Dad stayed only about five more minutes, then just as he was leaving, he produced four of the prototype tiramisu bars from the pocket of his (I can hardly type this) brown suede jacket. For a minute I was almost touched – at least he was planning to keep us in chocolate – then he says, ‘Let me know your impressions, especially if you think the coffee flavour is too strong.’
I threw a bar at him, which caught him on the sideburn and said, ‘Do your own fucking market research,’ but Mam held on to hers with a death-grip.
And next thing you know it’s just me and Mam again, sitting in silence, our mouths agape.
It was then that shock really got a grip of me; none of it seemed real. I couldn’t get anything hardwired into my system.
How had it all happened? But do you know what? In amongst all the other feelings I’ve still enough room to feel embarrassed. That’s bad, isn’t it? But, Christ, the thought of my father cavorting, cavorting with a woman my age. It’s bad enough to think of your parents having sex with each other. But with different people…
Remember when your dad married Carol? And how the thought of them ‘doing it’ was too horrific so we decided they were just together for the companionship? If only I could convince myself that this is the case here!
And what’s in it for hard-faced, highlighted Colette? My dad wears a vest. A vest, for God’s sake.
Aaargh! Just had an image there of them ‘at it’.
‘After all I did for him,’ Mam said. ‘And to leave me in my twilight years. What did I do wrong?’
You know what, I’ve always worried about having children because I felt I couldn’t watch them endure their teenage heartbreaks. Not in my worst nightmares did I think I’d have to do it for my mother.
You know what she’s like – the perfect wife, always cooking wonderful meals, keeping the house perfect, never braining Dad when he was narky about bars of chocolate not selling as well as they should have. She kept her figure right into the menopause. Even her menopause was carried off with aplomb; not once was she stopped leaving a supermarket with an unpaid-for can of sardines in her handbag. (Why is it always cans of sardines?)
I’ll tell you something, this has made me very bitter about men. What’s the point? You give them your life, cook yourself blue in the face, starve yourself into osteoporosis and for what? For them to leave you just when you’re commencing your final descent into old age, for a vest-loving woman who has highlights.
‘He didn’t deserve you,’ I said.
But she looked annoyed and said, ‘That’s your father you’re talking about.’
But what was I meant to say? Plenty more fish in the sea? You’ll meet someone else? Like, Mam is sixty-two; she’s soft and comfy and looks like someone’s granny.
If you get a chance, call me at Mam’s. She’s terrified of being on her own, so I’m going to stay here for a little while, just until he comes to his senses and returns home.
Love
Gemma
PS No, I don’t mind about you not having a Valium and yes, a rum and Coke was a good substitute. You did the right thing.
Mam let me out to collect clean clothes from my flat, a fifteen-minute drive away. ‘If you’re not back in forty minutes, I’ll be afraid,’ she promised.
At times like this I hate being an only child. Mam had had two miscarriages – one before having me and one after – and no amount of rocking horses and pink tricycles made up for not having brothers or sisters.
As I drove my mind was on Colette and her highlights. The greatest shock was that she was almost the same age as me; did this mean Dad had been eyeing up my friends? He had no history of affairs or flirtations – until yesterday the thought would have been thigh-slappingly funny – but all of a sudden I was looking with fresh eyes. Thinking back, he’d always been nice to my friends, giving them chocolate whenever they called round, but that was almost the same as inviting them to partake of the fresh air in the house. And when I was in my late teens and early twenties he was the dad who used to come out at two in the morning with his coat on over his PJs to collect me and nine or ten others from a club in town. We were usually a bit the worse for wear and the highwater mark was the time Susan opened her window and gawked half a bottle of peach Schnapps down the outside of the car door. Dad didn’t notice until the next morning when, jingling his car keys, he was leaving for golf only to find one of his doors caked in gunge. But instead of going on a mad rant like Mr Byers did the time Susan gawked into his flower bed (‘You tell that little brat to get round here and clear it up! She shouldn’t be drinking, she’s under age and she can’t hold it!’ etc., etc.), all Dad said was, ‘Ah, sugar! That Susan,’ and tramped back inside to get a basin of water and a J-cloth. At the time I thought Dad was simply being kind but now I was wondering if it implied something far more lecherous.
A revolting thought.
I got caught on several red lights, which ate into my time, but at least the code on the electronic gate was working. My flat is in a complex which aspires to be swinging and ‘modrin’ and among its many facilities are a (laughably poor) gym and an electronic gate which is meant to provide ‘security’. Except that, on a regular basis, the code on the gate doesn’t work and people either can’t get out for work, or can’t get back in for their dinner, depending on what time of the day it happens.
I flicked through my post – six or seven leaflets advertising power yoga, a flyer for colonic irrigation – and checked my answering machine: nothing urgent; everyone finished their messages by saying, ‘I’ll try you on the mobile.’ (Mobile indeed. My life would be easier if they just put wheels on it.) Then I flung toiletries, underwear and my mobile charger into a bag and tried to track down clean clothes for work. I found one crisply ironed shirt hanging on the wardrobe door, but I needed two. A rummage through the hangers produced another, then I saw that the reason it was unworn was because it had funny yellow stains under the arms that washing couldn’t shift, so I never wore it any more. Well, it would have to do; I just wouldn’t take my jacket off. Finally, I packed my pinstriped suit and four-inch heels. (I never wear flats. My shoes are so high that sometimes when I step out of them, people look around in confusion and ask, ‘Where’d she go?’ and I have to say, ‘I’m down here.’)
Before I left I gave my bed a wistful look; I’d be sleeping in my parents’ spare room tonight and it just wouldn’t be the same. I love my bed. Let me tell you about it…
A few of my favourite things
Favourite thing No. 1
My Bed: A love story
My bed is a lovely bed. It is not just any old bed. It is a bed I assembled myself and by that I don’t mean it came in a flat pack from Ikea. I bought an expensive mattress, in other words, not the cheapest one in the shop. I think it was only the third cheapest. Extravagance indeed!
Then the bedding. I have not one, but two duvets. One to cover me – obviously. But – you’re going to like this – the second one goes under my sheet, so I lie on top of it. It’s a trick my mother taught me and it’s hard to convey the bliss of climbing in and being received by the fluffy, feathery envelope. The duvets seem to stroke me, murmuring, You’re OK now, we’ve got you, we’ve got you, let it go, it’s all OK, you’re safe now – like the hero does to the girl at the end of the movie, after she’s been on the run from rogue elements of the FBI, and she’s finally managed to expose them without getting shot.
Sheets, duvet covers and pillow cases: cotton, of course, and they are white, white, white (apart from the coffee stains).
Unique feature: the headboard. Aka: the best bit. Cody’s friend Claud made it for me (I paid him for it, it wasn’t a present) and it’s a headboard fit for a fifties movie star: big, padded and all curves and curlicues, upholstered in faded bronze silk with a scattering of tea-roses, it’s a bit fairy tale, a bit Art Nouveau, in other words, a bit fabulous. People always remark on it. Indeed the first time Anton saw it he exclaimed, ‘Look at your girlie bed!’ then roar
ed laughing, before rolling me onto it. Ah, happy days…
I gave my bed a final regretful look, wishing I didn’t have to leave it. I consulted my ghost sisters. ‘You go on over to Mam,’ I said to the first one. ‘You’re the eldest.’ But nothing doing, so I went myself.
When I got out of the car and came into the house, carrying my clean suit and shirts, Mam said, ‘What do you need them for?’
‘Work.’
‘Work?’ Like she’d never heard of such a thing.
‘Yes, Mam, work.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Don’t go.’
‘Mam, I have to go. I’ll lose my job if I don’t.’
‘Take compassionate leave.’
‘They only give it when someone dies.’
‘I wish he had died.’
‘Mam!’
‘But I do. We’d get a ton of sympathy. And respect. And the neighbours would bring food.’
‘Quiches,’ I said. (Because they do.)
‘And apple tarts. Marguerite Kelly makes a lovely funeral apple tart.’ (Said with a certain amount of bitterness, you’ll see why in a minute.) ‘But instead of having the decency to die he’s got a girlfriend and left me. And now you’re talking about going to work. Take some of your holidays.’
‘I’ve none left.’
‘Sick leave, then. Dr Bailey will give you a note. I’ll pay.’
‘Mam, I can’t’ I was starting to panic.
‘What could be so important?’
‘Davinia Westport’s wedding next Thursday.’
‘Big deal,’ she said.
One of the society weddings of the year, to be precise. The most important, complex, costly, terrifying job I’d ever worked on and the logistics had occupied me for months, both in my waking hours and in my dreams.
The flowers alone involved five thousand refrigerated tulips arriving from Holland and a flower specialist and his six assistants flying in from New York. The cake was to be a twelve-foot-high replica of the Statue of Liberty, but was to be made of ice cream so couldn’t be prepared until the last minute. A marquee, big enough to hold five hundred guests, was to be set up in a field in Kildare on Monday night and transformed into an Arabian Nights Wonderland by Thursday morning. Because Davinia – in every other respect an obliging, sensible girl – had elected to get married in a tent in January, I was still trying to track down enough heaters to ensure we didn’t freeze. Among other things… Many, many other things. It was a real stamp of approval that Davinia had picked me to pull together her dream wedding. But the stress, I can’t tell you – chefs could get food poisoning, florists could develop sudden pollen allergy, hairdressers could break their wrists, the marquee could be vandalized and, at the end of the day, the problem was mine.
But I couldn’t tell Mam any of the details because they were strictly confidential and she was even worse than me at keeping secrets – half the locality already knew about the tiramisu bar.
‘But if you go to work, what about me?’
‘Maybe we could get one of the neighbours in to sit with you.’
Silence.
‘Is that OK? Because, you see, it’s my job, they pay me to be there, and I’ve been away for two days already.’
‘What neighbours?’
‘Ehhmm…’
A recent shake-down had seen a change in the fabric of the local community. One minute it seemed that all the neighbours were women of Mam’s age and older, and were called Mary, Maura, May, Maria, Moira, Mary, Maree, Mary, Mary and Mary. Except for Mrs Prior who was called Lotte but that was only because she was Dutch. They always seemed to be dropping in, distributing envelopes for a church collection or looking to borrow a jumper de-baller or… or… you know, that sort of thing.
But recently three or four of the Marys had moved; Mary and Mr Webb had sold up and moved to a retirement apartment by the sea ‘now that the children have grown’; Mr Sparrow had died and Mary Sparrow, a great friend of Mam’s, had gone to live with her sister in Wales. And the other two Marys? I can’t remember because I must admit I didn’t always pay as much attention as I should have to Mam’s recounting of local events. Oh yeah, Mary and Mr Griffin had gone to Spain because of Mary Griffin’s arthritis. And the other Mary? It’ll come to me.
‘Mrs Parsons,’ I suggested, ‘she’s nice. Or Mrs Kelly.’
Not a great idea, I realized. Relations had been strained –polite, of course, but strained – since Mrs Parsons had asked Mrs Kelly to make the cake for Celia Parsons’s twenty-first, instead of asking Mam, who the whole cul-de-sac knew made the cakes for everyone’s twenty-firsts; she did them in the shape of a key. (This took place a good eight years ago. Grudge-holding is one of the hobbies around here.)
‘Mrs Kelly,’ I repeated. ‘It wasn’t her fault Mrs Parsons asked her to make the cake.’
‘But she didn’t have to make it, she could have said no.’
I sighed. We’d been through this a thousand times. ‘Celia Parsons didn’t want a key, she wanted a champagne bottle.’
‘Dodie Parsons could at least have asked me if I could do it.’
‘Yes, but she knew that Mrs Kelly had the decoration book.’
‘I don’t need a book. I can just make up designs out of my head.’
‘Exactly! You’re the better one.’
‘And everyone said that the sponge was as dry as sand.’
‘They did.’
‘She should just stick to what she’s good at – apple tarts for funerals.’
‘Exactly and really, Mam, it wasn’t Mrs Kelly’s fault.’
It was important to broker closer links with Mrs Kelly because I couldn’t take any more time off. Francis and Frances – yes, the F&F of F&F Dignan – had been pleased when I’d won the Davinia account and said if I got it right I might get to do all of her weddings. But if I messed it up, well… The thing was, I was terrified of Frances and Francis – we all were. Frances had an iron-grey bob, all the better to highlight her boxer’s jaw. Although she didn’t actually smoke cigars, wear men’s trousers and sit with her legs apart, that’s what I saw whenever I closed my eyes and thought of her – something that didn’t happen often, at least not voluntarily. Francis, her partner in evil, was like an egg on legs: all his weight was piled on his stomach, but his pins were Kate Moss-skinny. He had a roundy face and was bald except for two tufts of hair which stuck out over his ears, so he looked like Yoda. People who didn’t know him well thought he was a hoot. They said of Frances, ‘She wears the trousers.’ But they were wrong, they both wore the trousers. They each had a pair.
If I got this wedding wrong, they’d take me into the RWNW (the Room With No Windows, their version of room 101) and say that I’d disappointed them. And then, almost as an afterthought, sack me. Because they’re a married couple they often boast that their company is more like a family. Certainly they know how to make me feel like a guilty schoolgirl and they encourage account managers (I’m one) to compete with their colleagues in an echo of – I’m told by those who know – sibling rivalry.
Anyway.
‘So will I ask Mrs Kelly to come in?’
Mam had relapsed into silence.
She opened her mouth. For a while nothing emerged, but I knew something was on its way. Then from somewhere far inside her came a long, thin keen of pain. Almost like white noise but with a slight, ragged human undertone. It was chilling. Give me plate-breaking over it any day of the week.
She stopped, gathered breath and began again. I shook her arm and said, ‘Ma-am. Please, Mam!’
‘Noel’s gone. Noel’s gone.’ At that, the white noise stopped and she was yelping uncontrollably, the way she had that morning, when I’d had to calm her down with Dr Bailey’s emergency tablets. But we were out of pills; I should have gone to the chemist when I’d had a chance. Perhaps there was a late-night one somewhere?
‘Mam, I’m just going to get someone to stay with you while I go out and get the t
ablets.’
She paid me no attention and I pelted up the road to Mrs Kelly and when she saw the state of me at the door, it was clear she thought it was time to start making pastry and peeling cooking apples.
I explained my plight and she knew of a chemist. ‘They close at ten.’
It was now ten to ten. Time to break the law.
I drove like the clappers and got to the chemist at a minute past. But there was still someone inside. I pounded on the glass door and a man calmly walked over and opened it for me.
‘Thank you. Oh, thank God.’ I fell in.
‘It’s nice to be wanted,’ he said.
I thrust the crumpled prescription at him. ‘Please tell me you have them. It’s an emergency.’
He smoothed it out and said, ‘Don’t worry, we have them. Take a seat there.’
He disappeared behind the white partition bit to where they keep the drugs and I sank onto the chair, trying to catch my breath.
‘That’s right,’ his disembodied voice came from behind the melamine divider. ‘Nice deep breaths. In, hold, out.’
He reappeared with the tranks and said kindly, ‘Mind yourself now. And remember, no driving or operating machinery when you’ve taken them.’
‘Fine. Thanks. Thanks very much.’ It wasn’t until I was back behind the wheel that I realized he thought they were for me.
5
Normally, I never read book reviews so it took me a while to find them in Saturday’s paper. As I skimmed critiques of biographies of obscure English generals and a book about the Boer war, I began to suspect that Cody might have been wrong for once. But then, my heart gave one big bang that hurt my chest. Bloody Cody was right. There was a review. He knows everything.
CHARMING DEBUT
Mimi’s Remedies by Lily Wright Dalkin Emery. £6.99