Chapter 26 #2
Heather stands behind the blue curtain as her mother dresses.
She wonders about the next steps, escorting her mum through the corridors, helping her into her car, driving her home.
Small things for a typical mother-daughter relationship, but enormous, almost insurmountable things for them.
In some ways it seems as though there is so much to say.
In others, the past fifteen years are irrelevant.
Heather allows her mum to slip her arm through hers as they walk slowly along the corridors, speaking only to discuss the shortest route, the location of the hospital shop and whether milk is needed at home.
She helps her into the passenger seat of the car, re-positioning the backrest to give her mother as much leg room as possible.
It’s only once she pulls out of the car park that her mother begins to speak.
‘There’s so much I’ve wanted to say to you over the years,’ she says.
Heather feels tears prick at her eyes.
‘Me too,’ she says through her clenched throat.
Her mother allows silence to fall as Heather navigates a set of traffic lights followed by a tight right-hand turn.
‘How’s Georgia?’
‘Good. Great. At university. Doing all the typical things. Drinking too much, falling in love, ditching her friends.’
She can see her mother nodding by the light of the streetlamps.
‘University,’ she says wistfully. ‘My word.’
Heather knows how she, as a mother herself, would react to hearing that her granddaughter had grown from a pre-schooler to a freshman and she had been absent throughout.
She would think of all the birthdays, holidays, school plays, report cards and dance performances she had missed.
The mere anticipation of it breaks Heather’s heart, so how her mother must be feeling when this is her reality feels utterly overwhelming.
‘Will you tell her I said hello?’ Her mother’s voice is gravelly.
Heather keeps her eyes on the road. They are turning into the cul de sac where her parents live.
‘I’ll tell her, mum. Don’t you worry,’ she says. It surprises Heather to think that she probably will tell Georgia about her grandmother when she next sees her.
‘Do you want me to help you to the door?’ Heather says as she pulls up outside the house. The security light activates, flooding the garden and the distinctive red front door with harsh light.
‘Probably best not to this time, pet,’ her mother says.
Heather remains in the car, her stomach a knot of contradictions, until her mother knocks on the door and Doreen lets her in.
As she pulls away from the kerb a message comes in from Claire.
"Open water swimming next week, then? I’ll be there."
Heather had momentarily forgotten about the invitation she had extended to her best friend. She replies with a thumbs up emoji and slowly retraces the route home.
SCOTT
He’s meant to be working, but Scott can’t help but inspect the phone in his hand. Heather declined one of his calls last week and today she gave his text wishing her a good time at the open swimming lesson tomorrow a thumbs up.
It was an enormous risk getting her, a woman he hardly knew at the time, a present which was so left field.
But her initial response, her determination to give something new a try, and her gratitude and humour when she opened it, had convinced him he’d made a good call.
Now he’s not so sure. A few weeks ago, Heather would have replied to a message like that with an extensive paragraph or a voice note outlining her feelings in detail.
An emoji response feels like a kick in the testicles.
Is she being intentionally standoffish, or has he been a fool not to acknowledge something has changed before now?
Firstly, their daughters’ relationship has been much more muted since Christmas. He’s lost count of the number of times Brianna has called, upset about her disintegrating relationship with Georgia. Last night was a case in point.
‘Can I come to see you, dad?’ she asked. ‘I think I’m the only one in the whole university who doesn’t have weekend plans.’
He’d said yes, of course, despite wondering if Brianna might be better staying on campus and sweating it out.
That’s one clear indication of Heather’s influence on him.
He’s becoming soft in his parenting. Have other things changed?
Heather always seems keen enough to see him and, when they do meet up, their time together is electric.
But he’s never addressed Lorraine’s calls.
Might his inability to explain them have driven a wedge between them?
And did she pick up on his jealousy about Gerry?
He’d tried to cover it up when they last spoke, but it was as though all the warning signs were screaming at him from the distance.
He knows Heather doesn’t fancy Gerry; but something feels compromised, nonetheless.
He’d probably be a better overall match for her: common interests, living in the same place, and he’s got no baggage other than loving Heather from the margins for the past twenty years.
Scott’s no fool. He knows that jealousy implies attachment, and it is this – attachment – which he must avoid at all costs.
To hell with it all. If she wants him, she can call. He texts Brianna with details about where to meet later, switches his phone off, turns it screen down and returns to his quotation.
***
Brianna falls into his arms in a flurry of blond curls and a blast of Valentino perfume. He feels her rib cage shudder as they hug.
‘It’s all gone to shit, dad,’ she says.
It’s unusual for Brianna to ask him for relationship advice and although he relishes the closeness this implies, he feels completely out of his depth.
Here’s where she needs a mother, or an aunt, or a female stand-in at the very least, because this feels like the kind of knotty relationship problem only another woman can help Brianna navigate.
But with Heather playing it cool (and how appropriate would it be for her to advise when her own daughter’s at the heart of the problem?) and her aunt in Stratford, he’s the best that Brianna's got.
He knows he needs to be careful not to overly dramatize the situation.
For all their sakes. Teenage girls fall in and out of love for a pastime, and friendships wax and wane.
‘Give it time. She’s your closest friend. I’m sure she’ll calm things down once she’s got over this initial flurry with Todd,’ he’d advised previously.
But now, several weeks on, he’s beginning to think that Brianna’s been played. Loving – even a friend – can lead to devastation when the relationship peters out and falters.
He takes her to a local coffee shop and buys her a ridiculous pumpkin spiced something-or-other topped with mountains of whipped cream, a sickly-sweet toffee syrup and - to top it all - nuts. It’s like diabetes in a cup. But he knows now (thanks Heather!) not to comment.
Brianna scoops up the nutty white and brown topping with a wooden spoon.
She gets a dollop of cream on the end of her nose which makes him think of when she was nine years old and he, Brianna and Lucy were at a winter market and eating sugar encrusted warm cinnamon doughnuts.
Is Lucy looking down on them right now, willing him to get this right?
He takes a mouthful of peppermint tea (another of Heather’s influences) and winces as the super-heated liquid scalds the back of his throat.
‘So, dad,’ Brianna says sitting forward in her bucket chair and tapping his knee. ‘Tell me what to do.’
Scott’s job is all about mathematical process, advice and risk, but sadly the same parameters cannot be applied to relationships. Here, the rules are much more spurious.
‘Well, love. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, but there’s not much I can suggest other than what we said last week.
Leave Georgia to it, focus on your friendship with Trey, and try to widen your social circle.
If Georgia wants nothing to do with you, then so be it.
I’m not sure there’s much else you can do.
Georgia needs to make these decisions for herself.
Your job, as her friend, is to be there when it all falls to pieces and then to talk to her about how she might do a better job in the future of maintaining your friendship whilst also being with a boy. ’
Brianna’s lips turn inwards.
‘I guessed you’d say that.’
It’s a painful watch. Scott has brought his daughter up to be strong, resilient and independent, but despite his best efforts, it doesn’t seem to have protected her from getting hurt.
Something, a sense of despondency and inadequacy, drives him to pull his phone from his pocket when Brianna heads for the loo.
He knows she will take a while primping and preening at the mirrors and that he has sufficient time for a quick text.
The conversation with Brianna, his invasive thoughts about Lucy, and Heather’s pulling back have all spurred him into action he has resisted for months.
He finds his sister-in-law’s number and texts her.
"Be good to meet. Next weekend? Can you get yourself to London?"
A neutral place feels good if he is to have this out.
Lorraine replies with: "St Pancras Station, under the destination boards, 12:30pm on Saturday. Can’t wait."
He slips his phone into his pocket when he sees Brianna returning to their table.
They finish their drinks and he distracts Brianna with shopping in Glasgow’s city centre, followed by a visit to his flat, then a trip to the cinema. By the time she needs to leave, Brianna seems more centred, more at peace.
‘Thanks dad,’ she says when he drops her off at the train station for her return journey, ‘You’re the best.’
She doesn’t even add given the circumstances.