July #3
I felt my own lip tremble. ‘We need to talk about last night, the conversation we had over dinner.’
‘OK,’ she said, taking a bite, bits of pastry falling on and around her plate.
‘Would you mind putting that down for a moment?’ I asked, the pitch of my voice rising involuntarily.
Her eyes narrowed in confusion, then widened as they clocked mine flashing towards the Danish. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said, swallowing and wiping at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m not going to leave Noah.’ Suddenly, I felt sick. Even saying the words out loud.
She laughed.
I felt my entire body stiffen, even as my lip continued to tremble. ‘Why is that funny?’
Still laughing and now looking around as if she expected others to be doing the same, she said, ‘Because of course you’re not! Why would you?’
It’s hard to explain how I felt at that moment : hurt, frustrated, embarrassed even. Three feelings I rarely, if ever, associated with my mother. I went to reply, but I was so close to the edge now that the only word I could manage was ‘Mum’.
Her laughter slowed and quietened, then stopped altogether.
A few seconds went by, then I managed to push out a full sentence : ‘I know you might not agree with the way I’m handling things, but it’s the only way I can think to handle them right now.’
‘But I don’t—’
‘Please, Mum.’ I paused. ‘I’ve made up my mind, and I’m going through with it.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know you don’t.’ My eyes were filling with tears, and I widened them to make room. ‘But please don’t tell me to leave him.’
‘Darling!’ She held out her hands, which were trembling too. ‘I would never tell you to leave Noah. I don’t remember saying it. If I did, I … I must have had too much to drink.’
My stomach lurched, but in my desperation not to break down at the table, I ignored it. ‘Right,’ I said, finishing my coffee and slowly pushing my chair back and away.
‘Where are you going?’
I don’t know whether it was because I was standing by this point, but through my blurry vision she looked small and vulnerable.
Another lurch, this one harder to ignore. ‘To pack,’ I said, taking a second, then adding softly : ‘We have to check out by eleven.’
When she looked down at her open hands and started to move her mouth, as if she was replaying our conversation, a single tear spilled over my lower lid, and I quickly wiped it away.
‘Mum?’
She looked up at me, her own eyes watery with worry.
‘There’s no rush, take your time.’
I’ve always hated confrontation, especially with my mother.
I packed as she finished her breakfast, and when she came back upstairs and bundled her own things into her bag, I went to check out.
On the return journey to Bury St Edmunds, I turned on the radio in the hope of reinstating normality.
But the only conversation that took place between us came in the form of my directions.
She pulled into the car park, put on the handbrake, and turned off the engine.
I leant over and kissed her goodbye. I was quiet, but my insides were whirring.
Mostly with the same blend of sadness and frustration I’d felt earlier, but also with worry.
Worry that I might have made a horrible mistake.
Worry that she truly had drunk too much and didn’t remember.
Worry that she hadn’t drunk too much and didn’t remember. Worry about what that meant.
‘Thank you, darling, for such a lovely weekend away.’ Her voice was quieter than usual and a little wobbly.
‘You’re welcome,’ I said, reminding her with a small smile that it was a gift from Noah, too.
‘Of course,’ she said, momentarily lifting her expression before letting it fall again, like it was too great an effort. ‘I am sorry if I said something to upset you.’
My internal whirring rose in volume at the ‘if’, then faded again as a flicker of confusion crept across her face.
She said it again – ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me’ – and turned away, hastily pushing some stray grey hairs from her forehead.
The whirring was muted, and in its place rose a wave of guilt. I felt my cheeks burn with shame. This weekend away was supposed to have been about her ; it was her birthday present. ‘I’m sorry too, Mum.’
She turned back to me then.
‘Please drive safely, and message me when you get home, OK?’
She nodded and said she would. She did.
I remember when I introduced Noah to my parents.
They were coming to London to see a play at the National Theatre, something they did only once or twice a year, and when I told them we’d be next door that night, watching a film at the BFI, they suggested we get together afterwards for a quick dinner.
Throughout the film I felt fidgety, and I recognised it was the kind of fidgetiness that crept up on me before exams and interviews.
I crossed and recrossed my legs, and at one point Noah put a hand on my knee and exerted a small amount of pressure to stop it from jiggling.
He paused, chin lifted, the brightness of the screen reflected on his cheek, and said, No, we’re good.
I must have looked at him questioningly because he explained that he thought he’d felt the rumblings of London’s first serious earthquake. Haha, I said, very funny.
It was almost ten o’clock when we emerged from the low-lit cinema, and my parents usually ate dinner at seven.
Not wanting to delay them any further, I’d booked us a table at a small-chain Italian around the corner.
We arrived first and ordered a bottle of red and some antipasti, and when they walked in ten minutes later, I had a plump green olive stuffed with a blanched almond in my mouth.
When Noah stood up to greet them, he towered over my mother, as he did me, and he even made my father, a tall but skinny man, look a few inches smaller than he was.
He navigated the potentially awkward first-encounter greeting with grace, reaching out to shake my father’s hand and taking hold of my mother’s shoulders as he planted a kiss on each of her cheeks.
I hadn’t told my parents much about him, other than where he’d grown up and what he did for a living.
I definitely hadn’t mentioned the fact that he’d been married before or why that marriage had ended.
When my mother had asked how old he was, I’d said something vague like a few years older than me.
I needn’t have worried. That night, there was barely a pause in conversation.
Noah politely enquired about life in Norfolk and my parents were eager to hear all about his job.
I kept sneaking glances at Noah, expecting his brow to be damp, or his wine glass low, but he was as relaxed as he had been when the two of us first went out for dinner together.
Even when my mother began to talk about a documentary that she and my father had watched recently on the community of Orthodox Jews living in north London, and he told her that sounded interesting but actually his family wasn’t Orthodox, the tone of his voice was even, and he was smiling.
When the food had been eaten, and a second bottle of red had been drunk, we said our goodbyes, already planning a second get-together.
It was the hottest July on record, and as I walked from the Tube station to the clinic, I wondered how the probability of my frozen eggs surviving compared with that of the ice caps.
I was wearing a loose sundress the colour of peach flesh ; it had a V-neck and short sleeves and fell to just below the knee.
I hoped the cotton wouldn’t soak up the bead of sweat that I could feel sliding down my spine.
On my feet was a pair of leather sandals that announced my arrival from a distance.
Whenever I wore them, I would notice people glance up from their phones, intrigued or perhaps even excited by the smart clip on the pavement.
When I was level with them, they would be staring at their screens again. I tried not to take it personally.
In the waiting room, I got talking to a fresh-faced woman with striking blue eyes made even more striking by heavy lids. She told me her mother had given her a round of egg freezing as a thirtieth birthday present.
‘Ah, ill-advised mothers,’ I cringed.
She pursed her lips. ‘I asked for it.’
I tried to conceal my surprise, then excused myself and went to phone my own ill-advised mother.
Just before voicemail kicked in, she answered, her voice chipper.
Like me, though, she seemed distracted, trailing off halfway through sentences.
I asked what she’d been up to in the couple of days that had passed since the weekend, eager to move on from our disagreement, searching for some reassurance about her state of mind maybe.
I hadn’t told Noah about what had gone on at the hotel because I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea.
When she happily filled me in on her weekly Monday evening game of Bridge, and tea with Peggy, I felt my shoulders drop with relief.
‘Cathy?’
I looked up to find Doctor Day standing in front of me, hands clasped together behind his back.
‘Mum, I have to go, I’ll call you later.’
‘OK, have fun, darling.’
I hadn’t told her where I was or what I was doing. If I had, I suspect she would have used a different sign-off.