Out of Control

Chapter 10

“Fiona! Where’ve you been? I was worried. You didn’t leave a note and I wasn’t sure how you really felt about Adele turning up out of the blue like that.” Joe looked genuinely concerned and wrapped his arms around her as soon as she stepped into the kitchen after her morning run the next day. She’d resentfully given breakfast with Meeko a miss because of the chaos at home. Joe smelled of soapy artificial lemons and spicy aftershave; there was no smell of man there at all. Fiona thought wistfully of Meeko and his plain maleness. Then she pulled herself together; he was her platonic best friend, who was taking a break from romantic entanglements.

Adele was at the kitchen table with an overflowing bowl of Shredded Wheat and milk. An open bag of sugar was in front of her and she’d obviously been making liberal use of it due to the lack of frosted cereals in Fiona’s cupboards. Eating for two. Fiona’s pregnancy had never got far enough for that. Don’t dwell on Amber. Joe, Adele and retirement are offering you a fresh start — grab it now before it’s too late.

Escaped white grains had created a pathway between sugar packet and cereal dish. Fiona folded down the top of the bag, secured it with an elastic band and put it away. She’d decant some into the sugar caddy later.

The atmosphere was strained, as though she’d walked in on a quarrel between father and daughter.

“How about a supermarket trip for you girls?” Joe wore a mask of false jollity. “I’ll pay. We’re not going to be a financial burden to you, Fiona.”

“I—” He silenced her with a look before she could explain it was easier and quicker to go on her own. Fiona wasn’t into girly shopping trips. Perhaps she would have been if Amber . . .

Adele kept her head down over the Shredded Wheat. The tender relationship between father and daughter from last night had dissipated.

Joe stumbled on with his one-sided conversation. “Two women sharing a kitchen can be difficult. So, I was thinking, spending some time together and deciding on what food we need . . . it might break the ice, help you understand one another . . .”

“It would be easier for me to do the food shopping on my own.” Fiona finished the sentence Joe had tried to silence.

Adele was swiping at her phone with her left hand, the right one still being in charge of a spoon that was tipping slightly and in danger of dumping its soggy load on the table top.

“Adele!” Joe spoke sharply. “Watch what you’re doing.”

His daughter threw him a look of annoyance. Fiona wasn’t the only one struggling in this mismatched household. Adele was used to the autonomy of her life at uni. Joe had regressed to being ‘Dad’ and dictating her behaviour, which, in turn, was making Adele regress to being an awkward teenager again. Fiona felt for this girl, caught somewhere between the child and adult world and on the cusp of becoming a mother herself. And without her own mum to help smooth things along. The food shopping would be better done on her own, but maybe it would help the bigger picture if she was more flexible on this point — albeit in a controlled way.

She backpedalled just a little bit. “We need to compromise and become a team in order to make this situation work.” Treat it like an IT project and everything will be OK. “The supermarket’s a good idea. I don’t know what food you like, Adele. But when I was—” She closed her mouth quickly, discovered an old tissue in the tiny key pocket of her leggings and blew her nose. She kept the crumpled scrap over her face for longer than necessary while she recomposed herself after almost revealing the secret of Amber. “There’s no rush. Take your time. Have a shower and then we’ll go for a mooch. There’s no harm in finding out if we’ve got the same taste in food.”

Adele frowned at the Shredded Wheat. Then she stared Fiona in the face. “I can tell when someone’s offering charity and trying to be a false friend. You’re not my mother and you’re not going to be my best mate either. Both of those positions are already taken.” Adele pushed the bowl of cereal away. “You’re simply my dad’s girlfriend.”

Fiona’s proffered dish of kindness had been upended. “I’m trying to make the best of the situation.”

Adele stalked upstairs.

“Apologise immediately,” Joe shouted after her. “Stop behaving like a stroppy teenager. Act like the adult you are, the adult you’ll need to be if you’re going to be a good mother.” He turned towards Fiona. “I’m sorry. Hormones?”

Fiona shrugged. She could understand Adele’s reaction. “How else can she behave? She’s still hurting from your marriage breakdown, and I’m the obvious target.”

“But you had nothing to do with that!”

“That’s not how she chooses to see it. And now, when the going has got tough, her mother has disappeared and she has to share her father with another woman. If I was her, I’d hate me too.”

“It’s impossible to hate you. You’ve offered her a home. I don’t understand. Last night she seemed accepting of the situation.” Joe pulled her close into the warmth of his body. Fiona pushed away a fleeting image of Meeko and relaxed into Joe. “I love you so much, Fiona Ormeroyd,” he said, “you are so big-hearted. Being cramped like this is only temporary. As soon as Rose reappears, Adele will be off to her like a shot. Next year the house will be sold, I’ll get my share of the capital and we can buy a place together.”

No! She pulled away from him. After Rob, she couldn’t combine her finances and home with someone else. Joe was suffocating her by jumping too quickly into what he wanted from their joint future. She needed baby steps, but he was used to being the leader of a couple, the leader of a whole family. For Fiona, a couple was a partnership of equals, and she needed to experience that equality with Joe before committing to anything. Fiona’s freedom had been too hard won. The pain of trying to extricate herself from Rob’s debts would never leave her. Except, hadn’t she, over the last few days, already relinquished part of that freedom?

Then she realised that Joe had just declared his undying love for her, despite her being sweaty from her run, with no make-up and drizzle-dampened hair sticking out at odd angles. In their previous one-day-a-week existence he’d only ever seen her looking perfect. Confused, she grabbed herself a bowl and filled it with breakfast berries and walnuts.

An hour later Adele stood in the hallway, trying and failing to make the edges of her jacket meet across her bump. Her lower half was clad in stretchy blue denim and the bottom of a baggy sweatshirt hung just below the hem of the jacket. “Are we going or what?”

In the supermarket Fiona took charge of the trolley. Neither of them made a move for any of the aisles and Fiona realised she’d made a faux pas. Never had she arrived at the supermarket without previously creating a meal plan for the week and an associated shopping list, with the items ordered according to their place in the store. She never deviated from that list. Now she had to make the best of a bad job by planning in real time while trying to build an adult relationship with Joe’s resentful and abandoned daughter.

“Any preferences for where we start or what we buy?” She tried to sound as though she were willing to be totally flexible, like a blade of grass in the wind.

“Biscuits. Chocolate. Crisps.” Adele’s words were like bullets.

Don’t lecture about what the baby needs. Don’t mention the unhealthy calories. “OK. The confectionery aisle is our starting point.”

Fiona expressed no opinion as Adele loaded the trolley. She merely hoped that it was at least a month’s supply and not for the single coming week. “And what about breakfast and main meals?”

“Frosties, honey-nut cornflakes, pizza, sausages, baked beans.”

“Cereal aisle.” She let Adele have free rein here too, but added a box of her own favourite porridge oats with added seeds.

“I thought we could eat together in the evenings when your dad gets home from work. We could share the cooking.” Fiona paused, waiting for Adele to offer an opinion, but the girl merely picked up another cereal box and started reading the special offer on the back. “I don’t mind starting us off with a few of my own dinner ideas but feel free to butt in if there’s a meal you’d like to cook for the three of us.” She’d nearly inserted the word ‘proper’ in front of ‘meal’ and then thought better of it. “Chicken casserole and jacket potatoes, lentil curry, fish pie and chilli. Are you OK with all of those?” Adele merely shrugged and followed Fiona up and down the aisles as she collected the ingredients.

Then Adele spoke as if she’d been building up to this request. “Could we get pizza for today? I feel like I really need it.”

Pepperoni pizza went into the trolley and Fiona balanced it out with a couple of bags of salad leaves and a pack of vine tomatoes.

“I think we’re done,” she said, and mentally patted herself on the back for accomplishing the trip with compromise and without argument. Joe would be glad to get a positive report. “Anything else you can think of while we’re here?”

“The baby section.” Adele’s words were barely more than a whisper. “I’m going to need stuff. And if Dad’s paying . . .”

“OK.”

The baby aisle was quieter than the rest and its basic contents hadn’t changed in the thirty years since Fiona had daydreamed her way through it, a perfect vision of motherhood in her mind. She tailed Adele past the tiny jars of weaning food, tins of formula milk and bulky packs of nappies. The girl was headed for the little outfits on miniature hangers. She picked them up, caressed them and put them down again. Fiona’s heart ached for her own younger self who had done exactly the same thing and had planned to run riot in the department as soon as January came and the world knew that Amber was on her way.

“Do you know the sex?”

“Girl.” Adele’s eyes were suddenly alive. “And I’m going to dress her in pink.”

Pink for a girl. Fiona hadn’t expected that from a young woman in today’s swing away from gender stereotyping. She wished Adele’s baby was a boy; it would be less painful. The mum-to-be also selected toys in all the colours of the rainbow, a small teddy and cot bedding. Fiona blinked her eyes and swallowed. This was the fun that had been torn from her by Rob. Watching someone else enjoy what she’d missed was more than she could bear.

“Adele, I’m feeling bushed. Take your time. I’m going to grab a coffee in the café.” She managed to keep her voice and face composed until she’d turned round and was heading away from that maternal fairytale land.

She added a sachet of brown sugar to her latte — sometimes you just needed that comfort. The power of the emotion she’d felt in the baby aisle had shocked her. How could she, the master of self-control, let her feelings overwhelm her like that? The sweetness of the liquid and the warmth of the cup in her hand were comforting and brought her back from the brink of becoming a quivering wreck in public.

You are over-reacting, Fiona. Lots of people lose babies but they don’t go around being jealous of anyone with a baby bump or blubbing in baby departments. Especially not thirty years after the event. Why wasn’t she coping? She was an independent, financially secure, mature woman. But those other women who’d lost children hadn’t also lost their trust in men on the same day. They hadn’t been betrayed by the one person they thought had their best interests at heart. If Rob hadn’t been the man he was, maybe she wouldn’t have been destined to remain childless and single. Perhaps she would have married again and had a whole brood of youngsters. Perhaps she would have had grandchildren by now.

Why couldn’t Adele have done the typical young person thing and ordered everything online so that Fiona didn’t have to have the plaster ripped off her wounds yet again?

“Fiona!” Adele was waving to her from the café entrance. The trolley looked significantly fuller than when Fiona had left her. She swallowed, blew her nose and walked over slowly.

“I’ve got a few things. Can we go through the checkout now?”

The girl’s mood had soared as Fiona’s had crashed. Fiona had to look away as the cashier scanned the little pink items. And this wouldn’t be the only baby shopping trip. Adele had only chosen the fripperies; lots of practical things were going to have to be purchased as well: cot, steriliser, nappies, et cetera.

The cashier was smiling and congratulating Adele. Then she looked at Fiona. “Is it a first grandchild?”

Fiona tried to smile, waiting for Adele to butt in and explain venomously that Fiona was not her mother. But for once the girl stayed silent.