by Sophie Duffy
‘No, Mum. Put that down.’ Loulou appears, like a store detective. ‘Stand away from the boots. Look at these beauties.’ She’s weighed down under another alarming heap of clothes.
Bex eyes the dress on top of the pile, a pink lacy thing that would be more at home on a glamour model. ‘Who do you think I am? Samantha Fox?’
‘Who’s Samantha Fox?’
Bex holds in a sigh. ‘Never mind. For now. Just discard that prawn-pink one. Have you got anything a little more… classy?’
‘In Topshop?’
‘I know it’s a long shot.’
‘Aha! You shouldn’t judge.’ Loulou’s clearly relishing every moment of bossing her mother. ‘What about this one?’ She dumps the dresses onto her mother’s lap, selects a little back number. Zips, cobweb sleeves, a reference to punk that makes Bex reach out to hold it. More Siouxsie Sioux than Samantha Fox.
‘I’ll try this on.’
‘Yay, go Mum.’
‘Yes, all right, enough of the cheerleading. Let’s find the fitting room. I’m not going in there alone. And please, God, don’t tell me it’s a communal one.’
‘Mum, you worry too much about the physical.’
‘You will one day too. When you’re old like me.’
‘You’re not old, Mother. You’re like knocking on a bit but you’re okay. You just need to make more of an effort.’
But to me, Bex is beautiful. Still beautiful. The beautiful girl (woman) I remember. I sit and wait for them, wondering if this is what it is like to be Tommo. How I wish I could trade places with him. I did that once. But could I ever do it again?
Ten minutes later – ten minutes can seem endless – they appear back in front of me.
‘Well?’ I ask.
‘A pair of Spanx and she’ll be a MILF.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Good,’ Bex says. ‘Ignore her.’ She turns to her daughter. ‘I presume there’s a compliment in there somewhere but we need to have a serious chat sometime very soon about feminism.’
‘Yeah, whatever. Can I get a pair of shoes to go with this dress?’ Lou’s all sweetness and light. ‘Please.’
‘Okay. Just be quick about it.’
Loulou rummages around the shoes with the highest heels and the pointiest toes.
‘She used to brandish that little word to maximum effect in the sweetshop on a Friday after school, asking for another strawberry shoelace,’ Bex says.
‘Which word?’
‘Please.’
‘Ah. That word.’
‘Demands were much smaller back then. A lot cheaper. But I’m so chuffed to spend time with her – no arguing or moaning or sulking. You’ve helped. Tommo would never dream of coming in Topshop. It’s like having my little girl back. I’d quite possibly promise her breast implants for Christmas if she asked. Thankfully she hasn’t.’ She looks at me and I see a spark of the old Bex.
‘I miss it. The small shoes, the lullabies, the nappies flapping on the washing line. I miss spending time with my daughter. But I can’t tell her that. If you name something, teenagers react. You have to go with it, not verbalise feelings. Feelings are bad unless discussed with friends or announced to the world via Facebook. You certainly don’t share them with your parents.’ She sighs that old Bex sigh. ‘Teenagers are bloody hard work.’
‘I certainly found it hard work being a teenager.’
Bex has tears in her eyes. ‘You had to go to prison when you were just a bit older than Ethan. I can’t imagine it. Well, I can. I knew enough about prison what with Dad working at Princetown. But when I visited you, it was a surprise.’
‘In what way?’
‘You actually seemed to be coping. You coped a whole lot better than Tommo ever would’ve done which made me think it was the right decision, despite the lies, despite the perjury, but now, I don’t know. I don’t think Tommo has learned anything.’
‘Trouble in the garden of Eden?’
‘It was never that. At best it was a half-hearted garden, where we struggled to keep the grass cut and the shrubs pruned. Now it’s overgrown with Japanese knotweed.’
‘You always had a way with words.’
‘Actions are better than words. I don’t want to be a moany woman. I want to be that woman back at university, in Fem Soc, in the anti-apartheid movement, a hunt sab.’
‘You can be,’ I tell her. ‘But first, time for that glass of wine.’
And she takes me by the hand. She actually takes me by the hand.
_________________________
*UKIP: another reason to vote Yes.
Kilt
Definitely an occasion for the kilt. I wasn’t sure when I packed it but after my conversation with Tommo, I know I need to wear it. It is my heritage. My armour and protection. You’re never too old to be a superhero.
God save the King.
I have a bottle of Champagne clutched to my breast like a bairn. I walk the corridors to their room. (I am indeed forever doomed to walk corridors.)
I knock loudly and wait.
Ethan lets me in, says something that sounds like ‘all right’.
‘Ah, it’s the old man of Hoy,’ says Tommo. He’s gaunt, tired, still in bed. His sandwiches from earlier unopened. Several empty miniatures.
‘You look like shite.’
‘You look like Bonnie Prince Charlie.’
‘The prince would’ve looked nothing like this. That’s a Romanticised view of us Scots you like to portray. But seriously, you really do look rough.’
Lou comes out the bathroom. ‘Wow, Cameron. You look awesome. And Champagne! Swag or what?’ She relieves me of the bottle. ‘Dad, Cameron’s brought fizz. Can I have a glass?’
‘Thanks, Cameron.’ Bex is here now – where did she appear from? – in the Topshop dress that could be Vivienne Westwood for all I know about fashion. But I know she looks beautiful. ‘Take a seat.’
I make my way to one of the armchairs by the window, dodging phone chargers, odd socks, ransacked suitcases, Bex right behind me, gathering up a clump of clothes so I can sit down.
There is a small pop. We look round and see Loulou licking the neck of the bottle.
‘Lou! What are you doing?’
‘I’m getting our guest a drink. He could be like dead of thirst by the time you or Dad sort him one out.’ Then she pours a glass, tipping it in a worryingly expert way.
‘What?’ So much teenage angst and issues and rites of passage are contained in that word. In that expression.
‘We need to have a chat later, Loulou.’
Loulou rolls her eyes and pouts.
‘You can open a bottle of Champagne?’ I ask, chirpy as David Tennant on a manic day. ‘Very sophisticated.’
‘Teenagers in a small town have to do something.’ She glances sideways at her mother, challenging her, knowing full well that Bex will hold back, desperate to unearth information on her daughter’s secret life.
‘Teenagers with too much money and time on their hands,’ Tommo says.
‘We had to make do with Irn-Bru.’
‘Gross.’ Lou pulls a face, changes the direction of the conversation in that way only teenagers and politicians can. ‘Dad’s got a gross cough. Mum’s always banging on at him to give up smoking. He won’t eat. Keeps moaning about needing a fag but won’t go out in the rain.’ She pauses for a breath. ‘So he’s dead grumpy.’
‘You really should eat, Tommo,’ Bex says. ‘There’ll only be canapés tonight. You’ll be starving when we get back and there’s no way you’re ordering room service.’
‘Stop nagging, the pair of you. I’ll be fine.’ Tommo wafts us away, shuts his eyes, his face a death mask, a ghost of its former self. He is disappearing before our eyes.
‘Where’s Ethan?’ I ask.
Bex points to an interconnecting door. ‘The twins are sleeping through there. I’d better see if he’s up.’
Lou joins me, sits in the other armchair. ‘Cheer
s,’ she says.
‘Bottoms up.’ We chink glasses.
Loulou crosses her legs, one long limb over the other, and a ghoulish sound buzzes in my head. Scraping metal. Shattering glass. Shrieking sirens. The crash is always there, swimming in my skull, tugging me under. The echo of voices, the concentrated breaths, the quickening heartbeat.
‘Is that like a Scottish phrase?’ Loulou asks.
‘Sorry?’
‘Bottoms up.’
‘I think it’s one of yours.’
‘Mine?’
‘You English.’ I gulp back my drink. I take my eyes away from her legs. And I certainly don’t let myself think about bottoms.
I am not a perv.
Bex is back, followed by a shaggy-haired son. She pours herself a glass of bubbly, while he lies down on the bed. (His other passion is obviously sleeping.) She takes a sip and then busies herself hunting down earrings, shoes, bag, faffing about, not able to keep still.
‘I saw you in that restaurant last night,’ Loulou says to me in a quiet voice. ‘On your own.’ She places a tendril of her hair behind an ear mutilated by a battalion of earrings. ‘Didn’t you want to eat with us? Is this a nightmare, being back with old student friends?’
Bex throws a warning look at me and I realise they’ve never told their children the story of our time in Lancaster. Which I can understand. I mean, why would they? But then, why are they here? A solution for their relationship? Peace with their past? ‘Are you ready to go, Lou?’
‘Almost.’ She gets up slowly, reluctantly, from the chair, her dress somehow shorter than it was in Topshop. She totters away and disappears through the connecting door.
‘You look great,’ I tell Bex.
‘Not quite up to the standards of the Ritz but it’ll do.’
‘You look gorgeous.’
‘The old Cameron would never have said that. You’ve changed.’ She shakes her head. ‘Of course you have. We all have.’
‘Don’t look so worried.’
‘Do I look worried?’
‘Yes, you do.’ And I wonder if she thinks I’ve spent all these years planning to get back at them through their children. Maybe she thinks I’m mad. A loose cannon.
‘Mum says it’s not Dad she should be worried about.’ Loulou’s back, bottle in hand. She tops up my glass. ‘It should be you,’ she says.
‘Me?’
‘Mum says you’re clearly depressed, a prime candidate for suicide, a male in his mid-forties, a failed marriage and the possible loss of your job and home.’
‘Lou!’ Bex glares at her daughter but it has no effect except for eliciting a shrug.
‘Just sayin’.’
‘Well, don’t just say. Think.’
‘She’s right.’ I lean back in my chair but misjudge its angle, bumping the back of my head and jarring my neck. I sit upright again. Hear a click. Old bones. ‘I should be depressed. But I’m not. At least I don’t think so.’
‘You’d know if you were depressed,’ Tommo says, a voice from the bed.
‘That’s not necessarily true,’ Bex says.
‘The social worker’s always right.’ Back to Tommo.
Bex slugs back her champagne and holds it out for Lou to refill.
When the glass is full-to-overflowing, Lou checks her mother for a moment. ‘You haven’t blended your make-up properly, Mum,’ she says. ‘You’ll draw attention to yourself.’
‘This from the girl with fake eyelashes and a Jaffa orange face?’ Tommo quips.
Loulou pouts.
Bex downs her drink.
‘Maybe we should go,’ I suggest.
‘Yep,’ says Tommo. He rolls out of bed and I see that he already has his suit on, the crumpled look only Tommo can get away with. ‘Let’s hit the high road.’
I want to hit Tommo. I want to kiss Bex. I want to lie down on the floor and have a hissy fit of a tantrum. But I go with them, from the room, down the sodding corridor, into the lift, down to whatever the evening has in store for us.
The grapes for Icewine are harvested only when a sustained temperature of -8°C or lower is reached, between December and February. By this point, the grapes have dehydrated and the juices have concentrated. This makes for a unique, full, rich flavour.
Armstrong King Estates, Ontario, Canada
Glass
We’re back in that lift, the five of us, all glammed up, the smell of vetivert vying with cologne, perfume and Lynx. I’m glad for my kilt, its comforting heaviness, its freedom. Amanda would never let me wear it; thought it was all a big joke. But then she was from Birmingham. Home of Ozzy Osbourne and Duran Duran.
The lift stops and the doors open.
‘Are we ready?’ Bex doesn’t wait. She’s out, leading the way to the Burlington Suite where the event is taking place, six fifteen so we shouldn’t be the first, shouldn’t be late, but any minute now we’ll be seeing her. We’ll be seeing Christie Armstrong.
The Burlington is already heaving by the time we get there, thanks to Lou’s last minute eyelash crisis. We had to wait for Bex to fix it. She couldn’t. In the end it was me who helped her stick it back on. I used to do this for Amanda.
A silver tray of white wine is proffered by a waiter in black and white – like a snooker player – and we all swipe a glass. A clear head is needed but one of these will calm the nerves a wee bit. Nerves that make me want to fetch up and we don’t want puke all over the fancy carpet. Not a nice photo for the society pages.
The room is braw. Swanky. Oil paintings of toffs in wigs and gowns, fat powdered faces and fancy clothes. A million miles from the plastic pint glasses of Fylde JCR. A million miles from my granny’s croft in Orkney. English accents all around. Surround sound. Suits and ties. What money can buy. My eye. I’ve lost the others already. Billy-no-mates. A student again, not the man who stepped into someone else’s shoes and ended up inside a prison cell.
And there she is, Christie. I see her unmistakeable blonde head through the swarm of guests. She is standing by a display of wine. Bottles and glasses, all shapes and sizes, gleaming like jewels. She’s listening politely to some ruddy Hoorah Henry, that broad toothy smile of hers, that sleek easy manner.
Christie. She is standing. Standing. I half-expected a wheelchair but she appears unchanged. Still tall, athletic, graceful. I can only see her from the waist up so I don’t know what… well, what she looks like… down there.
Only now she’s walking towards me, people parting the waves as if for the queen. Just call me the Ice Queen. A smile on her face, her eyes bright, her hair golden. I concentrate on her clothes. A vibrant blue dress. Classic, silk, graceful. Mad Men style – fitted bodice, cinched waist, flared skirt with nets, falling just below the knee. * And stilettos. Two of them. I focus on her breasts instead of her shoes, which somehow, I don’t know how, seems better. They are of course bonnie breasts but that’s not the point. The point is not to look at the leg, or the absence of a leg, or whatever is or isn’t there now, because she has two legs, two feet, a pair of heels, because here she is, in front of me, and I am kissing her on both cheeks and she is wrestling me into an awkward hug.
‘It’s been too long.’
‘Aye.’ What else am I supposed to say? I have no idea how I stand with her. Or how she stands with me. Or how she stands at all.
‘You seen the others yet?’
‘They’re here somewhere.’ I make an exaggerated attempt to look for them, swivelling my head this way and that like an owl. Like that girl from The Exorcist.
‘And the kids?’ she asks. ‘What are they like?’
‘They’re teenagers.’
She waits for me to elaborate.
‘They’re all right. The girl’s friendly. The boy’s quiet.’
‘So the apples fell a long way from the tree then?’
‘Don’t they always?’
‘Not in my case. I’m half-Mum/half-Dad.’
‘Except it would be grapes from the vine, not apples from th
e tree.’
She laughs. ‘That’s pretty funny, Cameron.’
I laugh too but it comes out too loud and people standing nearby turn their heads to see what’s so funny.
‘What d’ya think of the wine?’ She nods at my empty glass. ‘You like it?’
‘Very nice.’
‘Can I get you another?’
‘No, thank you. I’m okay for now.’
‘Wait till you try the Icewine. You’ll be blown away.’
‘I’m sure I will.’
She smiles at me. Her lips are a little thinner, tighter, than I remember them. A slash of blood-red lipstick. ‘You drink then?’ she asks.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You like a drink these days? You never used to be one for drinking.’
‘I have the odd glass of wine.’
‘None of the hard liquor?’
‘You mean whisky?’
‘Or vodka?’
‘Why?’
‘No reason,’ she says.
But there’s a reason. And the reason hits me like a blow to the stomach.
Christie doesn’t know. She doesn’t remember. She still believes it was me driving the car.
‘To be truthful, I never felt comfortable blaming it all on you, Cameron.’ She cuts through any sense of protocol, piercing the heart of the matter. ‘Tommo and Bex were the ones to louse up that whole Top of the Pops thing. It was Tommo who insisted we stop off at the pub. I could’ve said no. I could’ve called a cab. I could’ve walked or even gotten a lift off Richard. But I was crazy, and a little freaked by Richard, and without thinking I jumped inside that wreck of a Ford and, just a few minutes later, it was totalled. And I was very nearly totalled. But I somehow got out of there alive and for that I’m thankful.’
I feel my tear ducts threaten to spurt. I must not cry. I will not cry. I will not touch the oven or I will get burnt.
‘It wasn’t intentional,’ she says, gripping my arm, her fingers strong. ‘It was a series of events that started when you cracked my rib. Or maybe further back when I decided to buy a bun with raisins. Or when I decided to study overseas. It’s pointless blaming anyone for what happened that night.’