Pillow Talk (7 page)

Chapter Seven

‘Hullo?’

‘Dad?’

‘Hullo?’

‘It's Petra.’

‘Petra. Hullo. How are you?’

‘I'm fine. And you? I was thinking about popping in tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Yes – is that OK? About elevenish?’

‘Oh. Elevenish isn't very good as Joanna has ballet. How about after lunch?’

‘After lunch? Or what about lunch-timeish?’

‘After lunch is better. If it's all the same to you.’

‘Oh. OK. After lunch, then. See you tomorrow. And Dad? I'm bringing Rob.’

‘Rob?’

‘My boyfriend – you met him before Christmas.’

‘Investment chappy?’

‘Yes. It's going really well.’

‘Well, we'll see you both tomorrow then.’

*

Rob couldn't think of anything he'd like to do less with his Saturday than go on a day-trip to Watford to visit Petra's father. And he certainly wasn't going to give over his Sunday to journey out to Kent to visit Petra's mother. He'd rather visit his own parents in Hampshire, and that was saying something. His week had been long, mostly lucrative but exhausting. He fancied having a weekend left to his own devices. Certainly not to be wasted by being paraded in front of Petra's parents. Why was she so keen to do that anyway? It wasn't as if she was particularly close to them. Rob knew he could make it up to her by begging her forgiveness and promising that he'd have theatre tickets awaiting her return on Saturday evening, and the finest sushi in London when she came back on Sunday. Bloody work, he said. Bloody boring, he said. He didn't say that visiting her parents was hard work and boring.

On the Metropolitan Line to Watford, Petra fought a losing battle against nostalgia. It was always the same and on each occasion, only as she felt her spirits start to sap would she remember how she always asked herself why was she making this trip – uninvited yet feeling duty bound? She knew she'd leave deflated and reflective. She could be snuggled up with her boyfriend instead, if only he was a bit more into snuggling. Or she could be out shopping then. She could be cleaning her flat or curled up with a book. She could be having a nice, easy day.

The journey to Watford was relatively short but it was long enough for her to let the train window, against which she rested her head, judder memories and thoughts from the safe and private place she usually kept them. She always felt positive in advance about visiting one parent or the other, but as the destination neared so did a sense of trepidation and the hunch that on her homeward journey she would question why she made the trip in the first place. Petra envied people whose parents continued to live in the old family home, enabling them to return to the cornerstone of their childhood each time they visited. No matter how far away that home might be, by definition it would be an easy journey to make. But Petra's childhood home had been sold when she was fourteen and her parents had divorced. She and her mother had moved into a flat nearby and her father had moved away.

Petra gently played her fingertips over her lap as if in silent piano practice; in fact she was totting up the years. It occurred to her that John Flint had lived in his current house in Watford with his new family for the past fifteen years. In the same house. Which meant he'd been there a year longer than all the time he'd spent at home with Petra. Psychologically though, he'd moved out of that house long before his bags were packed and his current house was much more his home than theirs had ever been.

She looked out of the window, glimpsing cars at a standstill. John had offered to buy her a car for her twenty-fifth birthday, but she'd sensed he'd hoped she'd decline because at the same time he'd made much of Joanna's school fees and there being another baby on the way.

There'd been another since then. Something good had come out of the split between her parents and that was half-siblings for Petra. Joanna and Eliza and Bruce. She peeled back the cellophane on a bland-looking sandwich. It was hard not to feel hurt that she hadn't been invited for lunch. But Joanna had ballet and no doubt big families were on tight timetables at weekends to cram everything in. Including visits from the daughter, the stepdaughter, the half-sister.

Christ, I've just realized Joanna is the same age as I was when Dad left.

‘Petra!’ Eliza flung herself at Petra's waist while Bruce tried to squeeze in between their bodies.

‘What a welcome,’ Petra told them, noting Joanna slunk around the banister. ‘Hi Joanna, I'm loving your haircut. How was ballet?’

‘Jo,’ said Joanna. ‘I like being called Jo now.’

‘Sorry,’ Petra said. ‘Jo suits you.’

‘I'm giving up ballet – I'm just going to do modern and tap.’

‘Wow,’ said Petra.

The teenager approached and helped her half-sister peel Bruce and Eliza off her limbs.

‘Did you brung us things?’ Bruce asked.

‘Yeah! Presents!’ Eliza shrieked. Petra noted that even Joanna now had an expectant twinkle in her eye.

‘Let the poor woman in, you lot!’ It was Mary. Petra's father's wife. From the start, Petra had somehow seemed old enough, self-contained enough and simply didn't visit often enough for her to appear remotely in need of a stepmother. So Mary and Petra's relationship bypassed that aspect. To Petra, Mary was her father's wife. To Mary, Petra was John's daughter. They both referred to him as John. They liked each other well enough.

They kissed. ‘John is out – he should be back soon. I'm just doing an online supermarket order. Kids – show Petra in.’

‘She's brung us stuff,’ Bruce said cheerily, poking Petra's bag as Eliza dragged her through to the sitting room.

Mary paused and Petra could see her assessing the subtlest way to do her familiar disappearing act. ‘Petra, do you mind holding court – then I can just finish off on the computer?’ And Mary wafted off muttering that she couldn't believe she didn't have time to go to a real supermarket these days.

An hour later, she reappeared. ‘Where on earth is John?’ she said. ‘I'll phone him. Back in a sec.’ But soon enough, Petra could see her in the back garden, pruning half-heartedly before sitting down to sip from a mug.

Half an hour later, John arrived back.

‘Daddy!’ clamoured his two youngest children, rushing forward. Joanna glanced up momentarily from her teen magazine.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Petra, with an awkward half-wave, hanging back. She was always surprised at how grey her father's hair was; in between visits it automatically restored itself in her mind's eye to the darker thatch she remembered best. It had definitely thinned more too, even since her last visit before Christmas. Today he also appeared smaller around the shoulders yet more slumpy around the waist.

‘Hullo, Petra,’ he said, craning forward to kiss her cheek while Bruce and Eliza clambered around him like chimps on a trunk. ‘Sorry I'm late – you know how these things drag on.’ But Petra didn't know, because she didn't know where he'd been or what the things were that he usually did on a Saturday in early April. ‘You look well, darling. How long can you stay?’

Petra looked at her watch. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘about another hour, really. Rob's taking me to the theatre tonight.’

‘Rob?’

‘My boyfriend.’

‘The investment chappy?’

‘Yes. Him.’

‘You must bring him along next time you visit,’ John said.

‘OK,’ said Petra, wondering just now if she'd bother to visit before Christmas and wondering, very quietly, if she'd still be with Rob then anyway.

‘How's work?’

‘Great, thanks.’

‘And everything else?’

‘Yes, everything's fine, Dad, thanks.’

‘Where's Mum?’ John asked and it was instinctively on the tip of Petra's tongue to say, Still down in Kent actually I'm visiting her tomorrow – before she realized that he was asking the question of his other children.

‘Online,’ Joanna said, with a roll of her eyes.

‘Mummy,’ Eliza called.

‘She's in the garden,’ Petra told him. And off he went, followed at intervals of a minute or two by his children. Petra brought up the rear.

‘Isn't it lovely to see Petra, everyone,’ John announced. ‘Shame you have to go so soon. Next time, come for longer.’

‘And bring your boyfriend,’ Jo said.

‘OK,’ said Petra, ‘I will do.’ And it dawned on her that though she could stay until she physically needed to leave to catch a train, her visit had probably run its course already. ‘I suppose I'd better make tracks, now.’

‘Well, it's lovely to see you,’ Mary said.

‘Don't be a stranger,’ John added. ‘Come on, I'll run you to the station.’

‘It's not necessary,’ Petra told him. And John then said, ‘Well, OK then, if you're sure,’ at the same time as Petra said, ‘But a lift would be great, thanks,’ and there was a momentary stalemate during which they laughed awkwardly and wondered how to backtrack.

‘Come on, the least I can do is run you to the station,’ John said.

‘Don't dilly-dally,’ Mary warned him. ‘I've been run off my feet all day.’

John spread his palm to signify five minutes.

‘Bye, everyone,’ Petra said and the smaller children hugged her and bemoaned her leaving while Jo said, ‘See you,’ with the nonchalance characteristic of her age.

‘Great to see you,’ John said as he pulled up outside the station. ‘You look very well, darling.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ said Petra.

‘Are you OK for money?’ he asked, twisting to locate his wallet in his back pocket.

‘I'm fine, Dad,’ said Petra. ‘Thanks.’

‘Well, here,’ he said, passing over a twenty-pound note. ‘It's not much these days – but you can buy your chappy an ice cream in the interval at the theatre tonight.’

Petra felt almost euphoric as the train pulled away.

He remembered that Rob is taking me to the theatre tonight!

But the feeling soon disintegrated into the familiar sense of deflation. She rested her forehead so that it banged lightly against the window.

I am never an unwelcome guest in my father's house, but I am always an uninvited one. She felt close to tears and resolved not to arrange another visit until Christmas-time.

* * *

Petra's mother now collected chickens with much the same passion as she'd collected shoes when Petra started at Dame Alexandra Johnson School for Girls. When the letter arrived announcing that Petra had a place and a bursary too, Melinda Flint had taken her daughter into town in a taxi and told her to choose anything within reason at John Lewis. Petra had chosen a thick pad of cartridge paper, bound beautifully, and a Rotring draughtsman pen. Her mother had then spent ages in the shoe department, finally deciding on a pair of slingbacks in vivid scarlet suede. ‘Don't tell your father,’ Melinda had said, swooping down on a packet of cotton handkerchiefs monogrammed with a delicately embroidered P. Petra wondered how on earth her father could take offence to cotton handkerchiefs with her initial on them. Until she realized that her mother was referring to the shoes.

The only time John passed comment on her mother's shoes was in the heat of an argument. And there were plenty. Shoes and arguments.

On a bright Sunday morning, Petra alighted from the train at East Malling, waited for a taxi and then asked the driver to stop so she could buy some milk.

‘My mother is into soya milk,’ she explained, ‘and I don't like it.’

The soya-milk phase had lasted far longer than the red-shoe phase which came to an abrupt end when John left. She'd thrown the shoes out. Dumped them in a bin bag along with any items of his he'd left. She'd then eschewed anything as lively as red shoes in favour of elegant dressing so dark and demure it was almost funereal. However, when John and Mary had moved into the house in Watford to prepare for Joanna's birth two years later, Melinda had reverted to her maiden name of Cotton and, Petra assumed, the dress sense of her premarital days too. She forsook the nicely cut suits in sober colours to go with the flow. And everything was soon free flowing and colourful, from her hair to her long skirts to the yoga poses she did in the corner of the sitting room while Petra tried to watch
Blue Peter.

When I finished school, Petra liked to explain, it wasn't me who left home, but my mother. As soon as Petra's place at Central St Martins was guaranteed, her mother left London.

Melinda lived first in a yurt near Ludlow for a few months, then she tinkered with communal living in Devon. She tried Portsmouth with a boyfriend called Peter and she stayed a while in Lincoln with a boyfriend called Roger. She settled on chickens and Kent a few years ago and is now more settled than Petra has ever known her to be. So self-sufficient, in fact, that she seldom has the need or the nous to phone her daughter for a chat, let alone to arrange to see her.