‘Oh, come on,’ Viv says, ‘just give it a try. I mean, who knows you better than us?’
‘We’ve known you for twenty years,’ Kirsty points out.
‘That’s sixty years’ combined experience of Alice Sweet,’ Ingrid says with a throaty laugh.
I crunch a pink-flecked meringue. Kirsty is right; the combination of heady strawberries, and the chewy sweetness of the meringue, are a perfect match. ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘I’ll give it a try.’
‘Brilliant,’ Ingrid exclaims.
‘We’ll start thinking of candidates,’ Viv announces as everyone starts babbling excitedly. ‘My God! You might even love them all …’
I laugh, buoyed up by the wine and being with the women I love most. ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘but let’s hope they’re not too appalled when they meet me.’
‘They’ll think you’re gorgeous,’ Viv declares, shaking her head. ‘God, Alice, what’s wrong with you? Have some
belief
in yourself.’
‘Now, Alice, I’ve been thinking about your weight,’ my mother announces as the boys and I arrive on her doorstep next morning. It’s a thing with Mum – my appearance, I mean. Considering her fierce intelligence – until her recent retirement she was a university professor of Medieval Studies – she places an awful lot of emphasis on how people look. It’s probably why I’m wearing my favourite skirt and top, plus a cardi I absolutely love; cashmere, in a beautiful deep-raspberry shade, bought for my last birthday by Ingrid.
‘Have you, Mum? I’m kind of fine with the way I am,’ I say as the three of us follow her into her ancient, low-slung cottage. It stands alone, as if sulking, in the treeless landscape of the North Lanarkshire moorlands and seems to sag in the middle, as if someone has sat on it.
‘Well,’ she goes on, smoothing back her pewter-flecked hair which she wears in a long, low ponytail, ‘I just thought you might be interested in this diet I cut out for you. You know, if you wanted to lose a few pounds.’
Logan suppresses a snigger as we blink in the gloom of her kitchen.
‘What sort of diet is it?’ I ask pleasantly.
The one where you exist on some terrible, fart-making soup? Or staple your mouth shut and eat nothing at all?
‘Oh, I’ve got it here somewhere …’ She frowns and starts flicking through mountains of ratty old paperwork on the gnarled oak table. We’ve been here for less than five minutes and already I can sense a vein throbbing violently in my forehead. It’s my fault; I should have spent the forty-minute drive mentally revving myself up into the sparkling game-show hostess persona that’s required on these occasions, instead of berating the boys for moaning about visiting Grandma. ‘It’s my
Sunday
,’ Logan kept lamenting, as if he’d been slaving away at the coalface all week. ‘I was gonna do stuff.’
‘I don’t mind going,’ Fergus conceded, ‘but we’re not staying long, are we? Like, we’re not gonna be there
all day
?’
And now it’s too late. I’m gritting my teeth in defensiveness, while trying to reassure myself that being a size twelve is actually fine, at my age – at any age, in fact. We’re hardly talking morbidly obese. But then, I have never matched up to Mum’s expectations of what a daughter should be. She couldn’t understand why I never gleaned the clutch of A grades that had come so easily to her; the fact that I enjoyed drawing, baking and simply
playing
as a child left her utterly baffled. I don’t blame her especially – she’s just made that way – and, thankfully, she’s a little warmer to her grandsons.
As Logan and Fergus install themselves on the scuffed leather sofa beneath the kitchen window, Mum continues her search for a snippet of paper which will save me from a gastric bypass operation. Newspapers are piled up on wonky wooden chairs, and bookshelves are crammed with formidable tomes, all dusty and sticky with kitchen grease in which
evr’thing is spellte lyke this
. Finding her library oddly fascinating, Fergus selects one from a shelf.
‘What does this mean, Grandma?’ he asks, proceeding to read in a grand, theatrical voice: ‘“Tehee, quod she and clapte the window to!”’
‘Hang on a minute, love,’ she says distractedly.
‘I think it means he’s telling her to shut the window,’ I venture.
‘But why?’
‘Um, maybe it’s draughty …’
‘Yeah, but what’s the “tehee” bit about?’ Fergus wants to know.
I glance at Mum in the hope that she’ll stop excavating the paperwork and answer him. ‘I think she’s laughing at someone,’ I say, bobbing down to help her gather up a heap of yellowing journals which have slid off the table in a dusty heap.
Fergus frowns. ‘Is it meant to be funny?’
‘What’s that, Fergus?’ my mother asks.
‘Mum was just translating something Medieval for us,’ Logan says with a smirk.
‘Was she?’ Mum chuckles. ‘Good luck with that, Alice. It’s not like you to take an interest in my library.’ I form a rictus grin. Mum is of the impression that I can barely manage to read anything more taxing than
Grazia
, which these days isn’t too far from the truth.
Having dumped the book on the table, Fergus pulls something from his jeans pocket. ‘Look, Grandma – I’ve got a translator.’
‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you’re taking an interest in language, Fergus.’
‘Yes,’ I say quickly, ‘but it doesn’t speak Medieval. In fact it doesn’t make much sense at all. Please put it away, darling.’
Before it starts squawking about rape …
‘Ah – here it is, I knew I’d kept it safe for you.’ Mum brandishes a scrap of paper as if it’s a treasure hunt clue and presses it into my hand.
‘Thank you, Mum.’
‘Let me know how you get on …’
‘Of course I will.’ If I’m not too sodding fat to stagger to the telephone …
‘Anyway,’ she says, visibly relieved now, ‘I thought I’d do burgers for lunch, okay, boys? That’s what you like best, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, that’s great, Grandma,’ Fergus says dutifully. I drop my gaze to the diet. In fact, it isn’t newfangled; rather, it appears to have been snipped out of a Medieval copy of
Woman’s Own
.
Breakfast: half banana, black tea/coffee.
Lunch: One spoon cottage cheese, 4 Tuc biscuits.
Dinner: Tinned hot dog sausage (NO BREAD), unlimited green beans.
As Mum clatters around, managing to locate a frying pan in a jam-packed cupboard, I scrunch up the diet into a tight ball in my fist. I know I’m being churlish but I can’t help it.
‘I hear your father’s taking a holiday soon,’ Mum is telling me now. ‘An Easter holiday, like one a year isn’t good enough for him.’ She extracts a clear plastic carton of burgers from the fridge.
‘Really? I hadn’t heard. Where are they going?’
‘Penzance!’ she exclaims, in a voice more suited to ‘the Maldives’.
‘Well,’ I say carefully, ‘maybe you should have a holiday too. A change of scene might be good for you.’
She frowns, assessing my apparently ballooning figure. ‘Who would I go with?’
‘Mum, you have plenty of friends. I’m sure Penny or Joan would love to go away with you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says crossly.
A small silence descends as she lights the gas ring with a dented silver wand and sloshes yellow oil from a large unlabelled bottle into the pan.
‘When are we going home?’ Fergus mouths at me.
‘Never,’ I hiss, prompting him to mime a throat-cutting motion.
‘Please, Mum,’ he mouths back.
I shake my head and whisper,
‘You will die here
.’
Mum turns back to us from the cooker. ‘I’m afraid I’m not doing chips, boys. Can’t be doing with all that fat.’
‘That’s fine, Grandma,’ Logan mutters.
‘Oh, I brought you these,’ I say in an overly perky voice, lifting the tin of meringues from my bag and removing the lid. ‘I’ve been testing new flavours. You can give me your verdict if you like.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ she says, wincing as if I might have expelled them out of my bottom.
‘I thought you might like the chocolate ones. I made them specially.’
She forces a tight smile. ‘So, as I was saying, it’s all right for your father and his fancy woman to swan off here, there and everywhere at the drop of a hat …’
‘Uh-huh,’ I murmur, unwilling to be drawn into a character assassination of Dad right now. Okay, he left Mum for another woman – Brenda McPhail who, with her reedy ex-husband, ran a dump of a pub on the moors called The Last Gasp (we are not talking gastro-pub, although they do stock a fine range of pork scratchings). Understandably, Mum was horrified; she’d had not an inkling that anything had been going on. In his holey sweaters and faded jumbo cords, Dad – an academic like Mum – hardly seemed capable of sparking a scandal among the sparse community in this blasted landscape. But eight months ago, he and Brenda hotfooted it to Devon, where they now keep chickens and goats. Although he’s rarely in touch, I can’t bring myself to hate him for it. After decades of Mum pointing out his failings, perhaps Brenda made him realise he didn’t have to live out the rest of his years feeling like a colossal disappointment after all.
Mum slices open four rolls on the cluttered worktop. ‘Can I help you with anything?’ I ask, conscious of hovering ineffectually.
‘No, it’s fine.’
A tense silence descends, and I glance at my boys, both of whom are slumped on the sofa as if awaiting an unpleasant medical procedure. At times like this, I’d give anything for a sibling to share some of this. As it is, I feel guilty if we don’t visit, and guilty when we do – for dragging my boys here and because, in truth, I’d dearly love to be somewhere else too. In fact, coming here is
more
guilt-making than staying at home.
Plus, I’m annoyed with myself for not having the gumption to say,
Please stop badmouthing the boys’ granddad in front of them. It’s really not what we came here for.
‘Logan’s exams are coming up,’ I remark, sensing myself ageing rapidly, like a speeded-up film of the lifecycle of a rose. By the time we leave, I’ll be entirely withered.
‘I’m sure you’ll do well,’ Mum remarks. ‘You’ve always been a very bright boy.’
‘Thanks, Grandma,’ Logan mumbles.
‘You’ll be studying hard in the holidays, I’d imagine?’
‘Well, um, Dad’s taking us to the Highlands …’
‘But you’ll take all your books with you—’
‘Of course I will,’ he says quickly, flushing a little. I see a flicker of tension in his jaw, and am seized by an urge to hug him and say I’m so sorry it’s always like this, and I wish you had a storybook granny with an endless supply of cuddles and cakes and, actually, she
does
care about you. She just wants you and your brother to have successful lives, perhaps to compensate for me not having risen to the dizzy heights of academia … I start extracting plates from the cupboard and cutlery from the drawer, wondering if it would be so terrible to stop off to buy cigarettes on the way home, plus strong drink like vodka or gin.
‘How are
you
getting along at school, Fergus?’ Mum asks.
‘Great,’ he says brightly. ‘It’s loads better than primary school …’
‘Why’s that?’
‘’Cause we’re allowed to go up the street and get chips.’
She throws him a disappointed look, then turns to rip the cellophane lid off the carton of burgers, allowing a pungent odour to escape. Dear God, they
stink
. She’s planning to poison us all with rotten beef. Adopting the nonchalant air of someone planning to shoplift, I stroll around the kitchen table, bending to stroke Brian, her malevolent ginger tom, who hisses sharply from behind the propped-up ironing board. Working my way towards the cooker now, I casually peer into the pan where the slimy burgers have landed with feeble sizzle.
‘Um … are you sure they’re okay, Mum?’ I venture.
‘Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?’
‘Er, don’t you think they look a bit … peaky?’ What is
wrong
with me, an almost-forty-year-old woman, terrified of crossing my mother?
‘They’re fine,’ she declares as the remainder of our weekend flashes before me: of the boys puking copiously during the car journey home, culminating in twenty-four hours spent in bed.
I
can handle her cooking – I’ll stuff my burger in my shoe or something, as a sort of grease-soaked insole – but my boys won’t know unless I alert them. ‘I tried that diet myself,’ Mum informs me.
‘Did you? Well, you look great. Very trim.’ It’s true: she could spear someone’s eye out with those collarbones. Her moss-green scoop-necked sweater and dog-tooth-checked trousers are probably a size eight. Defeated now, I perch on the edge of the table and survey my poor sons who are about to ingest a swarm of seething bacteria. I’m their mother, for crying out loud; I can’t allow that to happen.
‘
Don’t-eat-the-burgers
,’ I mouth as Mum turns back to the stove.
‘Eh?’ Fergus says loudly.
‘The meat’s off. It’ll
kill you
.’
‘What?’ Logan barks as Mum heads for the fridge to rummage for her pre-war ketchup.
‘
Don’t eat the meat!’
I mouth again, more forcefully this time.
‘Mum, what are you on about?’ Fergus asks.
I make a petrified face, indicating the pan on the hob, then poke two fingers into my mouth to mime vomiting. Logan bursts out laughing and Fergus stares at me uncomprehendingly.
‘She’s gone mental,’ he whispers to his big brother. ‘This is it – she’s finally flipped.’
Mum turns back to us, setting down the sauce bottle, then goes in search of the generic lime cordial that I suspect only sees daylight during our visits. While she checks several crammed cupboards, I glance around wildly, wondering how to alert my boys to their imminent fate. If only we had some kind of secret family code, like a series of coughs, or knew semaphore or Morse …
Pretending to study a newspaper from the pile, I squint at the fiendishly difficult, completed crossword. While Mum continues her search for the cordial, I snatch a pencil from an overstuffed jam jar on a shelf and quickly scribble in the margin:
BURGERS BAD DO NOT EAT!!!