by Kit Eyre
‘Amy not going to uni isn’t anything to –’
‘Of course it is. I’ve written about her, I’ve spoken about her. If she doesn’t go then I look like a liar, don’t I? Not to mention the fact that I’ve raised a child who’d rather give up at the first hurdle than try and forge a life for herself. That reflects on me.’
‘It’s not about you,’ Max pointed out.
Valerie snorted and pivoted back towards the frying pan, but her hand overshot. She staggered with her hair near to the flames that licked around the rim of the pan and Max darted forward to pull her clear. They lurched away from the cooker, falling against the worktop instead. Max’s spine took the impact, although she was more focused on Valerie shaking in her arms. She wrapped her up properly, the whiff of steak more than a reminder of what could’ve happened. Valerie finally pulled away, cheeks pinched and her lip still trembling.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured.
‘You need to be careful,’ Max said as she stroked her neck.
‘I know.’ Valerie hesitated and met her eye. ‘I do know. I’m sorry if I sound harsh, I don’t mean to. But if Amy’s got a problem, she needs to come to me. I’ve tried putting myself in her way so many times and it doesn’t work. We’re the closest we’ve been for years, yet she still doesn’t want to talk to me. I can’t force her into it nor do I think I could talk her out of becoming a lawyer. She might be wobbling about it, Max, but that’s the only thing she’s doing. She’ll follow through on the ambition because of Clarice.’
‘What if she doesn’t get the grades?’ Max pressed. ‘What if she can’t go to uni?’
Valerie rested her head against her chest. ‘I know my daughter. She’s not in the habit of giving up.’
Chapter 24
On March 20th, Max’s birthday, Amy let herself into the house and paused in the hallway. She hadn’t expected fanfare, but the complete silence unnerved her. With the election in full swing, it was a given they wouldn’t be dining out, so she’d anticipated Valerie would cook as recompense. Instead, the only smell drifting through the house was the vague whiff of bleach. Amy took off into the kitchen then stopped short as she found Max sat at the table. The room was cold, but she seemed oblivious to it as she stripped the label from a beer bottle with her thumbnail while staring into space.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Amy asked.
Max flinched, dragging her gaze up. ‘Oh, hiya.’
‘Where is she?’
‘There’s a bottle of wine in the fridge if you want a drink. Not something I’ve heard –’
‘I don’t give a damn about wine. It’s your birthday – where’s Mum?’
‘She can’t make it,’ Max said after a moment. ‘There’s an event she’s got stuck at so I’m having a few beers here then going back to mine for a curry.’
Amy frowned at her. ‘What, on your own?’
‘It’s no big deal.’
‘You’re not eating alone on your birthday,’ she insisted, dropping her bag on the floor. ‘You want curry? We’ll get curry.’
‘I’m not in the mood for company,’ Max muttered.
‘Well, tough, because I’m not letting you spend your birthday alone.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’
Amy dug into her pocket for her mobile. ‘That’s not the point. I’ll call Bengal’s and get our usual banquet. You can get me a glass of that wine if you want to be useful.’
Max threw her a look then just shuffled across the room and followed her instruction. By the time she’d poured the wine, the food was ordered and Amy was already pulling a lumpy package from her bag.
‘This is for you,’ she said as she passed it over. ‘Sorry, I’m hopeless at wrapping.’
The way Max began picking apart the paper suggested she didn’t unwrap presents very often. She finally worked a hand inside and teased the shirt loose, shaking it out and gaping at the array of signatures.
‘Where the hell did you find this?’
Amy bit her lip. ‘Do you like it? I mean, it’s not a complete set of signatures, but it’s close and it didn’t cost thousands like the others.’
‘I bet it cost enough. I can’t accept it.’
‘Do you like it?’ Amy repeated.
Max motioned her into a clumsy hug and squeezed hard. ‘Best present I’ve ever got, honestly. How did you know?’
‘Elena said you used to go to matches with your aunt.’
‘Drew must’ve told her. First time he’s kept back something useful in his life. Thank you.’
Amy’s cheeks were burning as she pulled away. ‘You’re welcome. Tell me more about Bea. You always drop in these little titbits and then . . . Well, usually the election gets in the way. Come on, I’d like to know more about her.’
Although Max was reticent at first, a few pointed questions set her down the right track. In the forty minutes until their food arrived, Amy had never seen her talk so much or so animatedly. It was obvious from the way she spoke that Bea had been more of a parent to her than anyone else, and a crazy one to boot. The conversation continued as they ate, trailing off naturally when Max came to the end of one story just as their plates were clear.
‘And I had to bail her out,’ she said. ‘This sixty four year old woman with an artificial hip and all the man on the desk said to me was “try to keep her clothes on in future, ma’am”.’
Amy grinned and straightened her cutlery. ‘What on earth was she protesting?’
‘No idea. She was big into local conservation though. I got left all these guide books to old buildings and that. I’ve still got them in the spare room.’
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing them.’
‘Fancying a career in stately homes now, are you?’
‘Well, everyone needs a backup plan,’ she muttered.
Max shuffled her elbows onto the table. ‘That’s right. As long as it’s not something you’d rather be doing instead.’
‘I don’t know anything about heritage.’
‘So, not heritage, but what about something else? You’re smart, you can do whatever you want. Honest to God, you can. It’s not like me with no qualifications and no hope of getting any. You set your sights on something and you go and do it. No matter whether you think your gran won’t like it – or your mum, come to that. Do what’s right for you.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Amy replied with a weak smile, but Max just shook her head.
‘I know you don’t want to be a lawyer, so get out of it while you can. Whatever anyone says about it, you’ve got Ed, you’ve got me. We can work out a way past it. It’ll be okay.’
Amy snatched up her glass, more to hide behind than anything else. A minute ago, they’d been casually talking about Bea, and now the reality that she tried to avoid was crashing over her like an avalanche. The glass wobbled between her fingers then toppled to the table and shattered.
Max planted her forearm down to stem the flow of wine. It stained the fabric pink, snaking towards her elbow and through to her skin. Amy was transfixed, right until Max flinched away and she spotted a shard of glass hanging from her arm. That image brought Amy’s dinner into her throat and she was fortunate to make it to the downstairs bathroom before it bubbled up further than that.
Crumpled on the floor a few minutes later, she stared through her tears at the gentle knocking on the door. There was a patch of vomit seeping into her thigh, but that was nothing compared to the acrid smell that’d spread across the tiny room. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the picture of Max on the other side of the door.
‘Is your hand okay?’ she called.
The knocking halted. ‘Yeah, it was more caught in the shirt than anything else. How are you feeling? Can I get you some water or something?’
‘You should go,’ Amy said in a steady voice.
‘I’m not leaving you chucking your guts up.’
‘I want you to go.’
‘Let me just get you –’
Amy cra
cked her fist against the floor tiles. ‘You’re not my mum. Just go home, okay?’
There was a long silence. Now she could really picture Max’s face, flickering with hurt even as she pretended it hadn’t bothered her. She wanted to take back the words, but it was easier to let them stay there stagnating. A minute later, Max muttered a goodbye then her footsteps faded away. Amy heard the door to the utility room close and the rumble of the taxi as it moved first out of the garage and then out of the drive. She strained her ears until the noise must’ve been only in her imagination.
‘You talked to Max, didn’t you?’
Ed spun around, a tea towel dangling over his arm. Even underneath the beard, she could tell his cheeks were ashen. That was his guilt proven and she couldn’t breathe suddenly. She twisted away from him and rested her palms flat on the nearest empty table. The early-morning customers were probably staring at her from across the café, but she didn’t care.
‘Why did you do it?’ she demanded.
‘I was trying to help. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘It wasn’t your place to do anything.’
‘That’s not fair. What was I meant to do? Sit back and watch you tearing yourself to pieces? It was coming out at some point. I just thought that Max might –’
‘You shouldn’t have told her anything. If you were going to screw things up, why not go to Mum?’
‘Because you don’t get on properly and you like Max. Out of the two, if you’d listen to either of them, I thought it’d be her.’
Amy absorbed that then swivelled back towards him with a frown. Everything about his expression was sincere. She wanted to see some mark of the betrayal in his face, but she couldn’t find it, and that brought a new rush of words out before she could stop them.
‘You’ve got no idea what you could’ve done. You talking to Max like that – what if she’d decided it was too much and walked away? Thanks to you, she still might. I yelled at her to go, I didn’t want to talk to her.’
Ed edged forward, stretching for her arm. ‘Sweetie, you’re putting too much on yourself.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said as she took a step backwards.
‘I’m trying, but you’re not making sense. Max isn’t going anywhere, she loves you guys.’
Amy shook her head. Another step brought her spine against the corner of the table. She leaned back into it until her ribs growled then she pivoted away towards the door.
‘Wait,’ Ed said, darting after her, ‘where are you going? We need to talk about this.’
‘Talking’s what you do before you screw up someone’s life.’
‘No, come on. I was worried, I wanted to help. Yeah, I screwed up, but I didn’t go into it intending to. You can’t hide it – not forever – and I thought we could deal with it together, sort it out like a family or something. Don’t go, come on. Let’s talk about this. I’ll shut up the café –’
‘Stop it,’ she snapped. ‘Stop defending it.’
He held up his hands. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘Fine,’ she said, even as she groped for the door handle, ‘but it doesn’t change anything.’
Chapter 25
Baby Wallace was overdue and a General Election had been called.
Max was out in the cab on the first Tuesday in April when her mobile bleeped with a text. Her first thought was Drew, but it turned out to be Amy asking to see her at Geith Place, so she reassigned her job and went straight there. A summons like that, especially when they’d barely talked since that mess on her birthday, wasn’t something she’d ignore.
Pounding music was audible outside the house when she pulled up into the drive. It wasn’t Amy’s style, more like the indie rock Ed liked to listen to. Once Max opened the door, the noise smashed into her eardrums until her head rang with it. The kitchen was the source so she followed it through and managed to switch the radio off before there was any permanent damage. Liam Gallagher was still echoing in her ears when she turned back to the doorway then she stopped at the sight of the table and floor covered in papers. A round of machine gun thumps tore her eyes away from Valerie’s handwriting and she took the stairs two at a time, wondering what the hell she’d find up there. Amy scrunched up against the desk with books tossed all around wasn’t what she’d expected.
‘Amy? What’s wrong?’
There was no answer. Max clenched her jaw then nudged her way through the antique spines to kneel next to the desk. She didn’t go as far as touching her shoulder, holding off in case it set something going. With the way Amy looked, she’d either crumple on contact or explode.
‘I’m here like you wanted,’ Max said. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
It took a few seconds for her eyes to catch on Max’s then she tilted her head away. At first, Max reckoned she was trying to hide her tears, but closer inspection said it was more like she was well past crying. Whatever had gone on, it’d ripped something out of her and left a hole behind.
‘She’s screwed it up again,’ Amy mumbled finally.
Max’s stomach tensed. ‘You mean your mum. What’s happened?’
‘It was right, it was perfect. Why did she have to mess it up?’
‘Come on, tell me what’s happened,’ Max pressed, trying to keep her voice level. ‘Have you two had a row? Is she – is she all right?’
Amy snickered and clambered to her feet. ‘Haven’t you heard? Valerie Smythe always comes up smelling of roses because she doesn’t mind who she hurts on her way.’
The bitter tone of voice warded off any relief from hearing that Valerie was okay. Max followed Amy in getting up then glanced around at the mess on the floor. It was too intrusive to start tidying up, what with these being Tim’s books, but it looked worse than if it’d been just a clump of her paperbacks scattered everywhere. She was shocked when Amy kicked one of them into the wall and crunched over the others to get to the doorway. Max was more cautious on her way out, tiptoeing through the spines and giving her a head start down the stairs. She’d hardly got into the kitchen when Amy pushed a piece of paper into her hands.
‘Read it,’ she said.
Max tried to pass it back. ‘I can’t.’
‘Read it,’ Amy repeated.
‘It’s private,’ she replied.
Amy snorted and pushed it towards her again. ‘Not if she had her way. Go on. Read it.’
Short of chucking it in her face, there wasn’t much alternative. Max lowered her eyes to the paper and read the first paragraph of the email. Then she blinked and read it again. She had to do the same with the second paragraph before the rest started swimming on the page and Valerie’s handwritten notes in the margin bled into the main text.
Max let the paper drift back onto the table. ‘It’s just an opinion piece or something.’
‘Do not do that. I’m sick of you excusing her. Read it again! She actually calls it the ‘homosexual lifestyle’ – she actually uses that phrase. Who does that? Who’d do that when they’re in a relationship with another woman? You’ve been together for a year and she still thinks it’s okay to call it a lifestyle? What planet is she on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Max admitted, her throat burning. Her attention strayed back over the scattered papers and she asked, ‘Are they all like that?’
‘Same vein. There’s a real beauty on immigration, just banging on about integration without saying anything that’s technically racist. It’s dog-whistling, that’s what it is.’
‘But she doesn’t believe that. I’ve heard her after she’s been down the community centre, she respects people who’ve dragged themselves up out of nothing.’
Amy shook her head. ‘Oh, that’s her preaching to the crowd. She knows what she’s doing when it comes to manipulation.’
‘That’s not what I take from it. She likes them, genuinely likes them. There’s no need to put on the mask, not with me.’
‘Why – because you’d forgive her whatever she did? So, she misses yo
ur birthday and that’s fine because she sort of apologised. She’s late for everything, she keeps cancelling on you, but that’s all right because she doesn’t mean to. She knows exactly what she’s doing and I’m sick of covering for her, pretending she’s not messing this up when she is. There’s a guy, Max; another politician. Someone that she’s always with, someone she’s . . .’
Max swallowed as she trailed off. Something was itching at her chest, gnawing its way inside. Instead of giving in to the question, she crossed the kitchen and turned the kettle on. She flinched when Amy stomped over and jabbed it off at the plug.
‘Aren’t you listening?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ Max muttered.
‘Then ask me about him. Ask me about John Foster.’
‘Amy –’
‘You can’t, can you? Why do you let her do this to you? If you knew everything –’
‘Just calm down for a minute.’
‘No, you don’t get it, you don’t understand w-why . . .’
More might’ve coming, but it smothered itself under her tears. Max stood helpless until Amy shuffled forward and then she couldn’t help gathering her up like she’d done with Valerie over the last year. She cried herself out pretty quickly, though she didn’t let go.
‘I miss Ed,’ she whispered.
Max squeezed her tight. ‘You have broken up then. I did wonder.’
‘We wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for . . . It’s her, it’s always her.’
There was nothing to say to that, not if she didn’t want to get her going again. So, Max just rubbed her back and hoped she was helping until a bleeping from her jacket pulled them apart. She tugged out her mobile and scanned the message with fresh panic swirling around her gut.
‘It’s Elena,’ she said to Amy. ‘Something’s wrong.’
Chapter 26
All the roads to the hospital seemed to be populated by idiots who couldn’t drive properly. Amy kept her hands locked together on her lap, almost soothed by the sound of Max swearing at every car getting in their way on the bypass. It distracted her from the crushing memories of driving this way with Tim for his check-ups and treatments, ready to keep him company in the waiting room for appointments. He’d never suggested she stay at home, in the same way that it hadn’t seemed to occur to Max that she should leave her behind.