Mothers & Daughters (51 page)

Nat's plain bored with the whole Camelotty business. She thinks Jaz is only going on about castles and webs and greaves and mighty bugles because of Mr Bryant. All the girls (except for Nat) are in love with Mr Bryant
.

‘How old do you think he is?' asks Jaz dreamily
.

‘Dunno. Twenty-three?' Nat has no idea how long teacher
training lasts, but Mr B looks like a student to her. He wears tour T-shirts under his jackets, and a leather strap round his wrist. ‘You just want to shag him,' says Nat, seizing her chance with the crimpers
.

‘Already have done,' says Jaz
.

It's an idiotic boast. She's still only fourteen, hasn't even French-kissed yet
.

‘You can get into trouble for making up stories like that,' warns Nat. Tirra Lirra by the river. It's all bollocks, all of it
.

For years I've had a recurring dream where I come across a whole set of extra rooms to Sunnybank I hadn't realised were there. Sometimes it's a bedroom suite, sometimes a dining room featuring a great banqueting table; once I discovered, against all logic, a sea view. Even though I love my house, it's always a mild disappointment to wake up within its real confines. Disorientating, too. For a day or two after, I'll flick through home improvement magazines till the sensation passes.

You get to my age, you think you know yourself pretty well. But in that half-hour at Jaz's, I'd found a side to my personality I'd never suspected. I strode out of her flat and climbed into my car without hesitation. As I drove back through the sleety darkness I began making plans: how, if the worst came to the very worst, I could contact Grandparents Apart, engage a mediator, get myself a lawyer, take my access case to court. Remortgage Sunnybank if I had to.
You mustn't ever think you're powerless. You should never assume there's no hope
, I heard David say again. Then:
I'll be right behind you
. ‘I can do it on my own, you taught me that,' I said out loud into the night, and the windscreen wipers marked the seconds between what I'd done, and the consequences.

When I got home I had a glass of brandy, spent three hours on the internet researching useful organisations, then took
myself to bed. Against all the odds, I fell into a deep sleep that took me through till morning.

I woke with a crushing sense that I'd done something awful. But when I recalled the details, I didn't panic. I made myself breakfast, using some of my mother's Royal Worcester that normally lived in the back of the cupboard and never saw the light of day. I took the time to set the table properly. I opened a jar of posh jam I'd been saving, and I read the opening chapter of a Mavis Cheek novel while I ate my toast. Then I set off for work. What I didn't do was go rushing to the phone to plead my daughter's forgiveness, or trawl round the house stroking Matty's things, or pore over his albums, weeping.

How long I'd be able to keep it up I had no idea. Was I confusing courage with numbness? Had I been brave, or unbelievably, irredeemably stupid? Would I be spending Christmas alone? I had no way of knowing till Jaz made her move, whatever that might be.

Days passed, five of them, and I heard nothing. She could have been in her flat, or she could be at the other end of the country. She could be carrying on as normal, unconcerned beyond a lingering sense of annoyance, or beside herself, downing pills with the curtains closed and daytime TV on for company. She could even now be applying for Matty's passport, with a view to emigrating thousands of miles away. That would teach me.

She won't cut you off, you're too useful
, said David's voice, reasonably. And another voice, possibly my own:
Come on, you're her mother, she loves you
. ‘Then why hasn't she been in touch?' I asked the woman frowning back at me from the mirror. None of the voices in my head had a convincing answer to that.

In my bleakest moments, I found myself wondering how long it would take for Matty to forget me entirely. Time
operates differently for two-year-olds. Within the space of a few months, I guessed, those hundreds of hours we'd spent together would evaporate to nothing. By the time he started school, he'd have virtually no recollection of his grandma. Fifty-four, I'd be, then. Sixty-one when he went up to secondary school, sixty-six by the time he sat his GCSEs. How old when he married? I tried to picture it but the image was too remote. Matty was just a misty shape and the only Jaz I could conjure was younger than she was now, a sulking, flash-eyed teen. I couldn't get near either of them.

Repeatedly I forced my thoughts away from the worst possibilities, but even so, the temptation to at least phone Nat or Ian and check up on her was continuous and almost overpowering.

I started re-organising the loft, took more clothes to the charity shop, and binned all my mother's old recipe books and magazines. For all her hours spent carefully copying out ingredients, what use were they now?
Everyday Eggless Cooking
, for God's sake. Her other books – the novels, the de Beauvoir, the annotated Dawkins – I stowed in my bedside cabinet because one day I did intend to read those, if only for themselves.

On the Wednesday evening, when I should have been having Matty to stay, I retrieved the photograph of Penny and, without looking at her, folded it in two and dropped her on the fire. A brief yellow flare and she was gone. She really didn't matter any more. So little did, when it came down to it.

I was in freefall, I could have been any woman except the one I had been.

On the sixth day I was in Healey's picking at my ham sandwich when Josh came over and plonked a plate of sponge cake in front of me.

‘I didn't order that,' I said.

‘No,' he said, ‘but you looked like you needed something. And we're not allowed to serve alcohol.'

He winked at me, and I was just thinking what a lovely boy he was after all when suddenly his head jerked up and I saw him mouth ‘Fuck off' in the direction of the window. I turned to see three youths flicking Vs and grinning. When I looked again at Josh, he was grinning too. He snatched my laminated menu and held it with his middle finger up the back, towards them. The boys jostled each other, slapped the glass, jeered, and carried on past the window.

‘You won't last long if you start making obscene gestures at the public,' I observed.

‘I won't do it to real customers.'

‘You'd better not.'

‘Madam.' He draped a serviette over his forearm and bowed deeply. ‘Sometimes a waiter's got to do what a waiter's got to do. Enjoy your cake.'

I did my best to eat it, but the buttercream was an inch thick and tasted oily. Only last week, when Jaz was still at primary school, she'd stood in my kitchen sifting cocoa powder and icing sugar into a mixing bowl to decorate her first ever batch of fairy cakes. You know these years are going to come to an end, but you don't believe it. One day Matty would be a stroppy, gangling youth, and Jaz would be stranded out of time, bewildered and unsure.

I was trying again to visualise an adult Matty, when the café door tinkled open and Nat walked in.

Nat didn't come in Healey's, it wasn't her sort of place. Was she here for me? Did she bring bad news? I didn't know if I dared meet her gaze or not, but I had no chance to pretend indifference because she came straight over to my table and sat down.

‘That woman in the shop told me you were here,' she announced.

I swallowed nervously. ‘Everything all right?'

‘With Jaz?'

Of course with Jaz. Good God, what else would I mean?
‘And Matty.'

‘Oh, they're fine. Matty's still got a cold so he's off nursery. But he's all right.'

‘They're – around?'

‘She hasn't gone off anywhere. She's in the flat. I thought you'd want to know.'

‘Yes, yes I do. Thank you.'

‘'S all right.' A brief twitch of the lips that was Nat smiling.

‘What state's she in? Is she angry?'

‘She was, yeah. Now she's just, sort of crushed.'

That single syllable was like a stab to the ribs. ‘Depressed?'

‘I dunno. She wants to say sorry,' Nat continued, ‘but she can't, you know, make the move.'

‘So she's sent you?'

‘God, no. She doesn't know I'm talking to you. You mustn't tell her. She'd be – shit. No, don't say anything.'

I watched her fidgeting, nudging the salt and pepper pots around with her French-polished nails. Two narrow strips of bleached-white hair hung down around her cheekbones. She said, ‘I'm a little bit frightened of Jaz, to tell you the truth, Mrs Morgan.'

I don't want your confidences, I thought, I haven't the energy for them. In and out of Sunnybank for years, this girl had been; she was part of Jaz's childhood. There should have been a connection between us, but I looked at her and felt nothing.

‘What should I do?' I asked.

Nat shrugged.
How should I know?
her expression said.

‘Is she very upset?'

‘She was crying last night. She needs you.'

I felt like the worst mother in the world. ‘You're a good friend to her,' was all I could think to say, and that nearly choked me.

‘Yeah, well.'

Nat was studying me with narrowed eyes. Clearly there was something else she needed to add.

‘Do you remember,' she said at last, ‘when I used to come round your house?'

‘Well, yes.'

‘I bet you don't, really.'

‘Of course I do,' I said.

‘Not all of it. Like, in the summer, going to school, yeah, if it was hot, you'd put suncream on Jaz and then you'd put some on me too.'

‘That was no—'

‘My mum never bothered. And sometimes you cleaned my shoes when you cleaned hers. And once I didn't have the stuff I needed for Food Technology, and you sorted me out, pots of butter and that.'

Dimly I recalled standing in the kitchen amongst the breakfast remains, hunting out Tupperware boxes while the girls hovered behind me.

‘And if it was a non-uniform day and I'd forgotten, you'd let me wear Jaz's clothes. And you lent me a hat for the Year Seven play, and you made me a packed lunch for a trip when my mum hadn't done me one. I think you paid for a trip, too, didn't you? Because I had to have the cash that morning or I wouldn't have been allowed on the coach and Jaz didn't have anything in her money box. Did you ever get that back? I don't think I ever paid you back.'

‘It was no trouble,' I said. They were light, unthinking kindnesses I'd barely registered.

‘You don't even remember, do you?'

‘Some of it. I'm glad if I helped.'

Her face was irritated, disappointed. ‘I used to love your house. I tried to say about it to Jaz, sometimes, but she just laughed at me. She didn't get it.'

Nat paused there. If it had been anyone else, I might have put a supportive arm around them.

I struggled for a moment, decency against instinct, and then I withdrew my hand from under the table and laid my fingers across hers. Her brow pinched into its usual tight lines. Then she pulled away, scraped back her chair and got to her feet.

‘Basically, my mum's never been able to give a shit. Far as I can see, Jaz is bloody lucky.'

I stared down at the uneaten cake, embarrassed.

‘It's very nice of you,' I began, but when I raised my head she was already halfway to the door.

So on the seventh day I went to my daughter because she was unable to come to me.

I stood in the porch, surrounded by thick cobwebs and dead leaves, stamping my feet with nerves. When Jaz came to the door I took a deep breath and said, ‘Does Matty want a walk to the back field, see the horses?'

There was old gritty make-up round her eyes and a tiny smudge of ink under her chin, but I was relieved to see she was properly dressed, that her clothes and hair were clean. She was OK.

She said, ‘Shouldn't you be working?'

‘Moira's in this afternoon. I'm back again this evening for late-night opening.'

‘Oh,' she said.

‘I thought I could take him off your hands for an hour.'

‘I've got this translation to finish,' she said, her voice gruff and tired-sounding. ‘So that would be good, yeah.'

I waited on the doorstep while she got him ready. At last he trotted out, his face small between thick folds of scarf and woolly hat. His mittened hand reached straight up for mine and I took it and clasped it.

‘I've got my phone,' I said, patting my pocket.

Jaz nodded and stepped back into the hall, but she didn't close the door. She leaned on the jamb, watching us as we picked our way down the stone steps, and I knew without turning round that she stayed like that till we reached the end of the road.

The traffic was busy and I kept Matty well away from the kerb. We used the pelican crossing, Matty pushing the button, and shouting when the green man lit up. We looked both ways till we got to the other side.

An alleyway between two houses took us onto the broken tarmac of the public footpath, and there were iced-over puddles to step on, and a holly hedge covered in berries, and someone had dumped a wheel trim in the grass that needed investigating. We saw a flock of small birds land on a telegraph wire and take off again, and we heard a police siren far away, and just before we got to the field we discovered a wall with an air vent that was belting out a column of steam. I lifted Matty while he swiped and blew at it, but the effort made him cough so we left it and moved on.

Soon we came to the end of the estate and the path became cindery gravel, then opened into fields. ‘This is where the horses live,' I told him. ‘If they're around today.' There'd been horses here as long as I could remember; I used to take Jaz to see them when she was six or seven. She'd clamber up on the gate to reach, and stroke them confidently down their noses and flanks. The grey one she liked better than the black because he was smaller and friendlier. She'd given them names, and made up stories about them.