Star Struck (28 page)

Jay was obviously feeling uncomfortable, ‘Would you like to see some art, Jo?’

‘Not really.’

‘Why, afraid it might challenge your expectations?’

‘No, I’m afraid it might just be another turd-polishing exercise …’

‘Right!’ Jay said, throwing his hands in the air. ‘I’ve tried, Karen, God knows I’ve tried. But your kids are the limit.’ He flounced out of the room.

‘What has he tried? It’s not like he’s just taken me to Butlin’s for two weeks. It’s years since I’ve seen him and now he’s having a hissy fit because I think his art is shit?’

Karen grabbed her daughter by the wrist, ‘His art is
him
.
He
is his art. You can’t separate the two. Your words, Jo, can be mortally wounding to the spirit. When you grow up, if you ever do, you might realise that.’

‘I’ve had a look, it’s rather good,’ Mick said, nodding agreeably.

‘Who are you, Brian Sewell?’ Karen snapped. Mick recoiled and sipped his tea.

‘Don’t have a pop at him,’ Jo shouted.

Karen pushed her daughter through the kitchen door into a large hallway that led through to the lounge. ‘Go in there,’ she directed Jo. The lounge was newly decorated, it was all white walls and up-lighting, very
Grand
Designs
.
‘Are the Arts Council giving you more than usual this year?’ Jo asked, looking around the room.

‘What is that meant to mean?’

‘It means, how did you afford all of these fancy decorations?’

Karen pulled at her chestnut brown ponytail and narrowed her eyes at her daughter. It was more than a little disconcerting for Jo, as her mother looked exactly as Jo would look if she spent the next twenty years living outdoors on an ocean-going liner. Until Karen had taken up yoga – and there was no way of knowing if that was a new thing but Jo had a feeling it was a fad like everything else with her mother – Karen had been overly fond of cigarettes and red wine, which had aged her somewhat. ‘What the hell has it got to do with you?’ Karen asked.

And there it was; the sentence that Karen always managed to get to when she and Jo saw one another, the one where Jo knew not to go any further because she didn’t want to hear what else her mother might have to say. If Jo retaliated now, saying that what it had to do with her was that she was Karen’s daughter, Karen could easily counter with something blisteringly hurtful about her not really being her daughter as she hadn’t been bothered with her since she was twelve. Jo knew the facts, the last thing she needed was her selfish mother spelling them out.

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s right. nothing.’ Karen said, standing up and walking over to the picture window that looked out on a walled garden. ‘So, what’s new?’

Jo thought for a minute, was her mother serious? Didn’t she know about Catherine? ‘Catherine’s in New York.’

Her mother’s eye flickered. ‘Oh yes, your father said something about it. Some singing competition isn’t it?’ Karen said, as if she wasn’t bothered. Something told Jo she was more than bothered.

Jo shook her head. ‘Are you for real?’

‘What?’ Karen asked, lighting a cigarette and immediately waving the smoke away as if it had nothing to do with her.

‘A singing competition? It’s the most watched TV show in the world.’

‘Oh, right,’ Karen said, non-plussed.

‘Karen,’ Jo said, it seemed more appropriate than ‘Mum’, ‘this is a really big deal. Why are you pretending not to be bothered?’ She thought she smelled a rat. Did her mother know something she wasn’t admitting to? Jo quickly dismissed the idea. Her mum wasn’t one for hiding opportunities to cash in or be the centre of attention. If she knew something she would tell them; she wouldn’t have been able to help herself. It seemed she genuinely wasn’t that interested.

‘I am bothered and I wish her well. I’ll send a message to the spirits for her.’

‘You will, will you? And how will you do that?’

‘Jay and I are training to be Shamen.’ Karen said matter-of-factly.

‘Oh, right. Of course,’ Jo said, mocking her mother. If Karen caught her tone, she chose to ignore it. ‘Anyway, she’ll be on the TV very soon. Hundreds of thousands of people enter it and she’s down to the last six in her category. So, well done, Catherine.’

‘Yes, well done, her.’ Karen said without much enthusiasm.

‘In fact …’ Jo didn’t know why she let her mother get to her but she couldn’t help herself, ‘we’re all on it. As a family.’

‘You mean all of you?’ Karen asked, appalled.

‘Yes …’ Jo said, pleased to have her mother’s attention. ‘We all went down to support her and Dad sort of kicked off on Richard Forster.’

‘Oh my God, what on earth did he say?’

‘You’ll have to watch it to find out.’

‘OK,’ Karen said with a sigh.

Jo never failed to be surprised by her mother. There were mothers out there who would sever a limb to see their kids do well on a show like
Star Maker
, but not Karen, she couldn’t give a monkey’s. The only thing that would interest Karen on TV was a show about herself.

Jo decided to change the topic of conversation. ‘What’s Dad doing here, Mum?’

‘He comes here quite a bit. He sort of roams around outside. We used to call the police but now we just let him in, he has a cup of tea and then he goes.’

Jo’s heart sank, she wanted to get her dad by the scruff of the neck and to tell him to stop being such a deluded, soft old sod. What was he doing roaming around down here? And it wasn’t as if he could even drive himself here, he must always get a taxi the four or so miles to Chorlton in order to stalk his ex-wife.

‘Well, maybe he’s got something to tell you, maybe it’s because there’s something really serious wrong with him …’ Jo said, pushing her mother to see if there was an ounce of compassion in the woman.

‘The cancer. He told me, I know all about it. But perhaps it’s not true, perhaps it’s all in his mind.’

‘What?’ Her mother was seriously deranged, Jo realised.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time that he lied to get his way.’

‘You’re unbelievable …’ Jo was genuinely shocked that her mother could think such a thing.

‘He’s spiritually stunted. Do you know, Joanna, that your father didn’t tell me he loved me once after the day we got married? He couldn’t, he was an emotional husk …’

‘Right, we’re off,’ Jo shouted, marching into the kitchen.

Mick was still sipping his tea and staring out of the window. Jo hooked her hand through his arm and pulled him off the stool he was perched on. ‘What the blazes?’

‘Out now,’ Jo demanded.

‘But I need to say goodbye to your mother.’

‘You don’t need to say goodbye to anyone.’ Jo pushed Mick through the kitchen door and pulled it behind her. Once out on the street and safely out of earshot, Jo lambasted her dad. ‘What the bloody hell were you doing there?’

‘I might ask you the same thing.’

‘I was passing through Chorlton.’

‘Going where?’

‘Nowhere. None of your business. A friend’s, if you must know.’

‘What friend?’

‘Never mind me, what about you? Mum says you go there all the time! That they have to invite you in because they got bored of calling the police!’

‘So what?’

‘So what? You lied, you told me the other day that you hadn’t seen Mum in ages.’

‘Myself and your mother don’t have to report in to you kids every time we do something.’

‘Listen to yourself!’ Jo pleaded. ‘There is no “you and Mum”. You and her are no more. Stop making a fool of yourself, Dad. She doesn’t want you. She doesn’t want any of us; get used to it.’

Mick stood in front of his daughter and if it was possible for a human being to crumble then that is what he did. He slumped to the ground, his hat falling off his head into his lap, tears streaming down his face.

‘Oh God, Dad, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to upset you. Please don’t cry,’ Jo said, rubbing his back and smiling tightly at two passers-by who crossed the road in order to avoid the display of sadness they were witnessing.

‘I’m gone, Joanna. I’m gone.’

Jo didn’t know what he meant but she knew that he must feel terrible. He was sick with cancer, his kids were all grown up and the mother of those kids wanted nothing to do with him.

‘You’re not gone, Dad, you’re here and I’m here with you.’ She bent down and hugged her dad; he turned and clung to her like a drowning man hanging on to a piece of driftwood. She felt awful. He seemed so sad, so alone. She hasn’t realised, she just thought that he was a bluff old sod who weathered anything that was thrown at him.

She needed to move him away from the area so that neither her mother nor Jay saw him like this. She wasn’t going to allow that pair to feel any more smugly sorry for Mick than they already did. Jo looked at her bike and realised she was either going to have to flag a taxi or ride tandem with her dad to the hospital. She thought the taxi
would
be more appropriate under the circumstances and that the bike would have to be collected another time.

‘Anywhere here’ll do, thank you,’ Mick said in the middle of a wide house-lined road that didn’t seem to have a hospital anywhere in the vicinity.

‘Where’s the hospital?’ Jo asked, ‘We’re going to Christie’s,’ Jo informed the taxi driver. ‘Can you take us to the door please?’

‘Christie’s is about five minutes up this road, love.’

Jo looked at her dad. ‘Why do you want to get out here, Dad?’ After Mick’s collapse in Chorlton, Jo was being as gentle as possible with him.

‘I wanted a walk, that’s all,’ Mick said, ‘A bit of air.’

‘But I think it’s best that we just get to the hospital and if you want some air then you can walk around the grounds.’

‘I don’t need baby-sitting, Joanna.’ Mick seemed to have forgotten his breakdown in the street and was back to his truculent self.

‘OK. Fine. Can you pull over, sorry …’

Mick paid the driver and Jo climbed out onto the pavement. As the car pulled away Mick straightened himself out and began to walk. Jo followed in silence.

‘I don’t want you coming in with me.’

‘Why not?’ Jo wasn’t sure herself that she wanted to spend the next few hours in a cancer hospital but if her dad was going in then she didn’t think she had a choice.

‘Because I don’t. You can get a coffee and I’ll see you when I’m finished.’

Jo thought about Catherine and the fact that she had
always
had to put up with her father’s moods and whims. Jo decided to text her sister and ask what New York was like. She wished she was in New York rather than being forced to go for her coffee alone in Withington. In fact, she wished all of this would just go away and that her dad would be all right and he could just go back to his normal grumpy depressed self, rather than someone who was grumpy and depressed and potentially seriously ill.

‘Dad, I’d really like to come in with you. Maybe there are some things that the doctors would like to tell someone from your family …’

‘Like what?’ Mick shot his daughter a look.

‘Like how to look after you properly. Like what we should do if something happens.’

‘If what happens?’

‘I don’t know, do I? That’s why I want to come in with you,’ Jo said, exasperated.

Mick shook his head as if all this fussing and caring was getting on his nerves. Jo walked along at his side, waiting for him to say something. Finally he spoke. ‘She wasn’t bothered, you know, your mother. About the cancer. I thought she would be, I thought if there was one thing that would make her realise, then it was this.’

‘You thought that this would make her realise what?’

‘That all this,’ he threw his arms in the general direction of Chorlton, ‘was a fad.’

Was he serious? ‘Fads don’t last seven years, Dad. What are you on about?’ Then something dawned on Jo; she felt an icy chill run the length of her body. Her eyes must have given it away because Mick quickly began to cover his tracks.

‘Nothing, she’s not worth bothering about, not when I’ve got you lot being so good and looking out for me and everything.’

Jo’s eye’s narrowed and she bit her bottom lip as she tried to hold in what she was desperate to say and tried to add some rational thought before leaping to conclusions about her dad. ‘Right, OK,’ Jo said, stalling for thinking time.

‘Anyway, you get yourself in there and have a coffee,’ Mick instructed Jo as they passed a ropey-looking coffee shop.

Jo looked at her dad, ‘It’s all right, I don’t fancy a drink really. Anyway,’ she swallowed hard on the sick feeling that had come over her in the past few moments, ‘I’m going to come with you and see what the doctors have to say. I want to make sure that they’re doing all they can.’

‘I’m a big boy, I can look after myself.’

‘That might be the case, but I still want to come in with you.’

‘Well,’ Mick said defiantly, ‘I don’t want you to.’

‘Tough, I’m coming in.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘You can’t just go swanning in there,’ Mick said, flustered.

‘I’m not swanning, I’m accompanying my father who is a patient.’

‘Well, I don’t want you there.’

‘Why not?’ Jo asked angrily.

Mick threw his arms to his side like a petulant child, ‘Because …’ he struggled for the words, ‘I don’t want to
upset
you,’ he said finally. Jo buckled. She had been thinking some very dark things about her father in the past few minutes, that he was somehow milking this to somehow garner attention with his ex-wife but seeing him standing here now looking alone and frightened Jo realised that she had judged her dad in the same dismissive manner she always judged him.

‘All right, Dad, I’m sorry.’ Jo wanted to hug her dad again but it didn’t feel appropriate somehow. Instead she pointed awkwardly to the coffee shop and said, ‘I’ll just be in here, yeah? Shout if you need anything.’

‘I’ll be about an hour. You don’t have to wait; I’ll get the bus back.’

‘It’s all right, Dad, I don’t mind waiting.’ Jo said.

‘OK,’ Mick said and then turned and trudged away from Jo, looking small and, dressed in his suit and tie, as if he was attending a funeral.