said. ‘I mention this one little thing, and you fly off the handle!’
I whirled around. ‘It’s not one little thing! It’s never been one little thing! It’s everything. The flowers – oh, dear, I think Tricia would have wanted roses. The guest list – yes, you’re right. Terribly remiss of me to have forgotten to invite Tricia’s second cousin from Godalming. The bloody
invitations, even – God! What was I thinking! How could I possibly forget to make mention of her name somewhere on them! A footnote, perhaps. From Jonathan and Sally and Tricia-her-real-mother who’d just love to invite you except – oops! Darn it. She’s been dead twenty years.’
Jonathan stood up.
‘Sally!’ he barked at me.
He could bark all he liked. ‘And don’t you Sally me!’ I spat. ‘You, of all people, should be with me on this! How dare she come into my house and tell me how to run my own daughter’s wedding! How dare she!’
Androulla, hot pink under her diarrhoea coloured tan, stood up as well. And now she did look at me. With enough venom to fell an elephant. ‘But she’s not your daughter! And I think it’s high time you accepted that there are other people who have a right to – ‘
‘A right to what? Come on, tell me. Tell me what exactly gives you the right to come in here and treat me like a second rate bloody surrogate mother. I would really like to know. Because she’s not your daughter either!’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous, Sally.’
‘I am not being ridiculous. I am sick and tired of you criticising me. You never let up, do you? It’s always been the same! ‘I think you’ll find Tricia would have done things this way, Sally. ‘Are you sure you should be doing that that way, Sally?’. How do you think that’s always made me feel, eh? Well, I’ll let you into a secret, shall I? She’s been dead twenty years! Twenty! Morgan barely remembers her! And you can wipe that expression off your face right away. It was nothing to do with me, OK? I didn’t kill her. I didn’t bury her. I certainly didn’t try to take her place. But Morgan was three! Take some reality on board will you? I am Morgan’s mother, how ever much it pains you. Oh, and for your information, it just so happens that she chose Love De-bloody-sodding-vine for me.’
I banged down the cheese platter and fled the room at that point. Before I took the grape scissors and chopped her into tiny pieces. Jonathan, predictably, was after me moments later, his feet heavy and staccato on the staircase.
Straight on Till Morning Page 25