Chapter 38 #2
The feel of the foil against my skin sparks something, a broken circuit in the back of my mind, making me shudder as it ignites.
Mum used to curl the end up like that after giving one to me and Nick on the mile-long walk to school every day.
This was when we lived in Tottenham. We moved to Tottenham from Birmingham when I was four and Nick was six.
I can’t really remember Birmingham, but it was a nice house, and we had a good life.
I think Mum was happy there. We moved because Dad left, and she found out the truth about him.
We moved to a tiny, rented two-bed in a huge building that stuck up into the sky like a stack of brown Lego blocks. We knew no one.
A fresh start.
I hated that place.
Mum did too, but she never said it. I don’t remember us having a single guest for the entire time we lived there. Mum wouldn’t allow us to invite friends over from school.
Buried memories continue to surface.
The first real memory I have is in that flat. Yes.
In the front room.
We must have just moved in – because there are bin bags of clothes and toys everywhere. I think it is late – unless time has distorted the recollection – and Mum is typing on her laptop.
At the time, she was starting a diploma in administration – an online course – because she didn’t have a degree. She was applying to jobs and needed to be more employable. She was always so stressed. In Birmingham, she didn’t have a job. She didn’t need one. Dad was wealthy.
Until he wasn’t.
In the memory, Mum is sat in the front room. There is a faint smell of cigarettes.
She would smoke out of the kitchen window – we were on the twelfth floor – but pretend she didn’t.
In this memory, I start crying, and Mum tells me not to.
We don’t do that.
It’s not useful.
She then hugs me and takes me back to bed, into the room Nick and I shared. Nick talks to me. And makes me laugh.
He laughs, too.
His laugh.
A year after we arrived in Tottenham, my mother became a PA to a very wealthy banker in the city.
She was now working for people she once had dinner parties with – but at least she was there, on the periphery of a world that she loved and longed for.
That Christmas her boss, the banker, bought her a Tiffany’s bracelet.
This was the only time I have ever seen her on the brink of tears.
Mum always said one day she would own a house. And now she does. In Cheshire. In a town called Macclesfield. It has a little garden, where she has potted plants and two deck chairs. A little sun trap, she calls it.
I shove the mints and tissue back into her pocket, trying to push an unidentifiable nausea that has arisen into it with them.
When I re-enter the kitchen, Mum is sat at the island, and Ronan is gesticulating wildly – performing, mid-flow – telling his story about meeting Ralph Fiennes.
I watch her smiling, dipping a bread stick into guacamole.
She looks so happy. She always does around him.
I can tell the stool is a little high for her, but she would hate for me to suggest we move somewhere more comfortable, would hate for me to assume she was struggling.
‘Oh, I’m so glad he was nice. Sometimes you hear about these celebrities, that they aren’t.’
‘Oh – I have more stories for you. Maybe when the whiskey kicks in. But you’ll have to promise not to tell anyone.’
Her eyes bulge as she draws her fingers across her lips, as if zipping them shut. ‘Your secrets are safe with me.’
‘Any holidays coming up?’ he asks her. I am not sure if they have noticed me return.
‘Yes – I’ve booked one in Greece at Easter.’
‘Oh lovely.’
‘That’s nice, Mum.’
‘Are you taking anyone?’ he says. ‘Any lucky man?’
‘Oh, no.’ She waves her hand, batting him off. ‘No, no, no.’
‘What?’ he retorts. ‘Don’t you want to?’
‘I think the question is would anyone want to come with me?’
She does seem older. More fragile.
Ronan puts his hands up. ‘Well, you know what I think – anyone would be lucky to have you. You’re a total catch, Stace.’
If I was writing this as a scene in The Air Between Us, I’d be highlighting the dialogue in red and putting a note next to it saying: CHANGE!!! TOO CLICHé!!!
Ronan takes a gulp of his whiskey, winking at me now to let me know he is joking. He is just making her feel better.
‘Thank you, Ronan.’
‘How’s the school, Mum?’ I ask, as I join them at the table.
And as we sit and talk – through smiles and nodding heads and topped up glasses – I feel myself begin to warm.
It is as if my extremities thaw. Ronan takes my hand in his, squeezing it, and I let him.
I see Mum’s eyes noticing, smiling, laughing.
More stories. More wine. And the air stills.
A calm begins to take hold. Even the lighting in the kitchen starts to feel different. More golden.
‘So.’ Mum looks at me. ‘How are you, Mallory?’ There is a slight shift in her tone.
Ronan leans across the table and takes my hand in his. ‘She’s doing brilliantly, Stace.’
Mum nods. ‘That’s good to hear. Ronan told me you’ve been having a tough time again.’
Again.
I glance at him. He nods, approvingly. Go on. It’s OK. ‘I’m OK,’ I say. ‘I had a little wobble.’ I hear myself say the word, and want to take the glass of tomato juice in my hand and smash it into my own forehead. ‘But I’m doing OK now.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad. You’re very thin.’
‘Mallory is writing a new book,’ Ronan says. ‘Aren’t you, Mal?’
‘I am.’
I smile at Mum.
She flashes her eyes at Ronan. A look of half empathy, half concern. ‘Oh, that’s great, Mal,’ she says.
‘Why don’t you tell her about it, Mal? While I take the suitcase up?’
Mum nods, a little anxiously.
When Ronan disappears back into the hall and up the stairs, we sit in silence, with only the noise of him above us, the wheels across the landing. Mum takes the bottle of wine and tops up her glass. I watch her take a few large gulps.
‘So,’ I say. ‘Yes, I’ve been writing a romance.’
‘A romance?’ Mum repeats. Is that scepticism?
‘Yes.’
‘So, you’ve become unblocked?’ Is that sarcasm?
‘I guess that’s one way of putting it,’ I concede. ‘Ronan and I were talking – he thinks it’s a good avenue for me to go down.’
‘Yes, he’s very clever.’
‘He is,’ I say. ‘Also, they say: write what you know.’
‘Do they?’ I can feel her staring at me. ‘Well, then this should be great.’
‘How’s work going?’
‘It’s going well, thank you.’
I get up and go to the fridge to return the bottle of wine.
It was better with Ronan here. Perhaps I should start cooking.
I see the Ocado fish on its own shelf, its jelly eyes staring right at me.
How could you let me die? All for what? A dinner with the mother that hates you?
I nearly shush it. Instead, with a sudden rush of fervent desire to put it straight in the oven and grill it dead, I pick it up with my bare hands.
‘I’m going to make us salmon en cro?te – is that OK? ’
‘Sounds lovely.’ I keep my back to her, but I can hear her thinking, sipping, thinking. Deciphering how to phrase what she is about to say. I don’t want to hear it. I try to concoct a swift plan to stop it happening. Slap her with the fish? ‘You know...’ She hesitates. Here we go. ‘I’m worried.’
‘Oh?’ I turn to face her, appearing nonchalant but also confused, as if this were a very ridiculous and very out of the blue thing to say. I close the fridge door with my elbow like a capable domestic wife does. ‘Worried? What about?’
Confused, but relaxed.
Sane.
Holding a dead fish that just spoke to me.
‘I always have been.’
‘Mum, do you think I should use parsley—’
‘I didn’t bring you up to be someone people worry about.’
I look down at the fish. ‘OK, maybe we should keep things—’