Out on a Limb (16 page)

‘Jake’s mum used to work here with Dad,’ Oliver explains to her. For which I’m grateful, as it spares me from having to do so myself.

‘Oh, I see,’ she says. ‘Small world.’

‘I’m a physiotherapist,’ I add, as if it actually matters. ‘I was working here,’ I bolt on, ‘till a couple of months back.’

I note the way her daughter’s arm is linked so tightly in the crook of hers. Like they’re shoring each other up. ‘Oh,’ she says again, politely. I am, I realise with mixed feelings, not even on her radar. Just some instantly forgettable ex-member of the staff. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Well, nice to meet you, anyway.’

I nod. And never now, God willing, will be. When next we meet,
if
next we meet, it will be as fellow mothers. Which is an interesting thought. ‘Yes, you too,’ I say. Then to Hamish. ‘See you soon.’

I pause a moment to watch their progress as we part, and wonder if this brush with her husband’s mortality will make her appreciate him more.

And then I wonder if he has any right to expect that. Any knowledge (or lack) of his infidelity is irrelevant; it is he who reneged on the deal. And whatever she does or doesn’t know about Charlie, she must surely know the one thing – the
only
thing – that matters. That he’s a keeper of secrets that he doesn’t share with her.

And there’s something about her that tells me she
does
know. Not specifics, not names, I don’t think, just the fact of it. That she knows but can do little about it except hope. Her shoulders are slightly uneven, I notice, under the weight of the basket she has in the crook of her other arm. More things for Charlie. Some fruit? Another book? Certainly another newspaper. And Hamish is even, I think, carrying his laptop. His family are all looking after him.

I brought nothing. As it should be.
All
is now as it should be. For the moment, at least. But their future’s not my problem. Now it’s time for me to go home.

Chapter 16

W
HEN
I
GET IN
, the house is silent, and from the hallway I can see that my mother is sitting at the kitchen table doing my
Times
Su Doku puzzle. I presume she thinks she has the right, given that I’ve come in so late. Probably in a huff about sorting her own dinner. Well tough, frankly. Too bad. I’m not the bloody maid. It’s only when I’m taking my jacket off that I notice that, though she’s sitting in the kitchen, she’s dressed for an altogether grander location. She’s all dolled up in her pink floaty top and skirt thing, and has her triple string of pearls around her neck. All dressed up but with nowhere to go.
Is
she supposed to be going somewhere this evening? Is she going somewhere right now?

‘Oh,
there
you are,’ she says sourly, as I enter the kitchen and put my keys down on the table. And her expression makes clear that no, she ain’t not goin’ not nowhere not now. But she should have been. Oh, yes. No doubt about that. Then the penny drops. Rehearsals. No. Actually, a casting. Cyncoed Theatre Club.
Tonight
. Oh, dear, oh dear. She puts down my pencil-with-a-rubber-on and glares at me.

‘Oh, God, Mum. I’m sorry,’ I say.

Which history should tell me (but chronically forgets to) is the absolute last thing one should ever say to my mother. For she has only the one stock response.

‘And so you should be!’ she snaps. Which makes something snap in me. Why not vary things a little? Why not something along the lines of perhaps asking for an explanation? Why not some startlingly innovative cognitive reasoning process that culminates in her wondering – even if for just the tiniest instant –if there might just be a very good reason why I, this daughter who runs around for her pretty seamlessly pretty much whenever instructed to do so and has been doing so, like,
forever
, might have – no patently
has
– forgotten to come home on time and deliver her to her club? Why not just a straightforward ‘has something bad happened?’ Why not any and all of above? Huh?

I check the time. Eight-forty. I snatch the keys up again.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Come on. We’ll go now.’

She wafts a hand in the air. I am clearly not going to get off that easily. ‘Oh, it’s much too late now. They’ll be almost done.’

‘I’m sure they won’t. It’s only –’

‘Abigail, they started at seven.’

‘So you’ll be a bit late. It’s not the end of the world.’

‘And they’ve already cast the principals anyway.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I just spoke to Wilfred.’

‘Wilfred who?’ She picks the pencil up again. Pointedly. ‘Wilfred
who
?’

‘Wilfred who could have come and picked me up!’ she barks. ‘Only I told him not to because I thought
you’d
be back!’

‘Look, come on. Let’s go now. We can be there in ten minutes.’

‘No, no. Please don’t you worry yourself about
me
. I don’t want to go now, anyway.’ She turns her attention back to the puzzle. Well,
fine
. If she’d rather sit there and sulk she can go right ahead. I know full well that she’s expecting more appeasement and cajoling, but she’ll be waiting a bloody long time.

I put the car keys down again and go over to the fridge, but the scant glassful of wine I had left in the bottle in the door isn’t there any more. I turn around. It’s standing empty on the windowsill above the sink, along with a similarly empty Tio Pepe bottle. I shut the fridge again and slap on the kettle. My puzzle. My wine. My solitude, most of all. Perhaps I should persist. Perhaps I should just manhandle her from her chair and bundle her into the car and deposit her at theatre club after all. Perhaps not. I don’t have the energy for it. Or for making tea. I switch the kettle off again and pour myself a glass of milk instead, aware from the dusky reflection in the kitchen window, that her eyes are now boring into my back. I turn around.

‘Mum, don’t look at me like that, please.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like
that
. Look, I’m sorry I’m home so late, but something important came up, okay?’

‘What?’

‘Just something.’

‘Too important for you to phone me?’

‘Look, I didn’t phone you because I forgot all about your meeting, okay? I didn’t know I
needed
to phone you, did I?’

Down goes the pencil again. ‘But you should have phoned me
anyway
. Meeting or no meeting. Would that have been such a chore? I’m well aware that your comings and goings are entirely your own affair, but if you’d at least extended me the courtesy of bothering to phone me I could have asked Wilfred to come and pick me up on his way, couldn’t I?’

It occurs to me that it would be deeply satisfying to point out that if Wilfred was available to pick her up, then he could have picked her up in the first place. But I don’t point it out, because that would be childish, and I strenuously don’t wish to do any single thing that might inspire her to treat me like one.

And she’s quite right. It
did
occur to me to call home. Had Jake been at home I’d have definitely called. But she’s not my child. So I didn’t feel the need. No, more than that. I even
resented
the obligation to inform her of my movements; were she not in my house, it simply wouldn’t apply. And I know all too well that what I mainly resented was that if I had rung my mother I would have had to explain, which might necessitate me telling her a lie. Childish again. Mean and selfish and discourteous. But I
do
resent it. I resent it all the time. I can’t help it. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say instead. ‘
Really
. I’m sorry. I was at the hospital, all right?’

‘At the hospital?’

‘Yes, at the hospital.’

‘Why?’

‘A had to go and visit a sick friend.’

‘What, at this time?’

I drink some milk. It’s disgusting. Because someone left it out. ‘Yes, Mum. At this time.’

She says nothing more, and goes back to her –
my
– puzzle, while I clatter about putting things away. It’s some time before I realise she’s now stopped doing the puzzle again and is silently following my progress around the kitchen.

I close a cupboard. ‘
What
?’

‘Who is he?’ she then asks. And her tone’s entirely different.

I open another one and force in the cake rack. Then I realise it’s still dirty and pull it out again.

‘Well?’ she says.

I feel cornered. ‘Well what?’

‘Who
is
he?’

I put the dirty cake rack in the sink and turn on the tap. Oh, please. Please, not now. I’m too tired.

‘Who said it was a he?’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

I sigh heavily. ‘Yes, it’s a he.’

‘I thought so.’

I say nothing. I look at the clock on the kitchen wall. Would it be so ridiculous to go to bed at this time? Yes. I won’t sleep anyway. No. I shall have a bath. A long one. Decided, I tip the remainder of the milk down the sink. Perhaps there’s a beer knocking about at the back of the fridge. I return to it and rummage. The silence is clamouring in my ears.

And then she breaks it.

‘So you weren’t at the hospital at all, then.’
Whhhaaat?
‘Hmm,’ she says, before I can answer her. ‘Thought not.’

Which feels like such an outrageous thing to say under the circumstances, that it’s all I can do not to rush across the room and club her with the cucumber I currently have in my hand. Is that what she’s thinking? That I’ve been off on a tryst and am making up stories to try and mollify her? That I’d
do
something like that? And then a second thought rides up and elbows the first one out of the way. That I’m a fully grown woman, with a grown up child of my own, and that I do not – do
not
– have to answer to her. I put the cucumber back in the fridge with great deliberation.

‘Yes, of course I was at the hospital!’ I say.

‘Well,’ she says, tartly, rising now from the table. ‘Whether you were or whether you weren’t is really neither here nor there, Abigail, is it?’ She shakes her head as she shuffles round to get her stick. Fires off her “found
you
out, young lady” expression. ‘No wonder you were so reluctant to have me staying here,’ she mutters.

I have to let that go. I can’t put her straight on that tonight. I can’t trust myself not to be toxic and hateful. I return my attention to my quest for a beer.

But before I’ve even had time to see it coming, the contents of the fridge begin to shimmer and mist. Behind a veritable Niagara of hot fresh tears. Which is the last thing I want at this moment, in this company, so I slam the fridge shut and push past her out of the room. Fast.

I hear her huffing her way up the stairs long before she’s tapping at my bedroom door. I feel sixteen again. All puffed up with hormonal upheaval. Traumatised. Braced for her inevitable disapproval. A little scared. A lot defiant. But not at all In Charge.

She taps again. ‘Can I come in?’ she says softly. I don’t need to answer, because straight away, of course, she does.

I sit up on the bed and swing my legs over the side.

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she says. She’s still in the doorway at this point, but she soon relocates to the dressing table stool. ‘Well?’

It’s funny seeing her there. I’m used to Jake sitting there. Coming in to impart some terrifically important piece of musical intelligence, late at night, or to run through some Saturday itinerary with me. Which invariably includes some tortuous bus or train journey somewhere, and me offering to take him because he never ever asks. Wouldn’t dream of doing so. I wish he was home.

And I wish my mother felt more a proper part of my life and less like a stranger at the foot of my bed. I can’t remember the last time she was in here, before she moved here. We’d shop, sometimes, lunch sometimes, I’d go there for tea sometimes. Sometimes – though rarely – she and Hugo would come for dinner. But mainly I drove her. I’d go there and get her. We’d do what we’d do and then I’d take her back home. And Jake went there weekly. For his tea. On a Thursday. Now he has tea with her most days each week.

But I always went to where
she
was. And here she is, in my bedroom, in my personal space, looking worried – looking worried about
me
, moreover, which feels suddenly, intensely, uncomfortable. This is not what we do. We do
her
problems, not mine. I haven’t gone to my mother with a problem since I was twelve. And hardly before that. I always had my father. And after he’d gone, when we might have grown closer, she hardly ever seemed to be there.

And she’s looking at me from the stool where Charlie always tended to sit too – I can see him sitting on it now, while putting on his socks. I play with that thought for a moment, then let it go. Used to. No longer does. I feel no sudden twang of my heartstrings, and it soothes me. ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I tell Mum flatly. ‘Yes, he’s a he, and yes, he’s in hospital.’

‘Is he very sick?’

‘No, he’s okay. Well, he’s going to be. Just a heart scare.’

‘
Just
?’

‘It was just a virus. Of the surface of the heart. It’s not life-threatening.’

She nods. ‘What’s his name?’

Oh, ye Gods. ‘You don’t know him.’ The lie feels acid on my tongue. I pull out my bedside drawer to rootle for some tissues.

‘And neither am I supposed to, I imagine.’ Not a question, but a statement. I attend to my nose.

‘It’s academic anyway. We’re…well, he’s –’

‘Married. Yes, I think I gathered that much.’ I look over at her, astonished. Now she’s shaking her head. ‘Abigail, you must think I came down in the last shower of rain.’ She says this pointedly, but not in the least bit unpleasantly. I say nothing, and then she looks at me in an almost motherly way. Almost, but not quite. ‘But I didn’t, I promise you. How long’s it been going on?’

‘How long’s wha –’

‘Come on, Abbie,’ she says immediately, though gently. ‘There’s no need to pretend. I’m not stupid, you know.’ She lifts a finger towards me. ‘That expensive watch on your wrist, for example. Not the sort of thing one tends to buy on an NHS salary. And the perfume on your dressing table. That necklace.’

We both turn, in unison, to where it sits, behind her. Still in its box. As it has been since I put it there. For an instant I feel a surge of outrage that she’s been in here. That she’s looked at it. But it dissipates again, because it hasn’t any substance. Of course she’s been in here and looked at it. Why wouldn’t she have looked at it? I hadn’t hidden it or anything. I hadn’t barred her from the room. And, after all, she’s my mother.

And she
lives
here. I ball the tissue in my hand. ‘Too long. Not that long. But too long.’ I stand up. ‘A few months, that’s all. But now it’s over.’

‘That’s not how it looks from where I’m standing.’

‘You’re sitting.’

She narrows her eyes. ‘Even so.’

I go around to the other side of the bed and open the window. ‘Well, you’re wrong. It’s long over. It was just a bit of a shock, that’s all.’

She inclines her head and makes a ‘tsk’ sort of sound. ‘I take it he wouldn’t leave his wife, then?’

As if he
should
have. As if he had no business
not
to. ‘Mum, I didn’t
want
him to leave his wife.
He
didn’t want to leave his wife. He has three children, for God’s sake.’

She dismisses this trifle with a waft of her hand. ‘Oh, yes. Don’t they all?’ she says tartly. ‘And I dare say the arrangement suited him very nicely. But what about
you,
Abigail?’

‘What
about
me?’

‘You just accepted that, did you?’

‘No! I didn’t
know
, Mum.’

She goes ‘tsk!’ for a second time, and I find myself close to crying all over again. I don’t think I can bear it if she’s going to start on Charlie. I think I might feel inclined to lamp her. With the copy of
Memoirs of an Unfit Mother
, which is close at hand and beckoning from the floor beside the bed. What does she know about it anyway, huh? What does she know about
him
? I can stand a lot of things, but I can’t stand her standing in judgement over Charlie. Me, I can deal with, but not him. But perhaps she’s already figured that one out anyway. Because her sour expression softens. ‘Do you love him?’ she asks.