Chapter 3
HEATHER
‘What the hell was that about?’ Georgia drags Heather back into her room and closes the door behind them. Her cheeks are aflame. ‘Do you want to wreck this for me from the very beginning, Mum?’
Every cell in Heather’s body activates. Everything buzzes. The fear of falling from the kitchen cabinet, the shock of finding a strange man’s hands on her bottom, the realisation that it was him, have left her in a total mess. And his daughter is suddenly Georgia’s new bff? It’s all too much.
She moves Georgia’s hair straighteners and voluminous make-up bag to the side and plonks herself onto the bed.
‘Honey. I’m sorry. But what are the options? You’re sharing a kitchen with seven complete strangers. How else are you going to let them know you’ve got a serious allergy?’
Georgia flicks her hair from her face and does a dramatic Kardashian-esque eye roll.
‘It is NOT a serious allergy, Mum.’
And there it is, the source of tension between them all these years. Georgia ignoring unpalatable truths, and Heather scurrying around at the fringes of her life trying, sometimes without effect, to keep her daughter safe.
‘How can you even say that, Gee?’ Will using her childhood nickname soften what’s about to come? ‘That time you kissed Bobby Price, you nearly died.’
‘I did not nearly die. I just needed my EpiPen.’
How do teenagers do that? Turn a one syllable word into a bullet? The word die nearly punctures Heather’s belly. Georgia stands over her with her hands on her size six hips, her eyes blazing.
‘You can’t do that, Mum. You just can’t.’
Heather narrows her eyes. ‘So what? What’s the alternative?’
‘I don’t know …. I’ll use my words. Just like you’ve taught me since I was two. I’ll go up to my new flatmates and I’ll say, “Guys, I don’t do nuts. Any chance of keeping them in your room?” And that will be that.’
‘In their rooms? But how’s that an option? Remember that train journey to London? We had to get off at York and rush you—’
But the sentence is left incomplete. Because Georgia extends her flat palm in front of Heather’s face.
‘Whatever, Mum. Whatever. I’ll sort it. Okay? Trust me.’
Heather leans back against the wall, knowing she has no choice other than to accept defeat.
She also knows that she will now need to be constantly prepared for a middle-of-the-night phone call, demanding she handles a preventable crisis that has escalated into a catastrophe, all because she was ignored.
And Heather will need to pull a thick winter coat on over her pyjamas, grab her car keys, drive for two hours (one and a half if she is creative with the speed limit) and get herself up the road to solve the problem.
No wonder her chances of needing anti-depressants by the end of the year is so high.
The pulse in Heather’s neck is already racing after only two hours.
Multiply that by twenty-four hours each day, seven days each week and thirty weeks of the academic year, and you’ve got a high chance of cardiac arrest by mid-June.
Which, of course, will give Brianna’s dad no end of pleasure.
And for some reason, that’s even more of an affront to Heather than her inevitable health crisis. Bizarre.
Georgia’s face pales as she lets out a long, exasperated breath.
‘Look, Mum. Can we start again? I’m going into the kitchen to take those notices down, then maybe we can set up my room together. Would that be okay?’
Heather knows a peace offering when she hears one. And there’s so much to do. Boxes and bags litter every conceivable surface.
‘That would be lovely, darling. Yes, let’s do that.’
She can do that, right? She’s single through choice and her only child is leaving her soon.
It’s important they leave on good terms. Heather stands, Georgia takes a step towards her, and they hug.
Heather tries to absorb the very essence of her daughter.
She won’t get any more hugs like this for weeks.
‘I love you, Mum,’ Georgia says.
Grief at the thought of leaving her today seizes Heather’s throat. Her baby. All grown up. Leaving home.
Shit.
The tears are threatening.
Deflect, deflect.
Heather turns away from her daughter and looks at the butt print on the bed, created just a moment ago.
‘Gosh,’ she says, ‘this bed’s lumpy. Good job you’ve got that mattress topper.’
SCOTT
‘Listen. They’re fighting!’
He’s like a nosy neighbour in an exaggerated American sitcom with a glass pressed up against the partition wall.
‘Dad. Get your ear away from there,’ Brianna hisses.
Scott does as requested and fights to regain his position as the cool, not embarrassing parent.
‘Yeah. Sorry. Right,’ he says. Not eloquent at all. But at least he isn’t putting bloody notices up and bossing everyone else around in his daughter’s new flat. Lack of dynamic vocabulary, he can live with.
Brianna stops unpacking and stares out the window.
The flat may be placed in an idyllic spot on the seafront, but her room faces the parking courtyard.
Swarms of people are carrying numerous boxes of superfluous items into the student houses.
If you listened to what those helicopter parents on the online parents' forum said, you’d fill an entire van with paraphernalia for a first-year student.
Apparently, some have.
‘I don’t seem to have as much stuff as everyone else,’ Brianna says.
‘What, you think you’re missing out on bringing your childhood cuddly teddy or a cushion with your dog’s face printed on it?’ Scott asks.
People do that, by the way. So their DS or DD (!) won’t get homesick, apparently.
One parent even shared an image of an “In Case You Need This” box on the chat last week.
It was a decorated shoe box containing little messages.
“In case you’re getting poorly”: one envelope read.
Inside was some paracetamol and some throat lozenges.
Another read, “In case you’re feeling tired”: and inside were ear plugs, an eye mask and a sachet of Sleepy Time Tea.
Bloody ridiculous. Scott would put money on the crazy lady next door, with the petite frame and the feisty eyes, spending hours assembling such a box for Georgia.
Scott came to university alone with a rucksack on his back and nothing more.
Surely, all this fussing is not only unnecessary, but also unhealthy?
As an actuary, it is his job to assess and mitigate risk.
Experience tells him that people need to make their own mistakes in life, if they’re to learn for themselves.
The way you show a young person you love them, in Scott’s book, is to let them loose.
Of course, support them on their way, but this helicopter parenting is not, in his opinion, good for anyone.
It leaves young people with no internal risk filters of their own.
Developing resilience, Scott knows for sure, is what Brianna needs in life right now.
Brianna turns her back on him and begins putting shirts onto coat hangers, an essential which, thankfully, she’d remembered to pack. There’s no way Scott would have thought of coat hangers, and he really doesn’t fancy a trip into town to shop.
‘Well, maybe something would’ve been nice.’
Brianna’s voice is small and childlike and her blue eyes, so like his own, take on a glassy appearance. An alarm bell goes off in Scott’s head. Has he pitched this wrong? His strong, independent, competent daughter, who chose a university three hundred miles from home, is wobbling?
‘Hey, love, you don’t need all that stuff, do you?’
Brianna sniffs, something her mother only did when upset or triggered by an intolerance. ‘Nah, you’re right. I’m okay.’
‘Well, remember, I’m staying in town tonight. So, we’ll meet for breakfast tomorrow and if there’s anything you need, we can get it then. I’ll have a few hours before I need to get the bus to the airport.’
‘You could do one thing for me,’ Brianna says, with a look in her eye that Scott knows means a cheeky request is coming his way.
‘What’s that?’
‘You could leave the key.’
Brianna nods towards the key to his MG on her work bench.
Scott scoops it up, places it into the pocket of his leather jacket and zips it up.
‘No way, José,’ he says.
Brianna’s eyes lose their glimmer, and her hands move to her hips.
‘Dad, you’re being ridiculous. You can’t say I’m old enough to make decisions about things, then ban me from driving.’
This old thing. He rolls his eyes.
‘You know the deal, Brianna, and you know why. No driving until you’re twenty-one. Everything else you’re trusted with and is on the table. Driving is most definitely off it.’
Brianna purses her lips. She knows defeat when she sees it.