Sheila waved her hands around in front of her. ‘Stop rushing me, Aurora. I just want to have a look around, get some ideas. I need to modernise myself a bit. The lounge area in Seymour House hasn’t a hint of a high-backed chintz chair or a lap tray. Just lots of single armchairs in different colours. It’s inspired me.’
Rory sighed. ‘I know, Mum, I’ve been there.’ She felt a pang of guilt every time her mother mentioned Seymour House. It hadn’t been so bad when Rory had still been living in Scott’s house, because it had only had two bedrooms. But now Rory had such a large house, she couldn’t shake the idea that she should at least invite her mum to come and live with her and Belle.
As always, telling Sheila that she already knew something didn’t stop her mother from continuing. ‘Yes, well. Thankfully, that modern furniture in the lounge is quite light, as we have to push them all back against the wall when we have our tai chi class.’
Rory ran her fingers over a chenille rug. She needed to at least ask the question. ‘Mum, do you like it there? At Seymour House? I mean, does it feel a bit strange? Living in a flat. After the house?’
‘It’s fine, now I’m settled. The flat is quite small, but that means I have less to keep clean.’ Sheila picked up a psychedelic pink and orange cushion. ‘What do you think of this? Too much?’
Rory took it out of her hands and frisbeed it back onto the shelf. ‘Way too much.’
Sheila picked the cushion up again and replaced it neatly. ‘Anyway, I’ve got two bedrooms, so Belle can still come over and stay whenever she wants. I love our sleepovers.’
The guilt again.
Rory took a deep breath. ‘Mum, I’ve been thinking. Now that I have the house – once it’s done up, I mean – would you want to move in with Belle and me?’ There. She’d said it.
There was a stony silence next to her. Rory looked at her mother. They stayed like that for about ten seconds.
Then Sheila reached out and took Rory’s arm. ‘That would be wonderful, Aurora.’
Rory felt sick. ‘Really?’
‘Oh, I’ve been hoping you would ask! I didn’t want to presume, but…’
Rory turned back to the cushions and started to rearrange them. ‘Okay. Great. So, we should…’
She turned back to Sheila as she heard her mother start to laugh raucously.
‘The look on your face!’
‘What?’
Sheila put her hands either side of Rory’s face and kissed her cheek firmly. ‘Oh, my darling girl, thanks for asking, but we both know that living in the same house would result in one or the other of us heading to an early grave.’
Rory breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then grinned. ‘Thank God.’
Sheila laughed again. ‘Thank God, indeed. Anyway, your place would be too dull for me these days. It’s very sociable at Seymour House. You would laugh if you saw some of the other residents. Well, you’ve met Barb.’
‘The one with the dangly earrings and the fluffy high-heeled slippers?’ Barb made Bet Lynch look like a wallflower.
‘That’s the one. Well, since the poker night has started, a few more have come out of the woodwork. Mainly ladies – single men are VERY thin on the ground after sixty-five – but we do have Sid. Bless him, he seems a little bit frightened of us all, especially Barb, but he still turns up every week.’
‘So I can stop feeling guilty?’
Sheila was refolding a woven throw that Rory had moved. ‘I don’t know. If I let you stop feeling guilty, will it mean that you visit me less?’
‘Depends if you make me do tai chi and play poker.’
Sheila frowned. ‘We wouldn’t let you youngsters play. No, you don’t need to feel guilty at all. It did feel strange when the house sale finalised. It’s weird to think I won’t be going there again. Your dad and I were there for over forty years.’
Rory swallowed down the huge lump in her throat which developed whenever Sheila mentioned their old home. Although she hadn’t lived there in over sixteen years, she felt the same as her mum about its sale. It’s just a house.
Sheila was still talking. ‘I’m sure the young couple who bought it will change everything. I told them that the carpet had only been in for four years and I never allowed anyone to walk on it with their shoes on, but I don’t think they were really listening. They’ll probably change it to wooden floors like those houses in magazines. Funny, isn’t it? When I was a girl, wooden floors meant you were too poor for carpet. Anyway, that reminds me, there’s something I want to talk to you about. I’m bored of cushions. Let’s go and get a coffee.’
Whilst her mum found a seat, Rory queued for the drinks, under strict instructions not to let them put the tea bag into the pot because, ‘It’ll be stewed by the time I get it.’ She had known the cushions story was a ruse. When did her mum ever need help to shop?
Rory slid the tray onto the table. ‘Here you go. And here’s your tea bag and milk in a separate jug.’
‘You are a good girl. You know I only like a splash of milk.’
Rory picked up her coffee. ‘So, what did you want to talk to me about?’
Sheila reached into her bag and brought out an envelope.
Rory knew what this was. She put down her mug and held up her hands. ‘No, Mum. We’ve talked about this.’
‘No, Aurora. You’ve talked about this. I wasn’t listening. If you don’t take this cheque – and pay it into your account – I will draw the money out in cash and deliver it to you in a briefcase. Then it will be on your head if the headlines read: MAD OLD BAT GETS MUGGED CARRYING FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS. You are not the only stubborn woman in this family. That place is an absolute wreck. And if it hasn’t even got proper electrics,’ Sheila shuddered, ‘I will not sleep until you’ve got someone in to sort that out.’
‘I’ve contacted an electrician. I’m not stupid.’
‘Good. Then you can use some of this to pay for it. I am not arguing with you, Aurora. Sometimes you have to give in and accept help from somewhere.’ She sighed. ‘I do wish you had a man around to help with things.’
Well, that was guaranteed to get ‘Aurora’s’ back up.
‘How would a man help? I can do this on my own.’
‘It’s not as easy as all that. I know you think you just need to read a book about it and learn as you go along. But you can’t even knit, let alone decorate a whole house. And it isn’t as if you have lots of spare time on your hands. The amount of work you bring home every night: piles and piles of marking. Belle tells me you are up until midnight sometimes, trying to get it all done.’
Rory would kill Belle when she got home. She must have known that Sheila would give her a lecture about working too hard. There was no point getting into this with her mum. She should just accept the money for now and change the subject.
‘Okay, Mum, I’ll take the money. But I am going to put it into an account for emergencies only. If you need it back, it’ll be there.’
Sheila nodded. A compromise.
‘Speaking of Belle, she’s settled really well into college.’ Belle was always a safe bet to distract Sheila, who was nothing if not a proud grandmother.
‘I know! She popped in to see me. How lovely was that photograph of her on her ID card? She looks just like one of her princesses with those beautiful brown eyes of hers and all that hair. That’s one thing she can thank her father for; he always was a good-looking boy.’
Rory nodded. Belle had looked absolutely beautiful in her picture. Unlike Rory’s staff pass for St Anthony’s which looked like a picture from a ‘Don’t Take Drugs’ campaign. That’s what you got for not wearing make-up to work.
Sheila was gazing into the middle distance, reminiscing. ‘It doesn’t seem five minutes ago that she was click-clacking around the kitchen with my shoes and shawls on. Now she’s got a boyfriend.’
Rory coughed on her coffee. ‘A what?’
Sheila picked up the small jug and splashed the merest suggestion of milk into her cup. ‘Well,
I don’t know if he’s her boyfriend yet, but she likes him. Hasn’t she mentioned it?’
Rory shook her head. A boy? Belle had never shown an interest in boys before. And why hadn’t she mentioned him? They told each other everything.
‘We haven’t really seen each other much this week. I’ve been busy with the first week of term and she’s been at Fiona’s a lot.’
‘Well, there is a boy on the horizon. Things are going to change. You’ve had it easy with her up until now. I certainly didn’t have such an easy ride mothering through your teenage years. You were a nightmare. Every time I told you not to do something, it would be the exact thing that you would set out to do. It didn’t help that your dad indulged you so much. He was almost proud of your devil-may-care attitude. It wasn’t him that had to go up to the school every time you’d broken another rule.’
Rory smiled. Her dad had let her get away with murder. She was grateful that Belle had not taken after her rebellious side. Belle had always been a good girl. Too good, sometimes. Someone could take advantage of her very easily. Rory needed to talk to her about this boy. Or should she wait for Belle to open up to her?
Sheila had changed the subject again. ‘Speaking of rules, one of the women at Seymour House – Flo – is trying to get a residents’ committee together so that we can make sure that everyone is behaving appropriately. I’ve never been one for committees myself. I learned my lesson after joining the PTA when you were at school. Endless evenings spent listening to other people prattle on about nothing. Some people have far too much time on their hands and some of them, like Flo, want to spend it telling other people what to do.’
Rory couldn’t agree more. She had managed to side swerve joining any ‘working groups’ at St Anthony’s or ‘parent consultation groups’ at Belle’s grammar school. Maybe she and her mother weren’t total opposites after all. ‘Why does she think you need to keep an eye on residents’ behaviour?’
Sheila leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Well. Barb – she of the dangly earrings and fluffy slippers – has some conspiracy theory that Flo wants to curtail her “activities”. Flo doesn’t like it when Barb has gentlemen coming to visit her; she thinks it’s dangerous for her to bring unknown men into the building. Barb thinks Flo shouldn’t worry. With her cable knit cardigans, she’s not in any danger from the kind of men that Barb knows.’
Rory started to laugh. She had only met Barb once, but she could just imagine the kind of men she went for. ‘Hasn’t she tried to fix you up, Mum?’
Sheila looked embarrassed. She picked up her insipid tea and sipped. ‘Actually, Barb has been on at me to double date with her, but I don’t think it’s for me. I didn’t really date the first time round – I met your dad at sixteen and we knew we were going to get married from the first week. It all seems a lot more complicated these days.’ She sipped again and then leaned forwards. ‘Barb even showed me a book she got from the library: Sex for Seniors. It had drawings of positions you could do “it” in and everything. I asked her if there was a picture of my favourite position: sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea and a biscuit.’
Rory chuckled. ‘Oh, Mum. You’re not past it yet, you know.’
‘Maybe not. But I won’t be around forever. Which is why I would like to see you settled down. Why can’t you give it a chance, Aurora?’
Rory wasn’t about to go down that path again. ‘Has the vacant flat been filled yet?’
‘No. Obviously, Barb is hoping for a single man, which makes Flo shake her head in disgust. With any luck, it’ll be another Barb and they can go out together and leave me alone.’
‘Well. Don’t rule anything out, Mum.’
‘Same to you, Aurora.’
But it wasn’t a love interest for herself, or for her mum, that was on Rory’s mind. Why hadn’t Belle told her about the boy she liked?
Chapter Five
Standing in front of a display of screws and nails, Rory was at a loss. Some of the skirting board was coming away in her bedroom and she just wanted to screw it back. Why were there so many different types?
If there was one thing she hated, it was asking for help in a shop like this. Not only was there rarely anyone around to ask but, when you did, they were usually male and had a way of making you feel like an idiot. She had had enough of being made to feel stupid this week. Nathan Finch had been introducing new initiatives at school on an almost daily basis.
At this evening’s staff training, he had instructed them that they would need to produce a seating plan for each of their classes. This was something they already did, but he wanted a lot more than a sketch of who sat where in the room. ‘For each student, you will also need to indicate the following things. Firstly, their gender and ethnic origin. Then whether they have a Special Educational Need, are “Gifted and Talented” or receive free school meals. Lastly, their current National Curriculum level and whether they are making above, below or expected progress. We would like this colour coded as indicated and, ideally, I would like you to complete these by the end of the week.’
Although this was going to take a great deal of time and effort (and would have no impact whatsoever on the teaching of the children in her classes) at least Rory knew how to do it. Online dating, however, was a whole different ballgame. Susie had bullied her into looking at it with her over the weekend. They had scanned the websites together and had tried to work out what they needed to do.
‘Who are these people?’ Rory had been quite incredulous at the photographs people chose to use to promote themselves to their potential future life partners. Some of them looked like they were auditioning for the adult channel, whilst others decided that they would be most attractive atop a camel or beside a national monument. One picture looked like it had been taken in the Amazonian rainforest and the man in question was a tiny dot way in the distance. ‘That’s either an attempt at irony or he has got some serious self-esteem issues.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t look at the photographs.’ Susie kept scrolling through the list. ‘Let’s read their descriptions instead.’
This was worse. ‘“I love long walks in the countryside”,’ read Rory. ‘That’s the tenth one who says that. Maybe they should be thinking about getting a dog rather than a girlfriend?’
‘What about this one?’ Susie looked hopeful as she read. ‘“I’ve dated many women, but I am still searching for my soulmate.”’
‘Clearly wants someone to agree with everything he says.’ Rory leaned over the keyboard and hit return. ‘Next.’
‘How about this one? “Recently divorced, I am looking for that special lady who will help to mend my broken heart.”’
‘Rebound. Next.’
‘“Open minded, and seeking adventure, I would love to meet a woman who wants to try new things.”’
‘Swinger. Susie, I don’t think this is going to be for me. I can’t even face writing my description. Anyway, it’s too risky for us. What if one of the kids from school found us online? The humiliation! We’d have to leave the county.’
‘Maybe you’re right. But if you won’t try speed dating and we’re not going to do online, you have to promise that we will start going out more. You might be happy expending your energy with a paint brush or a hammer, but I need to meet someone soon or I am going to start walking funny.’
Rory had duly promised that she would go out more but she was starting to regret it already. She had had about the same success with choosing the right man as she was having with choosing these screws. She didn’t have a clue which ones she would need to buy and couldn’t afford to start buying materials which turned out to be useless. Although she had the money her mum had insisted on giving her, it was safely in a separate account and she was only going to use it for emergencies. Like that damn rewiring.
Walking to the end of the aisle, she found an assistant who seemed to be idly raking through a tray of metal. May as well give him something more productive to do. ‘Excuse me, could you give me some h
elp? I need to know which screws will fix a skirting board to a wall.’
Without any particular rush, he ambled over to her before crouching forward slightly and squinting at the display. He must have just come from the warehouse because his trousers were covered in dust and his boots were splattered in different types of paint. Rory could imagine him hefting boxes around; he had the shoulders for it. Maybe this was B&Q’s new marketing strategy to attract more female customers: good-looking sales assistants. This one could almost be auditioning for a builders and decorators calendar shoot. He was upright again and holding something out to her. ‘They should do the job. Although you may want to glue it as well; sometimes screws aren’t enough.’
She took the packet from him. His hands were paint-spattered too, but his nails were clean. ‘Great, thanks.’ Whilst she had his attention, she may as well get the other things on her list. ‘Actually, I also need some help with plaster. I have an electrician coming tomorrow to rewire my house and apparently he is going to channel out the walls for the new cables. He told me I would have to fill them back in myself. What do I need?’
The assistant shook his head. ‘I’d get a plasterer in for that if I were you. It’s a tricky job.’
Rory had been expecting this ever since she’d walked into the DIY shop. In fact, she had been just waiting for someone to ask her if she was looking for her husband. ‘Thanks for the advice, but I’m sure I’ll be able to fill in a few holes with plaster.’
Rubbing his unshaven face, the assistant fixed a pair of bright blue eyes on her. ‘Have you done it before? It’s quite difficult to get a smooth finish. Plastering is a bit of an art form, actually.’
She had been asking for directions to the correct aisle, not a tutorial. ‘If you could just show me where it is, I’d be grateful.’
The man shrugged and smiled. ‘Okay. I think I saw it a couple of aisles down. They keep moving things, but I’m sure we’ll find it. Follow me.’ As Rory followed him, she wondered how much of an expert on plastering he could be when he couldn’t even remember where products were kept in his own store. His long strides forced her to practically skip to keep up. When he stopped, she almost ran into him. ‘Here you go. These are the fillers. A professional plasterer would use Thistle, but if you’ve just got thin channels to fill in, you’ll probably get away with this stuff.’
Happily Never After_A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 3