Chapter Three
One week to go…
‘So, then I said to him, Maurice, I said, if you’re having chest pains again, you need to…’
‘Sorry, Mum.’ I cut across her, grimacing to Layla as I pulled on my boots. ‘I’ve got to head off. We’re meeting Richard and the kids for lunch, remember?’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Of course. Do send them all my love. Sorry I can’t be there, but Derek’s managed to get hold of tickets to The Marriage of Figaro, he’s a gold card member of the ENO so gets all these perks – and you know I’m an enormous fan of the opera.’
‘You are?’
‘Well, I haven’t been given the opportunity to attend performances of this quality many times in my life Harriet, but that’s not through want of trying! Just because Daddy was a total philistine, God rest his soul, doesn’t mean that I didn’t yearn for a richer cultural life.’
‘No, of course not, Mum. Derek though?’
‘Yes, Derek.’
‘Another Silver Soulmate?’
She made an indeterminate noise while I wondered about poor Maurice and his angina, and whether he knew that his Soulmate was dating another man, fulfilling her need for a rich cultural life while he dealt with his cardiac issues.
‘It’s all above board, darling, if that’s what you’re worried about. Maurice and I, we’re not exclusive.’
‘Evidently,’ I said, shutting the front door behind me. ‘It doesn’t matter, Mum. You enjoy yourself and hopefully I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Yes, darling, that would be lovely. Although I am meeting Robert for dinner at The Ivy tomorrow evening…’
‘Okay. Got to go. Love you.’
‘Your grandmother,’ I said to Layla, as we got into the car. ‘I don’t know how she keeps up with who she’s dating on any given evening. It’s all a bit baffling.’
‘She’s definitely got a more interesting love life than me,’ said Layla, pulling her seatbelt across her puffer jacket. ‘Especially the last few months.’
‘You did the right thing,’ I said, giving her knee a little pat before I turned the ignition on.
‘Splitting up with Ollie. I know it was hard, but it wouldn’t have been fair to keep him hanging on while you were away for months at a time.
’ And he wasn’t really right for you anyway, was what I wanted to add, although I knew better than to say something like that – it had backfired on me in the past when the Ollie in question had unceremoniously dumped Layla in year eleven, I’d slagged him off every which way but backwards, and of course they’d reunited during year twelve.
A lot of backtracking was required. Secretly there was a part of me that felt pleased she’d been the one to call it off this time.
He was a nice enough lad, and I had forgiven him for dumping my daughter so cruelly (I clearly hadn’t), but she could definitely do better.
‘Hmmm,’ she said, already scrolling through her phone, seemingly untroubled.
‘And who knows who you might meet at university,’ I said, half-excited, half-terrified. ‘Maybe your love life will one day be as exciting as Granmerry’s.’
‘I can but dream,’ she said, posing for another quick selfie.
‘Where are you posting those photos?’ I said, gesturing both in the general direction of her phone and out of the window in the general direction of the world.
‘Snap,’ she said. ‘And BeReal.’
‘You what now?’
She turned to me, her face a study in patience. ‘They’re just social media platforms,’ she said. ‘Snapchat?’
‘Yes, I am familiar with that one.’
‘And BeReal. You upload a photo of whatever you’re doing just so people know where you are.’
‘Even when it’s just “in the car going to see Uncle Richard”?’
‘Even then.’
‘And it’s only your friends who can see that?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s fine, Mum. I’m not broadcasting my whereabouts to the world.
I’m not leaving myself open to grooming by online gangs or people smugglers.
I’m just telling my friends where I am and what I’m doing through the medium of a single image.
It’s social media – being sociable. It’s how we stay in touch. ’
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘No need to get all salty about it.’
I could almost hear her eyeballs rolling back in her head.
‘I just want you to be careful,’ I said as we pulled up at the traffic lights. ‘When you – when you’re away from home – it worries me, that’s all.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I will be careful. I’ll monitor my drinks to make sure nobody’s spiked them.’
‘Or any of your friends’ drinks,’ I said.
‘Or those. And I’ll make sure we always go out in a group. And that nobody’s left behind.’
‘Like the army,’ I said.
‘Just like the army. But with fewer press-ups.’
I laughed. ‘Accommodation might be similar.’
She put her phone down on her lap so I knew she must be serious. ‘Mum. I will be fine,’ she said.
‘I know you will,’ I said, and we carried on making our way to the restaurant, neither of us entirely sure who was trying to reassure whom.
By the time we arrived, driving through a deer park to the restaurant my brother had booked, it was pissing down with rain.
‘There’s Uncle Rich,’ Layla said, pointing to the Tesla silently cruising across the gravel towards my second-hand Vauxhall.
‘And Aunty Jaqueline,’ I said, my heart sinking as I spotted my sister-in-law. ‘And the boys.’ I could just make out the face of my six-year-old nephew, Hugo, peering forlornly through the torrents lashing his window.
Making small talk with my brother and his chilly French wife didn’t exactly fill me with joy, and The Braised Fig didn’t look like my kind of venue – all tiny portions served on, or inside, bizarre household objects – a ‘sausage roll in a specimen jar’ restaurant as Farah would say.
Still, I always enjoyed seeing my nephews, who were both very sweet but very serious little boys.
And these were my last few days with Layla, so I wanted to make sure I was present for every moment, absorbing the tiny details of her voice, her face and her lovely bread-and-vanilla smell – adding them to my memory vault, banked for future withdrawals as needed when she wasn’t around.
I have been trying to be subtle about this gathering of sensory data, aiming to avoid weird stalkerish vibes, but I’m not sure it’s gone entirely unnoticed.
I was hugging her for so long a few days ago that she had messaged two friends and ordered a new top on Vinted by the time I released her.
And yesterday when we were watching television together, her head on my shoulder, I inhaled so deeply and for such a sustained period that I nearly passed out due to lack of oxygen.
I obviously draw the line at tiptoeing into her room to watch her sleep though. (Reader, I don’t.)
‘Richard,’ I called as I wrestled myself out of the car and into a cagoule whilst battling with a recalcitrant umbrella and dropping my handbag into a puddle.
There are few less edifying sights than that of a slightly overweight middle-aged British woman struggling against the elements.
A fact reinforced by the sight of my very thin, very glamorous, and distinctly un-British sister-in-law gliding across the gravel in a chic little designer mackintosh complete with fur trimmed hood, seemingly avoiding even the merest droplet of muddy water.
The fact that this woman has two little boys and yet always manages to look pristine leads me to the conclusion that she’s either trained Hugo and Lawrence to self-clean, like an expensive oven, or that she spends no time in their company at all.
Knowing Jaqueline, both these things could be true.
Her views on children are that they should be seen and not heard.
Apparently, she’s already asking Richard about boarding school, which makes me sad to the point of actual chest pain, but it’s not my place to interfere, of course (as Joe has to keep reminding me).
My attitude to parenting (and indeed, my attitude to most things) is very different to hers, and that’s fine, but sometimes I think she is a separate breed of woman entirely.
Where I am conciliatory, she is brusque to the point of being offensive.
Where I am needy, she is aloof, and where I am indulgent, bending and yielding to the tiniest of pressures, she is firm and resolute.
In the cat world she would be very much the haughty Margaret to my clingy Clarence.
Jaqueline knows that I have differing views to her, she knows that I silently disagree with her on many topics, and she couldn’t give less of a toss.
Which means that I have a quiet and begrudging respect for the woman – far more so than she does for me.
We made our way into the restaurant where we were greeted by a tall thin person sporting a full body tattoo and a man-bun (or perhaps just a bun) who introduced themselves as Zee.
They gruffly showed us to our table and muttered something incomprehensible about the Braised Fig vibe before giving us each a piece of slate with a QRS code as our menu.
When my eyebrows flickered upwards, I was told that this was all part of their sustainability ethos, along with the compost toilets, which I later found out consisted of a freezing shed that smelled like an unemptied nappy bin.
I duly smiled ingratiatingly, said ‘of course’ a lot of times, and took my seat.
‘This place has had excellent reviews,’ said Richard confidently. ‘The food is amazing.’ His voice wavered a fraction when he caught sight of Jaqueline’s expression which clearly said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘Fairly pricey,’ I said, having successfully scanned the QRS code, downloaded the sodding app onto my phone, signed in as a guest and sworn a blood-oath to the CEO of the restaurant chain. I was now peering in horror at the magnified numbers on my phone screen as I navigated the taster menu.