Chapter 13
‘Yoo-hoo,’ shouted Diane as she barged her way indoors. ‘I’m home!’
No one replied. There were boxes, bags and suitcases strewn all along the length of the hall. She was sure Chloe hadn’t taken this much stuff with her when she’d started university a few short months ago. What had she been doing, going to car-boot sales every weekend? Was that an old slide projector balancing on the hall table, knocking the carefully placed baubles out of the way? Where on earth had she bought that?
Leon had begrudgingly agreed to fetch his daughter when he realised he could use it as an excuse to pop into the Theatre Royal in Brighton and meet up with the director there for a chat. He’d left early that morning to miss the traffic, giving Diane time to put the final touches to the tree in the bay window in the lounge. She’d wrapped lights around it and left them on all day. She knew it was a waste of electricity but she wanted the house to look festive to welcome her daughter back home. She stuck her head round the door. The tree looked fantastic but Leon and Chloe were nowhere to be seen.
She went back into the hall and took her coat off before smoothing her dress down. They must both be in the kitchen, she thought, enticed by the smell of the stew she had put in the slow cooker that morning. Diane had decided Chloe would need comfort food after ten weeks without her mother’s cooking. Stew and dumplings was one of Chloe’s favourites. She couldn’t wait to sit down at the kitchen table with her and hear all about her first term at university whilst they ate good food and drank red wine. Now she could actually feel as if it might be the start of Christmas.
She pushed the kitchen door open and there indeed was Chloe, drinking tea at the table with her feet resting on the knee of an unknown boy, a man, a stranger, in her house, when all she wanted to do was totally monopolise her daughter.
‘Mum,’ said Chloe, leaping up out of her chair and flinging her arms around her. ‘Oh, Mum, so good to see you.’
‘And you,’ replied Diane, closing her eyes and breathing in her daughter’s embrace.
‘This is Bertie,’ said Chloe, pulling away and indicating the stranger at the table. ‘Say hi, Bertie.’
‘Hi,’ grinned Bertie, giving her a little wave.
‘We gave him a lift to London. His parents are up in Derbyshire so he’s getting the train up north in a few days. Dad said it would be OK if he stayed here until then.’
Diane felt stunned. Bertie looked perfectly nice as she watched her daughter curl her arms around his shoulders, but she knew that Bertie would inevitably be getting all of Chloe’s attention when she wanted some of Chloe’s attention now that she was home.
‘Of course,’ said Diane, heading for the kettle so they couldn’t see her face. ‘That would be fine, no problem.’
It was a massive fucking problem.
‘Cup of tea?’ she asked brightly.
‘We’ve just had one,’ said Chloe, ‘but you sit down. I’ll make you one. You’ve been at work all day.’
‘What do you do?’ asked Bertie. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’
Yes I do mind you asking, thought Diane. I hate you asking because I hate what I’m about to say.
‘I work for the council,’ she said. ‘In the accounts team.’
‘Oh, must be very interesting work,’ replied Bertie.
No, it’s fucking hideous, thought Diane. ‘What do you do?’ she asked Bertie.
‘Oh, Mum,’ said Chloe. ‘He’s a student of course. Second year media studies.’
Diane nodded. ‘Media studies?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘I want to be a TV producer,’ he added.
Of course you do, thought Diane, in awe of his youthful optimism. She could do with a bit of that.
‘There you go, Mum,’ said Chloe, putting a mug of tea in front of her and sitting down.
Diane had a million and one questions she wanted to ask her daughter but not really in front of this stranger. It would sound like the third degree and she didn’t want to come across like that. She sipped her tea and looked round awkwardly.
‘So how have you been, Mum?’ asked Chloe.
For fuck’s sake, thought Diane. I don’t want to tell my daughter in front of Bertie that my life pretty much sucks at the moment. That work is utter shit, that I’ve got to make someone redundant and that home life sucks too because my husband is never here and when he is, he’s always distracted to the point that I think he might be having an affair, and I feel like a terrible person because I haven’t rung my mother in at least three weeks and I haven’t bought nearly enough Christmas presents and we will have to go to a real-life supermarket in Christmas week, and it’s all going to be an absolute disaster.
‘I’ve been fine, thank you,’ she said tightly. ‘Fine.’
‘Oh, Dad says to tell you that he’ll be back around nine.’
‘Nine!’ exclaimed Diane. ‘What do you mean, nine? There are no performances on a Monday.’
Chloe shrugged. ‘He just said he had to go somewhere and to tell you that he’d be back around nine.’
Diane looked at the slow cooker bubbling away in the corner of the room and the bottle of red wine she’d got ready. Her wonderfully cosy family dinner, the first in ten weeks, had just gone up in smoke.
‘Right,’ she muttered. She looked up at Bertie. ‘Well, at least you can have his stew.’
He looked immediately uncomfortable.
‘Is it your special stew?’ asked Chloe.
‘Yes,’ said Diane. ‘I made it specially.’
‘That’s lovely, Mum, but Bertie is a vegetarian.’
Diane nodded. Of course he was. She couldn’t help it: her brain immediately went to the fridge to work out what vegetarian options there might be. Cheese toastie or boiled egg were all she could muster up, given she hadn’t bothered with a supermarket delivery in a long time.
‘You don’t need to feed me,’ Bertie grinned. ‘Honestly. I’ll grab something when we go out.’
‘You’re going out?’
‘Yeah,’ said Chloe. ‘Sara and Jess are already back. We’re meeting them down the pub at seven.’
‘Right,’ nodded Diane. ‘Of course. No problem.’
It was a problem, of course, of epic proportions. She’d been excited all day about finally having a shred of family life back that evening. The three of them around the kitchen table, sharing their lives over the last ten weeks, laughing, smiling, hugging. For Christ’s sake, this evening had even made her excited about Christmas for the first time this season. Having the three of them together for Christmas had given her a shred of festive joy and now it was in ruins.
She looked up. Chloe had her feet on Bertie’s knee again and he was gently stroking her leg whilst she stroked the back of his neck. This looked serious. Having said that, she was pretty much like this with her sixth-form college boyfriend, and that had all ended very abruptly after they’d been interrailing.
‘So I’ve mentioned it to Dad,’ said Chloe, ‘but I’ve been invited up to Bertie’s for Christmas. All his family will be there and I’ll only be gone Christmas Eve to the day after Boxing Day, and Dad said he’s working every day apart from Christmas Day. He said Christmas Day is always a bit of a wipe-out anyway, so he’d prefer a quiet one and we could do Christmas another day, couldn’t we?’
Diane stared at Chloe. She would have liked to say she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but she could. Of course her daughter wanted to be with this exciting new man for Christmas and not her miserable boring mother and father. Quite frankly, if Diane had a choice she wouldn’t spend Christmas here either.
She looked at Chloe, who was so flushed with youth and love it was scary. She looked so unbelievably happy.
‘Of course,’ said Diane. ‘That’s fine. Now I’ll just nip upstairs and get changed. Excuse me a minute.’
Diane left the room. A tear trickled down her cheek. She dashed upstairs and locked herself in the ensuite, putting the toilet lid down and sinking onto it, then putting her head in her hands. She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear the thought of Christmas, not without her daughter there to bring some sense of joy of being together. Some sense of ceremony that they would play out. The happy family all back together for Christmas. What would even be the point of getting up on Christmas Day if Chloe wasn’t here? She could see the day looming in front of her. Leon would lie in until lunchtime, feigning exhaustion from his very difficult and distracting job in the theatre. Traditional Christmas lunch would be pointless. Leon didn’t like turkey; she didn’t like Brussels sprouts – and since she would be the one expected to cook it then why should she or would she? Why on earth would she bother? She’d have to get herself a cheese toasty and open the fizz on her own at 1p.m., then settle in front of the telly until Leon finally appeared in his dressing gown, having apologised for not getting her a Christmas present because of his terribly difficult and distracting job in the theatre. He’d ask when lunch was and she wouldn’t know what to say to him she’d be so angry at the assumption that she would still be cooking his dinner despite the fact that Chloe was not there. Then he’d go to the kitchen, grab some crisps and the bottle of whisky, and ask if he could put The Railway Children on. His favourite movie to watch at Christmas and one that made her want to slit her wrists.
It would be the most depressing day she would ever spend. All she’d wanted was a day with her family, and all she was going to get was a day with her husband taking her for granted as he always did.
Still, she thought, trying to gather herself. She pulled off some toilet roll and blew her nose. Good job she hadn’t ordered a big Christmas delivery from the supermarket. Sounded like she might be able to get Christmas dinner from the local petrol station. A sandwich meal deal for two!