Chapter Thirty
Three hours later, as instructed, I was standing in the arrivals area of Luton airport, arms folded across my chest and a pissed-off look on my face. Of course, my mother, emerging through the arrivals gate, paid my expression not the slightest bit of attention and simply handed me her bags.
‘Frightful journey,’ she said, removing her sunglasses as though she’d only now realised it was the middle of January in the UK. ‘A hugely obese man was sitting next to me, barely squeezed into his seat, flesh spilling all over the place…’
‘Mum!’ I hissed. ‘You can’t say that kind of thing about people. It’s fat-shaming.’
‘Well, he didn’t seem very ashamed,’ she huffed.
‘And a returning hen-party occupying all four rows in front. Smelled like a brewery and some of the language, Harriet! Well! Words I’d never even heard of.
I’m surprised Mr Greedy beside me didn’t have a coronary.
Especially when the inflatable penis bounced onto his head. ’
‘Still, looks like you made friends,’ I said, indicating the L-plate slung around her neck like a medallion.
‘Ah, yes. Well, if you can’t beat them, join them. And they did provide some welcome distraction. If you can call Lianne’s stories of her ex-boyfriend’s infidelity with a seventeen-year-old he met on OnlyFans, distraction. He had a toe fetish apparently. Lianne’s ex.’
‘Jesus, Mum,’ I said, wearily rolling her Lulu Guinness suitcase behind me. ‘Let’s get you out of here before you say anything else that’s hugely indiscreet or offensive, at top volume.’
We were able to walk to the short-stay car park, but she looked a little chilly by the time we reached the car, so I put the hot-air blowers on full blast as we drove away.
The roads remained icy and the fog was back, so I took a few wrong turnings (tutted at by my mother) before we got back onto the main road.
‘So, come on then,’ I said. ‘Why were you in Malaga in the first place?’
She exhaled through her nose with a force that competed with the car heaters. ‘I was meeting Roger, if you must know,’ she said eventually.
I ignored the ‘if you must know’, feeling that it was perfectly reasonable of me, both as her daughter and emergency chauffeur, to ask what exactly had taken her out of the country.
‘The same Roger who stood you up in November?’ I said, still smarting from the fact that she’d never admitted to me directly that they were back in touch.
‘The same.’ She looked out of the window, which, given that it was pitch black and foggy, was clearly an attempt to end the conversation and not her taking an interest in the view.
‘And were you meeting him there? In Malaga?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was he there?’
‘He was.’
‘Oh! Okay. Well, that’s progress at least.’
She huffed again. ‘He had his reasons for not making it to the restaurant on the first occasion,’ she said. ‘Layla and I agreed that they sounded plausible, if not particularly indicative of technological competence.’
‘So I understand. From Layla.’ I wanted her to know that my daughter and I shared information in a grown-up fashion, unlike certain people I could mention.
‘I didn’t tell you at the time,’ she said. I could tell from her voice that she had turned to face me. ‘Because if you recall, we’d had a little falling out. And you had specifically accused me of dating “unsuitable” and “mediocre” men – if I remember correctly.’
‘I had.’
‘And I was concerned that you may have felt that Roger fell into one of those camps, possibly both.’
‘Yes. A reasonable assumption,’ I said, flicking on the windscreen wipers to combat the sleety rain. ‘But he turned out to be a good egg after all?’
There was a period of silence broken only by the wipers thudding across the windscreen.
‘Well, the thing is,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m not really sure.’
‘How so?’ Jesus, it was like pulling teeth.
‘I decided it was worth giving him a second chance. If you remember, we’d gotten along famously online, prior to his non-attendance at Estrella’s, and he was terribly apologetic about that.
And once he got back in touch, we were back to messaging each other just as we had in November and he mentioned that he was heading back over to Spain for the New Year because he has a little villa out there.
In a place called Nerja. It looked delightful in the photos he sent. ’
‘Mum,’ I said, feeling a sense of impending doom. ‘You didn’t send him any money, did you?’
‘No! Heavens, Harriet. What sort of fool do you take me for. Of course I didn’t send him any money!’
I breathed out a huge sigh of relief. ‘Okay. Carry on.’
‘Anyway,’ she said crossly. ‘He invited me out there for a few days. Escape the winter, is what he said. Plenty of room for me to stay. No need to share beds and what have you, unless all parties agreed.’
‘All parties?’ I said, imagining some sort of pensioner orgy – Roger’s villa as the Playboy mansion. ‘Were there other people invited? Other women?’
‘No other women, no. But it turns out that two of his friends were due to arrive the next day. Business associates, he described them as.’
‘Staying in the same villa? Odd that he didn’t mention it earlier?’
‘Yes. Quite. Anyway, he paid for my flight, British Airways, Business Class.’
‘Ooh. Nice.’
‘Yes, the outbound journey was quite the treat. Shame I had to go budget for the flight back but there we are. Anyway, he met me at the airport with a bunch of flowers.’
‘Gosh, okay.’ I had been totally assuming that the punchline to this story was that Roger the Dodger had indeed dodged my mother for a second time and simply not turned up to the airport, but it seemed I was wrong. ‘Go on.’
‘And he had his driver collect us. All very gallant, took my luggage, held open all the doors for me, bottle of Cava on ice and two champagne flutes good to go…’ I could tell from her tone that she was warming to the story now, enjoying the suspense.
‘But…’
I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye. ‘But… Something felt off.’
‘Something fell off?!’ I said. ‘Fell off him?’ The mind boggled.
‘No,’ she said with forced patience. ‘Something felt off.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, he was wearing terrible loafers for one thing.’
‘Right.’
‘And a cravat. It’s only con men who wear cravats and loafers in my experience Harriet.’
‘Is it?’
‘Hmm. Yes. And – I don’t know. He just wasn’t quite what I had imagined in the flesh.
And the whole thing about the business associates joining us – he never really clarified what line of business he was in.
It was clearly very lucrative but the way he described it, trading commodities, just sounded a bit shady.
And in all honesty, I suppose there was still a little niggle of concern about being stood up the first time.
The story never quite stacked up properly and I’d been ignoring the alarm bells, but he started to try and explain it again during the taxi ride and I just didn’t buy it.
By the time we’d reached his villa I could tell it wasn’t going to work so I asked his driver to take me back to the airport.
’ She folded her hands into her lap. ‘And here we are.’
‘Whoa!’ I said. ‘You just said I’m not feeling it – see you later?’
‘I did. Well, except for the see you later. I think it’s fairly evident that won’t be happening.’
‘And he was okay with that? Having forked out for your ticket and made all those plans?’ Suddenly I felt bad for poor old Roger.
‘It was his decision to do that without having met me first. Caveat emptor, etcetera. I mean, he wasn’t thrilled. But as I said to him, neither of us are getting any younger. There’s no point in wasting time on something that’s not going anywhere.’
‘True, Mum. But a bit brutal. Goodness me. Did you even get a chance to have a good old nose around the villa first?’
‘Sadly not. I didn’t feel it would have been appropriate, given the circumstances.
We pulled up right outside. It looked delightful, bougainvillea everywhere, wrought-iron-gated entrance, right on the beach.
And I just said, very politely, would it be possible to drive back to Malaga and if not, please point me in the direction of the nearest taxi rank.
He was a little put out. Understandably.
A few words were exchanged with the driver in Spanish.
Sounded fairly heated but maybe that’s just the language. And then he got out of the car.’
‘Adios amigo,’ I said.
‘As I said to Lianne when she was telling me about her ex on the flight home, you’ve got to trust your gut instincts where men are concerned. To be honest, where anything’s concerned. That’s a lesson I’ve learned since your father died. Listen to that inner voice a little bit more.’
I was silent for a moment and then I reached out and grabbed her hand. ‘Do you know what, Mum,’ I said. ‘That was a brave thing to do. Brave and dignified. I’m really proud of you.’
She nodded quietly to herself and gave my fingers the slightest of squeezes before withdrawing.
‘Please put both hands on the wheel, darling,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to die because we’ve crashed into a wheelie bin somewhere in the suburbs of Luton. That would be extremely unchic.’
‘Of course,’ I said, sneaking a sideways glance at her.
She seemed okay but it’s hard to tell with my mother.
She must have been a bit shaken by the experience.
‘Do you want to stay at ours tonight?’ I said.
‘Spare bed’s made up and you’ve got all your luggage.
We could watch a film with Layla. Might be nice? ’
She agreed that this would be an excellent idea and then asked if we could have the radio on so she could catch up with the news, having been out of the country for all of two minutes.
This put the kybosh on any further conversation until we reached home and Joe padded out across the drive in his socked feet, a weary look on his face.
‘Hello Meredith,’ he said as Mum gestured for him to take her suitcase. ‘Lucky you’re here actually.’ He nodded back in the direction of the house, his expression tight-lipped. ‘I’m hoping you can talk some sense into your granddaughter. She’s decided she’s not going back to university.’