Chapter 4
‘Morning, Jo. Good holiday?’
‘Yup.’ Jo’s face broke into a smile. ‘When do I get another one?’
‘Oh, in a couple of years, if you’re good,’ came the reply from news editor, Jeff, who was already in full swing.
His number two, Mike Madell, was wading through the full set of papers and magazines spilling across the desk.
His number three, Rod Butcher, was reading one of the stories that arrived every minute on the screen in front of him.
But they all took a moment to wave, nod or say hello as she passed the desk. Jeff looked as if he was about to say more, but his phone rang. He picked it up, answered, listened and then made the finger-waving gesture that she knew meant ‘Busy now, speak in a minute.’
Fine, she thought. She wasn’t together enough for the first newsgathering chat of the day. She needed to sit at her desk, drink tea, switch on the computer and psych herself up for the hours ahead.
Her mother had arrived at her house at 8.15 a.m. prompt but looking tired, Jo thought.
‘Everything OK?’ Jo had asked her, over the breakfast mêlée. In the morning rush, Jo had managed to spill orange juice into the rattan seat of her kitchen chair. How in the hell were you supposed to clean that? Those ‘rustic country kitchen’ photospreads had omitted that detail.
‘Everything’s fine, Jo, and just leave that,’ her mother had insisted.
‘I’ll sort it out when the girls are dressed.
’ Jo read reproach into that comment. Mel had to leave the house by twenty to nine at the very latest, or she would be late for school, but there she was down on the kitchen floor with Annette, playing dolls.
There were ratty-haired Barbies everywhere Jo stepped.
Grubby, ripped evening dresses revealed their anatomy-defying moulded plastic chests, and their bright blonde tresses were all snarled and snagged.
This was heroin Hollywood Barbie. A whole new look.
‘Mum,’ Mel looked up. ‘I’ve got a new joke.’
Jo didn’t have time, she really didn’t, she still had to put on her suit, her lipstick, fly round the house for all the other essential bits and pieces, but…
the sweet little heart-shaped face looking up at her.
Daddy’s dark gold hair falling below her shoulders, Daddy’s sparkling eyes and shapely eyebrows…
Quickly Jo sat down on one of the orange-juice-free kitchen chairs.
‘OK, let’s hear it.’
Mel sprang up and stood on one side of her. Annette, not wanting to be left out, rushed to the other.
‘I got a joke too,’ Nettie announced.
‘Oh, good. Two jokes,’ Jo smiled at them.
‘Knock knock,’ Mel began.
‘Who’s there?’ Jo obliged.
‘Alec.’
‘Alec who?’
‘Alec to pick my nose,’ came Mel’s triumphant punch line.
‘Yuck!’ Jo said but still managed to drum up a hearty laugh. ‘And now you have to get dressed. Upstairs, quick, quick, or you’ll be late.’
‘My one!’ Nettie reminded her in outrage. ‘You have to listen to my joke.’ There was hardly anything Nettie asked for which Jo could refuse, because her youngest daughter was as insistent and stubborn as she was gorgeous.
‘Of course.’ Jo fixed on the improbably blue eyes and tiny pink lips. ‘You tell me.’ She wondered what was coming now, because Nettie’s grasp of the joke, as a concept, was still pretty sketchy.
‘Knock knock,’ Nettie said, leaning back on her heels and sticking out her tummy.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Nose.’
‘Nose who?’
‘I like my nose.’
Jo laughed, ‘Very funny. I like your nose too.’ She landed a kiss on it, then scooped Nettie up into her arms.
‘I don’t want Granny,’ Nettie said into her ear, ‘I want you.’
‘I know,’ was Jo’s reply. ‘I want you. I want you and Mel all day long. I miss you,’ she said, stroking the velvety head. ‘But you know what, I’m going to be home early tonight, so what shall we do when I’m back?’
‘Have supper in front of the TV?’ Nettie asked hopefully.
It was enough to make Jo weep. You painted with your children, you baked, you talked, you read them stories, you took them out, you dressed up, you played games, you went with them to the park, wind, rain or shine, but if you ever asked what their idea of heaven was, it was eating toast in front of the TV.
‘Maybe,’ she said carefully, not wanting to upset or promise anything she didn’t mean. ‘What are you going to do with Granny?’
She looked over at her mother, hoping this would be a good moment to do the handover. It was best for everyone if it went smoothly; nothing worse than leaving the house with the sound of outraged sobs ringing in your ears.
‘Shall we collect all the bread crusts from the plates?’ Her mother took Annette from Jo’s arms and held her up, although her daughter looked far too big for a carry against her mother’s delicate frame. ‘We’ll put them in a bag and then take them out to the ducks, shall we?’
‘Mummy doesn’t let us feed the ducks,’ Nettie replied. ‘She says it gives them a sore tummy.’
‘No, it’s fine, honestly, it’s fine to feed the ducks with Granny,’ Jo said quickly.
There wasn’t time to give the environmentally friendly duck-feeding explanation and anyway, she didn’t like to criticise anything her mother did with the girls.
God knows, quite enough unintended criticisms surfaced without her even trying.
She was extremely grateful for her parents’ part in the childcare: she loved that her daughters were so close to their grandparents and all other concerns about how her parents looked after them were secondary to this.
‘You collect the bread crusts,’ Jo said, ‘I’ll round up Mel.’
As she’d expected, Mel was still in her pyjamas, reading a book on her bed. She’d got distracted somewhere between the kitchen and her wardrobe.
‘Mel! Get changed!’ Jo urged her, exasperated at the look of surprise on her daughter’s face. ‘School! Remember?!’
Just before Jo headed out of her front door, she planted big kisses on her daughters’ cheeks and squeezed them tightly. ‘Have fun,’ she urged them both. ‘See you soon.’
Then she gave her mother a peck on the cheek too. ‘No lifting,’ she warned her. ‘Not even if she screams! I don’t want to have to pay your chiropractor bills.’
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ was her mother’s response.
And Jo left, glad that her daughters were with her mum, glad also that her mum seemed to be forgiving her at least slightly for leaving her husband.
That was undoubtedly the good thing about Simon’s decision to move Gwen in with him: it had switched her parents’ sympathy right back in her favour. Before that, her loving, but nonetheless old-fashioned Lancashire parents hadn’t been shy to voice their disapproval.
‘No marriage is perfect,’ her mother had told her. ‘Everyone goes through these phases. You’ve got to stick with it, for the children. Every child needs two parents.’
‘They’ll have two parents,’ Jo had argued back. ‘We’ll be two parents who aren’t at each other’s throats all the time. We’re both still here for them, totally committed, 100 per cent. We’re only living a mile apart and the girls will spend three nights a week with Simon.’
This information had tipped her mother over the edge: ‘You’re going to let your daughters live somewhere else for half the week? What kind of mother are you?’
No pretending that hadn’t hurt.
‘A practical one,’ she’d flung back. ‘I work late those nights anyway, and if they weren’t with their dad, they’d be with a childminder.’
‘You know we’d—’
But Jo broke her off: ‘No. It’s a very kind offer, it really is and I appreciate everything you do for us, but Simon wants to do this. It’s a surprise to me, quite frankly, but he’s their dad and we have to give him the chance.’
Still, no opportunity was missed to make her feel she was behaving selfishly, even recklessly.
Until news of Gwen broke and at last, the sniping by her parents had stopped.
‘Do you think anything was going on between Simon and this woman— before— you know?’ her dad had ventured.
‘No,’ Jo had told him, ‘I’m sure of it. I think Simon has just panicked.’
But clearly, they’d formed their own opinion and now it was full guns blazing for Simon. ‘He’s looking a lot older, I thought,’ her mother had managed to get in just this morning. ‘And the little beard is awful. Do you think he dyes it?’
Anyway, back to the carnage of unopened envelopes on her desk and the computer declaring:
You have 1,781 new emails.
And probably only two would be interesting.
See. She started scrolling down: Free downloads, upgrade your software…
and all the press releases: medical breakthroughs, new medicines, launch invitations, boring…
oh, Friends of the Earth announce new campaign manager appointment, stark warning re: seabird population decline…
there were at least twenty different releases from Tony Jarvis, the Green Party press officer.
She called him and got through to his voicemail.
‘Tony, answering machine?! You’re supposed to be running a by-election campaign.
Get up, get to your desk. Give me a call.
It’s Jo Randall by the way, back in the office. ’
She started to rip through the pile of envelopes on the desk, putting almost every letter straight into the paper recycling bin as soon as she’d read it. Old news, last week’s press releases, the odd story suggestion, none of them interesting. Bin, bin, bin.
It was almost 10 a.m. and the entire staff of her Health and Environment department, all two of them, would be in soon. Dominique would be five minutes early, almost exactly, Aidan would be ten minutes late, almost exactly.
The TV suspended in the corner of the room closest to her desk caught her attention, another Health Minister’s press conference.
She got up and went to stand underneath it, looking up at the screen, arms folded.
‘Ask him a bloody question, why don’t you?
’ she muttered when the minister had finished his statement and was met with silence from the room. ‘Bloody TV dollies,’ she hissed.