Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
I was almost home when my phone rang.
I debated not answering it – I was exhausted, and all I wanted was to make myself some toast and fall into bed, possibly via a hot bath.
But then I thought it could be Sam.
Sam rarely called me; he almost always texted, unless it was some kind of emergency. But that was when we were together, speaking and seeing each other every day. When we were a couple. Now that we weren’t, the rules of engagement might have changed.
I snatched my phone out of my bag and saw with sinking disappointment that the name on the screen wasn’t Sam’s.
It was my mother’s.
She, too, rarely called me – in fact, we rarely contacted each other at all unless it was to arrange one of our occasional tense, duty-driven meet-ups.
It was too early for her to make plans for Christmas – plans I’d intended to avoid by being away on holiday somewhere with Sam.
Now, I wouldn’t have that excuse. My birthday was in March, so she definitely couldn’t be calling about that, and hers had passed in July, when I’d last visited her.
God. Maybe something was wrong. Perhaps she was ill or had had some kind of accident. Reluctantly, my stomach twisting with anxiety and guilt, I answered the call.
‘Gigi.’ She said my name and then nothing more, but I could hear her breathing, fast and ragged.
‘Mum? Are you all right? Has something happened?’
‘I need to see you,’ she gasped.
To see me? It was almost eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening. Not late, obviously, but by the time I’d got across London to Bayswater and then back, it would be.
‘Of course,’ I said brightly. ‘That would be lovely. Shall we make a plan for tomorrow, maybe? Or the weekend? We could have lunch together in town.’
‘No.’ I heard that rasping breath again. She sounded as if she was hyperventilating, and I began to worry. ‘I need to see you tonight.’
My anxiety dialled up a notch. There was no point asking her again what the problem was – she wanted to see me and that was that. If I argued, I’d end up feeling terrible about it and going anyway. And I’d feel particularly terrible if it turned out something bad had happened to her.
‘I’ll be there in about an hour,’ I said. ‘Sooner if I can.’
‘Be quick, Gigi.’ Her voice faded away as she ended the call.
Thoughts of my early night and relaxing bath forgotten, I turned and retraced my steps back to the station, taking one Tube line and then another until I eventually emerged at Mum’s stop.
I rushed up the stairs to street level and hurried along the pavement, dodging slower pedestrians as I raced towards her flat.
Throughout the journey, possible scenarios had been turning over in my mind, each more worrying than the last. Mum had been diagnosed with some awful disease.
Mum, her bones weakened from a lifetime of rigid dieting, had had a fall and was lying there in her flat, helpless and needing an ambulance.
Mum had somehow lost all her savings, her flat was being repossessed and she was going to have to move in with me.
It made me feel even worse that this last possibility was the one that worried me the most.
I knocked on the door, dreading what I was about to see. But she opened it herself – she was upright; she didn’t look ill.
Just utterly distraught. Her make-up was smeared from crying.
Her normally sleek hair was dishevelled as if she’d been raking her hands through it.
There was a scarlet stain on the front of her top that I thought at first might be blood and only realised from the smell when I reached out to hug her was in fact nail polish.
‘I thought you weren’t coming!’ she accused. ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting.’
‘Mum,’ I reasoned. ‘You know how long it takes me to get here.’
‘I’m just fifteen minutes from Mayfair,’ she snapped, like I was an estate agent trying to argue down the asking price of her flat.
‘I wasn’t in Mayfair,’ I explained patiently. ‘I work there, but I was almost back at home.’
‘Why you thought it was a good idea to buy a property in Hackney I’ll never understand.’
Now that I was here, the vulnerability I’d sensed when she called me was gone, replaced with her familiar hardness. I felt the usual resentment filling in the space my ebbing concern had left.
‘Maybe we don’t argue about the most desirable area of London to live in, and you tell me what’s wrong?’ I suggested.
As if responding to a stage cue, she started crying again. ‘You’d better come in.’
I followed her into the flat. The normally tidy interior was littered with her belongings – opened packing boxes spewed their contents over the sofa; a suitcase lay on the floor, its lid gaping open to reveal a tangle of old clothes; the coffee table and dining table were covered with folders, envelopes and what looked like vintage magazines.
Where does she keep all this stuff normally? I wondered. The flat was small and as far as I could tell had limited storage, and I’d never thought of Mum as a hoarder.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked as gently as I could. ‘Are you moving? Do you need a hand sorting through all this? Because I’m not sure now’s the best time to start.’
‘Get me a drink, Gigi.’ Mum pushed a photo album off the sofa and onto the floor, where it fell open, and flopped down as if her legs could no longer support her. ‘There’s gin and tonic in the fridge.’
Obediently, I went through to the kitchen – which was immaculate as ever – and poured us both a drink. Apparently, she needed one, and, as I was pouring it, I realised I did too.
When I returned, she’d picked up the photograph album and now had it open on her lap. The pictures inside had faded with time, and some of them had come adrift from the pages, the glue that had held them dried out.
‘Look.’ She almost snatched the glass from me and took a long swallow, pushing the album from her knees to mine as I sat down.
The photograph had been blown up so it occupied an entire page – or would have done if it hadn’t been askew, held only by one corner so its edges extended beyond the borders of the album.
It showed a man and a woman, arm in arm, beaming at the camera.
Her dress was white lace, and a veil covered her hair.
He was wearing a dark suit and had a carnation in his buttonhole.
It was the first time I’d ever seen a picture of my parents on their wedding day.
‘We were so happy,’ Mum went on. ‘So much in love. That frock was made for me. I had to get it let out at the last minute because – well, because of you. But still, your father said I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.’
‘You looked lovely,’ I said carefully. ‘He must have been very proud.’
‘The dress is in that suitcase.’ She pulled a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes. ‘I used to dream of you wearing it one day. Before all the memories were tarnished.’
I’d never known the memories not to be tarnished – I’d never known that my parents even had fond memories of their wedding day. This was the first time the idea of me wearing the dress had ever come up – a relief because if it had, I’d have had to think of a way to tactfully refuse.
‘Mum,’ I said, ‘why are you looking at all this stuff now? Why’ve you even kept it? Surely none of it matters any more?’
She looked at me, her hollow cheeks wet with tears. ‘I just found out he’s getting married again. To the latest in his string of floozies.’
Her news silenced me. Dad’s series of girlfriends – the women who’d come and (usually quite rapidly) gone in his life, some of whom I’d quite liked but most of whom had never meant much to me, mostly because I was too wary of their probable transience to get attached to them – had never been more than a peripheral presence.
And it was so long since I’d seen him that I wasn’t sure I even knew the latest one’s name.
‘He hasn’t even told you, has he? Emily she’s called.’ She spat out the name as if it had a foul taste. ‘She’s only forty, you know. She could easily have a baby and that’d be your inheritance down the tubes.’
‘I honestly don’t care about that. She’s welcome to it.’
That was true. Whatever my father had – property or savings or stocks and shares – he might as well leave to the local cats’ home as far as I was concerned. I’d even have preferred that. And if he had another child, the local cats were more likely to feel deprived than I was.
‘Of course,’ Mum went on as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘he only told me because he wanted something.’
‘What? To hurt you?’ I asked. ‘Because it looks like he’s done that.’
If she realised that her injured feelings would be seen as a victory by my father, she was more likely to get over them quickly.
‘Oh no, not that. That bastard can’t hurt me any more.’ That was blatantly untrue, and she was clearly trying to convince herself more than me. ‘It was the ring he wanted.’
‘What ring?’ Puzzled, I cast my mind back. I couldn’t remember Mum ever wearing an engagement ring, only the plain gold wedding band that she’d removed after their divorce and had melted down and made into earrings.
Surely my father wouldn’t have wanted that?
‘The engagement ring that was his mother’s. The cheek of it. He rang me and told me he wanted it back, after all these years. Like it was still his to give to this Emily like he gave it to me.’
‘Oh.’ I felt a fleeting moment of sadness, remembering how close I’d been to my grandfather before his death. He’d given the ring to the woman he’d loved and been happy with for thirty years, but who’d died before I was born. ‘And did you? Give it back to him, I mean?’
‘I wouldn’t have if I could.’ She sounded almost triumphant. ‘But I can’t. I haven’t got it any more. I gave it to Sam, a few weeks ago.’