by Sue Watson
The silence, his silence, was unnerving. So I kept talking.
‘I know I’ll need a job, there’s only so much irresponsibility a girl can have…’ I laughed, aware I was waffling and in my nervous state now in danger of saying too much and behaving weirdly. ‘But I could work anywhere… A school, a university? I don’t know if I’d have to be married to an Australian citizen, that would be you,’ I giggled nervously, wondering when I would stop behaving like some wannabe wife desperate to bag her man. ‘I’m forcing myself on you, aren’t I… am I? I’m not… am I, Dan? Please say something so I stop.’
‘No, no. You’re not forcing yourself…’ He hesitated. ‘But I just… This has all happened so suddenly, you have to understand I thought I’d never see you again, Faye.’
‘I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve messed you about, I’ve been an idiot.’
‘Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t put it like that, but you did piss everything away… I mean, I was ready to get married, make it forever and you just said no.’
‘Mmm, I did,’ I said, slightly irritated at his retelling – it made me seem selfish, like I’d only considered myself – but then again perhaps I had?
‘I’m sorry if I made you feel bad, Dan. I knew you had to go, I just couldn’t go with you – but now everything’s different. I’ve got enough money from the house sale to afford to fly over to you, spend the summer there and…’
Silence. Horrible. Silence.
‘Look, Faye, there’s nothing I’d love more than to spend the summer with you… here. But, babe, I just can’t do it.’
‘Oh, okay.’ I couldn’t quite get my head round this. He was the guy, the only guy, who’d do anything for me, who’d walk through hot coals to be with me – so what had changed?
‘It’s… I’m working. I’m working really hard, it’s great – the café – it’s what I always wanted. I feel like I’m finally doing what I wanted. Wonderful ingredients, locally sourced… It’s more like a restaurant since we started opening in the evenings.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, stopping him mid-speech. ‘I don’t expect you to abandon your life just because I’ve decided to come over.’
‘No, but it’s just so busy, I wouldn’t be able to see you…’
‘I understand… but hey, I just had a brilliant idea,’ I said, not listening to him, excited at my plans, ‘why don’t I come and work for you? There won’t be any teaching work until September anyway, so it would be perfect! Oh Dan, imagine, you and me working in the restaurant together… It’s what we always talked about.’ I could see it now, side by side in the kitchen, planning menus, Dan wiping flour from my cheek and kissing it gently.
‘I don’t know, Faye, you don’t have any experience…’
I felt crushed. He didn’t have to say that – I wanted to be his girlfriend, not an employee. Since when did he care about experience? He’d taught himself to cook, and had always encouraged me to do new things, take risks, scare myself. He believed in me before I believed in me – he showed me I could dive into deep waters, literally and metaphorically. I glanced at my upper arm and remembered how he’d convinced me to have the little lemon cupcake tattoo. It was still there – but he wasn’t.
‘Okay, so I don’t have experience,’ I said, still smarting from this put-down, ‘but I could work with you, learn from you. Dan, I’m so proud of you. Going home was so good for you…’
‘Yeah, yeah, it was…’
‘And I could be with you in a couple of weeks! I need to sort out flights, give my keys back to the landlord for this house, but Emma’s back from her honeymoon in Ireland tomorrow night…’ I laughed, but it was hollow. He’d usually have picked me up on this and said something about our prospective honeymoon. But he didn’t.
‘Faye, I should have said… I’m at work, it’s a bit difficult to talk,’ he said, like he hadn’t even been listening to me.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea you were still at work, you should have said… But it’s after midnight…’
‘No worries. I’m just getting tomorrow’s menus done.’
‘Okay,’ I said, slightly relieved now. It explained why there were so many silences; his awkwardness wasn’t about me, there were other people around and he didn’t want to say too much. ‘So, shall we talk in a couple of days? Or…?’
‘Hey… yeah, let’s do that.’
‘Okay,’ I said, thinking that perhaps he might also still be pissed off at the way I’d rejected him last time we saw each other.
I was about to put the phone down when he said, ‘Faye?’
‘Yes?’ I said, uncertainly.
‘It’s… good to hear your voice.’
I smiled a secret smile to myself, and clicking off the phone, sat in bed, watching the curtains drift in the summer breeze, but instead of feeling excited, certain of my future, I was left wondering what had just happened. Had the early morning sunshine gone behind a cloud, or was I just being stupid? Of course he was pleased to hear from me, but he was at work, he was busy… Or was it more than that? How bloody conceited I’d been to think I could just call him up after all this time and expect him to drop everything. He had a lot on his plate and I might not be top of his list of priorities at the moment. I had to accept that I might have to work my way back to being the love of his life – I had to earn it and not just expect that I’d be able to step in and carry on as we were. But I was prepared to do that, because he was worth it.
‘Who were you talking to, Nana?’ a little voice asked from the doorway.
I opened my arms to Rosie and she ran to me, clambering onto the bed. I swept her up, burying my face in her shampoo-scented hair. Children are a great antidote to any kind of pain and just hugging her soothed me, and at the same time reminded me she wouldn’t be here much longer. I had to make the most of these Nana and Rosie days before Emma came back and whisked her away to Scotland.
‘I was talking to Dan,’ I said. ‘You remember Dan, don’t you?’
She smiled a cheeky little smile and said shyly, ‘You mean Dam… He’s your boyfriend.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, he is… Well, he was.’
‘Do you love him, Nana?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Are you going to marry him, like Mummy married Richard?’ She was cross-legged now, arms folded across her tummy. ‘Can I be a unicorn… and have a hens party night with the vicars?’
‘Mmm, something like that. One day… perhaps. Now, come on, Little Miss Busybody,’ I said tickling her, ‘let’s make pancakes for breakfast.’
‘Yay! Let’s bake pancakes,’ she yelled and we put on our dressing gowns and raced downstairs.
‘Is Mandy coming to your wedding? I like Mandy,’ Rosie said a little later as I stood her on a chair to reach the kitchen worktop to help with the pancakes.
‘Probably.’
‘Can I have a T-shirt like Mandy’s?’
I was slightly distracted as she broke an egg outside the bowl in her efforts to ‘bake’.
‘A T-shirt, sweetie?’
‘Yes, like Mandy’s, with jewels and a front bottom on.’
‘Probably not,’ I said gently, horrified that she’d been able to decipher the picture on Mandy’s ‘Vajazzle Week’ T-shirts.
‘I think we’ll stick to the unicorn, darling. Now, shall we weigh out the flour?’
She lifted the bag of flour with a great deal of effort and I managed to catch it before it landed on the floor. I watched the concentration on her little face as she put the flour on the scales – painfully slow spoons, half-full, wobbly, flour dust everywhere. It seemed to last forever but I didn’t mind, I just took her in, aching with love and missing her already.
Along with my theory that children are a cure-all, I find stacks of pancakes smothered in sugar and spiked with fresh lemon are also a great soother. I was confused and inexplicably stung by my conversation with Dan, and dreading Rosie’s departure, therefore several pancakes would be required. Large ones.
; *
Mandy had offered to do Rosie’s nails before she left for Scotland, and as the salon was one of the places Rosie had grown up visiting, I wanted to take her for a farewell outing. So that afternoon we popped along and were soon swept up into the gentle camaraderie of women together. To my relief there wasn’t a vajazzle T-shirt in sight, and no sign of blow-up willies or whips and chains, which was always a possibility when Mandy was in the vicinity. Everyone called hello, smiling at Rosie, waving from under hairdryers, all of us recognising a fellow soldier of life – all fighting the fight, hoping one day to win the lottery, meet the man, retire to Benidorm. For most of us it would never happen, but while we waited there were worse things to do than kill time with other women and have our hair done. Stories, secrets, laughs and lies were all shared under the dryers and as the water sprayed in the backwashes, women of all ages and stages shared tales of scandalous affairs, wicked husbands, and long-lost children. I loved it here, among the curlers and hair dyes, where no subject was barred – even Mandy’s colourful sex life, which, frankly, should have been. Rosie loved it here too, in the whirring of hairdryers and the kindness of old ladies in rollers, with sweets in their pockets and time on their hands.
Everyone in the salon knew my own life story, and when I’d left Craig for a summer in Santorini with Dan, my customers and colleagues had been my cheerleaders. Mandy even gave me a goodbye fake tan (which was so orange, it might have jeopardised my relationship with a lesser man). I was back in that lovely summer of rebirth and new experiences when I was rudely awakened.
‘Hello GORGEOUS!’ came a loud voice from the Heavenly Spa at the top of the stairs. Mandy was in the building. She appeared wearing half a head of heated rollers, full lashes with sparkly bits and apparently she’d just had Botox, which explained the screams coming from the spa and the surprised look on her face.
On hearing Mandy’s voice, Rosie turned, abandoning some old lady’s Werther’s Originals, her face lit up. Mandy was all noise and colour to a four-year-old and often insisted on slapping creams/eyelashes/lip gloss on Rosie, which she loved, but Emma found a little disconcerting. ‘Mum, she looks like one of those pageant queens they have in America,’ Emma had gasped in mock horror the last time Rosie had paid a visit to Mandy’s dreaded spa. I’d laughed it off, which was easier than wiping off the tan and the fake lashes later, which I’d insisted to Emma were only temporary. ‘God, Mum, promise me you’ll never let Mandy near her with that tattoo gun,’ she’d half-joked.
Yes, Mandy had recently been fully trained at the Tattoo You school of cosmetic tattooing, had a licence to mark people for life – and the certificate to prove it. When she concentrated, Mandy created some beautiful nails, and eyes, her tattooed lips and brows could also be lovely. But the problem was that she sometimes took her eye off the ball – or the face, or whatever body part she was tattooing – she was so busy gossiping, suffering a hangover, or demonstrating her slutdropping prowess. Consequently, the visions that sometimes appeared from the spa after a long session were like something from Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors.
‘How’s my gorgeous little Rosie posy?’ Mandy was now addressing Rosie as she descended the stairs like a queen entering her court. The staff didn’t even bat an eyelid. Gayle, who billed herself as ‘head stylist to the stars’. was enjoying ‘a celebratory Prosecco’ (though I wasn’t sure what she was actually celebrating) and laughing at a video on her phone. Meanwhile, Camilla (still the junior after five years) was meditating on a large cushion on the floor. Mandy had always seen Camilla as great sport – she’d once sent her to Ann Summers, telling her it was a bookshop and told her to ask for The Karma Sutra, and would shout across the salon that ‘Mr P Ness’ was on the phone for her, to which of course Camilla would innocently call back, ‘P Ness?’ This alarmed some of the older clientele, but provided Mandy with deep, unbridled joy. Somehow against the odds, these two had become firm friends, Mandy giving the very straight Camilla some life and daring, while Camilla in turn provided the calm antidote to Mandy’s madness.
Mandy had now handed Rosie a bright pink lollipop from a bowl on the reception counter and was asking if she’d like her eyebrows ‘on fleek’. I immediately declined on my granddaughter’s behalf, just imagining Emma’s face when she came home from honeymoon to a tattooed child.
‘Oh, she just needs a bit of definition,’ Mandy was saying, weighing up the four-year-old’s eyebrows. ‘I can’t wait until she’s a bit bigger – we’ll knock a few highlights in that hair, a set of lashes and a sparkly mani and pedi and she’ll knock ’em dead down the Funkin’ Fusion.’
‘Yeah, lovely,’ I said non-committally, while pretending to share her vision. ‘We’ll just have a manicure for now, eh, Rosie?’ I said.
Rosie took her seat and Mandy painted her nails and asked her about her boyfriends, which delighted Rosie, who told all. And when she was finished, Mandy hugged her and we said our goodbyes as she downed a Prosecco and began wiggling her hips. I rushed Rosie to the door, fearing a sudden revival of the great salon slutdropping competition of 2014 when in an attempt at the world record, seventy-two-year-old Joyce inadvertently landed in the splits. Paramedics were called and Joyce was whisked to the Royal, where she was in traction for six months. She said her sex life had never been the same since that day, and she’d only come in for a root touch-up.
‘Do you want me to come in to work on Saturday, Mandy?’ I asked, from the doorway as we were leaving.
‘Ooh, yes please, love! Me and Jase are having a date night Friday, and you know what that means, don’t you?’
I certainly did, but really hoped she wasn’t going to share it in front of my little granddaughter, so I got in there first. ‘Yeah, it means you’ll be late in on Saturday,’ I smiled, opening the door and gently pushing Rosie towards it before Mandy spilled.
‘I’ll be pissed on all fours…’
Too late.
‘We’ll get off then… See you Saturday…’ I didn’t want a repeat of our previous week’s visit when Mandy had been to a glitter party and couldn’t remove the glitter from her body. This in itself was perfectly acceptable before the watershed, but when she announced that her crotch looked ‘like a bloody glitterball’, I saw Rosie’s eyes widen and knew the word ‘crotch’ had just been included in the Rosie Dobson Dictionary. Emma would kill me.
‘Two words…’ Mandy was now shouting after me as I attempted to remove my innocent granddaughter from the scene. ‘Carpet burns,’ she roared, laughing, and slapped a nearby stylist on the back, which caused her to take a large slice out of a customer’s hair. ‘We were doing it on the kitchen floor the other night – and it’s linoleum! LOL, I was sliding all over the show,’ she yelled at me across the salon. ‘Then Jase got a bit too excited and I was doing hundred miles an hour up the kitchen.’ She shook her head, in peals of laughter now. ‘Faye, take my advice, love, never lube up on lino.’
‘I won’t,’ I muttered, like this was sage advice I might need to take. I was now trying to bundle a protesting Rosie out of the door with my hands over her ears before Mandy could offer any more sage advice on sexual matters.
Eventually I rescued the poor child and when, over supper with Emma later that evening, Rosie chatted animatedly about, ‘Mandy and loob and dino,’ I laughed it off, saying how it was funny what children picked up at nursery. And sent up a little thank you that she still couldn’t pronounce ‘vajazzle’.
14
Kung Pao Chicken and a Burning Oesophagus
After a lovely week with Rosie, Emma returned from honeymoon to collect her and the last of their stuff and head back to Scotland to start married life. Richard had taken a flight directly to Edinburgh to be in work the next morning, and Emma planned on driving her and Rosie up the following day.
I was looking forward to a final evening at home with Emma, but just as she’d arrived, I received a text from Dan. I quickly checked it while Emma greeted Rosie.
Hi, sorry could
n’t talk yesterday. It’s 4am here, I’m tired and I can’t sleep. I hope you’re okay. I miss you. X
It literally took my breath away. All the doubts that had plagued me since our phone call dissipated, and I wanted to sing loudly and dance like Beyoncé round the kitchen. Everything was fine between us and he missed me. He. Missed. Me.
After I’d chatted with Emma and heard all about her honeymoon and bathed Rosie, I locked myself in the toilet (four-year-olds think it’s okay to sit and chat everywhere) and tried to call Dan back. It was 6 a.m. in Australia by then, but I didn’t care – I just wanted to let him know I missed him too. The line rang and rang, and Rosie was soon knocking on the toilet door, shouting, ‘I’m coming, ready or not!’ and Emma was suggesting a Chinese takeaway and there’s only so much multitasking a woman can do. So I decided to concentrate on them for now – I could talk to Dan later, or tomorrow when they’d gone and I was alone again. I had all the time in the world now, and he and I could plan another magical summer – only this time I wouldn’t be coming home.
I abandoned my bathroom sanctuary to deal with the important matter of Rosie’s game and the question of sweet and sour chicken or pork. We were just going through the takeaway menu when there was a knock on the door. Suddenly my heart was in my mouth. Having received that lovely text, my mind could think only of Dan and I know it was stupid because mathematically, it wasn’t possible because he’d texted only a couple of hours before from Australia, but I wasn’t thinking straight. As I got up and went into the hall to answer the door, I hoped against hope it wasn’t him. As delighted as I would be to see him, I was tired and hungry, my roots had grown and I looked like an old dog with day-old make-up and tied-back hair. The joy of my Dan weekends away was that I could be glamorous and carefree and didn’t have to be Mum or Grandma. I could be blonde, funny Faye, who made Dan go weak at the knees, and I wanted to be that again for him. But right now all I could do was hold in my stomach, push my hair back and wish for the best. As I opened the door, I felt breathless – my heart doing a little dance…