My Big Fat Empty Nest

Chapter One

Three weeks to go…

‘Well, I couldn’t decide between the tasselled harem pants and the kaftan so in the end I bought both.’ My mother gave a little sigh through the car speaker.

‘Okay, sounds good.’ I indicated left and pulled into the slip road. ‘And this is for the trip to Marbella?’

‘Marrakesh, darling. With Maurice.’

‘Maurice. Of course.’ I shot a sideways look at my daughter, Layla, who was sitting in the passenger seat, smiling to herself as she scrolled through the shopping list on her phone. ‘And he’s another one that you met online, is he?’

‘Well, don’t say it like that, Harriet. Another one. But yes, he was on Silver Soulmates. He’s the one who said he enjoyed fine wines and exotic travel.’

‘Don’t they all say that?’

There was a moment of static before her voice came through.

‘Many do, darling. And a similar number profess to having a good sense of humour although to be honest there should be some sort of trades description act of redress in many cases. Maurice had the good sense not to make erroneous claims about a GSOH. He stuck mainly to the affluent lifestyle angle.’

‘Hence Marrakesh.’

‘Hence Marrakesh. Indeed. He also described himself as young at heart.’

‘Despite being eighty-five,’ I said, thankful she couldn’t see my face.

‘Well, that’s the situation, Harriet.’ My mother’s tone was briefly admonishing. ‘The chaps on Silver Soulmates are almost always looking for someone at least a decade younger, in fact, most of them quite fancy the idea of stepping out with a forty-something like yourself.’

‘Thanks.’ I threw another look at Layla, who was stifling a laugh. ‘I’ll bear that in mind if Joe ever leaves me.’

‘Anyway, he makes me feel far younger than seventy-two,’ my mother carried on, oblivious. ‘He refers to me as his petite ingénue. And he can still just about manage some, shall we say, intimate relations. Although it requires a little pharmaceutical assistance.’

I was a little bit sick into my mouth. ‘Mother,’ I said. ‘Layla’s in the car with me. You’re on speaker.’

‘Oh, hello darling girl!’ My mother sounded not in the least bit perturbed by the fact that she may have mentally scarred her granddaughter for life with tales of geriatric bedroom action. ‘Are you off somewhere nice?’

‘Just IKEA and then Poundland, Granmerry.’ Layla leaned in towards my phone and raised her voice, knowing that Mum struggles a little with her hearing, not that she’d admit it of course.

Layla’s always used this name for her grandmother, ever since she was a toddler, Granny Meredith being too difficult to say when distinguishing her from her other grandmother (Granny Susan) and Mum being absolutely horrified at being called Granny anything.

Mum eventually agreed to Granmerry when she realised she could say it with a slight French accent to ‘make it sound a little less frumpy and ancient’.

‘IKEA? Poundland?’ My mother was predictably appalled. ‘Whatever for?’

‘We’re buying things for university. For my room.’

‘Oh, how exciting! Although surely you’d be better going to a nice department store like John Lewis. And will you be buying clothes? You’ll need a new wardrobe, Layla darling. Some nice outfits for wine bars and clubbing and whatnot.’

‘I think jeans are fine, Granmerry. I’m probably not going to go to that many wine bars.’

‘Of course, you teenagers don’t drink that much do you nowadays? It’s all vaping and TikTok isn’t it.’ My mother speaks with a natural authority that’s hard to push back against, even when she’s talking absolute bollocks, which is fairly often.

‘I don’t vape, Granmerry. It triggers my asthma. And I’m not on Tik…’

It didn’t matter what Layla said, Mum was on a roll.

‘Nothing like your mother’s generation,’ she said. ‘Do you remember, Harriet, how shocked Daddy was when you came back after that first term and asked for a pint of lager from the cricket club bar?’

‘I do,’ I said fondly. It had been quite the moment. Although Dad had masked his surprise better than anticipated. Better than my mother had masked her horror about the nose stud anyway.

‘Anyway, Layla sweetheart. Any questions about decorating your digs, soft furnishings, etcetera, just give me a call. Or send me a photo. Don’t rely on your mother’s sense of interior design. She doesn’t have the eye that I do.’

‘Hey!’ I pulled up at the traffic lights beside a hulking blue-and-yellow building, ‘I am still here you know! I don’t have a terrible eye for interiors, do I?’

‘Not terrible, no,’ my mother conceded. ‘But you never really inherited my flair for the aesthetic. Not your fault of course. You got it from your father. He could never see the bigger picture either, more of a fine details man.’

‘That’s why Mum’s so good at her job,’ said Layla, heroically steering the conversation away from my mother’s favourite topic (my shortcomings). ‘She says copy-editing is all about the detail. I didn’t know it had come from Grandad.’

‘Well, yes. Although your grandfather put those skills to rather more lucrative use than your mother does. Engineering is a lot better paid than copy-editing. Worth bearing in mind, Layla darling, when you’re looking for jobs in a few years’ time. Or husbands, come to that.’

‘Right, we’re here!’ I cut across my mother before she launched into yet another tirade about my career choices.

What she seemed to forget when comparing my job to that of my father was that he had been a white male senior executive during a time when it was expected that your wife would be at home cooking your meals, washing your clothes and keeping on top of the entire domestic burden, whilst also parenting your children, thus relieving you of any concerns or worries other than career progression.

My father had been a brilliant man, but he benefitted from both the era and the gender he was born into.

‘Oh! Have a marvellous time,’ she trilled. ‘And Harriet, don’t get all tearful about Layla leaving and what have you. It’s important she spreads her wings.’

‘I do know that, Mother,’ I said through gritted teeth, pulling into a parking space, narrowly avoiding a man pushing a trolley the size of a small family saloon that appeared to contain a flatpack shed, four pot-plants and a giant stuffed gorilla.

‘And, once again, I’ll remind you that she is still in the car with me – but I’ll endeavour to keep the histrionics at bay. ’

‘Hmm.’ She didn’t sound convinced. And with good reason. I surreptitiously wiped away a traitorous tear that had leaked from my eye at the mere mention of my daughter leaving home.

‘I’ll send you photos of what we buy, Granmerry,’ Layla said, leaning into the dashboard again and pretending not to notice the new tear that had joined its colleague on my cheek. ‘Love you.’

‘Love you too darling, both of you. Have fun!’

‘Bye Mum.’ My voice was a little tight as I disconnected the call and looked across to Layla, who was taking a quick selfie just in case the global internet needed to know where she was at that exact moment.

‘Right, sweetheart,’ I said putting on the cheeriest smile I could muster. ‘Have you got that shopping list?’

By the time we got home Layla was the proud owner of a Klunka laundry basket, three Fiskbo photo frames, a Kvart desk lamp, and a Mackapar shoe rack.

We hadn’t been able to find a Swedish doorstop, but we reasoned that a folded piece of cardboard would probably do and thus saved ourselves (me) a couple of quid.

We had also bought a washing-up bowl, a huge multipack of loo roll and a litre of vodka from Costco and I was now about eighty pounds lighter (cash-wise not weight-wise, sadly).

I had spent most of the trip in Practical Mummy mode rather than Tragic, Soon-to-be-Abandoned Mummy mode and was feeling quite proud of myself, particularly for not breaking down in floods of tears when walking past the baby bedroom section of IKEA.

The cots! The changing mats! The adorable cartoon-character curtains!

It was all a bit much and I now felt exhausted and achy.

Whether this was perimenopausal fatigue, the emotional trauma of trying not to dwell on my daughter’s departure (despite actively making purchases towards it), or simply the tiredness that accompanies walking around three huge department stores on forty-seven-year-old knees, who knows?

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Layla said as I slumped into an armchair, bags and boxes spilling over my lap. ‘Looks like the cats have missed you.’

Clarence, the needier of our feline companions, managed to spot a tiny gap between the Klunka laundry bag and the fifty-six loo rolls and launched himself onto my thighs with reckless abandon.

He doesn’t really behave like a cat, Clarence, saving the aloof disdain more common to his species for his sister, Margaret.

She appeared briefly to acknowledge our presence before jumping onto the windowsill, keeping well away from human contact while she groomed her tiny toes with the reverence they deserved.

We think Margaret is from the same litter as Clarence, although the animal shelter wasn’t certain given that the house they were rescued from as kittens contained at least seven different families of semi-feral felines.

Apparently, the old lady who housed them had failed to get any of them neutered and simply lost control of the expanding dynasty.

I had, in my more depressing moments, wondered if I would one day suffer the same fate.

Layla would leave home, my husband Joe would die (the husbands always seem to go first – weaker constitutions), and I’d be left entirely alone to become the ‘mad cat lady’ as described in recent American election campaigns.

A crazed hermit living in squalor, eking out my meagre pension on cheap pet food and shaking my walking stick at passersby who dared to look in my general direction.

‘Probably wouldn’t be too bad,’ I said to Clarence as I gave him a scratch behind the ears. ‘Least I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. And Layla might visit me. Occasionally.’

‘Are you having tragic conversations with the cat again?’ asked Layla as she pushed the door open with her bottom, a tea in each hand.

‘Might have been.’

‘Contemplating a bleak and lonely future without me?’ Her voice was cheerful as she handed me my favourite mug.

It’s chipped and the paint has cracked in the dishwasher, but you can still make out the faded ‘Best Mummy’ motif if you squint hard, plus it’s big enough to hold almost twice as much tea as your average cup.

Twice as much of any liquid come to that.

It doesn’t have to be tea. But why would you want anything else?

‘You’ll have to put up with a lot more of this in the next few months, Clarence,’ Layla said, addressing the cat as he nudged his nose against her outstretched fingers. ‘Deep gloomy sighs and scenario-building.’

‘Catastrophising,’ I said. ‘Appropriately.’

‘Well, he is the perfect cat to catastrophise with.’ Layla folded her feet beneath her, sitting down on the floor in one fluid movement with the enviable flexibility of youth.

Ostensibly Layla had chosen to sit near my feet to join in with petting Clarence but sometimes she just liked to sit close.

This hadn’t always been the case. Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen she hadn’t been able to get far enough away from me, actively cringing when I entered the room, as if my wanting to share the same air was an affront to all that was good in the world.

But since she turned sixteen, she seems to have overcome that habit and is now as fond of hugs and snuggling up on the sofa together as she was aged five.

It’s been lovely to have that version of Layla back again, particularly as my husband Joe and I aren’t what you would call a cuddly couple.

We love each other, sure. But physical contact is generally restricted to a peck on the cheek before he leaves for work, me kicking him in the kneecaps if he’s snoring at night, and the very occasional amorous interaction, or ‘maintenance sex’, as my friend Farah describes it.

‘Do you fancy a film this evening?’ I said as I stretched out my legs, my knees creaking like something out of a horror film. ‘Your father won’t be back from the rugby until late.’

She looked up at me from the floor. ‘Oh, I uhm, I’d said I’d go out with Lizzie and Ella…’

‘That’s fine,’ I said immediately, my voice breezy.

‘Are you sure?’ Her eyebrows knit together, which, given that she has rather chunky eyebrows as per the current trend, was actually a bit alarming – like two chevrons indicating danger somewhere in the region of her scalp.

‘Of course! Yes, absolutely. Clarence and I will settle down with an episode of Slow Horses. Unless you want me to wait so we can watch it together?’

She planted her feet and lifted herself off the floor like a gymnast, both hands occupied with her phone. ‘No, you’re alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and get ready. Can I borrow your hair straighteners? And that nice moisturiser? And what’s for dinner by the way? I’m starving.’

And just like that it was easy to convince myself that things weren’t about to change beyond all recognition.