Out of Control

Chapter 5

The toast Joe had made her was cold and covered in massive amounts of marmalade — he hadn’t listened when she’d told him a few weeks ago that she’d switched to sugar-free peanut butter. The banana in the fruit salad had gone soggy overnight. The breakfast reminded Fiona of the Mother’s Day trays her colleagues described in minute, loving detail, made by their young children. The difference was that a child could be genuinely praised for putting such a meal together; it was harder when the chef was a grown man.

“Don’t be such a perfectionist, Fiona.” That’s what her mother would say of this situation. “You can’t expect everyone to meet your high standards.”

To be fair, Joe couldn’t have rectified the banana situation without travelling back to the previous evening and not making his bombshell announcement and then not dragging his suitcases in from the car, thus allowing them to eat the fruit salad at the correct time. But it wasn’t difficult to put some logical thought into breakfast, especially when he, unlike her, had had the luxury of a full night’s sleep. He could’ve brought the coffee and fruit salad first and then gone to make fresh, HOT toast instead of staring at her and talking about showing her off to his work colleagues this evening. The magnitude of that last thought made her worry again. Would they mistakenly think she’d been the catalyst for his marriage break-up? She couldn’t bear to be branded ‘the other woman’. They’d want to know why he’d been keeping her hidden away for so long. People loved to gossip and they’d put two and two together and make five.

How would he introduce her? She cringed at the thought of him calling her his ‘other half’ or ‘partner’. Anything like that made them seem more of an item than they actually were. She wanted him just to use her name.

Fiona moved the tray onto the empty side of the bed. As she did so the plate holding the cold toast slid to one side revealing an advent chocolate nestled on a yellow Post-it note from the pad beside her landline in the hallway. He’d scribbled, Jumping the gun again with the calendar but I want you to know how much I love and appreciate you. XXX .

It was like giving someone your last Rolo. Fiona’s heart filled. She felt wanted. The inedible toast was forgiven. Joe might not be the world’s best breakfast chef but he was a romantic at heart. That was just one of the reasons why the relationship they’d had over the past year had worked so well. Smiling, she was about to pop the chocolate in her mouth when she had a better thought. She placed it on one of her lace handkerchiefs on his pillow for him to find later.

In the shower some of her tiredness slipped away. But as she towelled herself dry, her mind wouldn’t relinquish its journey around this new version of her relationship with Joe. She’d always looked forward to and enjoyed their weekly dates, but having him turn up with his suitcases or meeting his work colleagues had never been on her agenda. She’d been retired from work less than twenty-four hours, and it was a Saturday, but she felt a longing for the office, where everything would be as she expected and the day would proceed in an orderly fashion. Without surprises. She gazed at her work suits hanging in the wardrobe, each one protected by a dry cleaner’s polythene sheath and ready to wear. Next year’s electronic calendar had a reminder set for the end of May. If the suits hadn’t been worn by then, they would be donated to charity, one a month, until there were just two remaining: her favourite navy one for funerals and her only beige one for christenings and weddings. Fiona wasn’t a hoarder. Her garage was the only one in the road that housed a car instead of cardboard boxes. Similarly with the loft — Fiona’s held only the small Christmas tree that Joe had bought for her at the beginning of their relationship.

She pulled one of the suits from the wardrobe and stroked the few inches of caramel-coloured fabric hanging below the reach of the plastic cover. At work her mind was focused and it was easy to keep any demons or overthinking at bay. In the early days, after losing Amber and then the divorce from Rob, it had been a relief to have the ordered thought process of computer programming and later the endless spreadsheets of IT project management forced upon her. Now, as well as taming retirement, she faced the additional unknown of life with Joe.

Her phone buzzed and flashed up the warden’s name from her mother’s sheltered housing complex.

“Oh, Fiona! I’m glad I’ve caught you. I know it isn’t your usual day for visiting but could you pop in and see your mum? I just did my morning check on all the residents and she sounded down in the dumps. You know how she gets sometimes — lonely like everyone else here. I don’t know why they find it so hard to confide in each other. When I asked her what the problem was, she said something about not knowing what was happening at Christmas.”

Fiona sighed. As the date of her retirement had got closer, these last-minute requests from her mum, via the complex manager, had become more frequent — it was as though the old lady wanted to lay claim to a significant part of her daughter’s retirement. Fiona didn’t mind visiting but she liked to do it according to the timetable they’d agreed, and Saturday wasn’t her day. Before Joe had turned up, today had been earmarked for trying out a new Pilates class and then a spot of Christmas shopping. Joe and the breakfast and the job of washing up last night’s dinner stuff, a task which he had ignored, meant she was running too late for the class and her day had become annoyingly skew whiff before it had started.

“Do you think a phone call would do the trick?” That would only take ten minutes out of the already spoiled day.

There was a hesitation before Mrs Fairchild replied. “No. I think she was up really early baking and she mentioned having a delicious sponge cake all ready and waiting.”

Fiona sighed. Her mum’s reaction to any woe was to bake. Which then made the old lady even more fed up because there was no one to eat her baking. “OK. I’ll be there, but don’t give her a time otherwise she’ll sit and watch the clock.”

On the drive over to the sheltered housing complex, Fiona braced herself for an inquisition into her love life and for the criticisms that had been part of their relationship for as long as she could remember. An only child, she carried all her mother’s hopes and expectations single-handedly. One expectation that Dorothea had been voicing more regularly was to spend more time with Fiona when she retired. Which was now. This visit would be an opportunity to ensure those expectations were managed realistically for both of them.

Her mum’s sheltered flat was like a dolls’ house with an open-plan lounge/kitchen, a bathroom with an accessible shower, a bedroom which just fitted a double bed pushed up hard against the wall, plus a ‘dining room/second bedroom’. This latter space wasn’t big enough for either purpose and had become Dorothea’s jigsaw room, with a camp bed folded up under the window ‘just in case’. Fiona had had a joiner fix shelving to two of the walls to hold the old lady’s extensive jigsaw collection, and in the centre of the room was the old family dining table covered in a mat, specifically for doing jigsaws. A radio sat on the windowsill so that Dorothea could listen to Radio 4 as she worked.

“So,” her mother said when Fiona was settled in an armchair, “have you got yourself a nice young man yet who’s willing to settle down? Or is it still that one-night-a-week chap who I’m not allowed to meet? Has he got three heads or something?”

“His name’s Joe. And . . .” she paused for dramatic effect, wishing she could have a drum roll to accompany her announcement, “he moved in with me last night.” There was no point muddying the waters on the technicality that the situation was forced by a burst pipe, or mentioning that Fiona wasn’t sure if she wanted him there.

“About time too. Are you getting married?”

Married? Fiona’s stomach lurched and she felt like a horse shying away from a sudden hole in the road. “We . . . haven’t discussed that.”

“But you’d say ‘yes’, if he proposed?”

Fiona wished she’d kept her mouth shut on the Joe situation.

“Hmmm.” Dorothea set her lips in a thin line when Fiona didn’t respond. “Growing old alone isn’t much fun, and I should know.” She pointed to the slices of Victoria sandwich, liberally dusted with icing sugar and thickly filled with buttercream, on the plate between them. “Eat your cake. I’ve cut you an extra-large piece — I don’t get many visitors to share it with.”

The cake was twice the size of a standard piece. “Mum — I can’t eat all that.” Fiona patted her stomach.

Dorothea waved a hand dismissively. “For heaven’s sake just tuck in. You’re far too skinny.”

Her mother’s cakes were the best; Dorothea hadn’t won the WI Christmas Cake Competition seven years in a row for no good reason.

“How about I wrap my piece in a serviette and take it home for Joe? He’s got a very sweet tooth. And he appreciates his food.”

“Well, that’s a point in his favour.” The old lady smiled. “Remind me before you go and I’ll get him some of the flapjack I made yesterday. I could make extra for next time you call?”

“No, Mum. It’s fine, really. And I did want to talk about my future visits.” Fiona took an orange felt tip from her bag. “I’m going to mark more dates on your new calendar for next year. OK?”

The old lady beamed as Fiona circled an extra day per fortnight and added the dates to her phone calendar. She’d chosen times when she’d have an hour to spare en route to the Retired Means Active club meetings.

Then Dorothea diverted back to her favourite topic: her daughter’s inability to sustain a relationship with a suitable man. She seemed to have forgotten about her anxiety over the Christmas arrangements which had brought Fiona here in the first place. “Even if he likes my cake, this Joe-person still sounds dodgy. He keeps you at arm’s length for months and months and then, all of a sudden, he moves in. It’s your pension lump sum he’s after. Mark my words, this won’t end well.”

“Mum! You can’t judge a person you’ve never met. And he didn’t keep me at arm’s length, it was the other way around.”

“And why are you so cagey when I ask how the pair of you met in the first place?”

Her mother had decided that today was the day for awkward questions. If Fiona admitted to internet dating, her mother would voice a less than positive opinion on it. Keep it vague. “Mutual interests. But it’s really not important!”

“If it was a normal relationship, you would have introduced us already.” Dorothea had a mouthful of cake and tea before continuing. “Now Rob, he was a nice lad. You never gave him a proper chance to put things right and show that he could change. You can be an unforgiving woman, Fiona.”

Fiona choked on her tea. In one breath her mother was saying, with no proof at all, that Joe should be avoided because he was after her money. And in the next she was saying that Rob, who had gambled away everything they had plus some, should be given another chance.

“The thing is, Fiona—” her mother leaned forward as though she was letting her daughter into one of life’s biggest secrets — “you are sixty. Your life is at least two-thirds finished. Your ability to attract a man is probably limited to the next five years; by then everything will have sagged and wrinkled beyond repair. Unless you want to turn into an old maid — and, as I’ve already said, growing infirm on your own is no walk in the park — you need to get your act together. Stop letting things that have gone wrong in the past, like your marriage to Rob, frighten you off trying them again. Learn to trust again.”

“Mum, it’s my life.”

“Exactly. That’s why you don’t see it objectively.” Dorothea dropped her voice to a dramatic stage whisper. “I’ve heard on the maternal grapevine that Rob is back in town.” Dorothea sat back in her chair with a satisfied look. “Single. Available. He’s looking to meet new people. I told his mother about that retired business club thing you’ve joined.”

“Mum!”

“Rob is a lovely lad. He worshipped the ground you walked on. Me and your dad thought you were a match made in heaven. It’s a shame you never got as far as producing kiddies, but he always treated you well.”

“Except for when we lost everything through his gambling addiction.” Including your unborn granddaughter.

Over the intervening years Dorothea had never mentioned the miscarriage. Immediately afterwards Rob had insisted, against Fiona’s wishes, on telling both sets of parents about it, even though they hadn’t known she was pregnant in the first place. “They have a right to know. And you need your mother’s help to get through it.” Fiona swore she didn’t need help. She wanted to stay in her black hole out of respect to Amber. But eventually she had accepted Dorothea shopping and cleaning for them until she could face domestic activity and the outside world again.

“People change,” Dorothea said. “Apparently after all that business he went cold turkey and hasn’t gambled again.”

“Hmmm.” Whether he was a reformed character or not, Fiona had no intention of getting involved with her ex-husband again.

As Fiona put her coat on to leave, Dorothea pushed a foil-wrapped package on her. “Flapjack. For Joe.”