Chapter 8.
On Wednesday lunchtime, I call in to Mum’s. It’s only a fifteen-minute walk from the KLI offices, so I try to pop round a couple of times a week.
Even people who aren’t fussed about house porn struggle not to be impressed by my mother’s sprawling, four-storey Edwardian end terrace. It makes her seem wealthier than she is, and might also explain why property developers keep asking her out.
She and Dad panic-bought the house nearly three decades ago, when the Golden Triangle was still affordable, and Dad had just received a never-to-be-repeated pay rise and bonus. The place is undeniably gorgeous – red-bricked with high ceilings, brimming with features and character detailing, like stained glass and ceiling roses, cornicing and cast-iron fireplaces, and stunning original tiles in the hallway. But Mum has never bothered to maintain it, and over the years, the place has slid into disrepair.
A small part of me has always hoped that one day, she and I might restore the house together, return it to its former glory. She has a modest pot of savings, earmarked for a future renovation – I just need her to give me the green light and I’ll be ready to sand surfaces and fill cracks and call in the damp-proofing people, get the roof fixed. But every time I bring it up, she changes the subject. I guess she’s got used to the patchy paint and brown blooms of moisture, leaks in strange places and rotting timbers. It’s mostly sound, if she treads carefully and doesn’t try to peel back any carpets or wallpaper, and there’s always something more pressing she can spend the money on, I guess. But to me, a house as beautiful as this deserves to be cared for, cherished, loved.
‘Is that you, Neve?’
‘Yep.’
‘Phew. Thought you were Ralph.’ Mum comes bustling downstairs in a silk kimono, cigarette in hand, then kisses me on both cheeks. It makes me cringe, this pretentious imitation she’s always trying to do of a glamourpuss. I inherited the slight build of my father, but Mum is full-figured, all curves and proportions. She has a dramatic head of thick, dark curls that tumble past her face and bounce around her shoulders. The silk kimono exposes her cleavage.
‘Why don’t you want to see Ralph?’ I ask her suspiciously. Whenever my mother has a new love interest, she gets bristly with Ralph, the sweet, gentle man who I suspect has been faithfully in love with her for nearly fifteen years. She reckons they’re just friends, but he’s always here, and I see how he looks at her.
‘Oh, you know,’ she says, waving a hand through the air, drawing on her cigarette and wafting past me.
‘No?’ I follow her through to the kitchen.
‘Sometimes I just need a bit of space ,’ she says. ‘You know?’
I roll my eyes, not bothering to remind her how many times Ralph has picked her up off the floor over the years, literally and figuratively.
‘Tea?’ she says. ‘You’ll have to have it black, though. No milk.’
‘Fine,’ I say, pulling up a chair at the farmhouse-style table at the far end of the kitchen.
Mum fills the ancient kettle and plonks it on top of the equally ancient Aga. The table is crammed with dirty glasses and bowls doubling as ashtrays, Guardian newspapers so old they’ve turned crispy – all of them undoubtedly unread. There are empty wine bottles and half-punched pill packets, and... There it is. An elaborate bouquet of flowers, their effect slightly diminished by the rinsed-out coffee jar they’ve been stuffed into.
I resist the urge to get up and tidy, wipe surfaces, take the bins out. I have done, in the past, before realising that attempting to tame the disorder in my mother’s house is a bit like trying to hold back an avalanche using only my hands.
‘Who’re the flowers from?’
‘Hmm?’ She’s playing for time.
I speak slowly and loudly, as if there’s a language barrier. ‘Who are the flowers from?’
‘Just a friend.’
‘Ralph?’
She snorts. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Who, then?’
‘Oh Neve! Just a fan, okay?’
Mum’s not famous, but she is a singer, mostly of power ballads and love songs. It’s how she makes her living, through a combination of regular gigs and one-off bookings like weddings. It’s the only job she’s ever had, and I’d be devastated if she tried to do anything else. I’m still not fully sure how she never hit the big time. Might be because she’s easily distracted, I suppose, not to mention vehemently determined to keep smoking. Still. Whenever I see her sing, it does something unexpected to my heart. It dismantles, temporarily, all the barriers between us. It frees me, watching her sing.
The downside, however, is her ‘fans’. By which she means ‘flings’. Because that’s all they ever turn out to be. She always falls hard, at the start. Give her a pricey bunch of flowers, and she’s anyone’s.
Ralph tolerates it because it’s not his right to do otherwise, since he and my mother are officially just good friends. But I see it in his eyes whenever someone new crash-lands into her life. I imagine how it must feel – a kick to the chest, the kind of rejection that leaves you struggling for breath.
‘Who is he, then? This fan.’ I only just resist the urge to use air quotes.
Mum brings the tea over and pulls up a chair. Sunlight slices through the floor-to-ceiling windows and onto the table, helpfully bleaching out all the red wine rings and grease stains.
She smiles, already giddy as a schoolgirl. I’ve seen that look so many times before. ‘Oh, it’s early days.’
I sip my tea. It tastes terrible without milk, and is weak and bitter. I set the mug back down. ‘Does he have a name, at least?’
‘Actually, I’m not sure.’ She frowns. ‘They just call him “The Duke”, at the pub.’
‘What is he, a mob boss?’
She looks at me blankly. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Because he sounds like a cut-price Godfather.’
She waves this suggestion away as if it is more ridiculous than him being called The Duke. ‘His family must have been something to do with landed gentry, I suppose, back in the day. He shares a flat with his brother now, though. They fight like cat and dog, apparently.’
‘Sounds a bit chaotic.’
She shrugs. ‘Anyway, I just call him Duke.’
‘Any gigs this week?’
‘Three. The pub, a wedding anniversary and an actual wedding.’
Mum always looks sensational when she’s gigging. She takes it seriously – spends hours on her hair and make-up, and wears gorgeously lavish dresses. She sings under her maiden name – Daniela DiMarco – and to look at her, you’d think she lived a life of non-stop continental glamour. But most people never see the side of her that gets up at midday and drinks too much and smokes instead of eats and seeks out unsuitable men to help her forget her pain.
‘You’ll never guess who I saw in town yesterday,’ she says, tapping her cigarette over a cereal bowl, releasing a grey worm of ash.
‘Who?’
‘Lara.’
My stomach brakes hard against my ribcage. ‘What?’
‘Yes, with a man.’
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘Well, no. I didn’t know what reaction I might get. It’s such a shame you two fell out. She was always so lovely.’
‘Did the guy... look like her boyfriend? You’re sure it wasn’t her dad?’
‘He was rather handsome, actually. Impeccably dressed and very tall. They were holding hands, so yes – I assume he was her boyfriend.’
I feel my heart start to pound. The impulse to flee becomes urgent. ‘Just need to pop to the loo.’ I stand up and move past her, out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
‘Use the one upstairs,’ she calls. ‘Duke dislodged the seat off the downstairs loo.’
I shake my head, trying not to imagine how in the hell he’d managed that.
Upstairs, I sit on the edge of my childhood bed. Mum hasn’t touched this room since I went to uni. Same books and Justin Timberlake posters, same photos of Lara and me tacked up all over the place. Some have fluttered to the floor now, leaving hardened wads of Blu Tack in their place.
The room always feels stale whenever I walk into it. Unloved and unattended to, like it’s one more job Mum can’t be arsed to tick off her to-do list. Not that she’s ever had one.
The room needs airing and polishing, a good vacuum, a lick of paint.
I get up and wrench open the sash window, swollen now from years of damp and inattention. The trill of birdsong drifts through the gap, along with the screech of a van accelerating up the road. Fresh air floods the room. I inhale it, briefly shutting my eyes.
Lara .
Lara can’t be back. Can she?
I run a hand over my stripped mattress. It held Jamie’s body long ago, his form warm and firm against mine. Long kisses and fevered touches, stifled giggles whenever my mother wafted past the locked door, singing. Sometimes, she would rap on it, to make us both jump.
Mum never warmed to Jamie. She would always change in his company, becoming mute and watchful. They didn’t bond. Never so much as shared a joke. After their first few meetings, I avoided bringing him round here as much as I could, because the reception he got was always tepid at best.
Whenever I asked Mum about this, she flat-out denied there was a problem. So I had to conclude she was being awkward for the sake of it. Or that maybe a tiny part of her was jealous. After all, it hadn’t worked out too well for her, meeting the love of her life when she was only in her teens.
She never got over my dad leaving. Even though their relationship had been turbulent, I truly believe he was the only man she had ever really loved.
The affair, apparently, had been going on for two years.
Bev was younger than Dad, but that was where the cliché ended. She was Dad’s boss at the logistics company where they both worked. She spoke four languages and didn’t stand for anyone’s crap. She was far from the empty-headed bimbo my mum made her out to be.
Bev didn’t need my dad, not one bit. She wanted him.
Mum had suspected for a while, and so had I. Dad would whistle his way to the office, and was working increasingly long hours without complaint, taking extra pride in his appearance. I suppose he was good-looking, if you can say that about your own father. Dark and trim-figured, with a twinkle in his eye and a wicked sense of humour. He was the kind of person people always wanted to sit next to at the pub.
The day Mum discovered the texts, I came home from school to find Dad with blood all over his face, storming between the various floors of the house, gathering belongings. Mum was nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened?’ I asked, although I could guess, of course.
Dad didn’t respond. He just flung his things into a suitcase then left, not even bothering to shut the front door behind him.
I scrambled to the window of the living room.
A BMW was parked on the other side of the road beneath a street light, engine purring. I watched Bev take in my dad’s bloodied appearance as he climbed into the car before shaking her head, just once, then pressing her foot to the floor. Bev was better than all this drama, I could see that, even at the age of twelve. She wouldn’t indulge such histrionics. She was wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket. Her dark hair was bobbed and glossy. To me, she looked like a movie star. In some messed-up way, I felt in that moment that Bev was my idol.
I found Mum in the first-floor bathroom, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet. Some of Dad’s things were in the bath. Work shirts and trousers. A pile of photographs. Vinyl records. Slippers. A dressing gown. Boxer shorts. The stuff, I assumed, he didn’t want Bev judging him by.
I smelt bourbon, too. The expensive bottle Dad never let anyone touch, not even Mum. Well, she was touching it now, tipping it liberally over all the items in the bath, in between taking giant swigs. In her lap was a box of matches.
‘Mum!’ I exclaimed. ‘Don’t!’
She turned to stare at me. Her demeanour was wild, but she wasn’t out of control. I could see that instantly. This was vindication, I realised, after months – years – of being gaslit. Her fury had a place at last. Her anger was justified. She was now unstoppable. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I?’
She struck the first match. I left the room and went to sit on the landing while she turned Dad’s possessions into ash.
‘Did you hurt him?’ I asked her after a while, through the bathroom door. I couldn’t stop thinking about his face covered in blood.
There was a long silence. I’d almost given up waiting for an answer when her voice cut through the smoke of the fire she’d made, brittle and bitter.
‘Not like he hurt me,’ was all she said.