Take Mum Out (12 page)

Giles laughs, a little uncertainly now. I’ve been babbling on, I realise, due to my intensely nervous state, and I clearly lost him at Fuzzy Felts. What the hell am I rabbiting on about? He’ll assume I’m not just old, but mad as well, and likely to start wittering away about my childhood Etch a Sketch and Buckaroo game.
Fuzzy Felts.
Christ.

‘So, um … are you from Edinburgh?’ I ask.

‘No, I grew up in Aberdeen, went to a scarily posh school there …’ He laughs. ‘And I was – I
am
– dyslexic, but the school didn’t spot it. In fact, no one did, and I struggled so much with reading and stuff that it seemed far easier to behave like a complete twat.’ He shrugs. ‘So they threw me out.’

‘God, so no one knew there was anything wrong?’

‘Not at that point, no. People didn’t tend to in those days.’
In those days!
How endearing. It was virtually last week.

‘So what happened then?’ I prompt him.

Giles shrugs. ‘A lot
of drifting about. Couple more schools, hardly any qualifications to speak of – then I worked with friends on various projects, did a bit of travelling and an evening course in graphic design and here I am.’ He grins, and we have another drink, by which time the wine is having the miraculous effect of making me feel far more relaxed.

Just be natural
, I instruct myself silently when he goes to the loo. In fact, Giles is so obviously out of my league on the attractiveness scale that I’ve decided there’s no point in trying to come across as a hip young thing, or pretending to be au fait with the bands in
NME
, because he cannot possibly be interested in me
in that way
. I’m no longer fretting about my hair looking flat, and whether the loose powder I swept over my face has settled into the crevices. It’s like being in the presence of a fine-looking creature from a distant land, like a snow leopard. Faced with one at close quarters, you don’t think, ‘Do I fancy this snow leopard? Does it fancy me? Would it laugh at my old person’s CDs?’ You just enjoy its beauty in a slightly detached way, pretty certain that your paths are unlikely to cross again.

‘Listen,’ Giles is saying, ‘I didn’t have a chance to eat before I came out. Don’t suppose you fancy going to that Italian next door, if we can get a table?’

I haven’t eaten much either – just that measly slice of cheese on toast, mother-alone food – and right now, I can think of nothing more lovely than prolonging the evening.

‘Sounds great,’ I say, plucking my ringing phone from my bag as we leave the pub. ‘Hi, Mum, everything okay?’

‘Oh, just the same, rattling along. How’s the diet?’

‘Er, it’s going really well, thanks.’ I throw Giles an apologetic glance.

‘Good, isn’t it? Do you find you’re not hungry at all?’
Actually, no – because my existence is entirely fuelled by refined sugar and carbs.
Giles and I are outside the restaurant now. I skim the menu in its glass-fronted frame, salivating at the array of pastas on offer.

‘That’s right,’ I tell her, a little wine-giddy already. ‘It’s very … satisfying. Sorry, Mum, I’m out just now, can we chat tomorrow?’

‘Are you out with that dentist?’ she barks.

‘Um, no … someone else.’
Sorry
, I mouth at Giles.

‘And what does this one do?’

He’s on work experience, Mother
– ha, that’d put the cat among the pigeons …
In fact, he is younger than many of the dried goods in your pantry.

‘Um, we’ll talk in the morning, okay? Bye, Mum.’ I stuff my phone into my pocket as we head into the Italian with its bare wooden tables and welcoming vibe.

‘That was very nice of you,’ Giles murmurs.

‘What was?’

‘Telling your mum your date’s going well. That it’s
satisfying
.’ He grins flirtatiously and touches my arm, causing me to flinch, as if prodded with Fergus’s ‘hilarious’ electric-shock pen.

‘Oh,’ I laugh, ‘it wasn’t that. She was talking about a diet—’

‘Not on one, are you?’

‘No, but Mum thinks I should be.’

‘She’s insane then,’ Giles declares as we’re shown to a table. ‘You’re lovely, Alice. Viv didn’t do you justice.’

I laugh awkwardly, unsure of how to handle such a comment. ‘That’s friends for you,’ I say, holding the menu at arm’s length in order to read it in the dim light. Would he be so complimentary if he knew about my old-lady vision, my occasional haemorrhoid outbreaks and ravaged pelvic floor? Or the fact that, while I was once able to guzzle as much wine as I liked, I now wake up with a mouth like the inside of a particularly unsavoury slipper after a mere four glasses? It’s not that I think I’m some hideous gargoyle, not really; as far as I’m aware, none of the children at school weep and cling on to their mothers on glimpsing me in the playground. It’s just … Giles is
insanely
attractive and, as dates go, I can’t help suspect that we are being secretly filmed for some reality TV thing, and that the audience are cackling, ‘Look – she really believes he fancies her.’ A slender blonde waitress has already given him a quick, ‘Oooh,
hello
’ look, which he seemed not to notice, and an unavoidable fact keeps jabbing away at my brain: this is a little …
unbalanced
.

‘You have amazing eyes,’ Giles murmurs, fixing me with a penetrating smile.

I glance up. ‘Thank you, that’s a sweet thing to say.’

‘No, I mean it. With those little amber flecks, they’re mesmerising …’

I laugh, wondering if this is how young men operate these days: batting out compliments and oozing confidence. If only he knew that, in the normal scheme of things, I’d be simmering up a giant pot of chilli con carne right now, to divide into various receptacles for freezing and labelling with my special indelible pen. An older couple are locked in conversation at a nearby table, and the woman – mid-sixties at a guess, finely boned with silvery hair artfully piled up – casts us an indulgent smile.

‘It’s hard to decide, isn’t it?’ she remarks. ‘Took us ages.’

‘What did you have?’ I ask.

‘The sea bass,’ the woman replies, ‘and David had the lamb … both delicious.’

We choose from the specials on the blackboard – they’re easy to read, my distance vision is
fine
– and, before they arrive, Giles’s mobile rings. ‘Sorry, this is terribly rude of me but I’d better take it.’ He strides out to chatter away on the pavement outside, allowing me a few moments to assess the evening so far. Maybe I
am
making a big deal of our age difference. After all, it’s not as if I order elasticated-waisted ‘slacks’ from Sunday supplements, or have bunions – yet.

I glance towards the door. Giles is raking a hand through his lush, posh-boy hair, and still gabbing away on his phone. The older woman nearby asks a waiter for their bill, and she and her husband chat companionably for a few moments.

‘So nice to see, isn’t it?’ she tells him, giving me a quick glance. ‘I wish Owen would do that with me.’

The man chuckles. ‘Not many young men would go out for dinner with their mothers.’

She looks back at me, unaware of the crashing sensation in the pit of my stomach.
He complimented my eyes!
I want to tell her.
Didn’t you hear?
Giles returns to our table, and the older couple leaves as our main courses arrive – risotto for me, pork cutlets for him. I sip my white wine, managing to convince myself that it’s okay, we are having a lovely time and I really shouldn’t care what people think. When I notice Giles’s gaze skimming the restaurant, and settling upon a point in the distance, I look around, expecting him to be admiring the Bardot-esque young waitress. But it’s a woman of around my age, perhaps even older, smoothing back her neatly cropped auburn hair as she emerges from the loos.

‘D’you know,’ I tell Giles, ‘the woman next to us thought I was your mum.’

‘For God’s sake,’ he exclaims, with a hearty laugh. ‘She must be half-blind.’

‘I don’t think she was.’

‘Well, it’s as ridiculous as your mum telling you to go on a diet. Are you having pudding, by the way?’ We both do and, by the time we emerge from the restaurant, I’m pleasantly tiddly and full of delicious food, and happier than I should be for a woman whose sons have gone on holiday without her.

‘Fancy another drink?’ Giles asks. He touches my arm again, and my head whirls with possibilities: a whole child-free night ahead, and a bottle of wine in the fridge in my empty flat …

‘No, I’d better head back,’ I say firmly. But why? Viv wouldn’t scurry home. She’d seize the opportunity, and the thought of this sculpted God of a man seeing her naked wouldn’t trigger the fear in her. In fact, she’d have dragged him off back to her boudoir already, if she wasn’t technically his boss …

‘Are you sure?’ Giles says, his smile teasing.

‘Yes, it’s pretty late.’
Go on, scuttle home to your crossword then, Granny …

‘Okay,’ Giles says lightly. ‘But would it be okay to call you again?’ He focuses on my eyes, as if counting the flecks, then he kisses my lips – a brief, barely-there gesture, a million miles from Anthony’s lizard tongue, and for a moment I lose all sense of reason.
Oh, just come home with me. I’m pretty sure I could conquer my sex-fear with you …

‘That would be great,’ I manage. ‘I’ve had a lovely evening.’

‘Me too. So how will you get home?’

‘I’ll walk. It’s literally five minutes …’

‘Great. See you again, then.’ There’s a broad, melty smile, then he strides away into the crisp, cool night without looking back.

I wake up with slipper-tongue and aware of a faint odour permeating the flat. Sitting up in bed, I replay last night’s events, feeling quite pleased that a) I didn’t make a complete arse of myself, apart from mentioning Fuzzy Felts, and b) Giles seemed to enjoy himself too. Okay, there was the being mistaken for his mother bit – but it could have been worse, it could have been his
granny
. Perhaps he was right, and that woman had forgotten to put her contacts in. Whatever, if I’m going to get ‘back out there’ – and, after last night, a glimmer of optimism has awakened in me – then I need to stop worrying so much.

So everything’s good – apart from the pong which definitely seems to be
in
the flat, rather than coming in from outside (there are never any bad smells in our neighbourhood – the residents’ association wouldn’t allow it). I climb out of bed, pad across my bedroom and into the hallway. I stand there for a moment, sniffing experimentally, and decide that the smell is most likely to be coming from Logan’s bedroom. I’m not exhibiting favouritism here. I just have a hunch that, as I’m generally forbidden from entering, it’s the room in which things are most likely to fester.

Right, I’m going in. I push open the door and peer around in the gloom. The room is dark, apart from a sliver of sunlight which is bravely forcing its way through the gap between the drawn curtains. As David Attenborough might observe, it’s actually impressive that such inhospitable terrain can support human life. Yet, while it’s clear that atmospheric conditions are different in here – there’s a distinct staleness, reminiscent of old biscuits and socks – the actual
odour
doesn’t seem to be any worse than it was in the hallway. I draw back the curtains, allowing a gasp of bright April sunshine to stream in.

A plate on the black shag-pile rug is daubed with mysterious splodges of red, yellow and orange which, on closer inspection, are identified as baked beans, ketchup and egg. On another plate is a small collection of crusts, and dotted around the floor are numerous crumpled sheets of paper covered with his spiky handwriting, which may or may not be crucial English essays. Being as quick and light-footed as possible, so as to cause minimal disruption to Logan’s natural habitat, I round up several glasses, sticky with flat Coke and find tons of coins nestling in the rug. There’s almost enough here for a week’s groceries. His rumpled duvet is strewn with underwear, a ratty paperback copy of
The Shining
and several plectrums – some of which appear to have been cut out of a store charge card I thought I’d lost. It is hardly evocative of the Dandelion sleepwear catalogue. More like Tracy Emin’s bed.

I click into action, clearing up the debris and opening the window; instantly, it feels less like a place where an injured animal might limp off to die. Oh, I know Logan will probably be horrified that I’ve ‘moved’ things – but I’m sorry, I’m the adult here and I must seize control. I fetch a duster, then the Hoover, and by the time I’m done the room looks heaps better – not an
annexe
exactly, but fresh and welcoming. The doorbell buzzes and I run to answer it.

‘Alice? It’s me.’

‘Viv, come on up.’ This is a surprise. It’s Thursday, late morning, and I’d have assumed she’d be at the studio; she works more than anyone else I know, perhaps because she doesn’t have children and therefore has no reason to feel guilty for loving her job.

‘So?’ she asks as I welcome her in. ‘How did it go? Not interrupting anything, am I?’

‘No,’ I laugh, ‘of course not.’

‘It’s just, you look a bit … tousled.’ She raises a brow.

‘I’ve been tackling the horror of Logan’s room. Anyway, I’ll make you a coffee. How come you’re not at work?’

She takes a seat at the kitchen table and grins expectantly. ‘I’m officially out visiting suppliers but I was so close by, I had to see you—’

‘I know there’s an awful smell in here,’ I cut in. ‘I’m trying to find out where it’s coming from.’

‘Um, yeah, I did notice. But anyway. Giles …’

With a smile, and eking out the suspense, I pour our coffees and check both the bin and fridge for ponginess; both seem fine.

‘It was a nice evening,’ I say lightly.

‘A nice evening? What does that mean?’

I laugh, taking the seat opposite her. ‘Well, it was fun. We chatted loads, had a laugh, went on for something to eat … has he mentioned anything today?’

‘No, I wouldn’t ask him at work …’

‘Yes you would,’ I exclaim.

‘Oh, okay – I just haven’t had the chance. So, are you seeing him again?’