Perfect Daughter (11 page)

11

Jacks indicated and steered her little Skoda into the lay-by outside school.

‘Have a great day, darling.’ She smiled at her daughter, bundled up in her thick scarf, necessary on this frosty morning. They were all still buoyed up by her wonderful news.

Martha gripped the door handle but hesitated and turned towards her mum. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’ Jacks twisted round to face her.

‘Do you ever worry that you will end up like Nan?’

‘With dementia, you mean?’

Martha nodded.

Jacks sighed. ‘Well, my memory
is
shot – at least once a day I go upstairs, get to the top step and have absolutely no idea why I am up there. I pause, hang on to the wall and go through a list. Do I need the loo? Have I come to fetch laundry? Is it your nan? Often, after a minute, I walk back down, and I swear to God, the moment my foot touches the floor after the last step, it comes to me. “Bleach the loo!” Or, “Strip Jonty’s bed!” I shout it out like a bingo win, it makes me so happy that I’ve remembered.’

‘I’ve heard you do that!’ Martha shook her head.

Jacks laughed. ‘I’ve talked about it with a few of my mates and they do it too. I don’t let it worry me. I’m very different to Nan. I have a busy life and a busy family. I was thinking about it only last night. Before she got ill, Nan didn’t really do anything apart from sit in her chair and watch telly. I don’t think that helps. I think you can drive yourself nuts worrying about something that might never happen and, worse-case scenario, if it does, then I won’t know too much about it anyway.’

‘I’d hate to get like that – she’s just like a big baby. It’s like her life has been wiped out. I think it’s cruel.’ Martha’s eyes brimmed.

Jacks sighed. ‘You’re right, it is just like she’s a baby and it is cruel. But she doesn’t worry about the sorts of things that you and I worry about. Her needs are more basic: she wants to be warm and fed and have a bit of company and that’s enough for her.’

‘I suppose so.’ Martha clambered out of the car. ‘I think you are amazing, Mum, the way you look after her. She’s lucky to have you.’

Jacks replayed her daughter’s words, letting them swirl around inside her head like a divine mantra. Martha never, ever said things like that.
And I’m lucky to have you, my amazing girl.

Pushing the front door with her foot, Jacks called up the stairs, ‘I’m back, Mum. I’ll just get your porridge and I’ll be straight up!’

The doorbell behind her rang, making her jump. She opened the door and there stood Gina, stomping the cold from her boots, resplendent in a new razor-cut pixie hairdo and long, shaped fringe that had been dyed orange with the odd streak of pink.

‘Good God, what have you done to your hair?’ Jacks roared.

‘As I said to Rob, it’s bang on trend. Anyone that doesn’t like it, just isn’t with it.’ Gina waltzed into the hallway.

‘Blimey, G! If that’s with it, then I think I’d rather be without it!’ Jacks laughed.

‘Anyway, I didn’t come to discuss my new hair, I came to show you this!’ Gina held the magazine up in front of her chest.

Jacks looked down and there on the front cover, staring back at her, was Sven. Older, different, but unmistakeably him. She felt the strength leave her legs as she tottered backwards and leant against the wall.

‘You all right, mate?’ Gina reached out and held her friend’s arm.

Jacks nodded.

‘Come on,’ Gina coaxed, ‘let’s get you a cup of tea.’ She guided her friend into the kitchen and pulled out a chair. ‘Sit yourself down. You looked like you were going to faint!’

‘I came over a bit woozy. That’s the trouble – I rush around and if I don’t grab breakfast and a drink first thing, it catches up with me. Cup of tea will do the trick.’

Jacks sat at the table and stared at the magazine, looking at the face of the boy she loved, a boy who in the intervening years had turned into a man. It was a shock to see the reality of him, a face that lived in her mind, altered by the passing of time.

Gina caught her eye as she filled the kettle. ‘I thought it would make you laugh, seeing what Brains turned out like.’

Jacks rubbed her temples. ‘I know! Seems like a lifetime ago that we had our thing.’

‘I never did understand that, you nutter! He was hardly catch of the day.’ Gina laughed. ‘He was a bit of a weirdo.’

‘Yep, bit of a weirdo.’ She didn’t confess to still taking daily trips down memory lane all these years later, nor to her frequent musings of
what if…

‘Well, that explains why you liked each other, two weirdoes together.’ Gina smiled.

‘Says you with the multi-coloured hair! You look like a Rhubarb & Custard.’

‘I can’t believe that both my best friend and my husband are so untrendy. My creativity is stifled here!’ Gina shouted.

‘You’re right, you should probably move to Paris or Milan, where you can express yourself among other fashionistas.’

‘Or I could stay here and put Weston-super-Mare on the fashion map!’

Jacks smiled. ‘That’s probably easier. Although think about all those Italian men you are denying yourself…’

‘Ah, but I’d never trade in my Rob – though don’t tell him that. Treat ’em mean and keep ’em keen and all that.’

‘Treat ’em mean? You’ve been married forever and you are still all over each other!’ Jacks hooted.

Gina smiled as she put the mug of tea in front of her friend. ‘I know. We’re lucky. He treats me like a princess, he really does. Plus he knows that if he so much as looked at another woman, I’d cut off his penis and feed it to the seagulls. I find the threat of that is quite an incentive.’

They both chuckled.

‘Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if things hadn’t worked out with Rob? If you’d made a different choice, or if he had?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know, if things had worked out with that special someone who used to get your pulse racing but then slipped the net. The one that got away.’

‘Jacks, you’ve known me my whole life, who are you on about? What one that got away? Do you think that weekend I said I was at my cousin’s wedding in Crawley, I was really having it off with Jason Donovan?’

‘No! But you know what I mean.’

‘Actually I don’t.’ Gina stared at her friend.

Jacks closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Maybe it’s just me, but don’t you have anyone that you think about who makes you wonder, just for a minute, what your life would have been like if you had ended up with them?’

Gina bit her fingernail and thought about it. Her answer when it came was considered. ‘Truthfully? No. No, I just have Rob.’

‘Really? You only ever think about Rob?’ Jacks was aware she sounded a little angry, wanting the reassurance from her friend that she wasn’t the only one who had regrets. ‘Are you saying there’s never even the shadow of some bloke from your past who floats across the room or pops into your mind or who you imagine lying next to you on the mattress?’

Gina looked out of the window as if thinking about this for the first time. ‘No, Jacks. I’m sorry but no. Not for me. I know it sounds boring, but I do only think of Rob, because he’s enough. I love him. He’s everything.’ She shrugged. ‘Why? Who have you got a crush on, you little devil? It’s not that bloke on the fish counter, is it? The one with the dreadlocks that you said you’d like to take home?’

‘For advice! I said I’d like to bring him home and have him cook me tea. I just wanted to know how to cook some cod. That’s hardly a crush!’ Jacks tutted.

‘Hmmm, so you say.’ Gina winked.

Jacks was weighing up her friend’s words when Ida’s bell rang from upstairs. ‘Shit, she hasn’t had her breakfast.’ She jumped up and glanced at the clock. ‘Coming, Mum!’ she shouted.

‘I’ll let you get on, mate, but see you soon?’ Gina stood.

‘Yes, great.’ Jacks grabbed a breakfast bowl from the dirty pile on the draining board and rinsed it under the sink, slightly embarrassed by their discussion and wanting Gina to leave.

As soon as she’d waved goodbye to her mate, Jacks reached down with shaking fingers and pulled the magazine up to eye level. She clutched it to her chest, trying to feel him through the page and ridiculously wishing that she had brushed her hair and put on a bit of lippy.

Gina had stuck a Post-it note on the front –
Enjoy!
– presumably in case she hadn’t been in. Jacks folded the note and placed it in her pocket. She laid the magazine flat on the kitchen table. He had aged, sure, but was still recognisable from the cover photo. The same bright, blue eyes, the same charming smile that caused his eyes to wrinkle, and that shock of thick hair, which had now turned sandy yellow.

Jacks traced his outline with her finger. He was wearing a navy linen shirt that showed off his tan and jeans. On his wrist sat a chunky metal watch. He had bare feet and was astride the deck of a vast, gleaming boat. It was a shiny, sleek design of chrome, glass and glossed wood with a bright white hull.

Jacks felt a little lightheaded and took a deep breath. She leafed through the pages and found the article. There was another photograph that showed him sitting on a leather sofa inside the boat, a more relaxed photo and one in which she could see the contours of his chest and the slight shadow of whiskers across his chin. The interior was luxurious and this was just a boat! It was grander than any house she had ever been in. She shot a glance at her own beige laminate kitchen cupboard door, which listed to the right, askew on its hinges, and at the work surfaces around her, cluttered with cereal boxes that were too tall to fit in the cupboards and plastic boxes that contained everything from pegs to pens. She grimaced at the tiled floor, chipped at the edges, her eye drawn to the too-bright slicks of mismatched white mastic where Pete had repaired the damaged grouting.

Ignoring the sink full of dishes, the pile of laundry waiting to be sorted and the layer of dust that coated the front room, she sat hunched forward, sneaking the time to read the article three times. Devouring the information, she swallowed the facts. He was ‘currently single’ – what did that mean? Divorced? Engaged? Widowed? She wished there was more detail. He was living in San Francisco and was a qualified pilot as well as a keen yachtsman. How could one person do so much and have so many opportunities?

Her mum’s bell rang again and she jumped as though caught in the act. Quickly closing the magazine, she shoved some porridge in the microwave, glancing back at the front cover while she waited for the ping, before racing upstairs.

‘Here we go, Mum, sorry about the delay. I got a bit preoccupied. Gina dropped off a magazine with a picture of an old friend of mine on it. Sven – do you remember me talking about him? Feels like a very long time ago now.’

She placed the porridge on the padded tray on her mum’s lap and went to open the window. The room needed freshening.

‘Funny, isn’t it, how some people you know for years and they barely affect you and yet there are others who come into your life and breeze out again and it’s as if they leave a mark that no matter how much you try, you just can’t remove. Maybe they’re the ones we are meant to be with, the ones that got away. I was thinking—’

There was a loud clatter and a bang. The bowl of porridge had tumbled down the side of the bed, leaving a trail of sticky, glue-like oats that clung to the bedspread, the sheet and the carpet.

‘No.’ Ida said firmly. ‘Bad.’

‘No, no,’ Jacks sighed, ‘you aren’t bad, Mum. Don’t worry, it was my fault. I should have made sure it was steady.’ She retrieved the bowl and scraped what she could from the carpet with the spoon. ‘I’ll come back with a sponge and some hot soapy water.’

She pulled back the bedspread and couldn’t stop herself from retching. Her mum had managed to remove her nappy and was sitting with it wrapped around her feet, mess streaked along her legs.

‘I’ll go put the shower on,’ she said wearily.

It had been a long, tiring day.

Jacks allowed her mind to wander as, for the second time that day, she sprayed bleach around the shower tray, ran her hand under the showerhead and scrubbed the tiled walls. She wondered what it would be like if, instead of this cracked plastic cubicle, she had a huge power shower that took up the whole bathroom, in a big house with a glass deck and views of San Francisco Bay. She paused on the landing and held the banister. She didn’t see the stack of boxes piled high in the hallway. Instead, she closed her eyes and saw herself bobbing around in the ocean on a boat that cost more than most people’s houses. This was what it might have been like if she had chosen a different life, one where she had choices. ‘I’ll take ice with that!’ She lowered her sunglasses and addressed the waiter who was proffering a tall white-wine spritzer that sparkled in the sunshine.

‘Only me!’ Pete called from the front door. ‘You’ll take what?’ he asked as he removed his coat and dumped his keys on the windowsill.

‘Nothing.’ Jacks felt her face colour. She glanced at the clock on the landing: it was nearly six. ‘I lost track of time.’ She smiled weakly as she trotted down the stairs.

She filled and clicked the kettle to make him a cup of tea, knowing that would help thaw him out after his day outside in the cold. Opening the oven door, she looked in on the roast potatoes, which were browning nicely.

‘What on earth…?’ Pete held the magazine up in the air.

Jacks felt the breath stop in her throat.
Oh God!
She had forgotten to hide it, so mesmerised by it that she hadn’t wanted to put it out of sight.

Pete flicked through it and, much to her relief, chuckled, ‘It’s a motorbike I want, not a bloody boat! Although if this rain continues, a boat might be useful.’

‘Oh, Gina left it here. Do you remember when she and Rob went to the Boat Show last year?’

‘Do I ever. He’s still going on about it. Reckons he was barred from going on all the really fancy boats cos he wasn’t on the guest list. He tried to blag it apparently, but I told him he looks more pedalo than super-yacht to me!’

Pete casually threw the magazine down on to the table. Jacks resisted the temptation to retrieve it, hide it and smooth the pages to make sure they lay flat. She handed Pete his tea and watched, dry mouthed, with a twitch to her eye, as he placed the hot mug on Sven’s picture. Her heart hammered loudly.