Queen Mum (14 page)

Tom was coming over now with Manny, both of them holding an edge of the biggest kite. No change in Manny, I thought; nothing on his mind.

‘We’re going to have to take this one back to the hotel,’ said Tom. His cheeks were flushed and his hair on end where the wind had blown it about. ‘It’s jiggered.
It needs to go to the kite hospital.’

‘Not the kite graveyard?’ asked Manny.

‘It can be redeemed with a new central strut, I reckon.’ Tom laid it on the grass gently, as if it were alive and wounded. ‘What I was thinking was, shall we go down for lunch
now? It’s early, but we could have drinks while we were waiting.’

Juno was about to get to her feet when her Scarlatti ringtone went off. Kneeling, she pulled the phone out of her bag and held it to her ear. ‘Hi!’

‘Have you booked?’ Manny was saying.

‘Oh, yeah, you have to; the Cove’s a really popular place,’ said Tom, touching the kite with the toe of his shoe.

‘Great, that’s great; only, next time, there’s this fantastic little restaurant about two miles down the road, seventeenth century, originally a smugglers’
meet—’

Manny stopped speaking as Juno crumpled before him. Her shoulders drooped, the phone rolled down her skirt onto the ground and she buried her face in her hands.

‘It’s fine, fine,’ I heard her say through her fingers. ‘Give me a minute.’ She let out a long, ragged breath. ‘Oh, God.’

Manny got down beside her and took her wrists. ‘Juno?’

The children were coming up now, laughing and throwing handfuls of grass.

‘SHHH!’ I hissed at them.

The girls’ faces fell and Pascale ran forward. ‘Mum?’

Juno lifted her head and quickly wiped her eyes with the balls of her thumbs. ‘It’s OK. I’ve had a shock. That was the hospital in Bradford to say my mum’s collapsed.
They think it might be a brain tumour. They’re doing tests—’

Manny put his arms round her and I felt my eyes pricking, willed the tears not to come. Pascale stroked her mum’s arm and Sophie buried her face against Ben’s chest. I stared into
the sky and counted seagulls.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ asked Tom. ‘Help you pack or . . . ?’

Manny got to his feet. ‘No, it’s all still in the boot. There are a couple of people you could ring, let them know I won’t be coming – on second thoughts, I’ll do
it, probably easier. I think we should get going, really. Juno?’

He helped her to her feet and she started to apologize.

‘Come on, now,’ said Manny, ‘enough of that. Let’s get to the car. Do you want me to call the hospital back, ask for more details?’

‘I don’t know,’ sniffed Juno. ‘I’ll call—’

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Manny, over his shoulder. ‘Girls.’

I stepped across and hugged Juno briefly, then they walked away from us across the cliff top. We watched them get down to the car park, saw Manny lean against the bonnet and talk into his
mobile, then pass it to Juno. At last they got in the car and drove away, by which time I was crying.

Tom looked at me. ‘That’s that, then. Let’s go and have a bloody big drink.’

I knew I’d never settle that night. I waited till Tom was asleep, then I crept across the room and peered round the door to the annexe where Ben was. He was lying at an
angle with the duvet down by his waist in a
Death of Chatterton
sort of pose. His smooth chest rose and fell, hypnotically. I almost went across and kissed him, but I didn’t want him
waking up and making a fuss.

I tiptoed to the coat hook and took down my mac, slipped Tom’s trainers over my feet, and turned the key in the door. Before I closed it behind me I looked back longingly. It must be a
wonderful thing to lie down and just go to sleep.

The yard outside seemed pitch-black at first, but as I struggled to get my arm through my mac, a security light clicked on and showed me the gate with the single-track road outside. I checked my
watch and saw that it was 1.50 a.m. I hoped the main street would be empty.

It was difficult to see where I was going once I was out of the range of the floodlight. Thick rhododendron bushes rose up at each side. There was a lot of rustling, and you could hear the sound
of the sea too. I kept going and came to a thick white wall on the left-hand side which stood out of the gloom. I put my hand against it and it led me down a steep hill in the direction of the
beach.

There were more lights on outside the pub, and the cloud had thinned a little to let some moon show through. I could see the boats pulled up on the shingle, a tractor, coils of rope, plastic
drums, lobster pots, and the wave-edges further off. There were people up on the cliff but the beach itself was empty. I threaded my way between the wooden hulls and down across the clacking
pebbles to the water’s edge.

Juno’s mother had been frail for a long time. She’d gone in last year for a hip replacement, then she’d caught bronchitis. I’d offered to help with the girls so Juno
could go to Bradford for a few days and supervise her mum’s discharge from hospital. But Juno had got on the phone and hired an agency nurse.

‘Don’t you think it’s strange Juno does all this local charity work but leaves her widowed mother to fend for herself?’ Tom had asked late in the afternoon, when he
judged my tears had dried up, and while Ben was off skimming stones some distance away.

I’d thought the same myself, but didn’t want to admit it. ‘They never see Manny’s parents either.’

‘His mum and dad are at opposite ends of France.’

‘OK, granted. But you don’t know what the background is with Juno’s family.’

‘Do you?’

‘No. Not in any detail, but I get the impression there was some sort of big bust-up years ago, even before her dad died.’

‘Did she say that?’

I ignored him. ‘I think modern society encourages people to drift away from their roots. We don’t see much of our parents, do we?’

‘We trail up to see your mum often enough. I’d see mine more if they didn’t live in the back of beyond and I didn’t have a full-time job. Juno’s mum’s only in
Yorkshire, you could do it in a couple of hours.’

I knew what we were working up to. His theory is that Juno’s turned her back on her past because it doesn’t fit with her present life – that her parents weren’t posh
enough. I don’t know where he’s got this idea from, because Juno never talks about her childhood and has never shown us any old photos. I say there’s no reason why she
shouldn’t have grown up in a grand stone house like the ones in Harrogate, and Tom says you’ve only got to listen to the way she talks – not a trace of Yorkshire in there.
That’s deliberate, that is. Wiping out her roots.

‘You don’t know any more about it than me, so don’t judge.’

Tom shrugged.

‘You’re really weird with Juno, you know that?’ I snapped. ‘One minute you like her, the next she’s a selfish bitch.’

‘I never said she was a bitch.’

‘You implied—’

Tom put his head in his hands for a moment. ‘Right, listen; I like Juno, more or less. She’s all right, bossy, but OK. I know she’s been kind to you, to us. I
don’t
worship the ground she walks on. See?’

Meaning I did. He took my arm and moved against me, leaning his face against my hair. ‘Let’s not fall out. We’re on holiday.’

I’d let him hold me and we’d sat like that till Ben had come back to show us his giant crab shell.

Are all marriages like this, coming together and drifting away again? Or only the damaged ones?

The phone in my pocket bleeped suddenly, making me jump. I pulled it out and saw in the glowing screen that I’d got a text message. From Juno. I opened it up, heart thumping.

Mum v poorly. Grim here.

I phoned her back straight away. ‘Juno? Are you OK to talk? Where are you?’

‘Hospital,’ she said wearily. ‘Outside the front doors because they won’t let you use your phone inside in case it sends all the machines haywire. Where are you? God, did
I wake you up? I must have woken you.’

‘I’m on the beach.’

‘What, at two in the morning?’

‘Yeah. It smells of fish.’

‘Better than cigarettes. I’m in the smokers’ shelter because it’s raining. What are you doing on the beach?’

‘The usual, couldn’t sleep.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry about your mum.’

‘Yeah. Well. These things.’ After a moment she said, ‘She was with the next-door neighbour at the time looking at some plants, or something, so it’s not like she was
lying on the floor alone for ages. They had an ambulance there in twenty minutes.’

At my feet the stones shifted and I felt the slime of seaweed under the sole of the trainer. The sea shushed on. Was it going out or coming in?

‘Is she conscious, does she know what’s going on?’

‘She has been told, but I don’t know whether it’s gone in or not. I’ve been sitting by her bed but she’s fairly drugged up. I’m not getting a lot of response.
We’re waiting on the biopsy results.’

‘Oh, hell, Juno. That’s awful.’

Clouds broke apart above me and a piratey sort of sickle moon shone through. You could taste the salt in the night air. Still I could picture the ward, and her mum, like Juno but with white
hair, and Juno at the bedside, holding her hand and talking softly. ‘So you’ll stay up there for a while?’

‘Yeah. Although I don’t think Mum’s coming home. There’s a lot needs sorting out, it all keeps going round in my head. I need to speak to the consultant in the morning.
They don’t know anything for certain yet.’ She paused and the phone crackled. ‘I’m so glad you were awake, Ally.’

I felt a rush of guilty pleasure. ‘No problem.’

‘Better go.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Juno?’

‘Huh?’

‘I wish you were here.’

It was a stupid thing to come out with, but she just said, ‘So do I, Ally. So do I.’

I put the phone back in my pocket and all at once I had so much energy I wanted to run up the beach and sprint up the cliff path, singing. Isn’t that awful? My best friend in such
distress. I don’t know what got into me.

I didn’t run anywhere. I threw smooth stones hard into the water until my arm ached, then I made my uncertain way back across the shingle, through the boats, to the road, and walked up the
hill to the hotel. Another hour and it would be dawn. This time I could make out clumps of orange montbretia at the bottom of the white wall that led me back. The night felt charged. My body buzzed
as if I’d been out meeting a lover.

*

*

In the fortnight leading up to the airing of
Queen Mum
Juno was away a lot. I had a pregnancy scare that sent me wild with fear for a few days and made me nearly smack a
pre-schooler for smearing potato on the tabletop. When I confessed to Tom – after I’d got the all-clear – he’d been quiet for an hour or so, then blurted, ‘Would it
have been such a disaster?’

‘What?’ We were gathering up hedge clippings at the time, me holding the green sack open for him.

‘A baby.’

‘That shows how much you don’t understand me at the moment!’ I’d shouted, and burst into tears.

He’d hesitated, taken the sack out of my hands, then propped it against the wall and carried on sweeping up sadly.

I’d gone and sat in Ben’s room and looked out of the window at Juno’s lovely back garden. Fing was sleeping on the shed roof, Pascale and Sophie were sunbathing on the lawn.
They were stretched out on a travel rug, Sophie with her face to the sky, and Pascale on her front so she could read a book. Even from this distance you could see how perfect their skin was. There
was a photo of them both, with Ben, on the pinboard, above his PlayStation; Tom took it last summer when we all went to Cholmondeley Castle together. They’re on a stone bench in the gardens
and Sophie’s larking about, falling backwards so you can’t see her face properly. Pascale, though, is looking directly at the camera as if she’s about to say something. And
Ben’s sitting in the middle, his back very straight, his arms to himself. Pascale’s long hair lies against his shoulder.

Without thinking, I climbed into Ben’s bed and curled up around the period pain. The pillow smelt of his hair gel. Joe came and stood by the bed again. The wristwatch by my ear ticked
softly.

‘Mum?’ Ben was leaning over me with a puzzled expression on his face. His hair was still damp and spiky round the front. ‘If it’s not a daft question, what are you doing
in my bed?’

I groaned and unpeeled the watch face away from my cheek. ‘What time is it? Oh, God, I’ve been asleep for nearly two hours.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I just lay down for a moment . . . Where’s your dad?’

‘Downstairs watching the bike racing on TV. Have you had a row?’

I sat up, rubbing my skin back to life. ‘Of course not. Whatever makes you think that?’

‘Dad said you had.’ Ben swung his swimming bag off his shoulder onto the floor and went over to the mirror to comb his hair into shape. He spoke through his reflection: ‘Was it
about me?’