Chapter 22
Tina stands at the entrance to the private room at the back of the restaurant, guarding the guests inside.
Her hair has been expertly ironed into a sleek, black bob, not a hint of grey to be seen, while her face has been set in make-up, the foundation caking in every crease and crevice.
When it comes to cosmetics, Tina has never been a less-is-more kind of person.
A real pearl of wisdom from Olivia’s teenage years was nothing to do with knowing her own worth, or standing her ground, but ‘if in doubt, darling, put some more mascara on’.
This evening Tina is dressed in a black trouser suit with pointy kitten heels, a Vision Express version of Victoria Beckham.
Her energy is clear: nobody enters the sanctum without crossing her first.
‘Darlings,’ she greets them, her smile a sort of sticking plaster on a snarl, or so it seems to Olivia.
‘How wonderful it is to see you all, I’ve missed you so!
’ She launches herself at her grandchildren, begins pecking them on the cheek.
‘Saskia, black suits you! You look amazing, darling!’ Olivia feels something violent and primal in her stomach, a sort of urge to gather her daughter into her arms and take her immediately away from her mother, and her tired old obsession with the way people look.
‘Saskia doesn’t just look amazing, Mum.’ Olivia reaches in for an air kiss. ‘She IS amazing. She’s doing so well at school.’
Olivia turns to her daughter and realizes with a start that Saskia looks exhausted – hollow-cheeked and washed-out, like she might be coming down with something. Perhaps it’s an excuse to exit early, before she says anything she might live to regret.
‘Well, it’s just absolutely delightful that you’re here.
Now, if you could make your way into the private dining room, we can be getting on with the evening.
’ Tina eyes Olivia like she is a barely tolerated plus-one, rather than a human she carried in her womb and squeezed out of her vagina almost forty-five years ago.
‘I was going to say you can leave your gift for Lily on the table at the back, but I see you haven’t actually brought one. ’
‘I ordered it,’ says Olivia, thinking on her feet, ‘but it still hasn’t arrived. You know what those delivery companies are like.’ She tuts and rolls her eyes dramatically, unwilling to concede victory to her mother this early on in proceedings.
Olivia enters the private dining room, which is actually a conservatory in which the restaurant owners have cobbled together a selection of unevenly shaped tables and chairs in the hope of creating the atmosphere of a state banquet.
She wonders if Tina let Lily choose who could come, or if she vetted the guest list first. As Olivia’s mind ambles over her mother’s incredible control freakery, she feels her phone vibrating in her bag.
She reaches in to look at it and sees a text from a number she hasn’t saved. She opens it and gasps.
It’s Rose, call me.
Olivia steadies herself. ‘You are a grown woman, you are a grown woman, you are a grown woman,’ she says silently to herself, again and again and again.
She needs to have this conversation in her own time, on her own terms, rather than here as she tries to navigate her way round all the traps her mother has inevitably set for her, possibly even without realizing.
I will text you later with details on meeting up TOMORROW, Olivia taps out, channelling her mother.
She walks up to Lily, who looks genuinely thrilled to see her. ‘Wasn’t sure you’d actually make it, sis,’ she laughs, nervously. ‘Was a moment back there when I thought you might go rogue.’
Olivia puts her arms on her sister’s shoulders, feels a rush of affection for her that seems somehow embarrassing, here in the presence of their mother, who has always liked to point out their numerous differences, as if they should be warring states and not amenable siblings.
‘Happy birthday, Lily,’ she smiles. ‘You’ve not aged a day since you were twelve.’
‘You can talk.’ Lily ruffles Olivia’s arm. ‘You appear to be reverse-ageing. Who is this sexy motherfucker I see before me, showing off her legs in leopard print?’
‘If you can’t wear leopard print to your sister’s fortieth, then where can you?’
‘A sex party?’ Tina’s voice cuts through the air, followed by a high, tinkling laugh. Lily smiles awkwardly, Olivia rolls her eyes. ‘Only joking, darling,’ Tina lies, brushing Olivia’s shoulders. ‘Now, will you come and meet Clive?’
Olivia turns around, ready to say something pithy …
but there, to her surprise, stands the cord-wearing groper from the train.
She gulps. A flash of contempt crosses Clive’s face, one that Olivia sees despite his best attempts at disguising it with a crooked, entitled smile.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a shock that her mum is in a relationship with the oily creep from the 11.
47 to Brighton. She thinks about throwing a glass of champagne over him, just in case he needs reminding who she is – but stops herself.
This is Lily’s night, and however shocked Olivia is to see this man here, her mother isn’t to blame for his actions on the train the other day.
Olivia puts on her most Tina-esque grin. ‘Gosh, Mum, you won’t believe this but me and Clive have actually met before.’
Clive’s ruddy face has drained of colour. Olivia gets a perverse kick from imagining his terror at what she’s about to say.
‘Clive and I, darling, Clive and I.’ Tina sighs, takes Clive’s hand in hers. ‘Now tell me, how on earth have you two met?’
Clive clears his throat to speak, but Olivia isn’t allowing him to get the upper hand, not this time. ‘We commute on the same train, Mum,’ she says. ‘It’s quite the gang we’ve got going up and down the line from Sussex to London, isn’t it, Clive?’
‘I didn’t know you commuted, Clive,’ Tina says, before turning back to Lily and Olivia. ‘Clive doesn’t commute, on the train of all things, he’s far too busy running the council here!’
‘Well, Tina,’ Clive begins, before stopping to clear his throat.
‘I sometimes do have reason to go up to Westminster and meet with some of the party bigwigs, and it’s far more cost-effective to go by train.
It also stops anyone attacking me over my eco credentials.
’ He smirks, his voice as haughty and horrible as before.
‘So yes, your daughter and I have had the pleasure of meeting previously.’
Olivia says nothing. For now. Her father’s here now, anyway, barging in, breaking the tension with all the subtlety of a neutron bomb. ‘Ish thish your new fanchy man, Tina?’ he slurs, offering the hand that isn’t gripping a glass of wine.
‘Yes, Peter, this is my partner, Clive,’ Tina tuts. ‘Please be civil. Now, it’s time for everyone to sit down for the meal,’ she continues. ‘Please take your places and no messing with the seating plan, I’ve rather meticulously arranged it all myself!’
Olivia finds her name card at a sort of ante-table at the far end of the room, where she has been seated alongside her children, her father, and two of Lily’s godchildren.
That’s right, she’s on the kids’ table, and incredibly, this fact delights her.
Right now she can’t think of anything worse than being put next to that pervert Clive.
While the main table receive their prawn cocktail starters, a waitress plonks in front of Olivia a dish filled with bubbling macaroni cheese.
‘Well, aren’t we lucky that we get to eat something half-decent, rather than that rather eighties-looking party menu over there.
’ Olivia begins to crudely dish out great big dollops of mac and cheese on to everyone’s plates, her father ignoring his in favour of the bottle of wine he seems to have extracted from a waiter.
Saskia looks morosely at the meal.
‘Beige and congealed like all the best party food!’ Olivia beams, genuinely delighted with the dish. ‘Are you OK, Sass?’ She watches her daughter poke at her food with a fork. ‘You’re looking a bit peaky?’
‘I’m not feeling great, that’s all.’ She shifts stiffly in her chair. ‘There’s something going round at school and I think I’m a bit off my food.’
‘Well, if you need to go home just say the word.’ Olivia is wondering if willing her teenage daughter to be ill so that they can leave a family event early makes her a terrible parent, or merely a passably piss-poor one.
‘I’ll have yours,’ says Jack, who has already wolfed down his portion and is now helping himself to his sister’s.
‘Let Sass try a bit, Ja—’ Olivia begins, but she is cut off by the sound of the spoon on the side of a champagne glass once more.
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen!’ Clive stands up and addresses the room around him, with all the confidence of a man who thinks nothing of groping strangers in public.
Why does it surprise Olivia that he would feel entitled to make himself the master of ceremonies?
‘Would you please give a round of applause to the mother of the birthday girl, Mizz Tina Fryer!’
Tina laughs in a high, tinkly way, then stands up as everyone around her begins to clap.
She rearranges her features in a faux-bashful way, one that actually gives her the look of someone experiencing a minor neurological event.
‘Oh please, there’s no need!’ she demurs, in a manner that suggests the opposite is true. ‘You’re too kind, too kind!’