Authors: Judy Astley
There was chair-scraping and signs of imminent departure from across the room. Chloe and Zoe were on their way out and stopped by Bella’s table on the way. ‘Hi Bella, are you coming to the Fox tomorrow? Hope so!’
‘Er … yes, probably!’ Bella smiled brightly, amazed she still had the power of speech.
‘Great! See you there – got to dash, school-time! Ciao!’ The two women were on their way out, their lunch companion left behind, dealing with the bill and talking to Luigi. Bella finished the rest of her wine, feeling numb and as if she couldn’t move. She put her hands over her face and felt warm tears on her cheeks. Oh, great.
‘Are you all right?’ She opened her eyes and found she was disturbingly close to crotch-level denim, property of the Chloe-Zoe man. She scuffed at her face with the napkin, realizing too late that it was smeared with Amatriciano sauce.
He sat down in James’s seat and leaned across. ‘Here, let me; you’ve got an orange nose,’ he smiled, smudging a thumb down her cheek. His skin felt warm. She wanted to nuzzle her face into his hand the way a cat does, craving maximum comfort from his small, tender gesture.
‘Chloe said you were a journalist, gave me your name. I’m a great admirer of your “Week Moments” pieces, especially the “I Really Don’t Get” ones. Very caustic!’ He then added, ‘I’m Saul Barrett. I was picking their brains for a TV series we’re about to do. Fashion – a different take on the makeover lark. I’m coming to their writers’ group thing tomorrow and they said you’d
probably be there. You might be interested in the programme, actually, as a journalist.’
Bella smiled. ‘Yes, I’ll be there. It’s a good group, they’re a fun bunch.’
He stood up. ‘Great … well, I’ll look forward to it. Bye! And … whatever it is that’s upset you … well, I hope …’ His words fizzled out – she didn’t blame him. Sympathy to a crying woman only tends to make things more waterlogged. He must be married, she thought, as he waved goodbye to her through the restaurant window. That much empathy, it takes years of practice. She collected her bag and jacket, went off to the loo and used cool damp paper towel to try to make her face look more presentable.
It was only as she was halfway out of the door that Luigi caught up with her. ‘Bella, sorry – but your bill … is not …’ He looked apologetic.
‘You mean James just left without paying …? I’m so sorry, Luigi.’ She delved into her bag and pulled out her credit cards. Maybe after today she should cut them all up, get used to a new and necessary thrift. Not that she’d been exactly chucking her money around over the years. Bloody James. Bloody everything.
Bella sat on the end of Molly’s bed and picked up the old toy polar bear. The poor grubby thing was flattened from years of being slept on. Having a sudden fast-forward, Bella imagined herself tucking this soft toy into Molly’s bed when the girl was away on gap-year travels. With Alex already away at university most of the time, this was going to be a lonely echoing house a year or so from now.
‘The thing is, Molly …’ Bella began, as Molly had been dreading since the Giles incident. This was not a discussion either of them wanted to have, but both had known it had to happen. Molly had been playing a crafty game of avoidance ever since Bella had walked in on her and Giles, but now, cornered on her own territory, there was no escape. She sat cross-legged on top of her pillows, as effortlessly supple as only the under-twenties
can be, computer balanced across her flat-down thighs and a trapped expression on her face. She looked swiftly at the door the moment her mother sat down, considering the hopeless logistics of making a run for it.
‘OK, OK, Mum, I
know
! Please – we really don’t have to go there!’
Before Bella could say anything more, Molly put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. Her hands had the skinny sleeves of her pink top pulled over them, so her finger-ends poked out like little stubs. A current fashion thing, Bella recognized, the same way Moll and her friends all seemed to have their hair parted a mere few centimetres over their left ears and mussed up to a straight-from-bed look, though in Molly’s case it often was exactly that, no effort required. Bella had a flashback to Molly as an underweight baby, so delicately tiny at less than five pounds that everything she wore during the early months had sleeves that swamped her twiggy arms and she’d be constantly punching fists at fabric, battling to get her hands out into the air. Why did it seem like only ten minutes ago that Bella wondered if Molly would ever outgrow her wicker cradle? How did she so quickly become this long, leggy teenager who was all huge grey eyes and pout? And hormones …
‘No, I think we
have
to go there, Molly. You know I’m pretty liberal – Giles is welcome to stay overnight here whenever you like. Obviously I wouldn’t be happy
if you were bringing home boy after boy …
but
…’
‘Mum! Just
stop!
This is like
sooooo
embarrassing?’ Molly was giggling, but she was blushing as well.
Bella could feel her own mouth twitching too. The mother-daughter having the boys-staying-over talk – it was a classic toe-curler, though on the plus side Molly wasn’t that far off eighteen and generally pretty sensible. Far worse would be having this conversation with an easily exploited sixteen-year-old.
‘Yes, it is a bit, isn’t it?’ Bella couldn’t disagree. ‘But let me just say one thing … It wasn’t what you were doing with Giles, you know that. You’re old enough to make your own decisions there.’
‘I know, I know … It was the
your bed
thing.’ Molly groaned into her hands that now covered her pink face. ‘I’ve already apologized for that.
And
I’ve washed and ironed all the sheets and things and put them all away.’
‘Well actually it wasn’t really that either,’ Bella continued. ‘Not entirely. Obviously I wasn’t exactly delighted, being completely travel-whacked and bloody amazed to see you at all. I do think my private space should be respected, so please don’t do it again. But I mean, really if you want to sleep with Giles, fine. Your sex life is your own business. He’s a lovely boy and so long as you’re careful …’ (More groans from Molly. Bella was almost beginning to think this was fun. How to torture your teen …) ‘No, what upset me was that
you’d lied to me. Simple as that. You said you couldn’t go to stay with your father in Edinburgh because you were going to a party at Carly’s and you would be staying there. But that wasn’t true, was it? I really need to be able to trust you, Moll.’
Molly emerged from behind her hands. ‘Oh God, now you’re doing “disappointed”. I knew you would – you
know
that’s the one that gets to me.’ Her eyes started to look wet. ‘Why can’t you be like other mums and just say Giles is banned from the house and that I’m grounded or something?’
‘Is that what they’d say? Really? But you’re almost a legal adult.’ Bella felt puzzled.
Was
she too lenient? She wasn’t quite on a level with her own mother, who had made it perfectly clear (gleefully so) from the day Bella turned sixteen that the safest place for her daughter to have sex was in her own home. As parents went, Shirley was a bit of a one-off in that respect, because even in the easy-going 1980s, everyone else’s parents had seemed to be reliably old-fashioned in quite a comforting way: boyfriends in the house were to be kept to public family spaces at all times. Some daughters even had to be in by midnight, after which the doors to hell opened and late-night sinners would hurtle straight to damnation.
Bella remembered telling Jules on the school bus that she was allowed to have boys to stay overnight if she wanted to, and both had recoiled into horrified giggles
at the very idea. All their friends had thought the idea completely gross too. No teenager wanted to have the parental seal of approval on their sex life. It would ruin the whole thing. Where was the thrilling secrecy? The rebellion?
The overly liberal attitude completely put Bella off taking any boy up to her room, even for an innocent conversation with them, knowing Shirley would be just the other side of the wall. She would be sure to be listening in and barely able to stop herself barging in before any possible action, with an exotic condom selection on a tray and then with tea and brandy only seconds after all was over. And imagine, as she and Jules had, breakfast the next morning. Shirley asking if they’d slept well … What a disappointment Bella must have been, boyfriends kept forever on the pavement side of the front gate; no devious questioning answered, no contraception advice sought. Her mother’s determined liberalism had surely been a factor in keeping Bella a virgin till she was nearly twenty. Or maybe that had been the idea – in which case, what a neat and sneaky double bluff.
‘But I
did
go to Carly’s. I was going back to stay there too, um … later … and it’s not as if … I mean you did come back
a bit early
.’
‘OK … look, it’s all right. We’ll leave it there.’ Bella propped the bear up against the end bars of the bed. He
flopped down, exposing a ragged back foot where Molly had sucked it nightly when she’d been a toddler. ‘Just – honesty, that’s all I ask, Moll.’
‘Er … and that works both ways?’ Molly, safely off the hook, rallied quickly with something to say.
‘Of course it does. Why? I haven’t told you any lies.’
‘Right. So what about that Rick bloke? You said he was divorced and he like, wasn’t? Did you know? Truly?’
‘Molly, trust me, the first I knew of his wife still being on the scene was when she was standing outside the hotel room telling me I looked rubbish in black, OK?’
Molly smiled. Bella felt touched – it looked like womanly sympathy.
‘Poor Mum – what a cow!’ Molly said. ‘But you know, she might have a point. Black’s a bit harsh on you … Oooowwww!’ The bear hit her on her left ear and her shrieky giggle was joined by the sound of the doorbell downstairs.
‘I’ll go – it’s probably Alex, forgetting his key,’ Bella said.
Shirley looked worryingly wrong, somehow, very much not herself, standing on Bella’s doorstep clutching her vintage crocodile bag in one hand and a small suitcase on wheels (another one – was this house becoming a Terminal Five outpost?) in the other. She looked smaller, older. Her hair seemed wildly wispy and
uncombed instead of the usual immaculate blow-dry, her blue patent shoes were scuffed and her orange paisley silk scarf definitely didn’t go with her flouncy red cotton coat. Was she ill?
‘Mum – come on in! Did you phone earlier? I didn’t know you were coming. Was there a message I missed?’
‘No, well, I didn’t know I was coming either, not till just earlier when I decided it was for the best.’ Shirley bustled into the hallway, parked the case at the bottom of the stairs and clicked its handle down with one well-practised flick of the wrist. She then strode briskly into the big kitchen and flopped with unusual inelegance on to the old leather sofa, her legs at don’t-care angles. Bella felt worried. Shirley’s posture was habitually of the finishing-school type. On a low sofa such as Bella’s saggy kitchen one, that should mean knees together with ankles crossed and slanting prettily to the left.
‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I needed to get away. Tea, darling, please? Or possibly something stronger?’ Shirley’s fingers twitched at the fringe of the old plaid throw on the sofa arm. Fidgeting was something else she didn’t normally do.
‘Er … well …’ Bella looked at the cuckoo clock over the Aga. It was doing its preparatory whirring, ready to spring out and tell them it was ten o’clock. Morning not evening, though it would be a very special plastic cuckoo that could tell the difference.
‘I suppose it’s never too early for a Bloody Mary,’ Bella murmured, opening the fridge, snatching out of her memory a drink that she could faintly justify at such a time. Her late father had been a drinker. Shirley had divorced him when Bella was nine and he’d reached the stage when he needed Scotch before breakfast to steady the trembling. That sort of memory made you wary of odd-hours alcohol.
‘No, no, not vodka! Nasty sly stuff. I like something you can taste, then you know you’ve had it. Pour a slug of brandy into a coffee for me, please darling. That’ll hit the spot.’
‘OK,’ Bella started as soon as her mother was a few sips into the brandy-laced coffee, ‘but why is there a spot that needs an alcohol hit at this time of the morning? You look a bit as if you’ve seen a whole castleful of ghosts.’
Shirley began to seem somewhat revived as the coffee and brandy kicked in. She patted her hair into place, her hand hesitant as if suddenly realizing she’d forgotten to comb it. This, Bella was worried to recognize, was probably true.
‘What must I look like?’ Shirley murmured. ‘I just wondered, Bella, if it would be all right for me to come and stay for a week or so. Just till … Well, just till.’
‘Till what? What’s happened? Is there something wrong with your flat? Have you got the men in again?’
Shirley was a great one for redecoration and her apartment – in a smart enclave purpose-built for well-off retirees – was forever being painted in some newly fashionable shade from a range of whites and neutrals. The changes were often so subtle that Bella really couldn’t tell the difference between the pre- and post-painting stage. ‘No wonder your wardrobe is such a hit and miss botch-up of colour,’ Shirley had said, the last time Bella failed to comment on the hallway’s colour change from Dairy to String. ‘You have no instinct for the tonal nuance at all!’
‘No. No decorators, not just now. I’ve … er … the thing is I’ve been – oh this is so silly!’ Shirley laughed lightly, finishing her coffee in one swift gulp. Bella topped it up from the pot and added another – but smaller – slug of brandy. She wondered if she should have one as well – this was going to be bad news, she could tell.
‘I’ve been arrested.’ Shirley managed to get the words out at last.
‘
Arrested?
Good grief, whatever
for
?’
‘Who’s been arrested?’ Molly strolled into the kitchen carrying an armful of her laundry. She dropped items as she headed for the utility room, leaving tiny, bright knickers strewn across the walnut floor like collapsed bunting on a yacht’s deck.