The hair in question, I notice, has been recently touched up, taking her from almost-blonde to definitely blonde. She’s wearing more make-up than usual as well, but it doesn’t quite detract from the fact that her eyes look tired, and the lines around her mouth more pronounced. She’s wearing her favourite jumper, the one with sequinned love hearts on it, which she always calls her ‘cheer-me-up-top’.
There’s a black coffee in front of her, along with an untouched Christmas muffin that is oozing some kind of spicy syrup filling. She’s been ‘watching her figure’ for as long as I’ve been alive, my mum – although I have no idea why, as she’s still got the build she had as a 20-year-old, and is, like myself, on the petite side. She even joined Slimming World once, where she made herself highly unpopular by claiming to be struggling with her weight in a room full of women who really were.
She’s smiling at me, and at Cal, and anyone who didn’t know her might think she was perfectly happy and perfectly relaxed. It’s probably only me who spots the warning signs of tension: the strain in her face, the gentle tapping of her fingers on the table top, the slightly higher than normal pitch to her voice.
These are all signs I grew up learning to recognise, and signs that immediately put me into placatory mood in an attempt to offset any escalation.
‘Of course you can!’ I say, blinking my eyes rapidly to shake off my surprise and, if I’m entirely honest, any visible signs of the fact that I’m not 100 per cent thrilled to see her. I’m starting to think that I’m not a very nice person.
‘It’s lovely to see you,’ I semi-lie, ‘but why did you come here, and not to mine?’
‘I did try yours first, but there was no answer. I thought perhaps you were still in bed so I didn’t keep knocking.’
I try not to laugh at that one – as if I’d still be in bed, with Saul in the house! I also feel a bit like she’s sneakily trying to make me sound lazy in front of Cal. She probably isn’t, I’m just being paranoid. And defensive. And basically acting like a kid. Funny how you slip into your old roles around people you’ve known the whole of your life.
‘Oh, well – no. You must have called while I was taking Saul to nursery. Probably just missed you. Anyway, I’m glad you’re here.’
Cal looks from one of us to the other, his face set in a pleasant smile, his shirt sleeves rolled up around arms that are thick with muscle from a lifetime of manual labour. It would be easy to underestimate Cal, but he’s a lot more perceptive than he looks. He’s fitted into this world a lot more easily than I have, even though he grew up on the opposite side of it.
He stands up and stretches. There’s a brief moment where I notice pretty much every woman in the room stop what they’re doing and watch him, including the table full of middle-aged walkers, Laura from behind the counter, and even, dear God, my own mother.
‘Ladies,’ he says, placing his battered cowboy hat on his head and tipping it towards us, ‘it’s been a pleasure, but I have to get to work. Sandy, enjoy your stay, and I do hope we get to see more of you.’
She giggles in response – actually giggles – and reaches out to pat his hand.
‘Oh, so do I, Cal, so do I,’ she says, with a flutter of mascara-clad eyelashes, waving at him as he leaves.
‘Mum,’ I say, something of my horror creeping into my voice, ‘why did he call you Sandy? And were you … flirting with him?’
She shoots me a sideways look and shrugs.
‘Well, sweetie, of course I was flirting with him – have you got eyes? I’m fifty-three – not dead. He said he was going to shorten my name to Sandy, because Australians always shorten names, and because I reminded him of a young Olivia Newton-John when she was in Grease … anyway, I’m sure he’s used to being flirted with. No harm done.’
I nod, and have to concede that she has a point. He is used to it, and frankly seems to enjoy it. He’s a man who likes women, and women always seem to know that.
‘Fair enough. But if a man called Frank comes in – he’s tall and dresses like a farmer, because he is one, and has silver hair – then don’t flirt with him, okay?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s Cherie’s husband, and she’ll squash you like a bug.’
Mum lets out a confident snort, and replies: ‘Hah! I’d like to see her try!’
I glance over at Cherie, who is back behind the counter with Laura, helping her get ready for lunch. She’s tall, powerful, and a completely dominant presence, both physically and socially. I decide I’d quite like to see her try as well.
Mum and I sit in silence for a moment, looking at each other. As the silence stretches into something more awkward, I can see she’s putting on a show here; that her bravado is definitely covering something up. Something she doesn’t feel in control of.
She’s had her nails done, and decorated with little love-heart gems, and she’s wearing dangly earrings also in the shape of love hearts. Combined with the sequinned jumper, that’s a whole lot of love hearts going on. She’s put a lot of effort into her appearance, but despite it all, she still has the look of a woman brought low. Of someone fighting off the sadness inside.
‘You’d better eat that muffin,’ I say, pushing the plate towards her. Now that I notice it, it looks as though she’s lost a bit of weight as well, which she can’t really afford to lose. ‘They shoot people in here for not eating muffins, you know.’
She uses her knife to slice it in half, giving one side to me. She plays with it a bit, crumbling it up into pieces and moving it around the plate in the syrup that’s spilled out, but never actually eats any.
‘Sorry, love,’ she says, after a few seconds of muffin-bothering. ‘I don’t have much of an appetite. I stopped at the services on the M5 and had a big cooked breakfast. Wasn’t sure if you’d have anything in.’
She’s lying about that, and we both know it. She didn’t eat breakfast. I’d be surprised if she’s been eating much at all. The wave of sympathy I feel is slightly tempered by the fact that she added in that barb about my housekeeping skills, but the sympathy wins out.
‘Mum, I’m glad you came. I really am,’ I say, holding her hand just to stop her incessant tapping on the table. ‘But why are you here? What’s going on? The mystery phone calls, the texts, the fact that I’ve not been able to get hold of you for days? Is everything all right?’
‘Well, nobody’s died …’ she says quietly.
‘So I believe. But clearly something else is wrong. You’ve come all the way here, so you might as well talk to me. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong, can I?’
She bites her lip and stares off in the opposite direction. I see her clock Frank as he walks through the door, and that at least makes her smile.
‘That’s him, is it? Cherie’s hubby? Quite the gent, isn’t he? Like a sexy granddad …’
‘Mum!’ I say, slightly louder than I probably should have. I’m getting exasperated now. She’s only been here for half an hour and my nerves are already fraying.
She pulls a face at me, and replies: ‘All right, all right … don’t get your knickers in a twist. It’s your dad.’
‘What about Dad? Is he all right? I thought you said nobody was dying?’
‘He’s not dying, Katie. He’s … well, he’s very much living. Living with Fiona Whittaker from the next street over, in fact.’
‘Fiona Whittaker?’ I say, incredulous. ‘Fiona Whittaker, the woman who used to drive the ice cream van?’
‘Yes, her. She still does drive the ice cream van.’
‘Fiona Whittaker … the one who looked like she ate all the ice cream in her ice cream van?’
My mum simply nods, and starts opening sugar sachets for no good reason other than to give herself something to do with her hands.
‘The very same Fiona Whittaker, yes.’
I am momentarily so stunned by this that I simply can’t speak. There is so much wrong with what she’s just told me that I can’t quite take it in.
Still, you couldn’t get much further away from my mother’s physical type than Fiona Whittaker if you actually sat down and designed one for effect. And I’d stood with my dad buying ice cream from her on probably hundreds of occasions, and never picked up on any simmering sexual tension. Then again, I probably wouldn’t when I was six.
So him running away with Fiona Whittaker is, by itself, kind of weird. But weirder than who he’s run away with is the fact that he’s done it at all.
For all of their fighting and all of their mutual contempt, I’d always worked on the assumption that they’d be together forever, my mum and dad. Right up until the point where one of them gave the other a heart attack, or killed each other in a spatula duel gone bad.
I’d genuinely wanted them to split up when I was younger. I yearned for a scenario where I could visit them both in separate houses, and not be caught in the middle of it all; not be used as a pawn or an emotional human shield. Where we could do normal things together without the risk of someone getting shoved into a Christmas tree, or having a bowl of cereal emptied over their head at breakfast.
A world where I could come home from school and not lurk in the garden first, checking that nobody had thrown the other one’s clothes out of the window. I once found my dad’s Y-fronts hanging off a potted conifer, and never quite recovered.
And yet, they never did split up. They stuck together through what felt like sheer bloody-mindedness, clinging to a marriage that was so long dead it was practically a zombie. They seemed to despise each other, but cling to their stand-off. Maybe, I’d always thought, deep down they love each other – they just do the world’s best job of hiding it. And whenever I heard that phrase about there being a thin line between love and hate, I’d think of them – and how they lived their whole lives skipping over that particular line.
Once I’d left home in my teens, it was easier to deal with. Easier to accept them for what they were, and not to spend any more time wishing I could find out I was adopted and that my real parents were out there looking for me. And over time, I stopped being angry – I knew they loved me, and that they did their very best.
Trips home were still sometimes tense, although I’d laid down some pretty strict ground rules once Saul was on the scene. No fighting while he was there – ever. They mainly managed to stick to that, and limit themselves to barbed comments that he didn’t understand. So the tension was all on my end, not his – he didn’t have a clue; I on the other hand was constantly waiting for the ding-ding of the bell that signified the start of round 9007 in their battle royale.
But one thing I never expected was this. That one of them would finally call time on it all, and leave. That one of them would make a break for freedom and happiness, and presumably, in my dad’s case, free 99s with strawberry sauce whenever he fancied.
‘So,’ my mum prompts, making me realise that I’ve been sitting in silence doing an impression of one of Becca’s goldfish. ‘Don’t you have anything to say?’
‘Um … gosh. I don’t really know what to say, Mum. I’m completely shocked. What’s the situation now, then? When did all of this happen?’
She starts chopping up the muffin with the knife, reducing it to a sugary rubble, scraping the blade on the china and generally looking a little tiny bit psychotic.
‘I found out last week, but obviously it’d been going on a while. I knew there was something wrong – or I’d suspected anyway, for a few months. He was all … I don’t know … quiet. Content. He started working later shifts, and then going to bed early, and not complaining about anything, and … well. He just wasn’t himself.’
‘You mean he stopped fighting with you?’
She nods sadly, and I see a faint gleam of tears in her eyes. I think, from her body language, that they’re real. Only in her screwed-up world would a husband who seemed content, and stopped fighting, signify disaster. And yet it did – and I completely understand why. It must have totally confused her; she’d have felt like the rug of life had been tugged from beneath her feet.
‘Have you spoken to him since you found out? Have you sat down and properly talked?’
‘Well, he did come around on Monday night. To collect his things. I told him he’d find them in the garden, and that was that. He wasn’t even bothered, Katie – just walked back outside and started picking everything up off the lawn!’
I grimace inside, but try to keep my face calm and non-judgemental. That was a typical Mum move – and one that would usually have incited my father into a fit of purple-faced anger. The fact that he didn’t even rise to that kind of bait must have been terrible for her – all her expectations dashed. All of mine, too, to be honest.
If he’d stopped caring enough to fight with her, then he’d stopped caring. That would be the simple equation in her brain, and it was one I probably agreed with. I was sad for her, confused for me, and, I suspected, actually pretty impressed by my dad. If he’d done that when I was younger, it might have saved us all a lot of trouble.
‘All right, Mum. I’m so sorry. But you’re here now, and we can spend some time together, and it’ll get better – it really will. I know it might not feel like it now, but it will. You’ll stay for a bit, will you?’
‘If that’s okay, yes. I left my bags in the car. I just couldn’t stand it at home any more … it was just so quiet all the time. And I kept finding things of his lying around the house, like his shaving stuff in the bathroom and his old copies of Auto Trader in the downstairs loo and those tins of Irish stew he likes in the kitchen cupboard … and … well. I had to get away for a bit, love. The only thing I was grateful for was the weather – so she wasn’t driving around in the bloody ice cream van, looking all smug and loved up …’
I shudder slightly at the image of a female Jeff Goldblum getting loved up with my dad, and instead start calculating some logistics. Saul can sleep in with me for a few days, and Mum can have his room. She’ll have to sleep in a small single bed decorated with Paw Patrol stickers, but them’s the breaks.
‘I get it, Mum. I do. And don’t worry. The only way is up.’
‘Like Yazz used to say.’
‘Exactly. Now, come on – let me introduce you to a few people … and remember. No flirting with Frank.’
‘I’ll try,’ she replies, managing a smile. ‘But Sandy can’t make any promises …’
Chapter 15
After that, my life goes from busy but straightforward to something resembling a complicated American sitcom. Without evil twins or fake deaths – at least so far.
Mum takes root in Saul’s room, which he finds hilarious. On the first night, he tucks her in, surrounded by approximately 7,000 cuddly toys, telling her all their names and back-stories in a solemn way that suggests he might test her on them in the morning.
She’s tired, and clearly struggling with what has happened in her life, and being put to bed by a toddler beneath a Paw Patrol duvet cover must have only added to the sense of the surreal for her. It doesn’t get much less surreal, but luckily I have a busy spell with work and college, and she seems happy enough keeping herself amused.
Then, two days after that, The Cat arrives in all his ginger glory. Matt brings him round, fully recovered from his ‘small op’, but I suspect still harbouring some resentment. He definitely gives Matt an untrusting glare that wasn’t there before as he strolls out of the cat carrier, and inspects his new home like the Queen inspecting her guards on parade.
He prowls around the room a while, looking supremely confident and 99 per cent disdainful, while Saul sits on his hands almost bursting with excitemen
t.
I’ve had some Big Talks with Saul about pet etiquette, and how to handle the cat, and how important it is to let him settle in and get used to things before we smother him with affection. Also, about how pulling tails and tweaking ears isn’t a good thing under any circumstances. He’s playing along so far, but is literally vibrating with anticipation as the cat carries out his initial patrol.
I half expect him to just take off upstairs, find somewhere quiet and ignore us – but he surprises me by padding over to Saul and curling up on his lap. The look on Saul’s face is priceless, and actually makes me cry. There’s just something so pure and joyous about seeing a young child react to the presence of a pet – the simplest and most honest of reactions.
Saul looks up at me, as if asking a question, and I nod and tell him it’s probably okay to go ahead and touch now, as the cat seems to have made up his mind about us. Or Saul at least.
Tentatively at first, he runs his tiny hands along the cat’s back, and when he hears a purr, plunges his fingers into his thick fur. Within minutes, they’re best friends, and everyone in the room seems to sigh a communal breath of relief.
One hand on the cat’s head, Saul looks up at us with what is officially the world’s biggest grin, and announces: ‘We’re going to call her Tinkerbell!’
I look at Matt. Matt looks at me. We both shrug – what does it really matter? It’s not like the cat will ever respond to its name, unless he thinks there’s something in it for him. And if Saul has, for some reason, decided the cat is female … well, that’s not going to do any harm anyway.
The cat looks up at us, snuggled and comfy, and pauses in his leisurely paw-licking to give us a smug cat stare. He’s borderline ugly, this fella, with his scar tissue and bald patches and missing ear tip and sheer brute size. If not ugly, then definitely not pretty.
‘Tinkerbell,’ I say, reaching out to stroke Saul’s blond head. ‘That’s perfect, love.’
A Gift from the Comfort Food Café Page 9