by Janey Fraser
‘The trouble with teenagers’, he was hissing, ‘is that they just don’t know where to stop. And whose fault is that? That’s right. Their parents!’
Andy switched off the programme and shut the open fridge door, which was making a loud angry bleeping sound. Then he headed for the French windows, made at great expense in Lyons, which were banging against the outside wall in the breeze because no one had fastened them properly. Bloody hell. There were hordes of teenagers lying on the lawn. Laughing, drinking and smoking!
‘Mel! Nattie!’ He strode out, hardly believing his eyes. A group of large kids were sitting cross-legged on the giant trampoline that they’d bought the girls when they were younger. Instead of jumping on it, they now used it as a giant outdoor crash pad. Was that his youngest daughter? Swigging from a wine bottle? Next to a docking station.
‘Mel asked everyone back after the geography trip, Dad!’ Natasha’s slurred voice indicated he should know that already.
‘But you’ve got school tomorrow.’
‘It’s half-term!’
Was it? Why hadn’t anyone told him? Dimly Andy remembered one of the mums asking at last week’s session if there would still be a parenting class next week because if there was, she was going to have to miss it.
‘That still doesn’t explain this, young lady.’ Andy pointed to the cigarette in Natasha’s hand.
‘Chill out, Dad.’
Chill out! He made to take it away from her but something stopped him. Something from the Perfect Parents’ handbook for teenagers. Try seeing the situation from their point of view.
Bugger that. ‘WHERE’S YOUR SISTER?’
‘There’s no need to shout, Dad. She’s upstairs. And give me back my cigarette.’ Natasha lay down again on the trampoline next to some kid in a leather jacket. Leaning forward, Andy grabbed the phone from its dock, cutting the music off. There was a mass groan of ‘Who did that?’
‘Right everyone. Party’s over. Go back to your own homes. But clear up this mess first. Do you get me?’
Natasha’s face was furious. ‘Dad, you’re embarrassing me!’
She spoke as though he’d just committed the biggest sin in the world. ‘Too bad. When you’ve finished tidying, I want to talk to you. Both of you.’ Then he strode back into the house to find Mel. Going up the stairs, he had to step around the clothes lying everywhere. It was like an assault course.
But nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him when he went into Mel’s room. Oh my God. Was that really his daughter? His little girl? Half-naked? With a boy?
Andy turned away, clutching the door for support.
‘Dad!’
Mel’s voice suggested she was as shocked as he was. But it wasn’t just the bedroom scene that had thrown him. It was the smell. The sweet distinctive fragrance that indicated Bobbie’s accusation had been right.
‘GET OUT,’ he snarled at the youth. ‘As for you, Mel, I want you downstairs. Immediately. We need to talk.’
They hadn’t been in any fit state to talk, of course, so it had had to wait until morning. Well, lunchtime actually because that was how long it took them to stumble down to the kitchen, bleary-eyed with messed-up hair and smudged mascara. They didn’t look anything like the daughters he thought he knew.
‘Sit down.’ Andy indicated the kitchen table where he had put a large pot of coffee. The smell was calming. ‘Croissants, anyone?’
They eyed him with suspicion. Exactly what he had hoped for. Andy hadn’t sat up all night, mugging up on the Perfect Parents’ handbook for nothing. Change your pattern, it suggested. Instead of yelling, be their friend.
Here goes!
‘It must have been tempting to have a party when Mum was away and I was out for the evening,’ he began, pouring out the coffee into one of Pamela’s fine china mugs.
Mel snorted. ‘I’ve told you, Dad. I didn’t have sex. We just had a party. Mum never minds. You just didn’t know before cos you were always away.’
That hurt.
‘But she didn’t let you smoke and drink, did she?’
Natasha giggled. ‘She did it with us, Dad! My friends love her. They think she’s cool.’
Were they speaking about the same woman?
‘The thing is, Dad,’ said Mel, talking as though she was the adult giving some advice to a kid, ‘we have an arrangement, Mum and us.’
An arrangement?
‘Sure,’ Natasha piped up. ‘We make sure everything’s nice and calm for you when you’re around but then we do what we want when you’re away working.’
This didn’t fit into the Perfect Parents’ handbook. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘It makes it easier.’ Mel broke off a piece of croissant and stuffed it into her mouth. ‘That’s what Mum says. She hates arguments.’
That was true enough. Pamela was always cool and unflappable. Almost too much so. ‘But what about the drugs?’
‘Drugs?’ Mel laughed. ‘Cannabis is harmless.’
‘No it’s not.’ He felt his voice rising. ‘That’s why it’s illegal. It can tip some people over the edge; make them psychotic.’
‘But Mum did it when she was younger.’ Nattie’s voice sliced through the air. ‘She told us.’
Andy couldn’t speak for a moment. Then he found his voice. ‘Well, she shouldn’t have.’
‘Shouldn’t have taken it or shouldn’t have told us?’
He was still reeling. ‘Both,’ he managed to say.
Mel shrugged. ‘It’s why we get on, Mum and us. We’re more like friends than mother and daughter.’
Exactly what the parenting handbook said you shouldn’t be! Parents need to be approachable without being best buddies.
But this was on another level. This was dangerous. Drugs, in Andy’s mind, had always been out of bounds, even when he’d been a teenager. He didn’t care for anything that made him lose control; drink could be just as dangerous – that night with Kieran, all those years ago, had taught him that.
Sometimes it’s best to discuss things later when everyone’s calmed down. That was another tip from the handbook.
Andy took a deep breath. ‘OK. But I don’t want you smoking that stuff any more. Or drinking so much. I mean it, both of you. Otherwise I’ll …’
He stopped, wondering exactly what he would do. Haul them down to the nearest police station? Withdraw their allowance? This was something he needed to discuss with Pamela; it was the kind of decision that both parents needed to make. ‘Otherwise there’ll be trouble,’ he ended lamely. ‘Now why don’t you finish breakfast and I’ll take you out somewhere. How about bowling?’
Mel snorted. ‘We’re not kids any more, Dad.’ She stood up, stretching. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
‘Me too.’ Nattie gave him a nervous look before planting a kiss on his cheek. ‘Sorry, Dad.’
‘I’ve got to speak to you,’ he said when Pamela finally picked up her mobile phone. ‘Something’s happened.’
Her voice, as collected as ever, didn’t seem unduly alarmed. ‘What, Andy?’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Has the dishwasher broken down? Or couldn’t you find your way to the supermarket?’
‘Look.’ He tried to stay calm. ‘I can see why you’re doing this. You’ve gone off to your mother’s to show me that it’s not easy being a parent and you’re right. But did you know that Mel is smoking cannabis?’
She made a so-what noise. ‘Don’t make such a fuss. They all do it nowadays. It’s better that they experiment in the open than behind their bedroom door.’
So it was true! She did know. ‘What’s got into you, Pamela?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Coming, Mummy. I won’t be long. Sorry, Andy. Got to go.’
‘But …’
Too late. She’d put the phone down. Right. Andy’s hands closed round his car keys. ‘I’m going out,’ he called up the stairs but the music coming from the girls’ bedrooms was too loud for him to be heard. Maybe it was better they didn’t k
now he was going or they might have another party. He’d be back before nightfall, anyway. It wouldn’t take that long to drive down to Sussex.
Andy hadn’t banked on the half-term traffic. He got stuck for ages behind a huge black people carrier with a GRUMPY DAD ON BOARD sticker in the back. Then his mobile rang with an Unknown call but he didn’t take it because he’d left his hands-free behind.
‘Quite the model citizen now, aren’t we?’ he could just imagine Kieran jeering.
Finally he reached Camilla’s village: a pretty leafy hamlet which had managed to hang on to its post office-cum-shop with ivy trailing up the front. Camilla’s own home, a pink thatched-roofed cottage which she’d moved into after her husband’s death, was deceptively large inside. If that was her idea of ‘downsizing’, it was a good thing she’d never seen the places he’d grown up in.
It was lunchtime, Andy realised as his stomach rumbled. Or was it making that noise because he was frightened? This was ridiculous! How could he be nervous of his own wife, just because she was beautiful and aloof and had so much more poise in the tip of her little finger than he could ever have?
‘Andrew!’ His mother-in-law’s shocked expression gave him a certain amount of pleasure. Suspiciously, he glanced at her arm. It was indeed in a cast. So Pamela had been telling him the truth about that one.
‘I’ve come to see Pamela,’ he said firmly.
Her mouth, with that trademark pink glossy lipstick, tightened. ‘Thought you might. You’d better come in.’
Honestly, after all this time, she could be a bit more civil, couldn’t she?
‘Pamela!’ She was calling up the stairs; thick, heavy oak stairs that you couldn’t get nowadays, with family photographs lining the walls. Pictures of his wife as a child on her pony. Pictures of Rob in his cricket whites, sitting very straight in a row of shiny-faced boys. Each one, no doubt, with a family behind them.
‘Pamela!’ called his mother-in-law again. ‘You’ve got a visitor!’
A visitor! Is that what he’d become? How about husband? Then he stopped. Pamela was walking down, hanging on to the handrail. How pale she was! Thin too. And she was looking at him as though she was trying to work out who he was.
‘Are you ill?’ asked Andy, unable to hold back his shock.
Camilla’s voice cut in. ‘She’s been over-doing it. If you’d been at home for years with two children, you’d understand that she needs a rest.’
‘But I thought she was helping you!’
‘There’s no need to talk about me as though I wasn’t here.’ Pamela kissed Andy’s cheek briefly before stepping back and linking her arm with her mother’s. ‘We’re helping each other, aren’t we, Mummy?’
Talk about feeling shut out! But that wasn’t new. Whenever Pamela and her mother got together, they seemed to form an invincible unit against the rest of the world.
‘Shall we go into the drawing room? Sit down, Andy. Now what’s going on? It’s all right, Mummy. You can stay.’
‘Actually, Camilla,’ retorted Andy, finally finding his voice. ‘I’d like some time with my wife. Alone.’
His mother-in-law raised her eyebrows but rose up from her seat nevertheless, her back straight and erect despite that arm. ‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said tersely. ‘One-handed. No, don’t get up, Pamela, dear. I can manage.’
At last! ‘If you found it so difficult with the girls, why didn’t you say?’ he asked when she’d gone.
Pamela moved away from him on the pale yellow sofa, just like their own at home. ‘There’s no need to be confrontational!’
Was he? Andy thought back to the role play they’d been doing at school. Empathise. Positive praise. ‘You’ve done a great job with our daughters,’ he added.
Pamela’s face softened slightly. ‘Really?’
He hesitated, wanting to be truthful without alienating her again. ‘They’re wonderful when people come round and they always seemed very well behaved when I was home.’
Pamela laughed. ‘That wasn’t very often, was it?’
‘We’ve been through that. If I didn’t work, we wouldn’t have the lifestyle we have now. That’s another thing.’ He had been dreading this bit. ‘How can you owe ten thousand pounds?’
Immediately her face darkened. ‘How did you know?’
‘You had a final demand—’
‘You’ve been opening my post?’
His chest began to pound. ‘I thought it might be urgent.’
‘You had no right.’ Pamela stood up, her pale face taut. ‘If you can’t respect my privacy, Andy, perhaps we should have another think about our marriage. As for the girls, I brought them up my way.’
‘By allowing them to put on a front and then letting them do what they wanted behind my back.’
‘Exactly,’ she snapped back. ‘It was easier. Go on, criticise me if you want. But I’d like to see you do a better job. That’s why I’m having a break. It’s also why I couldn’t do the parenting course. It would have made me feel like a fraud. And before you ask, I didn’t volunteer to run it – I was invited because everyone thinks I’m perfect. Well I’m not, as you’re about to find out.’
She gave him a little push. ‘Now go. Back to teenage hell. And good luck. You’ll need it. Go. GO, I SAID.’
This wasn’t his Pamela! This wasn’t his wife! What had got into her? And what on earth had she meant when she’d said that stuff about ‘finding out’? Andy felt all his old insecurities flooding back. ‘You’re not going to leave me, are you?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
To his horror, his wife burst into tears. Pamela never cried.
‘Shhhh.’ Camilla came rushing in, taking her daughter in her arms. ‘It’s all right, darling. It’s all right. Go and lie down and I’ll see Andrew out.’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he started to say as Camilla virtually frogmarched him to the door with her good arm.
Then she stopped to face him and to his surprise, he saw that her face looked oddly sympathetic. ‘I know it’s not. Well, not all of it. You’ve got to understand, Andrew. Pamela’s going through a difficult time at the moment. She has some tricky choices to make.’
‘What do you mean?’
For a moment, his mother-in-law looked as though she was going to say something but then thought better of it. ‘Nothing. Please leave, Andrew. Please. You’re making it worse. Give Pamela a few weeks with me and she’ll be all right. I promise. She just needs a rest.’
Reluctantly, Andy went back to his car. Driving it round the corner, he stopped again, outside the post office, to gather his thoughts. Maybe Pamela was having a breakdown? That was it. The girls had got too much for her and instead of sharing with him (difficult, as he was never at home), she’d tried to sort it on her own. It was his fault.
BBRRM. Wow! Andy’s car shook as a sleek black sports car shot past, driven by a man in sunglasses and a determined look on his face. Bloody hell, that was close. Something made Andy get out and walk round the corner, just in time to see the sports car screech to a halt in Camilla’s drive. The man got out. Then the cottage’s door opened. It was Pamela! My God. They were hugging, and then the door shut.
Andy felt nausea rising up into his throat. His wife had been telling him a pack of lies. Pamela hadn’t come down to her mother’s to get away from the children. She had a lover! A boyfriend! And Camilla was providing a little love nest for her; letting her daughter get away with it, just as Pamela had allowed Mel and Nattie to get away with smoking and drinking and boys.
Shaking, Andy went back to the car. He could march back up. Knock on the door. Demand what was going on. But would that really be the right way to win his wife back – if that’s what he wanted to do?
Just then, his mobile vibrated in his jacket pocket. That Unknown caller again.
‘Hiya, Barry! Or should I say Andy?’
Not now …
‘Kieran, this isn’t a great time.’
‘Missed you too, m
ate! I would have been there last night but I had a job to do. Actually, there’s summat I want to talk to you about. How about a pint at your local? Don’t worry, I know where it is. I’ve found out where you live, you see!’ There was a chuckle. ‘That’s the thing about a small town like Corrywood. Everyone’s secrets come out in the end. Don’t they?’
There was a young dad in his teens,
Whose children refused to eat greens.
He bribed them with sweets
And all kinds of treats
Before opening a can of baked beans.
Chapter 19
BOBBIE
‘SO HOW LONG is it since—’
‘Mum! Look!’
‘Sorry, Mrs Botting. There seems to be some interference on the line.’ Bobbie glared at her daughter, gesticulated madly that she was on the phone, and tried again. ‘How long is it since you—’
‘MUM, I SAID, LOOK!’
‘I can’t,’ Bobbie mouthed. ‘I do apologise. As I was saying, how long is it since you had—’
‘MUM!’
This was no good! When Vanessa had asked if she could possibly mind the shop today because it was half-term and she had to do ‘some legal stuff’ in London with Sunshine, Bobbie had almost said no. Not only did she have the children at home but she also had to finish this week’s quota of market-research questions.
But then Vanessa gave her permission to take the kids into work with her (they could play at the back) and, privately, Bobbie had thought she might be able to fit in a few calls between clients. It was a bit quieter at the moment; lots of the regulars had gone off on skiing holidays. One woman announced that she’d paid for her trip to Verbier through saving up the year’s proceeds from her sales to the shop. ‘I intend to find a new man on the slopes who’ll buy me some more clothes!’ she’d informed Bobbie. It didn’t sound as though she was joking.
‘MUM, LOOK AT ME!’ Daisy now demanded, twirling in front of her. At any other time, Bobbie would have seen the funny side. Her daughter was wearing a sparkly green dress from the size-8 rail which actually looked rather good on her, especially with the jaunty little hat.