Getting Over It (16 page)

I decide that from now on I’m going to be ultra-efficient until Laetitia is forced to promote me to junior feature writer. She won’t want to, of course, but she’ll have no choice. The thought of my imminent ascension to grandeur and the wealth and kudos it will bring cheers me. Maybe I’ll be trusted to write the Happening page and conduct interviews with minor soap stars and and some poor keen innocent will unwittingly replace me as Deodorant Monitor. I’ll need a trouser suit, of course.

By 5
P.M.
, I have been promoted (in my head) to Editor in Chief. I decide to take my mother out to dinner to celebrate.

Brrg brrrg! “Bradshaw residence!” croaks The Queen. Or rather, Nana Flo in her telephone voice. I recover speedily enough to say in a friendly tone, “Hello, Nana, it’s Helen. How are you?”

She replies, “Can’t complain, Helen. What can I do for you?” Helen?! She never addresses me by name! Could be the onset of senility? That or she’s been watching
It’s a Wonderful Life
and the euphoria hasn’t yet worn off. Next thing she’ll be calling me honeychil’.

Bemused, I ask to speak to my mother. “How is she?” I ask quickly (best to be forewarned).

“Not so bad,” says Nana Flo briskly. “We’re keeping busy.”

Oh? “Like how?” I say, intrigued.

“Clearing out cupboards,” she replies tartly. I squeeze my nose between my thumb and forefinger to snuff the laughter. Let justice be done!

“Actually, Nana,” I say, when I regain composure, “I, er, don’t have to speak to my mother, I can ask you.”

There is a pause. “Yes?” she barks.

I clear my throat and say, “I’d like to take you and Mum out for dinner this Thursday, if you’re both free.” (That last bit was a courtesy.)

When Nana Flo replies, her voice is as stern as ever. “You sure you’ve got the money?”

Of all the ungracious cheek! “Yes,” I say (not a total lie, as I will have it when Barclaycard lends it to me).

“Then,” intones my grandmother plummily, “I don’t see why not.”

I grin down phone and crow, “Done!”

“What?” replies Nana Flo.

Chapter 22

I
HAVE MORE EMBARRASSING
moments than most. One of my earliest occurred when I was four—my parents had dragged me out for a bracing walk in Regents Park one Saturday morning and they were so engrossed in each other they didn’t notice I’d lagged behind, transfixed by the huge orange fish in the ornamental pond. When I looked up, my parents were gone and the park was full of tall terrifying people. I ran among them, stumbling in panic and scuffing my black patent shoes. At last, I spotted my father from behind and slipped my hand into his. He looked down and I looked up—into the bemused face of a stranger. Thankfully, because I was four and cute, the stranger found it funny and helped me locate my real dad.

Alas, my latest embarrassment occurred this morning, and as I’m no longer four and cute, the witnesses showed me no mercy. I’d eaten breakfast and was perfecting tonight’s persona in the bathroom mirror. I wasn’t sure how to present myself to Tom, so I was experimenting. The bubbly: “Hiiii!” and a sparky hello kiss on one cheek (“mwa!”)? Or the more sophisticated: “How are you?” accompanied by a closed-mouth smile? Or possibly the sexily smoldering: “Hello, Tom,” plus enigmatic twitch of the lips?

I was earnestly acting out these possibilities when I became aware of what I believe thriller writers call a Lurking Presence. I spun round and there at the bathroom door—which, in my enthusiasm, I’d forgotten to close—stood Luke and Marcus, stuffing their fists into their mouths to stifle their glee.

“Piss off!” I roared, as they bent over laughing and lisping witticisms like, “How ’bout smearing ma lipstick!” I slammed the door screeching, “I did not say that!” then sat on the toilet seat, head in hands.

My mortification reverberates throughout the morning, overshadowing my new efficiency resolution. I can’t concentrate on my work. Finally I can bear it no longer and am forced to unburden myself to Lizzy. “I’ve got post-traumatic stress syndrome,” I say grumpily, as Lizzy tries not to laugh.

“Helen,” she tinkles, “you mustn’t worry about tonight. Just be yourself!”

I roll my eyes and trundle back to my desk. The phone rings. I don’t want to answer in case it’s Tom canceling, but as Laetitia tuts and huffs if I let it ring more than twice, I snatch it up. “Hello?” I sing. “Features desk!” (This is an attempt to make myself seem a high-flying career woman instead of a laughable plodding bottom feeder.) Sadly, my efforts are wasted as it’s my mother. What gripe now?

“Hi, Mum,” I say cautiously. “What’s up?” I brace myself. Could it be Nana Flo has stripped my father’s wardrobe and packed all his clothes off to Oxfam? Or is she driving my mother madder with If Only’s? Might she be forcing her to watch
The Antiques Roadshow?
Or berating her as a spendthrift because she won’t buy tinned sausages?

“I’m exhausted,” she says petulantly.

It emerges that last night my mother felt sick and padded downstairs at 2
A.M.
in search of some anti-nausea pills. She was rifling through the first aid box when the kitchen door was thrown open—“I nearly died of fright!”—and the pill bottle was whipped from her hands by a triumphant Nana Flo. Apparently, my grandmother quavered: “As long as I’m in this house there’ll be no more nonsense from you!” I suspect my mother is both irritated and touched. She ends the conversation by saying stiffly, “I haven’t been taken out to dinner since our last wedding anniversary. Where are we going?” I haven’t a clue, but I say quickly, “There’s a Thai restaurant near Islington I thought would be nice. They do jasmine tea.”

My mother pauses. “That sounds nice,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever had Thai before.”

I whisper, “I’ll pick you and Nana up at eight,” and put the phone down. I stare at my desk, and the front page of the
Mirror
blurs. I blink and it looms back into focus. I can’t be sure but in all the months we’ve chopped leeks together, I don’t think my mother has ever expressed—pleasure is too strong a word—positivity at the prospect of my company. That said, this is the first time I’ve ever taken her out to dinner.

The afternoon drags by. Laetitia cripples it by ordering me to sort out the invoice file. Even though I am bored out of my skull, I try to maintain an aura of zeal. Eventually Laetitia peers over her computer, regards me suspiciously, and says “Helen, did they up your medication?” She peals with laughter.

“Ha ha,” I say, unamused. Laetitia’s jokes are as rare as tax rebates and as funny as cancer. I wonder how I am going to uphold the work ethic charade when I intend to leave on the dot of six. (It is essential I reach home at 6:40, in order to allow myself a moderate eighty minutes to beautify.)

Laetitia cuts short my dilemma at 5:30 by grabbing her coat and walking out. None of that “Goodbye, see you tomorrow” nonsense. Laetitia is enviable—although personally I can’t stand her—in that she doesn’t give a toss about being liked. I don’t carry it off with the same conviction. Laetitia is liberated. I’m still struggling. For instance, I hate and despise Marcus, but it matters to me that he hates and despises me back. And as for Jasper, I feel murderous but fond. He reminds me of Prince Philip. He’s a jerk but he can’t help himself. Though I haven’t heard from him since he moved in with Louisa, I need him to admire me. This puerile confetti swirls around my head until I unlock the flat door. Then I veto all thoughts of Jasper and Marcus and turn my attention to the Herculean task of washing and crafting my hair into a socially acceptable shape.

Tom rings the doorbell at 8:10. His timing is suspiciously perfect and I wonder if he arrived early and waited in his car. I feel a twitch of irritation—not too early, not too late, but just right. Like Goldilocks and the porridge. And she was a little prig. I bet Tom is one of those men who asks for the bill with a squiggle flourish of one hand and a flat palm of the other. Like Marcus. Oh! Enough about Marcus. Jasper, as I recall, raises a languid hand and the waitress comes running.

I walk to the door and pinch my arm to exorcise my silly, frilly, killjoy thoughts. What’s the matter with me? I hope Tom isn’t wearing anything frightening, like a waistcoat. I yank open the door to face my doom. Tom grins at me, and I sigh with relief and grin back. He’s wearing jeans, a khaki green shirt, a white t-shirt under that, and brown loafery shoes. In the old days I’d have made a mental note of each item and reported back to Tina so she could assess if he was cool or if I should run for the hills. But as Tina has silently relinquished the position of my personal fashion advisor and Tom looks ravishing, I don’t bother.

“You look nice,” says Tom, kissing me on the cheek. I think two things: (a),
Did he practice his greeting in the mirror, too?,
and (b),
I should damn well hope so after one and a half hours of preening, primping, and plucking.
For which I have Lizzy to thank. This morning, after bleating the party line, “Just be yourself,” she told me it might be wise to pluck my eyebrows. Her exact words: “Eyebrows are so important—they’re the clothes hanger on which you hang your face. It’s a beauty basic.”

I took the hint, flicked through a copy of
Glamour
until I came across a pair of enviable eyebrows, then tried to copy them. I’m not sure I succeeded fully, but Tom says I look nice. It worked! “Thank you,” I say, “so do you.” (Lizzy has also briefed me on the importance of accepting compliments: “If you don’t, it’s insulting the person who gave it to you.”)

Suddenly, I’m tongue-tied. I say, “So, er, come in, um, do you want a coffee or”—I nearly say the immortal sex kitten phrase “something stronger” but manage to stop myself—“or a beer or something?” Tom waves the plastic bag he’s carrying and says, “A client gave me a bottle of red this morning. We could open that if you like.”

I realize I’m hovering, so I beckon Tom toward the kitchen. There’s a rattle as Fatboy beats it through the catflap. Tom trots obediently along behind me. “So, how is your mum?” he says dutifully.

“She’s okay, thanks,” I say, deciding that my mother is not going to hijack tonight.

“Yeah?” says Tom, encouragingly.

“My Nan is looking after her,” I say shortly as I uncork the wine and glug-glug at least half of it into two huge green goblets (I bought them specially, as Marcus’s wine glasses are tiny. In keeping with the rest of him, boom boom.) Then, being me, I break my vow immediately and tell Tom the Curious Tale of the Secret Granny Meetings.

“I was seeing my mum three times a week. Why didn’t she tell me?” I squeak, hating myself for caring.

Tom looks puzzled. “It’s a weird one,” he says. “I might be wrong, but it sounds manipulative. A power thing.”

I am silent. I take a large slug of wine. Call me naive, but to this second I’ve imagined that I’ve always done mostly as I pleased, despite my mother. But, now Tom mentions it, the possibility dawns that I’ve always done as she’s pleased—and if I haven’t, she’s bought me sharply to book by, ooh, I don’t know, slicing her wrists.

I say slowly, “Do you think so?”

Tom scrutinizes my face and says quickly, “I don’t know your mother, it’s just a guess.”

I pause. Then I say falteringly, “She does love to be the center of attention. But maybe she just didn’t think. Or thought I wouldn’t be interested.” Then I realize Tom and I have been sitting at the kitchen table discussing my attention-loving mother for a full twenty-eight minutes. Foiled again! “Anyway, enough about her,” I say brightly. “Tell me about your parents.”

Tom shifts in his chair and says teasingly, “I’m not sure you want to know.”

I didn’t, but now I’m intrigued: “Tell me!” I say. So he does. In about three seconds flat. Tom’s parents divorced when he was five. His mother remarried three years later and he regards his stepfather as his real father. His mother is “a diamond” and his stepfather is “a great bloke.” He doesn’t see “Mum’s first husband.” The way he says it, I know he doesn’t want to discuss it further.

“Why?” I gasp. He shrugs and tells me that they never got on. “What!” I exclaim, “Not even when you were four? What’s not to like!” I see Tom’s discomfort and add quickly, “You don’t have to tell me.”

Tom laughs and says, “It’s nothing sinister! He just wasn’t too keen on kids. It wasn’t just me. He was the same with my brother and sister. Mum was, has always been, I suppose, liberal. You know, all for girls playing with tractors and boys crying, and her husband was the opposite. Girls should wear pink and dress their dolls and boys should wear blue and dress as cowboys.”

I pour myself another vat of red. Tom has hardly touched his, but I top up his goblet anyway to make myself seem less of a wino. “So,” I say—desperate to know the answer but aware I’m treading on Jerry Springerish ground—“did you like to”—as the words form, I remind myself that tactful restraint is of the essence—“wear pink, then?” I wince at my own crassness.

Tom laughs. “And what if I did?” he says, raising an eyebrow.

“Nothing, nothing. Nothing at all,” I blabber, thinking,
I should have known. He’s gay.

The nice ones always are. If they’re not married. Or both. I knew there was a catch. And now I’ve offended him. I am so pre-occupied with my narrow booze-confused train of thought that I don’t hear Tom’s next comment and have to ask him to repeat it. And it turns out that four-year-old Tom loved painting until the day his mother’s first husband snapped his brush in half and smacked him round the face and then he went off painting and hasn’t painted since.

“That’s terrible!” I gasp, the gothic tragedy of the situation intensifying in direct proportion to my alcohol consumption.

“Not really,” grins Tom. “My mother booted him out two days later, and we all lived happily ever after. Shall we go and get a pizza?”

I nod and say demurely, “We could even splash out and get two.”

We hail a cab to Pizza Express because Tom reckons there’s no way I can walk in those shoes and the conversation progresses to the certainty that Scooby Doo was much better off without that upstart Scrappy, and that even if you can’t do an accurate impression of Scooby Doo—or indeed any other cartoon or TV character—the fact that you’ve devoted the valuable time and painstaking effort makes you worthy of much respect. Tom does a superb Scooby Doo, which I force him to repeat about nine times. And he concedes that my Marge Simpson is second to none. My prowess wins me the last dough ball.

I notice that Tom doesn’t talk with his mouth full and when it’s time to pay (the staff start stacking chairs on tables), he doesn’t do an air-squiggle. We clatter noisily back to the flat and I know it’s going to be a good night.