Queen Mum (30 page)

*

She’d been leaning against the newel, but now she sank down onto the second step. ‘Where? Where did you see him?’

‘He was waiting outside the nursery. We only spoke for a couple of minutes, then he drove off.’

‘Is he coming here?’ She looked around wildly.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so, not at the moment.’

‘Oh God. What did he say? When’s he coming back?’

‘He’s angry with you for not telling him about your mum.’

‘He didn’t
deserve
to be told! Who’s got the right to be angry here, hey?’ She paused and I saw the first shine of tears.

‘Oh, Juno—’

‘What else did he say?’

‘That he’s been in the Lake District, he’s been taking stock of where he’s going in his life, he doesn’t like being able to predict where he’ll be in twenty
years’ time. He feels he’s due some kind of sabbatical. That was the gist of it.’ Oh, and I’m your clone, I could have added. I was trying not to let my voice shake.

‘Is that all?’

‘More or less.’

‘But he is coming back?’

‘I’m sure he is, at some point . . . ’

‘Did he say he was with Kim?’

‘He’s not with her, Juno. He says he’s been on his own. I’m convinced he was telling the truth.’

‘How would you know to believe anything he says?’ she cried, pulling off the scarf and throwing it on the carpet. ‘I don’t know where I am any more with him. I mean, why
did he choose to speak to you and not me? What was that all about?’

I went cold. ‘I think he was testing the water. I don’t know. You’re not—’

‘No, not really. Shit, my head’s just such a mess. I’m going to phone him, that’s what I’m going to do. He can come round here himself and damn well explain face to
face, like an adult. Fucking sabbatical. We’d all like one of those.’

She ran up the stairs and I heard a door slam. I stood in the hall for a few minutes, debating whether to stay or go home. I thought of watching Dad leave, seeing him walk down the path with his
suitcase, and the way I’d wanted to run after him and thump him hard or catch him by the trouser leg and pull him back to us. Then I remembered that he’d left during the night while I
was asleep. So where had that scene come from? God, I could see it, and yet it never happened.

I wandered into the living room and picked up a half-empty mug of cold coffee, took it through to the kitchen. As I rinsed it out, I scanned Juno’s wall calendar and list of useful
contacts. And there was Kim’s home phone number. It was like Fate giving me a great big nudge.

I used my mobile and I dialled 141 first, to make sure she couldn’t trace the call back. A woman’s voice said flatly, ‘Hiya.’ Was it her? I couldn’t be sure.

‘I wondered if I could speak to Kim, please?’

‘Speaking.’

I nearly shouted out, I was so relieved; instead I squeezed the end-call button so hard I nearly cracked the phone casing.

I ran up the stairs, desperate to tell Juno the news. Her bedroom door was closed, so I listened for a moment, then knocked gently.

‘Come in,’ I heard her say.

She was sitting on the bed, her hair mussed up, her shoulders drooping.

‘Have you finished?’

‘Hardly started. He said he’d come back for the funeral and I told him if that was his only reason then he could go fuck himself. Then I hung up.’

‘Try him again. He probably didn’t mean it to sound that way.’

‘Can’t. His mobile’s switched off, the bastard.’

I waved my phone at her. ‘I’ve just rung Kim’s house – don’t worry, I didn’t say who it was. She’s there, Juno, in Bolton. So Manny was telling the
truth.’

She put her hand to her mouth, then began to cry. Her back sagged, then she collapsed sideways on the bed and sobbed. I sat next to her, stroking her arm and wiping her cheeks where I could
reach them, smoothing her hair over her shoulder. Tom’s done this for me in the past. You just have to wait. Soon her whole face was wet and her nose slobbery, and the embroidered white
bedspread smeared with lipstick. ‘Oh God,’ she kept wailing.

At last the crying wore itself out and she lay quietly, taking juddering breaths every now and then. Her eyes were tight closed and when I stood up, she rolled her face away from me, back into
the bedcover.

I went downstairs to wait for Ben and the girls.

I ended up cooking for everyone that night. Juno broke the news to Pascale and Sophie and then brought them straight round; I don’t think she could cope with just the
three of them together. The girls sat in front of the TV, whispering, and Juno and I chopped veg in the kitchen. Ben hung around us for a while, then disappeared off to his room.

Tom we told as soon as he walked through the door. ‘Shit,’ he said, and put his arms round Juno straight away, but she stiffened and pushed him back.

‘It’s just,’ she said, ‘I don’t want you to start me off again. I’m fine till someone’s kind. The girls—’

‘Yep,’ said Tom. ‘Understood. Jesus, though. Ally, get a bottle of wine out. We all need a drink.’

Afterwards I took some leftovers out to the dustbin and found myself mesmerized by the view through my own lounge window. Was that my life, there in that lighted house? I tried to look at it
without the dull filter of familiarity. That medium-height, pleasant-looking man; my husband. That beautiful adolescent boy; my son, and in a different night, a different moment of conception,
he’d never have existed. If I’d married Mark Walters. Or if I’d never met Mark, or even Robin before him, I might not have been ready to love Tom. All the ways these things that
were now might not have ever happened.

I looked at Ben again and saw how he was with the girls. When I was a child I’d had, one Christmas, a little pair of plastic ladybirds. They were magic, because when you put them on a
smooth surface and tried to push their heads together, they’d spring apart. Or the one you weren’t holding would edge backwards all on its own as its partner drew near. That was Ben and
Soph at this moment, performing a subtle repulsion-dance around the room, constantly checking each other’s position to ensure the distance between them.

Then, as I watched, Juno said something to Tom and he came over to the sofa and embraced her. Her head lay against his shoulder and his lips moved in soothing shapes. He patted her hair gently,
which is what he does for me sometimes. I knew I could trust him: how much is that worth?

Later, in bed, Tom picked up his book, frowned at it for two minutes, then put it down again.

‘Waste of time, I can’t take it in,’ he said.

I reached for his hand under the covers.

‘You were really good tonight, at the meal and afterwards. I know Juno gets on your nerves sometimes, but she doesn’t deserve what Manny’s done.’

‘No. Life’s a bastard.’

I had a flash of Joe sitting watching his brother play on the computer, bobbing up and down in his chair with excitement.

‘It’s so awful that she feels she needs to keep it a secret, though. I still think she could have told me, I wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone. Unless she thought that
not talking about it would make it less real. Do you reckon she’s right, that the tabloids would stick it on the front page?’

‘I do, yes.’

‘Surely they wouldn’t be so insensitive; I mean, with her having lost her mum so recently. That would make them look mean, wouldn’t it, like they were victimizing her, and then
they might lose readers.’

Tom slid his fingers from mine, sighed, and put his hands behind his head. ‘Possibly. But you have to remember, the Kingstons stepped into the public domain when they signed up for
Queen Mum
. Juno’s a bright woman, she always knew that.’

‘But she didn’t know her marriage was going to fall apart.’

‘Ahh, no. She went on the programme because she was confident under media scrutiny. But that’s not the case any more. And it’s too late, now. She can’t wipe herself out
of the nation’s consciousness. She’s in there like the Bisto kids or
Pop Idol
. Branded.’

*

*

I was up again at 1.30; too much going on in my head. Mum had rung earlier with a story about a missing toddler and I’d only stopped her from delivering the punchline by
threatening not to go up next week. These things get into your head and drive you crazy. I left Tom sleeping and went to make a drink of milk. Through the kitchen window the stars were very bright:
Orion, Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia. You can’t help thinking about heaven on a frosty night.

As I passed the front room I spotted what I must have missed when I went past before; a faint light around the door frame. When I stood still I could hear the hum of the machine working,
too.

‘Ben?’ I pushed the door open and he started guiltily. His face seemed hard in the glow of the computer screen. ‘Ben! What are you doing up at this time? It’s getting on
for two o’clock in the morning. You’ve school tomorrow, you’ll be wrecked.’

He was busy clicking windows away, but I could see before they vanished it was some bizarre porn.

‘Oh, God, was that a dog?’

‘No,’ he said, shutting the screen down rapidly. ‘It wasn’t anything. Jesus, you gave me a shock. Why are you up, Mum?’

‘Never mind me. What on earth did you think you were doing on there?’ I put the main light on and he blinked and shielded his eyes with his arm.

‘It was just a joke.’

‘What was?’

‘Jeez, don’t make me tell you. It wasn’t anything, honest, mucking about.’

‘Ben.’

He lowered his arm and sighed. ‘You won’t want to hear. All it is, it’s a stupid joke we’ve been having at school, sending dodgy links to each other. It’s like a
competition to gross each other out. We find twisted sites and mail them to each other.’

I was thinking, You used to sing the theme tune from
The Snowman
and make your grandma cry. You used to stand on the bed in your little pyjamas and ask for an extra kiss for Chiffy in
case he got scared in the night-time.

‘It’s not all porn,’ he went on. ‘Some of it’s, like, sick humour. There’s this one cartoon site where they have kittens being chopped up with a chainsaw,
body parts flying around. It’s not real. Obviously. But it is quite funny.’

‘Go to bed, Ben. You’re right, I don’t want to hear.’

The computer did its final closing-down buzz and went silent.

‘There. All gone. I couldn’t sleep, that’s why I was down here. You know what it’s like when you’re lying there and all your thoughts are going round and round. I
had this idea I’d surf the Net for a bit till I was properly tired. I’d been looking at fossils on eBay before.’

‘You haven’t been in any chat rooms, have you?’ He hitched his boxer shorts up round his skinny waist and I thought of Sophie touching his tender skin. It was an outrageous
image; I vanished it at once.

‘Chat rooms’re for saddos. Waste of time. People are never who they say they are, so it’s pointless. I know all the stranger-danger stuff, so don’t start.’

‘And what about the danger of giving out personal email addresses to hundreds of sick websites, so we’re all flooded with vile nasty spam? I don’t want to fire up my emails and
get a load of offers from strangers to wee on me, thank you very much. No, it’s not funny. Our blocked-senders list is like an encyclopaedia.’

He came up and put his arms round me. ‘I’m taller than you, now.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Dunno. I’m glad you and dad are my parents, and not Juno and Manny.’ Why? I wanted to say, but he’d already detached himself and given me a peck on the cheek. ‘See
you, then.’

‘I should be cross with you,’ I called after him. ‘I am cross. It’ll have to stop, you know, craze or no craze.’

‘Night, night,’ I heard him say from the landing.

I sat down and fired the computer back up.

*