Chapter 30
A funny thing happens, as they gather round the television and watch Stephen interviewed triumphantly on a popular Sunday politics show, gloating about The Morning’s exposé of the sexual misconduct of various Tory politicians.
Olivia understands, suddenly, what it’s all been about.
Every wandering hand, every uninvited kiss, every silenced complaint, every anguished rumination …
it has all led up to this one, gobsmacking moment, where she watches her misogynist boss paint himself as some sort of feminist and saviour of women on national telly.
‘Hang the fuck on,’ says Lily, pointing at the picture that has flashed up on-screen.
‘Well, isn’t that a surprise?’ Olivia tries to stop the smile from creeping on to her face, as she recognizes the Tory councillor who has just been named by Stephen.
‘That’s CLIVE,’ nods Nick.
‘Such a shame.’ Olivia tries her best to be sincere.
Lily sighs. ‘Poor Mum, she really does have terrible taste.’
‘She really does,’ says Olivia.
‘Well, maybe it’s better for her to find out now than any further down the line.’ Nick’s voice drops in genuine sympathy for Tina, and somehow, Olivia loves him even more for it.
‘Quite right, babes, quite right.’ Olivia nods along, tries not to appear too delighted.
Just last night, she had been beating herself up for her dishonest people pleasing, the manipulative quality to her niceness.
But what, exactly, was a bit of polite silence compared to some of the shit that blokes like Stephen and Clive were pulling on a daily basis?
How did they find the bare-faced cheek to wander around ignoring their actual crimes and misdemeanours?
Stephen is passing judgement on the screen before her over the group of Tory councillors for their ‘deeply inappropriate’ WhatsApp messages about female party members.
Olivia laughs at the television, a kind of plaintive hoot at the audacity of it all.
What delightful hypocrisy. What incredible chutzpah.
‘We’re proud of the quality of our investigative reporting on this story,’ she hears Stephen say smugly to the young female reporter.
‘The values of integrity and truth-telling that our journalists have displayed with this incredible bit of reportage are the same principles that have established The Morning over the past one hundred years – principles that we hope to take into the next one hundred years, unlike the Tory party, clearly.’
But what, really, does any of it matter when her darling daughter is upstairs, miserable and starving and alone?
Olivia was damned if she was going to spend any more time feeling guilty for the decades of her life she had spent silently in submission to the patriarchal status quo.
She can’t go back to her life as it was before – something in her has shifted.
And she was also damned if she was going to continue to allow Saskia to suffer the consequences of it.
‘Let’s not waste any more time on these idiots,’ Olivia announces decisively, turning the television off. Then she drops the remote on the sofa, and storms upstairs to Saskia.
She finds her daughter curled up in bed, her face lit by the screen of her iPhone.
As Olivia opens the door, Saskia’s eyes don’t divert from the device in front of her, her apparent imperviousness one of those hard-won medals of adolescence.
Olivia remembers wearing it proudly when she herself was a teenager – the way she would shut down her mother for coming too close, and then be angry with her when she had the audacity to subsequently stay away.
She knows she has to tread a fine line with Saskia.
She knows because it was what she needed of her own mother – for Tina to listen to her rage and take it on while loving her through it regardless. To be there.
As she approaches Saskia now, Olivia has her mother’s voice in her head.
‘Don’t make it all about you,’ chastises Tina, for once actually saying something helpful.
‘But remember,’ cautions Rose, the other voice on her shoulder, ‘that the way you handle this next conversation will be about you: it will be about you, and Saskia, and Tina and Lily; it will be about all the women in your family, the many generations that have come before and didn’t get the support they needed, and all the ones who will come in the future but will. If you get this right.’
Olivia Greenwood nods at all the different women on her shoulders, the ones she doesn’t want to let down. She takes a deep breath. She feels the fear, and then she does it anyway.
‘I’m really sorry that you had to see Grandad like that last night,’ Olivia says, sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed. ‘It must have been scary.’ Saskia pulls her feet up towards her chest and away from her mother, her eyes still steadfastly on the screen.
‘I mean, it must be pretty disorientating generally, living in this family, with me being a bit erratic lately, and a drunk grandad living in the garden shed.’ Olivia waits a moment.
She’s clearly not going to get anything out of Saskia that easily.
‘I’m really sorry you didn’t feel able to call me or Dad last night, but I’m really glad that you had Auntie Lily to phone.
That’s good. I’m pleased she could help you.
I’m hoping maybe we can get a bit closer as a family and I will stop being so obsessed with work and focus on what really matt—’
‘Will you just stop?’ Saskia drops her phone on the floor with a carpeted thud.
‘I can stop, darling,’ Olivia nods, compliant. ‘I can do that and we can try and communica—’
‘You can’t, though, can you?’ Saskia turns around to her mother, furious.
‘You can’t communicate in any mode other than high-pitched anxiety.
You wang on about how awful Granny is and you think we can’t hear it or understand what you’re going on about but we’re not stupid.
And from where I’m sitting you’re just as bad.
You’re just as controlling, and desperate to pretend that we’re a nice normal family. ’
‘That’s very perceptive of you, Sass. I wish I’d had your awareness when I was your age. It’s taken me this long to even wonder what a normal family is.’
‘One that doesn’t go around all the time pretending that everything is perfect. One that doesn’t need everything to be fucking faultless from morning until night. One that—’
‘You shouldn’t swear.’
‘Oh my god, there you go again. Do you seriously think that your sixteen-year-old daughter doesn’t swear?
And calling me Sass, like we’re some bestie mother-and-daughter duo with cute nicknames for each other.
You have no idea about me, none at all.’ Saskia sits up, puts her arms defensively around her chest. ‘Honestly, how do you think it’s felt to watch my mum go through some sort of breakdown?
You’re having a midlife crisis, fine, you’re going through menopause, fine, but fucking hell, do we have to hear about it all the time?
You’d think your generation invented midlife or something.
Well done, you’ve survived a drop in oestrogen, now would you mind pulling your head out your arse and paying some attention to the rest of us? ’
Olivia makes a bright ‘hmmm’ noise. She knows what she wants to say: that she’s spent most of her life paying attention to the rest of them, that her obsession with everyone else’s self-worth but her own is why she’s had this little public breakdown lately …
but she also knows that saying all of this will only make things ten times worse, and very possibly cut her off from Saskia for another sixteen years.
And as she watches her daughter’s face contort in loathing for her, she realizes that this is not her battle to fight. It’s Saskia’s.
‘That’s pretty bloody wise of you. You know, I’d be angry with me too if I were you.
You’re right that you’re almost an adult, and I should start treating you like one.
’ Olivia shuffles up against the wall of the bed, makes herself comfortable.
‘I only stopped being angry with my mum about five minutes ago, when Lily taught me a valuable lesson about love and family values. It was like being Elsa and Anna, the sisters in Frozen, except without the magic powers or the tragic orphaned backstory.’
Saskia unfolds her arms, looks her mother in the eye for the first time in … months? ‘So nothing like the sisters in Frozen, then,’ she deadpans.
‘No, nothing like the sisters in Frozen,’ nods Olivia. ‘And you really don’t want to hear me singing “Let It Go”.’
‘Not if it’s anything like your Celine Dion renditions in the shower,’ scoffs Saskia.
‘Fair. Anyway, the point is, it’s OK that you hate me right now. It’s your human right to hate me right now. I am going to sit with this hatred, and hold it lovingly until it dissipates into something less hostile.’
‘You could be sitting there for some time.’