The Time of Their Lives

by Maeve Haran

  Sal gasped. Jonny Wheeler was the editor she was replacing.

  ‘So you might find – no promises mind, and this is strictly between you and me and not an employment tribunal – you were offered his job. Which is why I’d like you to hop over to New York next week and meet Lou. See what your take on the idea is, whether we should progress it or not. I can’t go, I’m too old, and Michael’s too entrenched, so it’ll have to be you.’

  Sudden nausea overwhelmed her, and Sal got up and left the room, saying she would be back in a moment.

  Once in the loo she dry-heaved over the lavatory pan, her chest aching with the effort and her head spinning. Should she tell Rose the truth?

  Reality flooded in like a freezing dawn. If Rose knew she had serious cancer that would be it. Rose would have no choice but to find another editor, and just at the very moment when she was doing so well and might actually be offered what she had been dreaming of – the permanent editorship of a magazine she could shape and steer to real success – everything would evaporate and she would be left jobless and penniless again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Rose asked when she sat down again.

  ‘I’m coming down with some hideous virus, I’m afraid. New York’s out for me. I’d be throwing up all over Manhattan.’

  ‘OK,’ Rose watched her closely, ‘perhaps we can prevaricate for a little while. I’ll keep you in touch.’

  ‘Thanks, Rose.’ Sal edged towards the door. ‘I think I’m going to have to work at home till this passes. It all sounds very exciting.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Rose studying her more intently, ‘yes it does, doesn’t it?’

  Claudia was feeling more cheerful. She had taken the decision to be nicer to Don instead of having a confrontation with him and to practice the dictum so beloved of agony aunts that they should spend more time together.

  Her mother was a little better as well. The medication seemed to be working and she had settled down. The only thing was, she was so much quieter than she had been and the irony was, Claudia still missed the old Olivia.

  It was like the joke Woody Allen told in Annie Hall. A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office and tells the doctor his brother thinks he’s a chicken. When the doctor says, why don’t you get him committed, the man shrugs and says, ‘I would but I need the eggs.’

  Somehow Claudia was finding the same thing. They needed her mother’s manic energy like that man needed the eggs. Of course she couldn’t admit this to anyone, not even to Don.

  Instead of holding her mother back, she needed to find things for her to do. What with that and taking her dad to his physio appointments, plus the choir and the chance to get involved with Daniel’s charity, life here was proving a lot busier than she’d expected.

  She was about to leave to pick her father up when the phone rang. It was their daughter, Gaby, announcing that she was coming home for the weekend.

  ‘How lovely,’ Claudia said and meant it. It had been quite a while since Gaby had visited.

  ‘How’s Vito?’

  ‘He’s taken the country by storm. He was a wonderful present.’

  ‘Not cowed by all the snooty setters?’

  ‘He looks down on them from the basket of my friend

  Betty’s scooter.’

  ‘Mu-um . . . you’re not turning that poor dog into a replacement child, I hope?’

  Why ever not, thought Claudia, it was what most people did when their children left. She’d seen it time and time again. As soon as children stopped being a responsibility people got a dog and worried about that instead.

  ‘By the way,’ Gaby added tantalizingly. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  ‘A nice surprise?’ Claudia wasn’t sure she was up to a nasty one.

  ‘I think so. You’ll have to wait and see.’

  Claudia put the phone down, bemused. There was a kind of suppressed excitement in Gaby’s voice she’d never heard before.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Don. There was a slight tone of anxiety in his tone. Had he thought it might be the mysterious Marianne?

  ‘Gaby. She’s coming home this weekend and she’s got a surprise for us.’

  ‘I hope she hasn’t decided working for an architect’s too dull and she wants to be an airline pilot or an astrophysicist. Did she give you any inkling?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’ She started to look for her car keys. ‘I’ve just got to drop Dad at the cottage hospital. Then how about us taking Vito for a walk and a pub lunch later?’

  ‘I’d love to but’ – Don looked shifty – ‘there’s something I need to get on with.’

  Claudia wondered whether to have it out then and there about why he was being so evasive all of a sudden but she would be late for her father. ‘All right. See you later. Why don’t we have supper early and watch a film?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation before he answered. ‘Yes, that’d be nice.’

  Her father’s appointment went smoothly and he was declared to be making good progress. ‘A bit more exercise would help, though,’ insisted the physio. ‘A short walk every day. Could you manage that?’

  Len nodded but Claudia knew that without her mother’s efficiency and energy to push him, he probably wouldn’t. It was so sad that Olivia’s energy seemed to be so tied up with her condition. They’d have to hope in time a happy medium could be achieved. For all their sakes.

  Ella had spent a pleasant morning in the warm shed at the allotment wondering if it was too early to plant her sweet peas and thinking how best to try and make it up with Sal. The walk home was glorious with the real promise of warm weather to come. A swan was already building its nest on the bank.

  She stopped for a moment watching a small bird with a twig in its beak that was almost bigger than itself.

  The sun shone so brightly that she had to take her cardigan off for the first time this year.

  Life felt good.

  To her surprise she saw that there was someone sitting on the top of the stone steps outside her front door. It was her daughter Julia.

  Her eyes were red and her hair unbrushed.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, darling, haven’t you got a key?’

  ‘You took it, Mum, don’t you remember?’

  Ella felt a flash of guilt that she’d been responsible for locking Julia out of her family home.

  ‘Mum, I’ve left Neil.’

  Ella’s newfound optimism about her daughter’s marriage evaporated like the morning mist. She’d really thought things might change for them. ‘Oh, darling, come in. Quick!’

  She opened the front door, too agitated to notice the usual aroma of beeswax mixed with the scent of lilies from the bunch on the hall table.

  ‘Let’s have a cup of tea. Come and tell me what happened.’

  ‘Neil’s just so petty-minded! He keeps watching me all the time as if I’m about to run off after Wenceslaus! He’s like some little Hitler who just wants to guard his own possessions when he doesn’t really value them anyway!’

  ‘Aren’t you being a bit harsh?’ Ella was thinking of Neil’s concern the other day for both Julia and their marriage. ‘How do you know he doesn’t value you?’

  ‘Because he never bloody shows it! He’s always out somewhere. I might as well be living on my own.’

  Ella swirled the tea round in the pot. ‘Have you said that to him, that you want to see more of him, spend some time together?’

  ‘What’s the point, Mum? It wouldn’t make any bloody difference.’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Why are you suddenly taking his side?’ Julia looked at her suspiciously. ‘You’ve never been able to stand him. You always made that quite obvious. Even the boys notice.’ She stood up suddenly. ‘You don’t want me here!’ she accused. ‘I was always in the way! Not now, Julia, I’m busy! Maybe later, Julia, now I just have to make this phone call. Dad was the one who had time for us, not you!’

  Ella cringed at the accuracy of that imitation of her. Poor little Julia.r />
  ‘The thing is, he came round here.’

  ‘Who came round here? You’re not making sense.’

  ‘Neil did. He came round to ask my advice.’

  ‘Neil would never do that. You must have imagined it. What about, anyway?’

  ‘How to make you happier, to try and keep your marriage together. Julia, he wasn’t blaming you. I said I thought perhaps you were a bit lonely.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t made a bloody bit of difference. He’s actually disappeared off in the car today to close another sale.’ Her eyes flashed with unshed tears. ‘I’m not going back! If you won’t have me, I’ll find a bedsit or something.’

  ‘Oh, darling, you can’t have the boys in a bedsit!’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like him! That’s just the sort of thing Neil would say.’

  She put her arm round Julia. ‘You go and sit down. I’ll see what I can rustle up for supper.’

  But what she really wanted to do was scream: ‘I’m too old for this! What is the matter with everyone? You should be looking after me!’

  But one truth was obvious to Ella and all her friends. Once you were a mother, you were always a mother.

  After supper they watched TV and Ella noticed how Julia glanced at the clock and then at her bag, as if she expected her phone to ring at any time.

  By 11.30 they were both yawning. ‘Why don’t you go up for a bath and I’ll bring a hottie up to you?’

  ‘Thanks, Mum, but I’m not a child, I’ll be fine. Do you have a phone charger I could use now that you’ve joined the modern world?’

  Julia found her iPhone charger and handed it over. She understood the hidden meaning in the request. Julia might say she wasn’t going back to Neil, but she didn’t want to miss a call from him all the same.

  Once Julia had gone upstairs she made a hot water bottle for herself, the nights were still cold and it was the one indulgence she’d begun at Laurence’s death to warm the gap left in their big bed.

  Given Neil’s concern at the state of their marriage, she was surprised he hadn’t called. On the spur of the moment she rang their home number. Julia would kill her but then Julia wouldn’t know. The tone rang and rang, not even switching to answering machine. Strange how desolate the sound of a phone not being answered could be.

  Maybe Julia was right. Maybe the situation was beyond repair and Neil really had gone away.

  She padded up the carpeted stairs and knocked on Julia’s door. When there no answer she opened it. Julia was fast asleep, the bedside light still on. Ella went in and sat for a moment on her bed. The trouble was, you might have a part in causing your children’s problems but you could rarely solve them. What was it Larkin so famously wrote about your Mum and Dad fucking you up, even if they didn’t mean to?

  She thought of Harry and Mark, shuffled off to boarding school because their father wanted them to go, and how convinced he was that it would be the best thing for them. Why hadn’t Julia put her foot down and said no, when she was the kind of mother who wanted them at home?

  And was it their fault, hers and Laurence’s, that Julia might seem strong yet hadn’t been strong enough to fight against Neil’s wishes?

  When did the responsibility, or indeed the sense of fucking up, finish? When she was eighty and Julia fifty? Or would she still feel it on her deathbed?

  The temptation to write a blog about it came down upon her and she had to shake it off sternly. No more blogging for Ella.

  She kissed her daughter on the forehead and turned off the bedside light.

  As she did so another thought came to her. She’d kept this big house not only for herself but for her daughters to come to if they needed a haven.

  But was that altogether a good thing?

  Laura woke up and instantly buried her head under the duvet. She was at a loss over what to do with Sam, and Nigel’s breezy contribution about young men in Japan taking permanently to their beds had worried her more than she’d admitted. What if this was Sam’s protest at how his parents had screwed up their marriage?

  She sat up suddenly. There were unfamiliar sounds downstairs. She could hear TomTom mewing to be let out, which meant that there was someone in the kitchen. Laura sniffed the air. Surely that was the unmistakeable smell of bacon frying?

  For the briefest moment she thought maybe Simon had come back and was making one of his famous fry-ups.

  Laura scrambled out of bed, dressed hurriedly and went downstairs.

  The scene in the kitchen stopped her in her tracks.

  Bella, her rapidly increasing bump camouflaged in an enormous sweater, sat at the kitchen table with TomTom, purring wildly, on her knee. Nigel, massive as ever and still Goth-like apart from the pinny he wore which bore the legend NEVER TRUST A SKINNY COOK, stood at the cooker in front of a frying pan, from which the glorious smells were emanating.

  Also at the kitchen table, dressed in skinny jeans and a reasonably clean T-shirt, sat Sam.

  The Cure’s ‘Just Like Heaven’ blared out through Nigel’s iPod dock.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Sam smiled, as if he hadn’t been in bed for the last two weeks solid. ‘Nige has got tickets for Bloody Dead and Sexy! To think, one of my favourite bands are playing in Hammersmith and I didn’t even know!’

  It took all Laura’s strength of character not to fling her arms round Nigel’s knees and declare him her guardian angel. She had no idea who Bloody Dead and Sexy were but she was grateful to them as well.

  ‘Bacon butty?’ enquired Nigel and plonked a doorstep of white bread filled with sizzling bacon on her plate.

  Unsurprisingly, seeing as it was made by an angel, it tasted divine.

  As she munched away, it suddenly struck Laura how misleading appearances could be. Simon, whom she had seen as a responsible husband and father, was off making babies with a work colleague, while an eighteen-stone Goth had taken the part of Victorian pater familias.

  ‘And guess what?’ Sam grinned. ‘I’ve got an interview!’

  ‘Sam, that’s terrific,’ Laura congratulated.

  ‘Only trouble is, it’s in Manchester.’

  ‘Do you want me to drive you?’ she asked between mouthfuls. This was such good news she’d go to any lengths to make sure he got there.

  ‘Nige said he would.’

  ‘In his van?’

  It struck her that it was time Simon, Sam’s actual dad, helped out instead of Nigel having to do it. After breakfast, when Sam had disappeared upstairs again, Laura rang him.

  Reluctantly, Simon agreed he would come tomorrow and drive his son to his interview, moaning that he didn’t see why Sam shouldn’t get a train.

  ‘But, Simon,’ Laura pointed out. ‘You’re always saying you want to have more of a relationship with him.’

  Even this one gesture of paternal responsibility clearly annoyed the hell out of Suki. Simon was hardly on their doorstep when she rang and shouted at him down the mobile.

  ‘She wasn’t very happy I’d agreed to do it,’ Simon shrugged.

  ‘I could hear that,’ Laura replied. What a bitch, not even prepared to let Simon give his son some support after all he’d been through. Laura wished him good luck with her.

  And Sam wasn’t up yet, despite Laura taking him a cup of tea.

  ‘Hello, Sam,’ Simon greeted his son almost shyly when he did finally emerge looking surprisingly natty in a dark grey suit and narrow tie.

  ‘Dad, what are you doing here?’

  Simon looked nonplussed. ‘Giving you a lift to Manchester.’

  Sam shot a look at his mother.

  ‘Sorry, Dad, but I’m going with Bella’s boyfriend. He’s coming any minute.’

  He ran upstairs again to avoid arguing.

  Simon looked livid. He turned to Laura. ‘Did you deliberately set me up? I bet you knew he was going with that doofus all along.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought it would be a chance for you to spend time together.’

  ‘He clearly doesn’t want to spen
d time with me. Thanks a lot. I suppose this is all about showing how important you are to the kids, while I’m the shit. Everyone’s warned me about this, that you’d turn them against me and play the poor discarded wife. You can forget asking to stay here for his sake, I was a schmuck to even consider it. Suki was right. You’re just preying on my emotions because it suits you. She was right about today too. She told me not to come, that I was just being used because it suited you.’

  ‘Simon.’ Laura lost all patience. She couldn’t care less if Rowley had told her to be sweet and nice. ‘Just fuck OFF!’

  Simon turned on his heel and banged the door as he left, just as guilt and regret were beginning to sweep over Laura that she had let her temper make things worse for Bella and Sam.

  ‘That went well,’ commented Bella, who had been keeping out of sight in the sitting room.

  ‘Yes, didn’t it? Suki’ll be happy, she didn’t want him to come anyway.’

  ‘How can she be so mean?’

  ‘Either she’s a cow, or she’s not confident of him. Are you going with them?’ she asked Bella.

  ‘Nah. Boys’ day out. I’m going to curl on the sofa and watch Modern Family.’

  ‘Bella . . .’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Nigel’s going to make a really good dad.’

  ‘I could have told you that months ago, but you wouldn’t have believed me.’

  Laura put her arm round her daughter. ‘You’re right. I probably wouldn’t.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Bella grinned, ‘you’re mellowing in your old age.’

  ‘I’m having to challenge my assumptions,’ Laura conceded. ‘Take single mothers . . . I never expected at my time of life that I’d suddenly become one.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  Laura smiled. She felt so proud of her strong, feisty daughter. She had produced one child who would be all right no matter what. And maybe Sam would be all right too. Perhaps her marriage hadn’t been such a complete waste after all.

  ‘No word from Neil yet?’ Ella wished she could do more to ease her daughter’s unhappiness.

  ‘No. Shows how much he cares.’ Julia suddenly crumpled up on the kitchen table, her head buried in her arms.