by Claire Sandy
‘Good,’ Marie had said, stealing the last biscuit. ‘Chloe’s not the only one who needs you at the fete. You must witness my triumph.’
Prinny stood up abruptly, ears pricked, eyes a-boggle, and a moment later Chloe knocked at the front door, sending Prinny into full whirling-dervish mode, chasing his tail, barking hoarsely, so desperate for Marie to put his lead on that he knocked it out of her hands.
‘Here, he’s all yours.’ Chloe handed over Prinny, who was immediately assaulted by Cookie and the Gnomes’ feisty mongrel.
‘Ta.’ Despite the recent downturn in Chloe and Lucy’s financial situation – the Easter emerald had been sold, the antiques were on eBay, a stack of store-cards had been cancelled – the girl still insisted on giving all the dog-walking money to PeTA.
‘An extra two quid today,’ said Marie, with a Don’t argue look. ‘On condition that you keep it for yourself.’
‘Thanks.’ Chloe struggled comically off down the path with her unruly charges, neither asking after Angus nor looking beyond Marie to see if she could spot him inside the house.
Just as well. Angus’s ire hadn’t cooled. He had careered through the days since his outburst over the girlfriend questionnaire, working up a head of steam about Chloe that dismayed his mother.
The royal marriage was not to be.
The cakes were golden, billowy, perfect. Marie eased the trays out of the oven and allowed herself an abbreviated gloat.
Across the way Lucy looked up from her studies and waved.
Waving back, one of Marie’s mum’s oft-used phrases spoke to her across the years. ‘Winter and summer them, before you call them friend.’ She’d wintered Lucy, and summered her.
She could call her friend.
Last to bed, Marie was the first up. While feeling the injustice of this, she also relished the solitude: just her and the dawn chorus, supplemented by Mrs Gnome’s thunderous first-fag-of-the-day coughing fit from her front step.
‘Hello, beautiful.’ Marie greeted her show-stopper. Time to carefully shepherd it into its carrying case.
It was faultless. Tears stood to attention in her eyes, unexpected and bringing with them a rush of feeling more usually associated with weddings or funerals than school fetes.
The enormous satisfaction of a small job, lovingly done, claimed her. Standing in her past-its-best dressing gown, her hair a fright-wig, Marie felt the essence of Mary Berry all around her. And there were others with her, too. Countless warm arms enfolded her, congratulating her and recognising her as one of their own; Marie was the latest in a long line of wise and kind women, the sort who make the world go round.
The year was over. It had been a year of change and upheaval, but mainly one of discovery. Of skills and truths and friends.
The stabilisers were off.
‘Manfred!’ Lynda, unable to decide between a Big Mac and a quinoa salad, was eating both at her desk. ‘Barrington’s panicking,’ she told Marie, who was running her hands over the walls, still in awe of the clinic’s chic new look. ‘Thinks we’re not ready to be parents.’
‘Well, you’re not,’ said Aileen, inhaling a Lion Bar over a fashion magazine. She liked to belittle the models and laugh at how thin their arms were.
‘He’s worried he doesn’t know how to be a father.’ Lynda drank long and deep of her milkshake. ‘And that I don’t know how to be a mum.’
‘Not a problem I’ll ever have,’ said Aileen, tearing out an article about a life in the day of Alexa Chung to savour later. ‘Thank the sweet Lord Baby Jaysus.’
Marie scanned the appointments book, checking she was still free to get to the fete. ‘Who taught Barrington how to be a husband? He’s pretty good at that.’
‘He’s brilliant at it.’ Lynda was complacent; Barrington looked like a movie star and he rubbed her feet every night.
‘Exactamundo.’ Marie folded her arms, relishing the chance to be the wise old broad. ‘If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll never do it. I’ve had three kids, and I’m still not ready for the constant commotion, the fights about nothing, the refusal to eat cauliflower because it looks like a brain. But I am ready for the hugs, the absurd way of looking at life, the new door that opens in your heart when each of them is born.’
‘Oh, my gosh, that’s so lovely.’ Her milkshake pausing in mid-air, Lynda put her hand to her mouth. Pregnancy had brought out a sentimental side to her character.
Marie thought of her own children at the breakfast table that morning. (She persisted in thinking of the chaotic food fight that took place in her kitchen every morning as ‘the breakfast table’.) All three had been edgy, excited. They’d explained it away by their anticipation of the show-stopper, but she knew them better than to swallow that. Something was afoot.
‘You’re a brilliant mum,’ said Aileen.
‘Pardon?’ Unaccustomed to praise, or even civility, from her assistant, Marie looked puzzled.
‘You’re a complete natural.’ Aileen licked the Lion Bar wrapper. ‘Them kids are lucky to have you.’
‘Um . . .’ Marie was lost for words.
‘I mean, all the feckin’ effort you’ve put into them cakes this past year.’ Aileen shook her head, as if awestruck. ‘I don’t love anybody enough to do that for them. But you did that for your children, just to be a better ma to them.’
‘Well . . .’ Marie felt a fraud for accepting that without demur. The impetus for her ‘journey’ (a notion she scoffed at on The X Factor, but which perfectly described her odyssey with Mary) had initially been the lesser Dunwoodys, but that had changed. She was a baker in her bones these days. She did it for the pure joy of the thing, which of course included the happiness it brought her family, but also gave her confidence and solace.
‘Nathaniel!’ said Lynda, and then: ‘Show us your show-stopper then.’
‘Ooh, yes!’ Aileen was on her feet and hovering around the big cardboard box on the coffee table. ‘Come on!’
Carefully pulling back the lid, Marie exposed her pride and joy.
‘You’re joking, right?’ said Aileen, hands flying to her hips.
‘Is that it?’ Lynda pulled a face. ‘Seriously?’
‘Isn’t it perfect?’ Nothing they said could dent Marie’s pride.
‘I take it all back,’ said Aileen, closing the lid with a pudgy, decisive hand. ‘You’re a terrible mother.’
‘I love the smell of fresh plaster.’
Marie’s voice echoed in the gutted shop. Robert and Lucy were formidable project managers: Life Is Sweet was coming together faster than Marie would have believed possible. Timber stacked along one wall hinted at shelves and cupboards to come. The chill of a long rectangle of marble seeped out through its protective wrapping. ‘It’s all just . . . waiting.’ It reminded her of her pregnancies. That feeling of potential, of something big around the corner.
‘The chairs are arriving later today.’ Robert studied some paperwork in his hand. He was energised, as if Red Bull ran through his veins.
‘You look good in a hard hat.’ Marie waggled her eyebrows. ‘Kind of porny.’
‘Gee, thanks. Christ, nearly forgot! I have to meet the guy from Planning to go through the cellar details again.’
‘You can make it to the fete, though, right?’
‘Of course.’ Robert picked up a folder, clutched it to his chest. ‘I’ll be handing out leaflets to our gala opening.’
‘You’re a workaholic.’ Marie said it approvingly. She preferred motivated Robert to the demotivated model. He was funnier, sharper and the sex was better. ‘Oh, look. Here’s your other woman.’
‘Hi-hi-hi.’ Lucy, too, had had the Red Bull transfusion. ‘Listen, Robert, there’s a problem with the ovens.’ She and Robert fell into a huddle, and Marie gravitated to Chloe, who had followed Lucy in and was running her fingers along the stacked timber.
‘Careful!’ Marie smiled. ‘Splinters.’
‘Least of my worries,’ said Chloe.
Should s
he ask? Marie hesitated. The girl might not want to talk about where she’d been that morning. Then again, not to enquire might seem callous. But then again . . . Oh, shut up and ask, you fool. ‘So?’
‘So.’
‘How did it go? This morning?’
‘Fine.’
‘I’m glad.’ Chloe doesn’t want to talk.
‘Although . . .’
Oh. She does. ‘Yes?’
‘I don’t know why I said that. It wasn’t fine.’ Chloe peered closely at the grain of the wood, following the looping ovals with her forefinger. ‘It was odd.’
‘Bound to be.’ Marie moved nearer, glancing at Robert and Lucy, arguing politely about where to site a fridge.
‘She cried. And she talked a lot. Like, a lot lot.’
‘That could be nerves. If I didn’t see my girls for ten years . . .’ Even to say it felt taboo. ‘Mothering’s hard, even when you share a house. To miss out on so many years and then meet your daughter, as an almost grown woman, must have been incredibly tough for your mother.’
‘She looks like me. Or I look like her, I guess. My nose makes sense all of a sudden.’
‘It’s a very nice nose.’
Chloe giggled reluctantly. Up and down, round and round went her finger on the timber. ‘I didn’t like her house.’
‘You don’t have to like it.’
‘It’s really messy.’
It would be wrong, quite wrong, to smile at the irony of Chloe disapproving of mess. ‘Does she live alone?’
‘She’s got a great big stinky cat. And . . .’
‘And?’
‘A little boy. Fabian. He’s, like, two or something.’
A brother. Marie tried to imagine discovering a brother she hadn’t known about. ‘Bit of a surprise.’
‘Just a bit.’
‘It will get easier, you know.’
‘You don’t know, though.’ Chloe pulled her attention away from the eddies and whirls in the wood. ‘Not being rude. Sorry.’
‘Ah, but I do know.’ Marie shifted the box in her arms; show-stoppers are, by their very nature, heavy. ‘I’m not pretending I’ve ever been in your exact situation, but I’ve been around a bit and I can promise you that, if you bring honesty and love to it, it’ll get better. Maybe she’ll be the mum you went looking for, and maybe she won’t, but she’s yours and that’s that.’ Marie hesitated. ‘And you’ve always got Lum.’
‘I know.’ Chloe nodded. Didn’t dissemble, or roll her eyes. ‘I couldn’t do it without my Lum.’
It wouldn’t do to cry. This wasn’t Marie’s story, it was Chloe’s and Lucy’s. So instead she tapped her watch and said, to all and sundry, ‘Time to go!’
‘Remember,’ said Robert as the car pulled away from the parking space behind what would soon be Life Is Sweet Bakery and Cafe, ‘I lent the twins my phone. You’re under strict instructions from them to text them when we’re on our way.’
Obediently whipping out her mobile – nobody wants to be on the business end of twinny wrath – Marie mused aloud, ‘Why have I got to warn them we’re coming?
‘Because they love us so,’ said Robert.
‘They’re up to something, you mean.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Robert. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
The grounds of St Ethelred’s were once again crawling with people, just like the same day twelve months ago. But Marie was nothing like the woman who’d passed through the gates back then. She didn’t cringe or hyperventilate or contemplate faking a heart attack; today she was proud of the show-stopper under wraps in her arms.
‘Oops. ’Scuse me.’ Marie negotiated the crush of parents and students and teachers, leading her little band towards her appointment with baking glory in the main hall. If only Mary could be here, she thought, with shameless whimsy.
In her handbag her mobile announced a text. ‘Robert!’ She backed towards him, shoulder-bag first. ‘Dig out my phone and read that, would you?’
‘The twins want us to meet them,’ said Robert, eyes on the tiny screen, ‘in the Design and Technology block.’ His face was a question mark.
‘But . . .’ Marie looked down at her box. ‘Why? Do we have time?’
‘I told you,’ said Robert, ‘those two are plotting.’
‘Let’s indulge them.’ Today of all days Marie had the softest of spots for her little doppelgängers. She collared a passing sixth-former for directions and they headed for a low-built brick and glass cabin on the other side of the football pitch.
‘Mum!’ From the far end of the noisy, teeming barn of a room the twins waved their hello.
‘What are they wearing on their heads?’ Marie excuse me’d her way through adoring/bored parents watching lathes fly up and down, saws whirr and hammers hammer at the parallel rows of work benches.
‘Headscarves?’ Lucy, too, was puzzled by the twins’ headgear, tied not beneath their chins but at the back of their heads.
‘They look like factory workers,’ said Chloe.
As they neared the girls, Marie saw Rose tap out a text with a surreptitious air that she knew only too well. Speeding up, she noticed how Rose nodded to Iris, who pressed, with some gravity, a button on the pink ghetto-blaster usually kept between their beds at home, blaring out David Walliams audio books.
Heads turned as music blasted out, the volume whacked right up.
‘I know that song, I think.’ Marie reached the girls and stared at them sceptically, looking for answers.
‘So do I,’ said Chloe. She bit her lip and joined Marie in staring at the girls, who refused to meet their eyes and stoically ignored them both.
A romantic female voice, at odds with the mechanical uproar of the Design and Technology block, sang a couple of lines, before a meaty male growl took over.
‘Yes!’ smiled Lucy, realising. ‘It’s – ooh, what’s it called? – “Up Where We Belong”.’
‘From that film . . .’ said Marie. She turned to Chloe. ‘You’ll know. What film is it from?’
But Chloe was riveted by the view through the large window that took up the side wall of the block. ‘Oh my God!’ she whispered.
Following her line of sight, Marie’s eyes widened.
Pedalling furiously on Rose’s pink, aged 9–11 bike, Angus parted the sea of people out on the football pitch. Knees scissoring up and down to his ears, shoulders hunched, effort distorting his face, he was nearer and larger with every millisecond. Atop his head, hiding his curls, sat the white peaked cap of a US naval officer.
Flashing past the window, the bike screeched to a halt by the open doors at the far end of the room.
‘What in the name of . . . ?’ Marie almost dropped her precious box as Angus unfurled and shook out his limbs to stand tall in a crisp, white tailored uniform, the jacket studded with brass buttons, epaulettes on the shoulders and the trousers sharply creased. She and Robert offered each other the same bewildered expression. This is something epic, thought Marie; her gauche, loner son would never expose himself in this way for anything less.
Striding in, Angus had the attention of much of the room. The hammering subsided; the soaring music was in charge as he strode through the crowd. Heads turned and Marie thought He’s not really that tall, is he? The uniform made a strapping man of her boy.
Mums and dads darted out of his way as Angus marched, with a purpose he’d never before exhibited, between the work benches. People stared, not sure what was happening, but aware that something was happening.
Chloe, Marie noticed, was trembling. The girl’s hands came slowly up to her mouth.
‘Mum . . .’ Iris tugged at Marie’s sleeve, asking her to step away, to recede. She did as she was told, Robert and Lucy following suit, leaving Chloe alone, a slender sapling in a forest clearing.
The girl watched Angus close the space between them; aware of the magic in the air, Marie held her breath as she watched them both.
According to the lyrics, there were mountains in the way, there w
ere eagles crying; no words passed between the teenagers, but any fool could see they were having an intense conversation.
We’ve all just disappeared, thought Marie. It was another letting-go, yet she felt nothing but elation. The air was charged, filled with the change that had come over Chloe and Angus. They were electric with love and longing and youth.
As the song swelled, Angus drew Chloe’s fingers away from her mouth. With greater tenderness than his mother would have believed him capable of, he touched her slender neck with both his hands. Chloe was calm now and she lifted her face to his.
‘Hello, Soulmate,’ he breathed.
So sweet, so heartfelt, Angus’s first kiss was a public one. Slightly clumsy, completely earnest, it held the room spellbound.
Even the twins.
The Design and Technology master lifted his welding goggles to wipe his eye.
With a megawatt smile, Angus pulled away to wrap his arms around Chloe, sweep her off her feet and whirl her round. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered into her neck. ‘I’ve been such an idiot. I’m sorry.’
A mother behind Marie, an obvious devotee of An Officer and a Gentleman, murmured, ‘I love Richard Gere!’
The spinning and laughing broke the spell. Clapping broke out, slow at first, then wild. Somebody whooped as Angus scooped up Chloe, tucking one arm under her knees so that her hands flew about his neck. He bore her away, as if carrying her over a threshold.
‘Now!’ whispered Rose.
‘Way to go, Paula!’ hollered Iris. ‘Way to go!’
‘What the hell is going on?’ Robert’s head turned like an owl on speed.
‘Just clap!’ ordered his wife.
He clapped and so did everybody else, as Angus – his lips glued to Chloe’s – made off with his prize.
‘The hat, Chloe!’ shouted Rose, over the cheering.
Chloe swiped Angus’s cap and rammed it on her own head, as they moved out through the door to become a silhouette in the bright sunshine.
‘Amazing!’ said a man holding a clamp.
‘That,’ said a woman in a hijab, ‘was the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.’