The Light of Amsterdam (5 page)

‘You are not! Can I come?'

‘Girls only, Marty, her daughter's getting married. They're having their hen party in Amsterdam.'

‘Can I still come?' Marty asked. ‘I'll chaperone you, keep an eye out for you. I've always wanted to go to Amsterdam.'

‘Marty, these girls would eat you alive,' Lisa said. ‘Chew you up and spit you out in little pieces.'

‘It's not going to be like that,' Karen insisted, without conviction. ‘And I've never even been on a plane before. Had to get a passport as well. A night out in Belfast would be a lot less hassle, if you ask me.'

‘You only live once,' Marty ventured, ‘but anyway I'd rather go to Thailand. The boss goes once a year, says it's the business. Brings home these counterfeit cigarettes that he tries to sell all the drivers.'

‘And does he take his wife?' Lisa asked.

‘Never mentions her. I don't think so.'

‘Didn't think so either and sooner or later he'll bring home something besides phoney fags,' Lisa said, pretending to smoke the cigarette and blowing imaginary rings through the exaggerated pursed circle of her lips at Marty watching her in the mirror.

They dropped Pat off first and then Lisa who told them she was absolutely gagging for the fag as she lumbered wearily out of the car.

‘That one's barking mad,' Marty said as they drove off.

‘She's all right. Likes a laugh, that's all.'

‘Do mothers go on their daughter's hen do?'

‘That's what I asked but she wants me to go and it's coming up to my fortieth and it's supposed to be a treat for me as well. I got tired arguing. Sometimes it's easier just to go with the flow.'

He nodded as if he understood. Then he looked at her for a second as they reached her house. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee, Karen?'

She smiled at him before saying, ‘Sorry, Marty, there isn't and there's never any chance. Remember, never mix business and pleasure.'

‘No harm in asking.'

‘No, no harm and you have a good day,' she said as she closed the door.

When she got in the house everywhere was dark and quiet. Going into the kitchen she put the kettle on, warming her hands against its sides as she stood waiting for it to boil. Shannon wasn't up yet and wouldn't be for another half an hour so this was her time, when she had breakfast and rested before the demands of the day imposed themselves once again. Sometimes if she was very tired she would go to bed still in her clothes for a couple of hours but there was always the danger of slipping into a deep sleep and being late for work in the care home. After she had dropped a piece of bread into the toaster she emptied her pockets into the biscuit tin she kept in a cupboard. Today she had only brought four paper clips, two red and two yellow. She added them to the others, the pencils and pens, the rubber bands, the little memo block in lilac, the tiny bits and bobs that no one was ever going to miss, and let her hand lift and sift through them like sand. Why she bothered to bring them she wasn't sure when the other women only thought of secreting more useful items like toilet rolls and dusters or the odd wad of photocopying paper and would laugh at her if they knew. Kevin the doorman always looked at them on their way out as if he'd like to search them, and not out of pervy pleasure, but because he hated the idea that someone might dare to filch something from his little kingdom.

She stole other things. But they couldn't do you for looks. So when she did the desks she always studied the photographs, sometimes holding them close as she pretended to dust. Held their family snapshots. Children in Disney World. Children coming out of the sea in black wetsuits and carrying bodyboards. Engagement parties. Groups of people leaning into each other around restaurant tables with their glasses raised to the camera as if it was their best friend. Young mothers cradling newly arrived babies. She was familiar with it all – their mugs with funny slogans and little desk ornaments; their postcards from around the world; their paperweights and their yellow Post-it notes to themselves, reminders of phone numbers to be rung and dental appointments that had to be kept. And everyone's desk declared that it was a happy little personalised kingdom but always willing to join in others' laughter. There were a couple of exceptions of course and she thought of McClean's desk with its absence of any such softeners or revelations of personal life, his recent attempts to stop smoking – the store of nicotine chewing gum – and the ripped lottery tickets in the waste bin. His habit of sticking spent gum on the underside of his desk. She'd like to talk to him about that, as well as how he managed to get Tipp-Ex on his phone. From time to time he left her an unwanted present of fast-food containers or dregs of coffee in polystyrene cups from which he had always crumbled little bits and dropped them into the coffee. Why didn't he get a nice mug with a snazzy slogan? She had started to think he was divorced, that he had slipped into slobbishness due to the absence of a loved one. But perhaps there never was a loved one.

Because she wasn't stupid she knew that the photographs couldn't all represent perfect lives and that people only took them to preserve the moments when they were most happy, but she still couldn't help thinking that they lived in some world that was distant from, and different to, hers. Lives which weren't built on struggle and which gave access to higher levels of reward than she had ever been invited to share. And if there was this world, then there had to be a key, some membership card that gave admittance, so she studied their faces closely in the hope that the answer might be written there. Sometimes she told herself that it was all about luck – an accident of birth – and that made her feel better but at others she thought it was down to passing examinations and intelligence, to knowing the right information and the right secrets.

She curled into an armchair and had her tea and toast. She didn't want to go to Amsterdam. It was far too much money on top of everything else and even if the wedding was going to be modest in size there were still a lot of expenses to be met – both their outfits for a start, the cars, the flowers and the cost of the buffet afterwards, even though his family was going halves. She tried to add it up as she did at regular intervals and each time got a different sum, always getting confused about what cost per head they had agreed on. A meal and a few drinks afterwards would have done the hen night and they were spoilt for choice for eating places. Every five minutes there was a new one opening in the city. She'd heard people say the Red Panda was classy and she'd always fancied one of those meals with all the courses that they put on a wheel.

After a while there was the sound of the bathroom and she knew that Shannon was up and starting the process of putting on her face, getting herself ready for the day ahead. What her daughter spent on make-up would pay for the wedding twice over – working in Debenhams and then giving them back half her wages, despite the discount. She had a lovely face – she told her that all the time – so why did she insist on plastering so much slap on it? There were heavy footsteps on the stairs and when the door opened it wasn't Shannon but Wade.

‘Morning, Karen,' he said, straightening and tightening his tie.

‘I didn't know you were here,' she answered, irritated that her daughter hadn't told her.

‘We got in late. I'd had a few so I just stayed.'

‘Right. Better not to drink and drive.' But he wasn't really listening to her, instead combing his hair with his hand and checking that he'd got his mobile phone in his jacket pocket. ‘Do you want some breakfast?'

‘No thanks. Haven't got time. I'll get some later. Don't want to hit the traffic.'

And then he was gone. She cupped the tea with both hands but the heat had gone out of it already. Why was she so cold today? She couldn't afford to get sick right now. She might even have to take a few extra shifts at the care home if she wasn't to end up in the poorhouse. And then it was Shannon coming down the stairs in her full-length dressing gown with the hood and her half-pinned-up hair tumbling everywhere in an avalanche.

‘Why didn't you tell me that Wade was staying over? I didn't know he was here.'

‘It wasn't planned. We got in late and you were sleeping. I was hardly going to wake you up and tell you,' she said as she poured breakfast cereal into a bowl.

‘You look rough, girl.'

‘Thanks.'

‘And can you afford to be out mid-week? Better to be salting that money away towards your deposit.'

‘Mum, give us a break. We only had a few drinks.'

‘Every penny counts. And another thing, you let him have it too often and too easy and he'll start taking it for granted.'

‘Mum, please. I'm trying to have my breakfast. Don't talk like that – it's disgusting.'

She watched her daughter assemble the pathetic little arrangement she considered a breakfast but after their conversation about Wade she was reluctant to criticise her again knowing anyway that it was a waste of time, because at the end of the day her daughter did things how she, and only she, thought best. So there was never really any chance of changing her mind about Amsterdam or any of the other ideas about the wedding that seemed to spring from magazines or what some of her friends thought was the classy way to do things. Although she knew it was wrong, she couldn't help thinking of her own life, of being dumped before a wedding had the chance to take place and when she was three months pregnant, and there seemed, to her mind at least, to be a connection between the naive expectations and lack of understanding of what was important, the mistaken energies invested in fripperies, with the likelihood of future failure. For a second she wanted to shake her by the shoulder and tell her that weddings were fairy tales, the happy-ever-after dreams of know-nothing children, and the more these dreams were allowed to grow reckless and unchecked the more likely there was a poisoned apple or a spell waiting to be cast. And she wasn't sure about Wade.

It was true he seemed to have a decent job and went each day to work in a shirt and tie, that he told them before long he was going to be manager of his branch of Carphone Warehouse. And while it was also true that his parents were decent working people who were putting a little towards the cost of the wedding, there was still something that she didn't feel certain about. Perhaps it would be the same with any boy Shannon wanted to marry, perhaps after what had happened to her she found it impossible to trust anyone because with men she believed that what you saw was not what you got and what you always wanted to get was your trust rewarded. Rock solid. She watched her daughter finish her breakfast almost as soon as she had started it, then drink the first of the endless glasses of water that she believed were essential for the maintenance of her complexion. A little water dribbled down her chin and she wiped it roughly but expertly with the back of her hand like a beer drinker might. It was a high-maintenance complexion seemingly requiring endless scrubbing and masking, steaming and moisturising. And now there was tanning as well, about whose cost she was persistently vague but which had become an important part of the image she wanted to project to the world, so it looked as if she was permanently just returned from a holiday in the sun.

So what were the chances of Shannon spending the rest of her life rock-solidly happy with Wade? Who could tell? But she'd be happier if she saw some shaft of energy illuminate his face more often, if he had more get up and go. If he even had more get up and didn't find so much satisfaction from being sunk in the settee with his pint of beer, his football on the television, his Chinese takeaway, his stomach already beginning to creep over his belt. If he wasn't so set in his ways. But then, she told herself, stuck in his ways made it less likely that he might ever have the desire to stray. To stray she imagined you needed energy and despite what he said about being earmarked for the manager's job she couldn't believe that there wasn't at least one of his colleagues who displayed greater commitment and drive. Someone who would pip him at the post every time until he gave up and slipped into indifference.

‘What do you want for your tea?' she asked Shannon although at this time of the morning it was difficult to think of food or being hungry.

‘Anything, so long as it's not fried or too heavy.'

‘Right,' she said while wondering if it ever entered her daughter's head that some night it would be good if, even just once, she made her mother's tea. She put off thinking what form the tea might take, there would be plenty of time to decide, then watched her hurry back up the stairs to get dressed and ready for work. She returned to the teapot and poured herself another half cup but it wasn't warm enough and she didn't finish it. Perhaps she was being too hard on Wade and when her daughter eventually came back down the stairs she tried to compensate by telling her she had scrubbed up well and clearing both their breakfast dishes to the sink, but if Shannon noticed the gesture she gave no sign and instead leaned into the mirror above the fireplace, offered a frozen kiss to her reflection and concentrated on a final application of lipstick.

‘Have a good day,' they said to each other and then her daughter was gone and the house was silent again but it wasn't something that she welcomed because now it felt as if into her daughter's wake flowed a tired predictability about the hours ahead. She was tempted to go upstairs and climb into her bed but it was a bed that would hold no vestige of heat and in whose still-unmade mess she would feel only a nagging guilt about her failure to do what had to be done. So she cleaned up the kitchen, washed the dishes and stacked them to dry, then splashed her face and tried to energise herself.