15
J aney has the next day off and hooray, she thinks, pulling back her curtains: it is a pretty one.
She cranes round to see the dilapidated windows of the other houses in the close.
Goodness, Dwight will have his work cut out.
She immediately jumps on a property website to see what they are asking for them, but they haven’t appeared.
Al had gone to Aberdeen first shout to discuss a new tannery.
Sometimes Janey does not like to think too deeply about what her eldest actually does in his highly successful job; the day she’d asked to pop in to see him at work and he’d been getting everyone in the office to test out new electric fences sprang to mind.
It is a lovely spring morning, just coming into bluebell season, when the astonishing heavy scent of the flowers coats the woods, so lovely it is almost impossible to believe they are real.
Certainly it doesn’t matter how up-to-date your camera is; you won’t manage to catch their loveliness or the way they appear to hover just above their green stems, like a carpet.
You can put lots of filters on it before you post it on Instagram, but you know it’s not the same, not really, as drifting in that soft blue cloud, feeling privileged to be inside it, scowling if you see anyone dare to pick one, even though you know they only want the same thing as you do: to hold on to that sweet scent a little longer, bring it with them wherever they go, as a talisman.
Janey has bought every type of bluebell scent ever since, from very expensive candles to basic room plug-ins, but none of them, none of them even gets close.
At best it’s a harsh reminder, outside of that precious three weeks when they bloom so briefly.
As she gets older Janey feels these things are more important, more special for being transient.
If the bluebell cloud settled over the world permanently, it would lose all of its magic.
Likewise Christmas, even though that seems to come round every fifteen seconds these days.
Whereas, the young, of course, have so many years ahead to appreciate it . . .
But she isn’t old, she reminds herself. She is middle-aged. She has absolutely yonkingtons.
‘Hey,’ she says up the stairs at nine-thirty, as she feels the day slipping away from her; her precious day off and she really doesn’t want to spend it scrolling or catching up on housework or trying to work out which of the nine thousand new shows to watch on television and ending up with Sex and the City again, astounded anew at Carrie constantly lighting up cigarettes indoors and nobody even mentioning it.
There’s no reply. She had felt the quiz night had marked something of a thawing in general relations with her most beloved, gorgeous, wonderful, utterly infuriating daughter, but it was possible Alasdair was being a buffer, and so it proves.
‘ What ?’ comes a voice, finally, and it sounds so like Essie at fifteen on a school morning that Janey has to check herself.
‘Well,’ she says, clearing her throat and telling herself it is ridiculous to be slightly scared of your own daughter, ‘it’s a glorious day and I was going to go and walk through the bluebell wood and thought you might like to come.’
‘Neh, I’m working on my CV,’ comes the default response, as it always does these days.
‘You aren’t,’ says Janey, feeling slightly shaky. But this can’t go on. ‘You’re lying in bed staring at your phone.’
She goes up the stairs, knocks on the door and goes in.
‘Mu-um!’
The bedroom is in a right state. Clothes are strewn everywhere, along with dirty coffee cups. The suitcase is a floordrobe.
To her credit Essie does look shamefaced at the state of it; she knows Janey has worked very hard to get the cottage into shape.
The dusky pink walls might not be to everyone’s taste, but Janey thinks they are soft and lovely and suit the evening light, and she chose the colour with care and painted the room herself. And now it’s just a scrap heap.
‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ says Essie, angry and defensive. ‘You don’t even care.’
‘Of course I do,’ says Janey.
‘But you don’t understand what it’s like out there.
You think it’s me not doing it properly, not doing the “get a job, get a place” thing.
But everything’s changed! It’s not like that now!
You don’t just walk down the road and get a job!
You’re up against everyone in the world!
And everyone else can do internships . . . ’
Essie’s voice trails off. She knows this is unfair. Her family have never had the money for her to undertake unpaid internships in big banks, but that’s not her mum’s fault.
‘You don’t just get a job, then get a house. Everything . . . everything is different.’
‘You’re right,’ says Janey. ‘I don’t understand. The whole world seems mad to me.’
Essie harrumphs.
‘So maybe . . . a wee walk to clear your head and get your focus on? You’re meant to get out in nature every day, aren’t you? We could call it a forest bath?’
She attempts a conciliatory smile. She doesn’t think Essie is depressed, clinically depressed; she has worked with particularly elderly people who lose their hearing and withdraw from the world, and Essie is not in that place.
But she recognises her beloved daughter is very, very sad, and incredibly upset about this halt in her hitherto glittering career.
Janey understands completely, and wishes Essie could talk to her about it.
But obviously she’s too proud and can’t, or won’t.
And Janey feels so bad that things have got to this state.
But you can respect that people are sad and feel sorry for them, while also finding them quite annoying, that’s for sure.
‘Anyway, you need to strip your sheets, it’s a perfect drying day.’
This is true: it is breezy and bright, and also, giving Essie an ultimatum might help. Janey glances down at Essie’s laptop. It is open on the same property website Janey was looking at.
‘Were you snooping at the houses for sale next door?’ she asks immediately.
‘No!’ Essie scoops up the laptop. ‘Maybe.’
‘They’re not on there,’ says Janey.
‘I know. Why not?’
‘Well, I happen to know the answer to that,’ says Janey. ‘I’ll tell you if you come for a walk. Fancy buying one?’
‘Of course not!’ chokes Essie, horrified.
‘I was only joking,’ says Janey. ‘Come on. A wander through the woods and I’ll buy you a hot chocolate at the shore. With marshmallows. You love them.’
‘Mum!’ says Essie. ‘I’m not nine!’
‘Marshmallows are not ageist,’ says Janey, conscious that for once she appears to be winning a battle. ‘They are the only thing in the world that isn’t. I’ll see you downstairs in half an hour.’
*
Of course it’s nearly an hour, and the glorious morning is nearly gone and the afternoon, as is so often the case, looks as if it might not be nearly so nice.
But even so. It is a victory of sorts, compounded when Essie rather clumpily brings down her coffee cups and stuffs her sheets in the laundry basket, which is not the washing machine, but close enough for government work.
They agree to go together into the cobbled streets of the town, heading down naturally, as your feet take you, towards the harbour.
They’ll skirt it, then turn south into the woods, following people walking their dogs – it’s a happy life in Carso for dogs, although depending on your standards of dog cleanliness it can be tricky for their owners, as dogs like nothing better than a good splash about in the waves in the morning followed by running into the forest for a quick roll in the mud, plus some fox poo if that’s available, which it always is.
There are plenty of West Highland terriers, and terriers in general, with short wiry coats, who don’t mind the cold but dislike swimming, which is useful.
The people with long-haired wave-loving spaniels learn very quickly to give up on any ultra-high standards of non-muddiness for their cars, hair, houses, clothes, etc.
The children had been desperate for a dog when they were little, but Colin had not had time for it, didn’t want the fuss.
In fact, Janey reminds herself, that big dog that Johnson was talking about is still missing.
An Irish wolfhound, it turned out; it was sitting, looking gormless, on the local Facebook page while people offered up various hopes and prayers but, tragically, no sightings.
It isn’t a dog she recognises, but it appears to be the size of a small horse, which leaves an obvious question as to how it could be missing, unless someone had accidentally jumped on it for the Grand National.
They walk in what Janey would call a companionable silence.
She wants to say something normal, like did Essie have fun at the quiz, but doesn’t want Essie to snort and say of course not like she did when she’d made a mild remark about buying the house next door.
Also, Janey herself is still feeling slightly too touchy about making a slight idiot of herself in front of that man to really think about it.
‘Sorry you got Owen yesterday,’ she offers.
Essie blinks. She doesn’t want to admit it but going out last night – even with Shelby there, grumpily eyeing her up from the corner – and being out in the fresh sea air this morning – she has had a shower and is wearing jeans and a jumper and is not, amazingly, freezing to death, even though the jumper was incredibly expensive and therefore has holes and fraying bits all over it, thus making it not very good at actual jumpering – is doing her a little bit of good.
Obviously last night was terrible: but it had stopped her missing Connor and her lost life for five seconds, particularly as they had to put all their phones into a basket as apparently there had been some fairly rampant Google cheating from ringers in the past, and Hector was having a crackdown.