Chapter 9
The next day was Sunday, and Lauren was relieved that she’d have a day to just relax. She loved the café, but her Sundays were precious, and she liked to spend time with Myriam, touching base after a busy week.
As she sat eating a decadently late breakfast, Lauren tried not to keep thinking back to her conversation on Marc’s doorstep.
It had been that strange combination of sweet but terribly awkward.
Situation normal, she thought to herself.
She wondered what had possessed her to just rock up to the lake house.
On reflection, it probably wasn’t the best course of action.
He’d been pleased to get the gloves back, but any normal person, any normal café owner, would probably have just tucked them behind the counter and waited for an opportunity to give them back when Marc came back into the café.
Was it a bit stalkerish that she’d jumped into her car and returned them?
‘Lauren, are you listening to me?’ Myriam’s vaguely exasperated tone cut into her thoughts, and her eyes snapped up from studying her bowl of porridge, topped with a dollop of leftover double cream from the café’s fridge, to her mother, who was sitting on the other side of the small kitchen table.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ she replied. ‘I was miles away.’
‘I could tell. Anyone I know?’ Myriam gave her a mischievous smile.
‘No,’ Lauren muttered, caught out. Myriam was as sharp as a tack when it came to Lauren’s moods; she had been since Lauren was little, and all the way through secondary school when Lauren had borne the brunt of some pretty awful bullying.
There wasn’t much that Lauren could get by Myriam.
But this time, Lauren wasn’t going to admit to anything.
She didn’t really know what she’d be admitting to, for a start.
‘Well, you know where I am.’ Myriam’s wry smile wasn’t lost on Lauren.
The women focused on their breakfast. As Lauren was contemplating what to do with her day off, she realised her mother was chatting again.
‘Sorry? Run that past me again, Mum? What was that about a trip?’
Myriam sighed. ‘There you go, daydreaming again. I’ve been invited to be a guest artist on a river cruise over Christmas.
The Rusholme Gallery in North Manchester sold one of my postgraduate pieces to a collector about six months ago and he owns the cruise line.
He’s asked if I would consider doing an art residency on one of his Norwegian river trips.
It’ll last thirteen nights, and they’ll fly me out to join the boat and then fly me back into Bristol airport at the end of it. ’
‘And this collector got in touch with you how?’ Lauren hated the sceptical tone in her voice, but this sounded too good to be true. ‘Are you sure you’ve not been catfished, Mum?’
Myriam shook her head impatiently. ‘It’s all above board.’
‘But how do you know?’
‘I’m not an idiot, Lauren, even though you sometimes assume I am.’
‘No I don’t!’ Lauren shot back. ‘You know I just worry about you.’
‘I know, darling, but this time you needn’t.
’ Myriam took a sip from her glass of orange juice.
‘Lovely Gary from the Rusholme Gallery emailed me last week about it. I was as dubious as you were, but I gave the gallery a ring and he arranged a Zoom call with Daniel Weston, of Weston River Cruises. We have to iron out a few details, but he’s sending me the draft contract this week. ’
Lauren was slightly reassured. Gary Donovan had been her mother’s mentor during her postgraduate studies at the North Western School of Art.
A successful artist himself, he’d set up his gallery in the early nineties, exhibiting many Brit School artists, and also much of Myriam’s early work.
He’d been a good friend to her mother over the years, and, if she didn’t know better, Lauren would think that he was also a little bit in love with Myriam.
But time and distance had put paid to any romantic aspirations either of them might have had.
Manchester was a long way from Lower Brambleton.
But there was a bigger issue, and Lauren knew she had to broach it.
‘Mum,’ she began carefully, ‘you haven’t been anywhere on your own since that fall you had two years ago.
The doctors have said it could happen again.
Are you sure that being on a boat in the middle of a river is something you should risk? What if it gets… I don’t know… choppy?’
Myriam laughed. ‘It’s hardly going to be the middle of the Atlantic, love! And besides, Daniel’s assured me that every ship of his carries a fully qualified medical team. If anything happens, I’ll probably be better taken care of than I would in the local hospital!’
‘But what about the actual work? You do a shift in the café and you’re knackered. What exactly will you have to do for your residency?’
‘Two hours a day teaching guests how to paint,’ Myriam replied. ‘And…’ she raised an eyebrow suggestively ‘…Daniel likes to include a bit of life painting in that, so the views from inside the art room may well be as fabulous as the view from my cabin’s balcony!’
‘Mum!’ Lauren’s face started to burn. Even though her mother was young to have a thirty-year-old daughter, she still found any discussion about sex with her excruciating.
But she wasn’t done with Myriam yet. ‘That all sounds good,’ she continued, ‘but you’re so used to having me around to help…
do you think you’ll manage on your own?’
‘Oh, I won’t be on my own, darling,’ Myriam replied.
‘Oh?’
‘No, that’s the last thing I’ll be. You see, Gary’s booked the cabin next to mine, so we’ll be able to enjoy the rivers together!’
Lauren’s heart started to speed up. ‘Gary’s going with you? But hasn’t he got a gallery to run?’
‘He’s going to take a fortnight off.’ Myriam began to toy with the salt cellar on the kitchen table, and when she looked back up at Lauren, there was an expression of yearning in her eyes.
‘We’ve been talking a lot recently – you know, through FaceTime, and on the phone.
I’m beginning to realise that I probably should have paid more attention to his signals all those years ago.
He’s lonely, you see. He never married, poured all his love and attention into the gallery.
When he sold one of my old pieces, it made him want to look me up for more than just old times’ sake.
’ Her eyes started to shine. ‘I know it’s daft, but I feel as though you and I missed out on so much after my accident.
You spent so many years close to home, looking after me, when you should have been spreading your wings.
I ended up settling into this cosy life of ours, narrowing my own horizons, too.
I think it’s about time we were both more adventurous, don’t you? ’
‘Are you saying you don’t like what we’ve got?’ Lauren’s own eyes stung at her interpretation of what her mother was saying. ‘Am I – is the café – not enough for you?’
Myriam smiled sadly. ‘Of course it is, my darling. And you are so much better, so much more, than I ever could have dreamed you would be. But I can’t spend the rest of my life being afraid of striking out, of trying new things.
We haven’t had a holiday, either of us, for years.
Now I’m being given an opportunity to go somewhere new, and get paid for it, with someone who’ll ensure I’m safe and looked after. Can you see why I want to do it?’
‘And Gary’s fully aware of your condition?’ Lauren was trying to focus on the facts as much as she could.
‘Lauren, he was one of the people who gave me the confidence, after it had happened, to try to paint again. He knows exactly what I’m dealing with. And…’ Myriam squeezed Lauren’s hand ‘…he wants to help. He wants to be a part of my life.’
‘Well then,’ Lauren injected a note of brightness that she still didn’t feel into her voice.
‘It seems as though you’ve got it all sorted out.
No need to talk about it with little old me any more, is there?
’ Knowing she was being childish but finding it difficult to rail back from the roiling hurt she felt at her mother presenting this new situation as a fait accompli made her rise from the table.
‘I’d better go over the fridge stock in the café.
I forgot to do it before I closed up last night. And then I think I’ll go for a walk.’
‘Lauren…’ Myriam stood up from the table, too, and for the first time, Lauren noticed how much straighter she was standing. She had a glow about her, too. She looked healthy, and happy.
‘I’ll see you later.’ Relenting a little, Lauren leaned over and hugged her mother. ‘I’m pleased for you, Mum. Really. I’m just, you know, worried, too.’
‘I know. And I can understand that. But you have to let me make my own decisions sometimes.’
Lauren nodded. Quickly, she reached for her coat and hurried out of the back door of the maisonette.
She’d fibbed about the food in the café’s fridge: the only thing that was going out of date had been the double cream, but her mother didn’t need to know that.
She needed to get out and blow away the cobwebs and the unwelcome worries that the conversation with her mother had provoked.
Shrugging into her coat and wrapping her long green scarf around her neck, she briskly set out for the lake.