Mothers & Daughters (16 page)

Then the phone rang next to me, and the knife skittered out of my grasp and twirled across the work surface.

‘Excuse me,' I said, and snatched up the receiver.

It was Jaz.

‘Mum?'

‘Yes. Hang on while I—' The back door was ajar and I slipped through it, closing it behind me, leaving Phil to play Grandad. The air on the patio was balmy. A wood pigeon cooed from the top of the shed. ‘Everything all right, love?'

‘Yeah, all it was, would you mind if I picked up Matty a bit late? This document's taking me longer than I thought. There's loads of legal jargon in it I keep having to look up.'

‘No bother. Give me a call when you're near finishing and I'll bob him over. What's that I can hear in the background, by the way?'

‘Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto. It helps me concentrate. Why?'

I smiled, even though she couldn't see me. ‘I remember when it was nothing but thumping rock music with you. Thud thud thud through the floor.'

‘I've always liked classical.'

‘Have you?'

‘Yeah.'

A skein of geese pulled across the sky, and I flew with them for a moment.

‘Have you heard from Ian?' she said.

‘No. Have you?'

A snort. ‘Nothing. It's like he's not interested. Not interested in his own child. Can you believe it, after all that fuss?'

‘Your dad's here,' I blurted.

‘What's he want?'

‘I don't think he knows himself. Look, I've got to go, Jaz. I left him in charge and he's bound to be making a hash of things. Lord knows what kind of a mess I'll find when I go back in.'

I pressed End Call and stepped back inside. The high chair was empty, Matty's bowl of spaghetti untouched.

‘Phil? Phil?'

I hurried through to the living room. And there they were, Matty lying across the changing mat Ian had left out, bare legs kicking, and Phil unfurling a clean nappy with the flourish of a magician.

‘What are you doing?'

‘What's it look like? You were busy, Mr Stinky here needed sorting.'

‘But you've never changed a nappy in your life.'

‘I used to do Jaz's.'

‘You didn't.'

‘I bloody did, Carol. Christ, you've got a selective memory.'

‘Watch your language,' I said, staring at the way he hoisted Matty's hips, slid the nappy under, pulled the side tabs clear, wrapped them neatly round the front.

‘The old one's over there,' he said. ‘I don't know where you want it putting.'

Which goes to show, you can be wrong about people, even those you think you know inside out.

CHAPTER 13

Photograph 279, Album Two

Location: Chester Zoo

Taken by: Carol

Subject: Jaz, eleven, stands in front of a wire-link fence, a toy snake draped round her neck. Phil's half-in, half-out of the photograph, which happens to be a good representation of how he is with the family these days. Earlier he tried to enliven the trip by breaking suddenly into a sprint, waving his arms and crying, ‘They're loose! They're loose!'

After the panic has subsided, he is invited to the manager's office to explain himself. There
is
no explanation for Phil, thinks Carol. She has only recently trained him out of shouting, ‘I've won!' every time he visits a cash machine, and writing
For smuggling diamonds
on all her chequebook stubs. Really, it wears you down
.

So Phil skulks on the periphery of the picture, neither use nor ornament. Nobody takes any notice of him, that's the trouble; nobody understands his sense of humour. Well, there is one person he can make laugh, but she's not here
.

‘Sometimes,' I confided to Josh as we came into the outskirts of town, ‘when I'm on a short journey, I get this mad impulse to keep going and not stop, drive and drive, and see where the road takes me.'

‘Mum comes out with stuff like that,' he said.

‘Maybe all mothers feel the same way.'

‘Not just mums. If I could drive . . .'

‘Another couple of years and you'll be old enough to learn.'

‘Yeah, right, like Mum's ever going to let me loose behind a steering wheel.'

I knew what he meant: I couldn't picture it either.

‘If I could,' he went on, ‘I'd get on a plane this afternoon. If I was old enough, and I had a passport. And a stack of money.'

‘And your mother would have a nervous breakdown. We'd be sweeping up the pieces even before you'd got to the departure lounge.'

‘Yeah.' He picked at the skin around his thumbnail. ‘Best stay at home and practise staring at the wallpaper.'

There were so many activities Laverne vetoed: she didn't want Josh travelling fifteen miles to spend the day in Chester on his own, or surfing the net unsupervised, wearing low-slung jeans, sticking posters in his room, listening to music with unsound lyrics, watching the catchphrase comedy he needed to be in the social loop. Laverne's list of prohibiteds was long and broad-ranging. She'd have had him in short trousers if she could.

‘Well. It's hard being a mum,' I said non-committally.

‘Harder being a teenager.'

‘I expect it is these days, yes.'

He reached over the seat for his bag. ‘My stop.'

‘Here again? You want to walk?'

‘Yup.'

‘If you insist. I shan't ask.'

‘Very wise.' Josh reached for the door handle.

‘Have a nice day.'

‘I won't.'

A burst of laughter greeted me as I walked in through the gym door. Every machine on the circuit was busy, the room was bright and the music punching. Gwen-the-instructor stood in the middle with her hand over her mouth, feigning shock. ‘You wouldn't,' she was saying to Pauline. ‘You wouldn't really.'

‘I would,' said Pauline. ‘And afterwards I wouldn't throw it in a hedge neither. I'd stick it in the mincer. Try sewing
that
back on.'

More laughter. I stuck my car keys and water bottle in the corner and came across to join the girls.

‘Margaret's nearly finished,' Gwen told me. ‘She'll be off in a sec.'

Change stations now
, went the CD player. Margaret stepped off her board and headed for the water cooler, and I took her place.

On the machine opposite, Frances swung her shins backwards and forwards. ‘If my husband was trying new things in bed, buying me flowers for no reason and taking more care with his appearance, then, to be honest, I wouldn't care if he was playing away. It'd be worth it.'

Gwen filled me in. ‘We're talking about the Tell-Tale Signs your husband's having an affair.'

‘I've been reading this article,' said Pauline.

‘Yeah. If you tick more than four out of ten, chances are he's up to no good.'

‘Problem is,' said Aud, pulling on the bars next to me, ‘he can leave no tracks at all. Mine didn't. I hadn't a clue. Not a clue. No funny phone calls, no hiding his credit-card bills. It was because she was at work, it was all so easy for him.'

‘How did you find out?'

‘He told me. He said he was going, and why. I think he expected me to plead with him to stay. But I just said, “OK then, bugger off.” You should've seen his face.'

‘Weren't you upset?' said Gwen.

‘I was shocked. It was a shock that he'd been lying to me, and to be on my own after so long. But you get used to it, and my sister, same thing had happened to her, so it wasn't too bad. Once, you know, I'd had time to come round.' (
Change stations now
, said the CD.) ‘And I lost a stone in weight with the worry, so every cloud has a silver lining.'

‘You go, girl,' said Pauline. We were all smiling as we moved round, all nodding our support, and I thought: I could confide if I wanted to. I could tell them how I had no idea Phil was seeing anyone the first time, because you don't expect that kind of behaviour early on in a marriage, especially not when your own parents have been so solidly faithful you never had to think about it. It didn't occur to me he might lie, that he might be going somewhere other than where he said. It had taken Mavis Pearson, Phil's boss's secretary, pulling me to one side at their Christmas dinner. Her emerald blouse, her coral lipstick so bright it was offensive.
I can't stand by and watch it going on
,
a young girl like you
.

‘So it's been good in the long run,' Aud was saying.

‘I still miss mine,' said a grey-haired woman whose name I wasn't sure of, though I saw her every week.

‘Yeah?'

‘I do. Even though it was me who finished it, and it's getting on for twelve years. My daughter, she's in her thirties and she still talks about us getting back together. I say to her, “Why should it matter? You've left home”.'

‘You can please yourself when you live alone, though, can't you?' said Gwen. (
Change stations now
, went the CD.)

The grey-haired woman climbed off her machine, frowning. ‘I know it's fashionable to say you're fine on your own, but I hate it, if I'm being honest. I'm not lonely, I've plenty of friends. But if you go to – oh, say, a party or some do like that – when you get home, there's no one to compare notes with. There's no one to ask, “What did you think of her?” and “Wasn't it funny when such and such happened?”. Do you know what I mean?' She stood there, outside the circuit, while we pumped our limbs sympathetically.

Gwen turned to me. ‘You don't mind, do you, Carol?'

‘What, being on my own?'

‘Yeah.'

I let myself think for a moment before I answered, dragging hard on the bars above me and exhaling noisily. Yes, it was better to be alone than with a man like Phil, and his stupid games and continual excuses that ground you down, and it had been like switching a light on when he finally went; I was giddy for days afterwards. And Jaz had gone, ‘What took you so long, Mum?' And I'd said, ‘I was waiting till you went to college,' and she'd said, ‘Well, you needn't have.' Which felt like a slap in the face at the time, but I didn't dwell. Three last-chances he'd had, and he'd blown them all. That's enough for anyone.

‘I don't mind it. I'm not often
on
my own. Matty stays over Saturday nights, plus I have him Wednesday afternoons, and I'm at the shop every morning. Evenings I'm here or swimming or Beavers or something else. I don't know how I'd cope with a man on top.'

‘Ooh, a man on top!'

I realised what I'd said. ‘Honestly, you lot.'

‘She means, she doesn't know how she'd fit a man in,' chuckled Pauline.

Now move away from your stations and check your heart rate
, said the CD.
Three, two, one – go
.

We stood for ten seconds like mannequins, fingers on throats.

‘Everyone OK?' asked Gwen when we'd finished.

‘Mine's a little high,' I said.

‘You know the best cure for a broken heart,' broke in Sheila from the far end of the room. ‘Go out and get laid.'

Shrieks of mirth.

‘It's whether you can find someone half-decent, though,' said Aud.

‘Oh, I don't let that stand in my way. Use it or lose it, that's my motto.'

‘We have noticed,' said Pauline.

‘Yeah, well.' Sheila shook her hair back out of her face. ‘Get out there, I say, make the most of yourself. Have some fun. You're a long time dead.'

‘Thought for the day, ladies,' said Gwen.

Some of us are fine as we are, I wanted to say, but that would have broken the mood. So I just smiled and held my tongue. The music changed to ‘Dancing Queen'.

It was my turn for the punchball next.

At least when you're single you can have all your things where you want them.

When Phil lived here it was a house of motoring magazines – stacks of them in the downstairs cloakroom, by the bed, next to the sofa, flooding out of the shoe cupboard every time you opened the doors. His piles of copper were another irritation. I was forever emptying the hollows of ornaments, sweeping coins from the edges of tables, shelves and mantelpieces. The space beneath the sideboard he used for housing not one but three knackered old pairs of slippers; refused to be trained out of the habit. So no matter how scrupulously I tidied the lounge, that area always looked a mess. Then there was his
shaving equipment: chargers and spare foils left on the bedroom floor to be trodden on, capsules of gel and bottles of balm and oil spread across sink, bath end, windowsill.

But best of all was when he took his clothes away, and hey presto, I had a whole wardrobe to myself and all the drawers I wanted. Over the years I'd managed to fill them up again: a hanging rail, the shelf above it, the space below, a huge oak press that had been Mum's, and two slide-under-the-bed plastic cases full of clothes.