5. Katie
‘Ouch, Mum, you’re pulling too hard,’ Lucy complained. ‘If you brush too hard, my hair will fall out.’
‘Lucy, I’m a hairdresser, a trained expert, and I can promise you that it won’t. You have to stop freaking out.’
Katie put the brush down and reached for her glass of Coke. She drank deeply, hoping the caffeine and sugar would help with her hangover.
‘Sore head?’ Jamie grinned.
‘Why did we open that second bottle of wine?’ Katie whispered.
‘You opened it,’ Jamie reminded her.
‘I’m regretting it now.’
‘Mum!’ Lucy poked her mother’s arm. ‘Come on, do my plaits or I’ll be late for school. I have English first class and I want to tell Miss Kerrigan that I finished my book.’
Katie had a banging headache and Lucy’s voice was like a drill. ‘Relax, it’s all fine.’ She focused on plaiting her daughter’s hair.
Jamie picked up his car keys. ‘I’d better head in or Ross will have taken over my office.’
Katie rolled her eyes. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Overbearing, arrogant, a pain in the arse.’ Jamie shook his head. ‘So, same as always really.’
‘Daddy said “arse”.’ Toby giggled.
‘Do you not like Uncle Ross?’ Lucy, who never missed a trick, asked.
‘Of course he does. They’re brothers. But sometimes your siblings can annoy you.’ Katie tied ribbons around her daughter’s plaits.
‘Toby does annoy me at times, but you and Uncle Ross are brothers with different dads,’ Lucy pointed out.
‘Yes, but we’re still brothers,’ Jamie said. ‘I like Ross a lot. We’re just getting used to him being home and working with us, that’s all.’
‘Auntie Amanda looks sad.’ Lucy inspected her plaits in the hall mirror.
‘I guess it’s not easy moving back here and living with Granny, especially as she’s a bit grumpy because of her broken leg. Amanda just needs to find her feet,’ Katie said.
‘You’re grumpy this morning and you didn’t break your leg.’ Lucy straightened the bow on her left plait so it exactly matched the right one.
Yes, I am grumpy and you are driving me nuts. Katie’s head throbbed.
‘Amanda has never been a big smiler or giggler, though,’ Jamie noted. ‘I think she’s doing okay.’
‘No. She looked like she wanted to cry at Granny’s,’ Lucy, the family observer, said. ‘I felt bad for her.’
‘Did she?’ Jamie asked.
‘Yes. You were too busy drinking wine and talking to Uncle Frank and Auntie Melanie to notice. I saw tears in her eyes.’
Katie had noticed that too. ‘It’s a tricky time for her, so we have to be extra nice to her.’
‘You should do her hair. That would be nice,’ Lucy suggested. ‘You could make it cool like yours.’
That wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe Katie would offer to cut and colour her sister-in-law’s hair.
It needed some maintenance. Katie had been surprised to see the usually perfectly groomed Amanda looking bedraggled.
Mind you, she doubted Amanda would want a short, shaggy peroxide bob like hers.
She was more of a smooth, sleek, caramel-highlights, shoulder-length-hair type.
‘That’s a really sweet idea, Lucy. I’ll call her. Now go into the kitchen and get your lunchboxes,’ Katie told the kids.
Turning to Jamie, who was putting his coat on, she said, ‘What do you think is really going on with Ross and Amanda? I know he said he’s back because of your mum’s fall and because he wants to be involved in the agency, but I think there’s more to it.’
Her husband shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he got fired. Maybe he’d just had enough of London and wanted to come home.’
‘But taking Theo out of school at the beginning of his final year seems crazy. And the kid looks miserable.’
‘Who knows? Maybe Mum’s accident was the catalyst for him making the move. He saw the opening to come home and take over the business.’
‘Don’t you dare let him. You, Frank and Melanie have run that agency for years. He is not allowed to waltz back in and lay claim to it.’
Jamie kissed her forehead. ‘Don’t worry. Melanie is never going to let that happen and neither am I. We’ll figure it out.’
‘And Frank, don’t forget.’
Jamie rolled his eyes. ‘Frank is Frank.’
‘ Muuuuummy , not stinky cheese again!’ Toby roared from the kitchen.
‘Good luck with that. I’m off.’ Jamie kissed his wife on the lips and rushed out of the door.
She finished her Coke and headed into the kitchen where her children were waving their cheese sandwiches in the air.
‘You promised you’d give us chicken today.’ Toby was incensed.
‘And strawberries, not these old apples from the bottom of the fridge,’ Lucy added.
Katie felt bad. She had promised to do a shop yesterday evening, but then Jamie had come home stressed after dealing with Ross and they’d opened a bottle of wine, then another, and the shopping had been sidelined.
‘Those apples are perfect and cheese is the best thing to help you grow tall and strong.’
‘The apples are bruised and wrinkly.’ Lucy was having none of it. ‘We need fresh fruit to feed our brains.’
‘Mummy, if cheese makes you grow, we should be huge, massive giants because you give it to us every day!’ Toby shouted. He seemed unable to talk at a reasonable level. Toby’s idea of ‘normal voice’ was ten decibels louder than anyone else’s. Katie hoped it was a phase.
She needed to get them out of the door so they’d be on time for school and she’d make her first appointment.
‘How about we stop in the garage on the way to school and I get you crisps as a treat?’
Lucy wagged a finger in her mother’s face. ‘We’re not allowed crisps or anything sugary in our lunchboxes, Mum, you know that. I don’t want to get into trouble.’
Oh, for feck’s sake. Bloody schools and their do-gooder rules. When did a packet of cheese-and-onion ruin a kid’s life? When did a small packet of salt-and-vinegar turn a kid into a psycho, or cause their teeth to fall out, or make them obese?
‘The only snack we were allowed was popcorn and we’re not allowed that any more because the teachers said it’s a pain to clear up – some kids spill it.’ Lucy was all over the rules.
Katie often wondered where her daughter had come from.
She and Jamie were not rule-abiders. Especially Katie: she’d always been in trouble at school and couldn’t have cared less.
From the age of seven, Katie had had no mum, and a dad who was buried in grief, so she’d been pretty much left to her own devices.
She’d chosen to mess and become the class clown – it helped to hide her pain and deal with the gaping hole in her life.
It also helped her hide her struggle to read.
She didn’t want Lucy to be a troublemaker, but she hated that her daughter was afraid to break any rule or get up to any mischief.
Lucy was too serious and, at times, anxious for her age: she worried about everything.
Life was tough. It threw curve balls at you.
Katie had lost her mother to cancer at such a young age, and she felt Lucy, coming from such a solid home, should be more carefree – giggling with her mates, being silly and having a lot more fun.
What was this arseology about teachers having a problem with popcorn?
Try cleaning up human hair all day: that’s a real pain in the arse.
Sweeping up a few kernels of popcorn was hardly trauma-inducing.
Bloody teachers, bloody school rules, bloody stupid school lunches, bloody hangover … Katie wanted to kick something.
Why couldn’t the schools here be like the schools in France, with canteens where the kids were given a three-course meal every day and ate whatever was bloody well put in front of them? Thinking of healthy things to put into school lunchboxes was a head-wreck.
Taking a deep breath, Katie said, ‘Okay. Maybe the garage will have bananas or – or non-bruised apples?’
‘Miss Kerrigan said you should only ever buy organic fruit from a proper fruit and vegetable shop.’
Miss Kerrigan could take a flying jump off a high cliff.
After Katie’s mum had died, she’d had to make her own school lunches.
They’d usually consisted of a packet of crisps, a slice of buttered bread and a KitKat.
She’d survived just fine. Why did everyone have to be perfect?
Why was it no longer okay to be good enough, or even average?
Instagram and TikTok bloody cooking reels were partly to blame.
Perfect, pert and perky mothers baking their own ‘healthy’ bread and preparing ‘from scratch’ meals, making Katie look and feel inadequate.
And now this new craze of Trad Wives? WTAF?
Were these women all drugged? Women who shunned birth control, had thirty kids swinging out of them, breast-fed two babies while they milked cows, made clothes from curtains, skinned rabbits for dinner and declared how much they loved cooking and cleaning for their man.
They must be mainlining Valium. It wasn’t normal to be thrilled with a life of relentless, boring drudgery.
Katie turned to her daughter. ‘Okay, what do you suggest we do, then?’
Lucy pursed her lips. ‘I suggest you do a proper shop. But it’s too late now, so we’ll just have to have horrible lunches.
My new best friend, Olivia, will probably share hers with me.
She does it a lot because her mum makes her spaghetti Bolognese and other pasta lunches and puts them in a big Thermos to keep them warm and they’re delicious and nutritious. ’
‘Yes, well, Olivia’s mum probably has lots of time to cook because she doesn’t work and has all day to shop and make lunches.
’ Katie knew it was childish and pathetic to react like that, but she was hung-over, tired, and being compared to other mothers really triggered her.
Try having no mother and a broken heart , she wanted to shout.
That’s a real problem. Having a cheese sandwich for lunch is a tiny blip in your day. A dead mother is a living hell.
Lucy put her hands on her hips and stared her mother down. ‘Olivia’s mum does work. She’s really clever – she’s a doctor. She does operations on people’s hearts and saves their lives.’