Mothers & Daughters (3 page)

‘Sit there while I make up the bed,' I told her, and she plonked herself in front of the dressing-table. I got fresh sheets from the airing cupboard and grabbed the pillows off my own bed because they're the decent ones.

‘You've taken my posters down,' she said, as she watched me shake out the duvet cover.

‘Well, yes. It's my guest room, now.'

I could see her eyes swivelling round, clocking all the changes. ‘And you've repainted the ceiling. And the lampshade's new. And that's not my duvet.'

I said: ‘Love, I couldn't leave it untouched for ever. If I have people to stay, they don't want to be looking at pictures of half-naked men waving guitars about or leaning on gravestones.' I tried a laugh. ‘Could give them nightmares.'

‘Well, I hope you haven't thrown them away.'

‘Of course I haven't. They're on top of the wardrobe in Matty's room.'

‘And what about my lampshade?'

I paused, pillowcase in hand. ‘What about it?'

‘Did you keep that?'

‘No, it went to the tip. I didn't for one minute think you'd want it.'

‘I customised it,' she said. ‘I painted it myself.'

‘Black, with crosses and roses. It didn't really go with anything any more. And it was very battered. You wouldn't have wanted it up in your house, would you?'

‘Dunno. But you could have offered it to me before you chucked it out.'

I shook the pillow down and dropped it onto the bed.

‘Did you keep my old curtains?'

‘They're in the loft,' I said quickly. I didn't dare tell her I'd cut them up to make a garden kneeler.

‘Good.' She continued to watch me in a glazed, spacey way. ‘I suppose I should be helping with that.'

‘You stay where you are. Just this duvet to sort out and we're done. Then you can put your head down. Matty and I might go for a walk so you can have total peace.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Do you want to borrow one of my nighties?'

For a moment she actually smiled. ‘I'll give that one a miss,
Mum. I've got a T-shirt on under this jumper; I can sleep in that.'

I left her to get undressed, and when I came back she was under the covers. I drew the curtains closer to block out the little triangle of light at the top, and went to sit on the bed next to her. ‘Can I get you anything? Cup of Horlicks? Do you want the radio out of my room?'

She shook her head and closed her eyes. ‘Oh – you have still got Kitten?'

‘Of course. I'd never throw Kitten out. He's in Matty's cot.'

‘Can I have him?'

‘Now?'

‘Yeah.'

I stepped across the landing and retrieved the cat-doll from under a pile of bright, newer teddies. ‘You're in demand again,' I told it. ‘I hope you're more use than me.'

‘Thanks,' she murmured, when I placed it in her hand. She never opened her eyes, and I think she was asleep two minutes after. You sod, Ian Reid, I thought as I closed the door on her quietly. You utter, utter sod.

Matty didn't want to go for a walk; he'd been watching a cookery programme on CBeebies, and it was baking or nothing.

‘Shall we make rolls for tea, then?' I asked, because I knew I had a packet of bread mix in the cupboard, and all you do is add water and knead. Matty made a drilling noise which I took to mean yes, so I got down the big mixing bowl that was my mother's, and carried a chair in from the lounge for him to stand on.

‘You'll need to let Nanna measure out the water,' I told him. I didn't want him near the tap. Laverne-next-door's cousin's little girl was very badly scalded with a hot tap last year. That
story's haunted me ever since I heard it. Her mother was only in the next room, ironing.

I opened the packet, and a little bit of flour puffed up into the air. ‘Oh,' said Matty, impressed. I patted the sides for fun and another tiny cloud rose up. Matty squealed. I slid the packet slightly over towards him, smiling, and without hesitation he stuck out his palm and walloped the side. Bread mix exploded out of the top and the packet fell over, spilling a long white plume across the kitchen surface.

‘Oops,' I said.

‘Oops,' echoed Matty.

‘My fault,' I said. ‘Nanna's fault. Silly Nanna. What was I thinking.'

I began to scrape the mix back up but, as I did so, Matty leaned in over my arm and sneezed spectacularly. The air in front of us became at once thick and misty. Flour hung in suspension, like smoke, like the pall after a bomb's gone off. ‘Uh-oh,' he said.

‘Uh-oh indeed. My goodness. What a mess.'

‘All-gone.' He waved his arms.

‘Not really, Matty. Not even slightly, in fact.'

While I wetted a piece of kitchen towel, he began to blow at the flour like a maniac, spreading it as far as his lungs could reach. I thought, I'm going to be cleaning this room till midnight.

‘Gotcha,' I said, swooping in and lifting him off the chair, out of range of the bread mix. ‘Now, mister, let's see if we can clean you up. Oh, good grief. It's all in your hair, down your T-shirt. You've even got it on your eyelashes. If your mummy sees you like this . . . Close your eyes. Close your eyes, Matty. No, don't wipe it on your trousers. I've got a cloth. Close your eyes while Nanna sorts you out.' As he twisted away from me I could see that my front was covered in streaks of flour too, and
that a pale film had settled over everything even as far as the sink, which meant it must be on all the plates in the plate rack and the cups above and the storage jars, and the lot would need taking down and washing.

And at the same time I was thinking, His nails need a proper scrub with a brush if I'm going to let him help knead the dough, and is there enough mix left, should I weigh it out and scale down the amount of water, and when is he due a nappy change, and I was just asking him again to stop blowing at me when the phone rang.

It took me about twenty rings to brush the worst of the mess off myself, shepherd Matty into the living room and shut the kitchen door behind us, pull the toy box out again from under the coffee-table, and locate the phone. If it was Ian, I was going to tell him what I bloody well thought of him. No, I couldn't do that because Matty was at my elbow. I was going to be icily polite, then, and tell him Jaz would ring back when she was less upset, then hang up. No, I'd be better just hanging up, full stop. Unless that was too rude. Except he'd gone beyond rude with what he'd done, even if he was the father of my grandchild.

Then, as I reached for the handset, I had this flash that it might, in fact, be Phil, and I wondered what the hell to say to him, because Jaz had said to me twice now,
Don't tell Dad yet
. But if he asked after Jaz (and he always did), or if he heard Matty in the background, I wasn't going to lie. I wasn't going down that route. There'd been enough lies in our family.

So when I pressed the accept button, I was already worked up, and not fully on the ball. Which is why I made such a hash of it; why I managed to make everything a whole lot worse.

CHAPTER 3

Photograph 271, Album Two

Location: the hallway, Sunnybank, Shropshire

Taken by: Carol

Subject: Jaz, ten, in a blue sequinned party frock. She stands stiff and furious, the Deco glass of the front door fanning behind her in an accidental headdress. It's clothing that's the issue: Jaz would prefer to wear a black strapless top with jeans, and has stated this preference energetically for the last hour. But Phil says the outfit's too old for her and, just for once, Carol's backing him up. ‘Nobody else'll be in a dress,' complains Jaz. ‘Dresses are lame.' ‘Then wear your jeans with a nice blouse,' says Carol. If looks could kill, Carol would be eviscerated on the spot
.

But this is not actually the argument. This is an add-on, an extra layer on top of something else. What Jaz is really sulking about – has been for weeks – is that she's been banned from the travellers' camp that's appeared on the wasteground behind the local GP surgery. ‘Why would you want to keep going there anyway?' asks Phil. ‘Because they're
interesting,'
says Jaz. And, when she catches him making faces behind her back, adds, ‘More interesting than either of you, anyway.'
Phil laughs his head off, but it's a line that cuts Carol to the quick
.

‘Hello? Am I speaking to Carol Morgan?'

The tone was formal, and I thought it might be a cold-caller. At the same time, Matty was holding up a pot of Play-Doh for me to unscrew, pushing it into my chest.

‘Who is this?' I said crossly.

‘David.'

I still wasn't with it.

‘David Reid,' he said. ‘Ian's father.'

There were, I saw now, white footprints across my blue carpet and a shower of white over the arm of the sofa. When I turned to look in the mirror, there was flour in my hair and also caught in the top folds of my blouse. A tilt of the head dislodged another flurry.

‘We should talk,' went on David, his tone ultra-cool. I stopped seeing the marks on the furniture and pictured him instead at the wedding in his morning suit, and his snooty girlfriend buzzing around in the background as though it was her son getting married.
I've moved the flowers so they're in the centre of the table, Carol
.

‘Talk?' I said.

‘Nanna,' said Matty, thumping the pot against my breastbone. ‘
Nanna
.'

‘Is Jasmine with you?' he said. ‘Is she around? Because Ian's been trying to call her, and she won't answer. Is that Matty?'

‘Jaz is with me, yes. But she's having a lie-down, I'm not disturbing her.'

‘If you could. Ian needs to speak to her urgently.'

‘He'll have to wait. She's not ready.'

‘You should know, he's staying with me at the moment. He's very upset.'

I snatched at the Play-Doh pot and flung it at the hearth. The top pinged off, and Matty scrambled after it.

‘Upset?' I said. ‘Upset? I should damn well think he is. Jaz is pretty “upset”, too. She's devastated. What Ian's done to her is –' I almost said ‘unforgivable', but stopped myself in time –‘despicable. At the very least she needs some time to come to terms with it.'

‘There's nothing to be gained from silence,' David was saying. ‘The sooner they get together and talk it through, the better.'

‘She needs
time
,' I repeated.

‘I disagree. The longer she shuts him out, the harder it's going to be.'

‘For who, exactly?'

There was a pause, then David spoke again. ‘For everyone. Look, I've always had you down as a very reasonable person, Carol, so if the two of us could—'

‘Oh,
reasonable
, is it? Depends what your definition of reasonable is, doesn't it? I suppose you want me to go upstairs, wake her and tell her it's all OK, Ian's sorry, and she should be a good girl and take him straight back. Four years they've been married, four years, and if he can't keep his hands to himself in that time then they've no chance. She might as well ditch him now. Everything on a golden plate, he's had, you've seen to that –'

‘I resent the implication there.'

‘– and it's still not good enough. I don't know who he thinks he is, what right he has to – That lovely girl up there – God, what's wrong with people that they can't
hold on to what they have and be grateful
?'

I realised I must have been shouting, because Matty had stopped playing and was looking at me. I put my hand against my mouth, ashamed, and at that moment the living-room door opened and Jaz walked in.

‘What's going on?' she said. ‘I could hear you on the stairs.'

I shushed her, but it was too late.

‘Can I hear Jasmine?' came David's voice, thin and powerless out of the receiver. ‘Jasmine? Jasmine?' I held the phone to my chest, muffling him.

Her face fell. ‘Oh God, what have you been saying, Mum?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘It just came out.'

‘Well, it shouldn't have. This is my crisis.' And she took the phone away from me and switched it off.

There've been several notable occasions when I've opened my mouth and come out with the opposite of what I wanted to say. Sometimes, if I can't sleep at night, I play those times back and then I have to get up and stick the radio on and have a milky drink or maybe do a few stretches. Must be nice to be one of those people who aren't bothered.

After Jaz had taken Matty upstairs to change him I felt the urge to haul out her wedding album, compound the misery of the moment. The album (hand-tooled, gilt-finished) lived in the space under the bureau, in a special white box. Last time it had an airing was the night Jaz came round to tell me she was pregnant.

I wiped the dust away with my sleeve and lifted the lid.

Inside, it smelled of the past. Leather, cream card, tissue paper edged in gold: all those layers protecting, and not one of them any use in the end. Here at the front was Phil – open-faced, amiable cheat. It's eight years since I finally threw him out – an age ago – yet if I look at his picture for too long, time's compressed to nothing. He was standing under the archway at the entrance to the church, Jaz clutching his arm. Later she'd told me she was so nervous she thought she might be sick, right there in the porch, but Phil had distracted her with a story about how he'd sneaked into the hotel earlier and drawn
a penis on the inside of David's place-card. She'd been so busy being annoyed, she'd forgotten to be scared. So Phil had been some use. And at least he had turned up, without Penny in tow, and had given Jaz away properly. He even behaved himself at the reception, if you didn't count trying to kiss me at the end of the evening.

On the next page was the immaculate David with his lovely consort, Jacky, like a couple out of
Cheshire Life
. ‘I tell you, I'd have sold my bloody flat to pay for this wedding if I'd known he'd be so up himself,' Phil said to me afterwards. ‘Lording it over everyone.' I'd thought that was a bit unfair at the time; put simply, David had money, and we didn't.