by Claire Sandy
‘It’s not her thing.’ Tallulah was evasive, turning on the spot, her arms out aeroplane-style.
‘Shame.’ Fern could have drawn her initials in the dust on Adam’s keyboard.
‘Why does Carey hate me?’ Tallulah still twirled.
‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’ Fern trod carefully; it could be hard to distil complex emotions into a form her daughter could digest.
‘Carey should like me. I got in trouble for her.’ Tallulah stopped twirling abruptly and staggered. ‘I love being dizzy.’
‘Me too. Maybe Carey feels guilty because her rash behaviour made so much trouble for you. Do you think Carey’s family say “sorry” to each other?’
‘No!’ laughed Tallulah. ‘She gets the blame for everything.’
‘She’s not used to people being kind to her, doing things for her.’ Fern felt for the confused kid living in a home of hard edges, at a loss for how to cope with Tallulah’s warmth.
‘I miss her. Carey’s loads more fun than anyone else.’
‘We can’t always have what we want, honeybun.’ Mums have to lay bare the hard facts. Fern was ready to follow it up with a hug, but Tallulah displayed that incredible resilience all children can call on when they need it.
‘Yeah,’ she shrugged. ‘I want you and Daddy to get back but that won’t happen either, so . . .’
The certainty was a punch; the acceptance was another. Fern didn’t show she was on the ropes. Glad that Tallie had moved on from mourning, Fern also felt pain for the girl’s acceptance of a life she hadn’t asked for. ‘We both—’
‘I know, Mum. You both still love me, I know, I know,’ said Tallulah. ‘So. Cheese Strings?’
Fern wasn’t good at knitting or smoking or working out celebrities’ ages. It turned out that she was also crap at sexting.
oh god I want you.
She erased that, tutting furiously.
I’m imagining you right now.
That’s OK. Fern sent that one, and fanned her face at Hal’s (very speedy) reply.
wish U were here. Nakd. What would U do 2 me?
Correct your spelling, for a start. Fern cringed, shrinking down into her armchair, sending frantic glances at the door. This house was full of people, and any of them could walk in to find her in her jaded trackies, getting down and virtually dirty.
I would put your
Nope. She tried again.
First I’d touch my
God no. Growling with annoyance, she rang Hal. ‘I can’t,’ she said as he picked up. ‘I’m a rubbish sexter. I give up.’
Hal’s laugh was deep and rumbly, like a Tube train slowing in a tunnel beneath her feet. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. Everybody sexts these days.’ No doubt Penny had a diploma. ‘You’ll think I’m uptight.’
‘How could I think that when yesterday we . . . Look, I’m with a customer right now, but you get my drift, don’t you?’
‘I do.’ Fern was pathetically grateful. Perhaps twenty-first-century adults could carry on a relationship without sexting.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow night, yeah? Love you.’
Fern drifted to answer the Beauty Room door in a haze. ‘Hi Walter,’ she said mechanically, seating him at the manicure table. She looked at all her familiar bits and bobs. The base coat, the files, the buffing tool all meant nothing to her.
Love you.
Was it throwaway? Everybody said it. Donna said it to all her friends. But if Hal was in the habit of saying it, why hadn’t he said it before? Did Hal, sexy, funny Hal, love Fern, abandoned mother of two?
‘I need a right good manicure today, Fern.’ Walter spread his hands on the white towel.
‘Where are you off to?’ roared Fern, back in the room.
‘No need to shout, dear.’ Walter pointed to one of his sticky-out ears. ‘New hearing aid. It’s a belter. I can hear a fly cough.’
‘Brilliant!’ Fern liked this cheeky new Walter; his deafness had alienated him. ‘Are you off somewhere special?’
‘The cemetery.’
‘Oh.’ Fern dipped Walter’s fingers into a bowl of tepid water.
‘It’s my fiftieth wedding anniversary today, so I’ll take my dear wife some flowers and have a bit of a tidy-up. We had thirty-one of those years together before she went.’
Nineteen years alone, and still observing their wedding date; Walter had depths Fern hadn’t guessed at. She recalled the Boite Rouge menu she’d kept from her posh meal with Adam on their anniversary, never suspecting it would be their last.
A pounding on the door made them both jump. Nora, in dark glasses the size of TV screens, said, ‘It’s your mum, Fern. On the phone. It’s urgent.’
Unaccustomed to worrying about her mother – Mum was a self-contained unit who asked for nothing – Fern was frightened. Wiping Walter’s fingers, she said, ‘Auntie, you remember Walter from Christmas Day? Keep him company, will you?’
‘I remember him.’ Nora didn’t sound impressed.
The kitchen landline was by the fridge. ‘Mum? What’s happened?’
‘You tell me, Fern.’
‘No, no, what’s up?’
‘Nora said you needed to speak to me. You sound frazzled, love.’
‘Nora called you?’
‘Yes. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing. I did want to chat.’ Fern scoured her brain for a topic. ‘How’s Dave?’ Any other subject felt too complex and, Fern realized, too intimate. I should want to speak to my own mother about my life. Bracing herself, Fern said, ‘Amelie’s doing great. Four months old now, and a little tooth coming through.’
‘Aw. Bless. So you think of her as your granddaughter, do you?’
‘Don’t you?’
The sound of swallowing came over the long distance line. ‘If you say so, love.’
‘I do, Mum. I do say so.’ Amelie hadn’t asked to be born. The least they could give her was an unqualified welcome.
‘I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.’
We relate as if one of us is returning a faulty skirt to Marks and Spencer. Fern spotted a message on the chalkboard in Nora’s shaky handwriting.
Invite her over to see Amelie!!!
A long anecdote about Dave’s heroic struggle to build a barbecue area had begun. Fern wiped at the board with her sleeve. As she waited for a moment to jump in, Fern wanted to say I’m happy you’re happy, but I need a mum! Realizing she’d left her client alone for too long, instead she butted in with ‘Mum, gotta run.’
Nora wouldn’t let Fern hug her, brushed aside the thanks, but she had a wide smile on her face as she barged into the hall table.
‘Look at my tummy!’
‘Stand sideways so I can see. Oh Layla, you’re a proper pregnant lady.’
‘I never thought I’d be so pleased about my jeans not fitting.’
‘Any sickness? Any wooziness?’
‘No, Doc, nothing like that.’
‘I lay on the floor whining for the whole of my first trimester with Tallie.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of sickness. It would feel like there’s something really there. That this isn’t all a dream.’
‘The scans tell you that, you idiot. Your baby’s in there, twiddling its thumbs.’
‘We almost talked about names the other night. We stopped ourselves. Tempting fate and all that.’
‘Fate owes you, Layla.’
‘You know that, and I know that, but nobody’s told fate.’
‘You say love you sometimes, don’t you, when you end a phone conversation?’
‘Yeah. Only with people I love. Like you. Why?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Fern?’
‘Listen, I should shoot off. It’s Ollie and Donna’s date night and I want to have a shower before they slope off.’
‘Give them all a kiss from me. Especially that Amelie.’
‘Bye!’
‘Bye. Oh, and . . . I like Antoinette for a girl.’
‘Love you.’
Fern shamed Ollie and Donna into keeping up the date night tradition. ‘Did you really just say you’d rather have a baked potato than go out?’ She was determined that they wouldn’t lose their rights to be teenagers at least once a week; as she said to Evka over the family tub of ice cream they were shovelling their way through, ‘Sure, they’re tired, but they’ll perk up when they go out.’
‘But Ollie DJs two nights of week.’ Evka encroached on Fern’s side of the mint choc swirl. ‘He is always in club.’
‘Donna needs a break. New babies are slave-drivers. Get off.’ Fern rapped Evka’s knuckles with her spoon. ‘Keep to your own half.’
A text arrived from Hal. Not exactly a sext, it still made Fern’s temperature rise.
An expert in all things filthy, Evka said, ‘Ah, that’s from him. Does he like your new lacy underwears?’
‘How do you know about . . . actually, no, don’t tell me.’
‘I try on, but panties are too big and bra is too small.’ Evka looked with sympathy at Fern’s chest. ‘Much too small. Do not blush. I approve of lover,’ said Evka grandly. ‘Do not get serious with him, Fern. No-strings bonking is fun. I should thank beast of boyfriend who did unspeakable thing to me. Before him I was like you and Adam. In coma. Same man every day, same penis every night. Marriage is sex prison, Fern. You escaped.’
‘It wasn’t marriage.’
‘It was same as.’
That was true. ‘I felt married. It was a personal marriage, without a priest or a registrar or a horrible sit-down meal with third cousins. Which made it more binding, not less.’
‘Now you are like me. In charge of self. Queen!’
‘It does have its upside.’ Fern felt able to confide in Evka about Hal. A little. ‘My friend makes me happy. He’s a good thing to come out of all the mess.’
‘You are type to fall for him. Stupid love ruins everything.’
‘What’s so wrong with love, Evka? It makes the world go round.’
‘Not my world.’
Fern didn’t dare ask what made Evka’s world go round. ‘Finding somebody to love is everybody’s ambition. Commitment is beautiful, not restricting. It sets you free when you have a rock to rely on, when there’s something muscular to make you feel safe.’
‘Your rock ran away.’
‘Any news from the rock’s flat, by the way?’
‘Penny has over-the-knee boots at back of wardrobe. PVC.’
‘PVC?’ Adam had made noises over the years about PVC, but Fern had just laughed. Imagine the chafing, she’d said.
‘And whip.’
‘Jesus.’ He’d kept quiet about wanting a whip. Is Adam the whipper or the whippee?
‘Those rats in Penny’s flat stay for long time . . .’ Evka checked her make-up in a small mirror. ‘I have date. I met him in queue.’
‘A queue for what?’ Fern was half listening, still assimilating Adam’s new toys.
‘I did not know. I want to queue like English, so I stand behind him and we snog and we never get to front of queue.’
Fern was still thinking PVC . . . when Maz rang the doorbell, minutes after Evka left the house.
‘Me again,’ he said, with doleful eyes.
‘You can’t keep doing this, Maz.’ Fern shook her head, sad for him and sad for herself, put in this sticky position again.
‘Are they here? We could talk right now.’
‘It’s date night again.’ She smiled. ‘Are you watching the house?’
He seemed to take her seriously, putting his hand over his heart. ‘No, no, I swear. I pass this way every Thursday and I just can’t resist.’
‘This has to be done properly. For Amelie’s sake.’
‘The feelings,’ he said, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘The feelings were unexpected.’
‘It’s a rush, isn’t it?’ Fern couldn’t help smiling. The young guy in front of her was probably experiencing his first brush with unselfish love. ‘Oh, come in, then. Just for a minute or two.’
Checking that Tallie was asleep – Fern didn’t want anybody to see what she was doing, which rang an alarm bell, but one faint enough to ignore – Fern brought Amelie downstairs, bundled up in trailing crocheted blankets.
‘Hello, little girl.’ Maz took her tenderly. ‘Do you really think she looks like me?’
It couldn’t be denied. ‘Something about her brow. And the shape of her eyes.’ Fern stood awkwardly, hands together, watching father and child work each other out. She could see that Maz was near tears; she felt like an intruder. Eventually, she said gently, ‘Time to get her back to bed, Maz.’
‘How about I put her to bed?’ Maz was pleading with his whole body.
‘I don’t know, Maz . . . Sorry. No.’ Maz was nudging Fern, inch by inch, to a place she didn’t want to be. It’s my fault for opening the door. ‘Donna would hate that.’
‘It’s not that much to ask. A minute alone with my own flesh and blood. Go on, Fern. Please. I’ll be careful. I’ll tuck her in. I just want a moment with her.’
It felt shabby, leaning over the baby monitor as Maz cautiously climbed the stairs with his gurgling armful. Penny’s overheard monologue had taught her this underhand trick.
There were murmurs, muttered endearments, interspersed with splutters from Amelie, then, ‘You’re mine,’ said Maz, loudly, clearly. ‘Got that? I’m your daddy, Amelie. You’re mine.’
Fern listened hard, but after that there was only the soft hum of the monitor. She heard a squeak on the stairs and dashed out to see Maz in the hall. He held Amelie out to her. He spoke immediately, as if to stop Fern protesting.
‘She won’t stop wriggling. Nappy needs changing, probs.’
As Fern wound her arms around Amelie, she was conscious of their proximity to the front door. ‘Maz, I can’t let you in again. Speak to Donna.’
‘We both know what that one’ll say.’ Maz blew a kiss to the baby and was gone.
Spring had sprung behind Fern’s back.
The park was a carpet of daffodils as she and Hal passed it. Hal had relinquished his scarf. Fern’s nose wasn’t red.
‘This is the plan for the evening.’ Hal held up a finger. ‘One. We drink wine. Two. We eat pasta in that funny restaurant. Three. You kiss me to death.’
‘Beats yesterday. I cleared a U-bend.’
‘Hardly any U-bend clearing tonight, I promise.’ Hal was jaunty, his arm tight around her shoulders as he marched her along. ‘Come on, before the wine runs out.’
Luckily there was plenty of wine left. As Hal put down the glasses on their usual corner table he apologized for her house white. ‘It looks like a sample. We need to find another boozer.’
‘This is fine.’
Hal supped and snaffled a crisp and crunched it and looked around him and pointed at a sweet dog that had just come in, and Fern said, ‘I’m sorry, Hal, but I can’t do this any more.’
‘The pub’s not that bad!’ Hal laughed a shower of crisp shards.
‘Not the pub. You and me. This.’ Fern pushed her wine away.
Hal stared, a crisp in his hand. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said eventually. ‘Everything’s fine, better than fine. I’m not pushing. We’re having fun.’
‘That’s the point. I’m having fun, yes, but it’s just fun. I’m not explaining myself very well.’ She sighed, crushed by Hal’s expression. ‘Don’t take it personally, please.’
‘How else can I take it?’ Hal sat back, chin out. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Me. Nothing’s wrong with you.’
‘The old “it’s not me, it’s you”.’
‘Yes, exactly that. It’s true this time. You’re lovely, Hal, kind and gorgeous and I can’t wait to see you, but when I do see you it’s just not enough.’ Fern pulled her chair closer to his, stricken by the feeling of loss even while she was still trying to shake him off. ‘I’m not ready for fun. Not this sort of fu
n.’
‘Everybody’s ready for fun.’ When Hal grumbled like that, his chin down, he sounded like Ollie.
‘I was a partner, a half, for so many years. You were a baby when I got together with Adam. While you were learning how to suck your thumb I was already in a committed relationship. I’m unlearning the habits of a lifetime. It’s too much to do that and give you what you deserve.’
‘Don’t make out you’re doing me a favour.’ Hal was sullen, leaning to one side, avoiding her eye.
‘I’m still stumbling about in the ruins of my relationship, Hal.’
‘Very poetic.’
Fern bridled. ‘Do you want to talk about it or just snipe? This isn’t easy.’
‘Oh, it isn’t easy?’ Hal sat forward, all sarcastic sympathy. ‘You poor love. It’s ever so easy for me, listening to why I’m not good enough.’
‘I’m not saying that.’ Fern could practically taste his hurt. ‘I need to heal before I embark on something else. If you weren’t so lovely I wouldn’t have been tempted. I wasn’t looking for anything to happen, but there you were.’
‘And the rest is pisstory,’ said Hal.
‘Please be nice, be you.’
‘This is me,’ snarled Hal. ‘I’m not a toy you pick up and put down. Some warning might have been nice.’
‘Can we stay friends?’
‘Of course! I really need somebody to go shoe shopping with! No, Fern, we can’t be bloody friends. I don’t like you enough to be your friend.’ Hal stood so abruptly he tipped over his drink. ‘Shit,’ he snapped, looking down at his ruined jeans. ‘You were right, Fern. I don’t have to be with an old woman. I should be with somebody my own age. They might not be such selfish bitches.’
Everybody watched as he stalked out of the pub like a gunfighter. Fern put her face in her hands and wept, and everybody looked away again.
Still in her jacket, Fern sat on the end of her single bed in what had been Ollie’s room and gazed at the rocket-ship light fitting. She’d used up all the energy at her disposal acting normal for Nora, who’d asked suspiciously, ‘You’re back early. Everything all right?’