Three
‘Perhaps your father could take a look?’ Mum said when I told her about the problem with my heating, and my faulty tap.
I’m not sure if she was questioning herself, Dad’s DIY skills, or my desperation, but knowing that Dad was about as handy as me when it came to DIY, I thought she was joking – and laughed.
Dad, who had already quirked a brow but had pretended not to hear Mum’s comment and had continued to read the Sunday papers, shot me a look, and grinned. We both knew there was no way he was going to take a look at my heating problem.
‘If the boiler’s still playing up and the heating doesn’t come on again this afternoon, may I come and stay here the night, please? I hate waking up in a freezing cold room. I can leave the heating on all day if I must. Although that would mean paying a fortune in my bills. But I can’t sleep if the heating’s on all night.’
‘You’re lucky to have heating,’ Gran said. ‘When I was a girl we had one fire to heat the whole house. And we had an outside loo.’
Mum rolled her eyes. ‘No you didn’t, Mother. That was your mother, not you. You grew up in a house with central heating and a bathroom. And your parents had an ensuite.’
‘Fiddlesticks,’ said Gran. ‘You weren’t born so you don’t know. Times were hard until I met Harold. He was the one who bought my parents a new house with all the mod-cons.’
Gran lived in a home for the elderly on the outskirts of Fairlight Bay, but she’d come round for Sunday lunch as always and was sitting in an armchair opposite Dad, knitting something that I was fairly sure would end up in my Christmas stocking.
Gran was good at knitting, even if her memory wasn’t what it once was, her fingers were as agile as ever, but the three balls of wool jiggling on the carpet as her needles clicked and clacked and wove the strands of wool together were, it had to be said, colours I wouldn’t be seen dead in.
One was vomit-green, one was vivid orange, so bright it seared my eyes just looking at it, and the third one was … I wasn’t sure there was a word to describe it. Although I suppose it must’ve been called something otherwise how would one be able to order more of it, if required?
Or perhaps the question should’ve been, why would anyone want to order any of it in the first place? Puce would be the closest, I supposed, but it reminded me of dog poo, to be honest.
Perhaps I’d be lucky, and Gran was knitting whatever it was for Mum, not me. Or possibly for Dad.
‘Just one night?’ Mum asked, looking anxious.
‘Two at the most,’ I said, trying not to feel unwanted. ‘The plumber guy has promised he’ll be there on Tuesday.’
Mum brightened. ‘Then of course you can stay, dear. He’s sure he’ll be able to mend it?’
‘Until we know what’s wrong, I can’t really say. But he sounded confident.’
He also sounded gorgeous, but Mum didn’t need to know that.
Mum and I had a fairly good relationship, but we weren’t best friends or anything, like some daughters and mothers say they are. Mind you, I wouldn’t have told my mum the stuff I told Madi and Berry even if we were friends. Mum was … old fashioned in many ways.
When I asked if she had some headache tablets, I didn’t tell her it was because I had a hangover from drinking far too much in The Dog and Duck the previous night. I told her it was from the stress and worry of waking up in a freezing cold cottage and knowing there was a problem with my heating.
I rarely got headaches, and I was usually as fit as a fiddle, as Gran would say, so I didn’t heave any headache tablets at the cottage. Maybe I should get some in, just in case.
‘How’s your little business going?’ Mum asked during lunch, emphasising the word business in a way that made it sound as if it wasn’t a business at all.
She called it my little hobby for several months, but when I told her and Dad last month how much money I was making, she finally agreed to take it a bit more seriously.
‘It’s going great,’ I said, not bothering to elaborate.
I knew she wasn’t really interested. Mum had never worked a day in her life. Unless you call bringing up a child, work.
Which come to think of it, Mum did.
‘You were such hard work as a child,’ she often said, once again putting the emphasis on one word to really rub it in.
She loved me, I was certain of that, but she had wanted a son, not a daughter, and as I was an only child, Mum never seemed to get over the disappointment, and as strange as it might seem, she wasn’t really equipped to deal with a daughter.
It had been Gran who had plaited my hair. Gran who had taught me how to sew and knit and bake. Gran who had picked out party dresses, and bows, and sparkly shoes, even if it had been Mum, or more accurately, Dad, who had insisted on paying for most of them.
Gran had enrolled me in ballet classes, the brownies, and swimming lessons. But Gran had also signed me up for karate, and the running club, believing that every girl should be able to look after herself if the need arose, and if she couldn’t, she should be able to run fast enough to get out of danger.
I’m not sure why Gran also arranged for me to have piano lessons, horse riding lessons, and to join the local astronomy club, but I think that was the dreamer in her.
She loved music and she adored horses, but her own mum hadn’t been able to afford such things, and neither had Gran when she was first married.
As for the astronomy club, well, Gran had always maintained that there was no way we were alone in this wonderful, amazing Universe, so perhaps she hoped I might be able to spot a spaceship or something.
It was Gran’s second husband, Harold, who had money, and marrying him, after her first husband passed away, meant that Gran could give up her job in the local department store, and that Mum could have almost anything she wanted. Within reason. And as Gran had said, Harold paid for a new house for Gran’s own parents.
Mum was just a few months old when her biological dad died, and three years-old when Gran remarried, so Mum remembered her own childhood as idyllic, having little or no memory of the years when Gran had struggled financially.
Gran told me that the first thing she bought after her second marriage, was a telescope. Harold bought her a piano, followed soon after by a horse.
Mum hated her own piano lessons, was allergic to horses, and the only time she ever looked up was to check if it looked like it might rain. Unlike my hair, which was long and straight and light brown, Mum’s was shoulder-length, blonde, and curled like a corkscrew when it got wet. Which was probably why she also hated swimming.
Thanks to her stepdad’s wealth, Mum didn’t need to work to support herself through university, and as she met Dad on the first day there, and they married two days after they both graduated, she didn’t work once she was a wife. Other than bringing me up, of course. Which, as I have said, was apparently such hard work.