Chapter Four #2
I am so not in the mood to talk about Freddie with Mum.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s my favorite subject when I feel strong enough, but not with her.
Never with her. She wouldn’t understand how it felt when he kissed me, how I came to rely on him with an intensity I didn’t think possible.
I wish I’d never told her about him. I pick at an old chip on the table.
It’s been there since I was a child. I used to dig at it at teatime, try to widen it with my thumbnail. “What do you want to know?”
This is entirely my fault. For the last six years, Mum and I have met for coffee every three months.
I choose the place. Somewhere local, neutral, with at least two exits.
Never, ever here. I’m not sure who decided that these rendezvous were a good idea considering we both usually leave in a mood that’s worse than the one we arrived in, but she gets what she comes for (news on Dad) and I can pretend that someone in my family still cares about me.
I told her about Freddie when our relationship was still budding, hardly able to keep the excitement from leaking into my tone.
I am aware Mum thinks of me not unlike my university cohort did: that I’m odd.
Fundamentally flawed. A natural loner. I’d thought—misguidedly—that mentioning a boyfriend might dispel some of these preconceived ideas.
“A boyfriend?” Her nostrils had flared. I’d thought she was going to laugh, and it made me want to claw at her face.
“Are you coping?” she asks now. She doesn’t care, but, since we’re doubling down on the charade, she might as well float the question.
Usually, I love questions like these. Usually, I’d curl my hands into fists and press them hard into my eyes, as though I were stifling tears.
I don’t bother this time. Those sorts of displays never seem to work with her.
Freddie always thought I was too harsh on her.
In my first week on the job, he sought me out in the small kitchen, ostensibly to check how I was settling in, but there was a charged undercurrent to the meeting.
A slightly unprofessional eagerness about him.
In how close he stood to me, in the way our hands brushed as we both reached for a mug at the same time.
The slight flush that rose in his cheeks at the accidental contact.
I was very aware of our sudden proximity, and I loved every moment of it.
He gathered himself, leaned against the counter, seemed to shake off the brief moment of electric awkwardness. “And what’s Iris’s story, then? The unofficial version—not the one you gave in the interview.”
I loved that he was showing an interest in my life. He had a way of focusing totally on whomever he was speaking to. Of making you feel like you were the only person with a story worth hearing.
I wanted—no, I needed—to impress him. To be worthy of the way he was looking at me: like I was someone worth listening to.
There was only one person I could think of who commanded respect like that.
So I borrowed one of her favorite tactics as I told my story.
A slightly self-deprecating retelling, peppering the darker moments with light, so they bordered on amusing.
I told him about my run-down flat and Barry, Dad leaving, and Mum’s alcoholism. Our strained relationship.
“She sounds like a real character,” he’d replied.
“That’s one word for it,” I said.
He passed a hand across his face, suddenly serious. “Ah, but family’s important, though. They’re all we’ve got, in the end.”
I sensed that there was something deeper layered beneath this statement, so I asked about his own family.
“It’s just me and my parents. I had—” He broke off, took a breath. “I had a brother. He died when we were small.”
I recalled the sadness that I’d seen in his eyes that day in the café and wondered if he’d seen the same reflected in mine. If he’d sensed that common grief, binding us together even then. It made me even surer of our connection. And so I told him about Marcie, pulse thudding in my neck.
“God, Iris. I’m so sorry. No one really understands, do they? What it’s like. Not unless they’ve been through it.”
He reached out, touched me gently on the arm, and I wondered if he knew how alone I sometimes felt. If he felt the same. And I think he recognized, in that moment, that he’d found someone who just might be able to change that for us both.
Now, as Mum bustles around, I shrug. “Mostly I just try not to think of it.”
She places a mug of watery tea down in front of me. I thank her, but I won’t drink it. I can’t even bring myself to touch the mug.
Mum lowers herself into the seat opposite. She’s just over sixty, but it’s the stiff movement of a much older person. “Losing a partner is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure.”
I roll my eyes. Of course she brings it back to him.
“Freddie’s dead, Mum. Dad moved to Surrey.”
She stiffens. Dad’s departure—cowardly as it was—is always a touchy subject.
“And your job?” Her voice is tight with annoyance. And so it begins.
“Still looking for something more permanent. I’m working in a café for the time being.
” I was vague when Mum asked why I’d lost my job.
I always got the sense that she felt my grief for Freddie was somehow not quite as acute as the grief she felt over losing my father.
If I told her that I lost my job because Freddie’s death made it impossible for me to function, I know she’d scoff. Think less of me.
“And how are you finding the café?”
I smile sweetly. “Oh, you know. Pays the bills.”
“Well, it clearly doesn’t.”
“It’s an expression.”
“Right.”
A muscle tics in her jaw. She’s holding back, and I know why. I have something she wants. It’s the only reason she’s let me stay. Sure enough, it’s the next question she asks. She’s so predictable it hurts.
“And how is your father?”
I stifle a sigh and mentally prepare my speech.
It’s important not to give too much away.
I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, and I must portion the information out until I can find a living situation that doesn’t pose a public health hazard.
I’ll just have to go over some stuff she already knows, adding a few embellishments here and there.
I take a deep breath and begin.
I tell her that Dad still lives in a modern (read: ugly) three-bedroom house in Surrey.
It is surrounded by a privet hedge that he trims with a handheld bush trimmer every fourth Saturday in the summer months.
It has an electric gate, which is something that his scandalously young wife insisted on, for the safety of their now decrepit and largely incontinent dog, Florence.
The gate was also essential to keep their two daughters from running into the road, as young children are wont to do.
They have two cars: one four-by-four—essential for navigating the treacherous roads of suburbia—and a sedan, which Dad uses to attend his bank clerk job when he doesn’t cycle in.
When he does cycle in, he makes jokes about being a MAMIL (a middle-aged man in Lycra), which attracted a polite smattering of laughter the first time, but now the year is 2026 and cute acronyms died in the final years of the pandemic.
He enjoys it all. He enjoys the treacherous mundanity of his new, small, boring life.
So much so that he barely thinks about the wife and daughter he left behind.
I don’t include that last bit, obviously. Every time I mention Dad, I dip my voice to the reverential whisper of the religious, and Mum closes her eyes and nods along as though every word is an epiphany.
“Did he ask about me?” she says. Her hangover is setting in. Sweat beads along her upper lip.
“Yes.” He didn’t, but it’s a nice touch that will keep her sweet.
“What did you say?”
“That I hadn’t seen you for a while. I told him I was moving in with you, though, and I’d let him know if there was anything to report.”
She nods and I think I even see a flash of gratitude.
Then she ruins it all by leaning forward and grasping for the pack of cigarettes.
She doesn’t bother to ask if I mind, which I very much do.
The flame shudders as she raises the lighter toward her mouth, where a cigarette now dangles from puckered lips.
And, since I am understandably more mindful of my mortality than most, I excuse myself. Back in the hallway, I empty the bottle of hand sanitizer into my palms.