by Tom Bradby
‘I’ll come down in a minute.’
Kate took that as a ‘no’. She kissed her daughter once more and returned to the kitchen.
Stuart already had the kettle on. It was as close as he got to telepathy. ‘What is wrong with her?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’d like to hear it. I’ve never met anyone more irrational and unreasonable in my entire life. And that includes you.’ He smiled, came over and kissed her tenderly. ‘I’m sorry, my love. How was your trip?’
‘It was – potentially – incredibly successful.’
‘Can you say why?’
‘Not really. But we’ll see.’
Kate and Stuart sat at the table for another half-hour, grappling with the infinite mysteries of his favourite subject: logistics. They took in the school run, a weekend he was trying to plan in Norfolk, Christmas and what to do with her mother (hope she’s dead), and an invitation he wanted to accept to a five-a-side football tournament in Bristol.
Kate countered by asking whether he’d booked the villa in Greece for half-term, as agreed. He hadn’t.
After that, she left again, taking Gus’s silence with her.
As she closed the door, Stuart fired two parting shots. ‘Don’t be late,’ he said, since she was a notoriously poor timekeeper at home, which was odd for a woman whose workplace measured it in life and death, and ‘Have fun,’ which was obviously heavily ironic. Fun was one thing she was absolutely guaranteed not to have down the road with her sick mother.
The phone call turned out to have been about an unpaid bill, which she might have guessed. The home was a genteel establishment for elderly residents who liked to consider themselves a cut above the rest. It suited her mother down to the ground.
When she could finally delay the dreaded moment no longer, Kate went up to the eleventh floor. Lucy sat by the window in her room, staring out over the treetops in the park. A carer was clearing away the evening meal.
As she pulled up a seat, her mother turned to her. ‘Hello, love,’ she said. It was so long since she had recognized her daughter at all – let alone at first sight – that Kate had to suppress a tear.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘How lovely to see you.’
Kate tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been away for work.’
‘You’re always so busy.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘The children came. It was charming to see them. Gus is going to be a very big boy. He’s like a gangly giant already.’
‘He’s growing fast. It’s hard work keeping him in clothes.’
‘I don’t know why Fiona has to dress like that. What’s wrong with her?’
‘She’s a teenager, Mum. You may remember having one yourself.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Well, yes, I do. You used to wear those awful lurid trousers and went out with a boy who had a pierced ear.’
‘Pete Carter, the trainee anarchist.’
‘Stuart was with them.’
The first hint of the minefield. ‘Well, yes. He would have brought them. He’s their father.’
‘Hardly said a word. Cat got his tongue?’
‘He’s been very busy too. And we don’t have a cat.’
‘You want to watch him. I’ve told you that before. He’s a nice enough man, but I don’t trust—’
‘Let’s not go there, Mum, all right?’ Kate was not in a mood to take lessons in trustworthiness from her mother, and she had long since decided that Lucy’s basic issue with Stuart was that he was too much like Kate’s father. Which, in her own eyes, was his shining virtue.
Lucy shifted uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Oooh. Would you mind getting me my pills? They’re next door.’
Kate went through to her mother’s bedroom, and took a couple of very deep breaths. The pills were on the lurid pink and gold bedside table her mother had always treasured, but something else had stopped Kate in her tracks: the photograph of her father smiling on a Cornish beach, which had once taken pride of place beneath the lamp, had been replaced by one of a man with a pencil moustache and striped swimming trunks.
Kate sat for a moment on the bed, in an attempt to contain her fury. Then she picked up the pills and went back to her mother.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lucy asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Perhaps I have.’
5
‘Oh, don’t be so silly.’ Lucy took two large white tablets out of their blister pack and gulped them down with a glass of water. Kate hoped they might choke her.
‘You’ve replaced the picture of Dad with one of David Underpants.’
As her mother met her gaze, Kate realized she knew precisely what she was doing. Nothing about this moment was lost in the mists of memory. There was no shame, no regret. It occurred to Kate that the bedside mission might have had nothing to do with the urgent need for medication.
‘Don’t be a prig, Kate. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Where’s the photo of Dad?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Somewhere.’
Kate stared at her mother. Even now, after all the water that had flowed under the bridge, the old bitch’s capacity to wound took her breath away.
‘Honestly, where’s the harm in it?’ Lucy threw up her arms extravagantly. ‘They’re both dead, for God’s sake. And I will be soon!’
Not soon enough, Kate thought. ‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ she said eventually. ‘Apart from noting that you were married to one of them – my father – for fifty years, and the other destroyed our family life.’
‘That’s your opinion.’
‘It’s absolutely everyone’s opinion.’
‘Oh, well,’ Lucy said. ‘Why does it matter now?’
Kate took a deep breath. ‘I can’t believe you have the gall to ask that. To you, clearly, incredibly, it doesn’t. But it might have occurred to you that it could possibly matter to me. Just a bit.’
The corner of Lucy’s mouth began to twist in the way it always did when she was thwarted. ‘You were nowhere near as much the apple of your father’s eye as you like to think, you know. And he was never the man you imagined. So you might want to get him down off that pedestal and see him as—’
‘I don’t need any instruction on how to view my father, thank you. Neither do I want your demonic version of how he felt about me. And as for David bloody Underpants, I—’
‘I don’t know why you insist on calling him that.’
‘Because he was a ridiculous figure, a testament to your towering misjudgement. And why you think I would ever give a shit what you of all people think of Stuart, I can’t imagine.’
Lucy sighed. ‘You were such a disappointment to your father. To both of us. We so wanted to have a boy. Then everything would have been different.’
On other occasions, duty – she possessed her father’s stoicism, and drew inspiration from his relentless good humour – had forced Kate to sit there and soak up the bile, but not today. ‘I’m going now,’ she said. ‘Call me if you’re dying.’ She reached the door. ‘And I might come back to say goodbye.’
Kate burst out of the home. The wind and rain tugged at her hair as she charged through Battersea Park towards the river. She wanted to scream her rage at the night sky. It had been Stuart’s idea to move her mother there, in the fond belief that having work, home and filial duty within walking distance of one another would reduce the burden on her, but having Lucy so close had achieved precisely the opposite. It was a dark cloud in the morning and a thunderhead at night. Not to visit meant guilt. Visiting meant hurt. How did people end up like that?
David Johnson and his wife Emma had been their oldest and best family friends. Their daughter Helen had been more or less a sister to Kate, and young Neil the brother she had never had. They’d gone on holiday together every summer, to the same bungalow by the same Cornish beach. Even now, Kate could see David in his unprepossessingly snug swimming trunks as they played tennis in the garden
or cricket on the beach.
And then one day the friendship and the laughter had come to a sudden end. There were no more Sunday lunches and neither of Kate’s parents talked about the impending summer holidays. Worse, when Kate had plucked up the courage to call, Helen had taken the phone from her brother and said simply that they couldn’t be friends any more.
It took several weeks for her father to get round to a partial explanation of what had happened, sufficient to allow logic and her imagination to fill in the rest. Her mother had been having an affair with David Johnson, perhaps for many years. His wife had now decreed that the two families were never to speak again. And they never did.
A year or two later, Kate had urged her father to leave her mother, and the worst of it all was that she had thought less of him when he wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t. His dependency – weakness, even, she sometimes had to admit – had fuelled her mother’s cruelty.
Kate reached the river wall and looked down into the dark, swirling water. She had always suspected her mother of continuing to see her lover over the years, and her extravagant reaction to David’s untimely death long before her husband’s had more or less confirmed her suspicions. Kate blamed the rain for dampening her cheeks. What kind of wife and mother fucks her husband’s best friend? And what part of that woman had lodged itself genetically in her daughter?
If Kate could have run away from the reality of her upbringing at that moment, she would have done so, but she had long since known there was no escape. The shame followed her like a shadow. She walked home and put her arms around Stuart – who was leaning against the cooker, staring at his phone intently.
‘Is it Christmas?’ He looked at her. ‘What happened?’
‘Lucidity, that’s what. She recognized me straight away. I can’t remember the last time that happened.’
‘And? What did she say?’
‘Not much. But quite enough. She’s thrown out the picture of Dad by her bedside and replaced him with David Underpants.’
‘So you had an exchange of pleasantries.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Oh, shit.’ Stuart hugged her. ‘That’s the last time you do that. From now on I’ll go, once a week, and if she tries anything on with me, she’s going to get it with both barrels. I’ll chop her up and bury her under the back patio. And the picture of that weirdo in his very tight trunks can join her.’
Kate put her hand to his chest. ‘It’s a nice idea, and you’re positively heroic. But she’s my mother.’
‘That is a matter of opinion.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I was going to point out that you are very slightly late, but under the circumstances I’ll let it go. However, in the nicest possible way, you do need to get into the shower.’
Kate followed Stuart upstairs, her hand resting between his still quite finely honed shoulder blades. She loved her husband for many of the same reasons she’d adored her father. He was funny, generous and kind. He had an insatiable curiosity about the world, and a lively mind. ‘My dreamboat,’ she said.
‘They still handing out the wacky-baccy at the home?’
Kate had a bath, not a shower, and took her time. She could tell that Stuart was torn between hurrying her because they were going to be late, and relaxing her to the point where she might feel like rolling around before they left. She dried herself slowly and shook out her hair.
‘We really need to get going,’ he said. ‘But do you want to fool around for a bit first?’
‘Do you mind if we save it for the weekend? It’s been a punishing few days.’
He came over and kissed her. ‘Of course not. But it’d better be good.’
She began to dress. ‘What happened with Fi?’
Stuart sat on the bed. ‘She wanted to go out. I said that was fine, but I wanted to see her essay on the Tudors before she went. She said she would do it, but in her own fucking time and … Well, you can imagine the rest.’
‘You did the right thing. Frankly, anything to keep her away from Jedhead.’
‘I don’t think that’s your most brilliant domestic strategy.’
‘You haven’t met him.’
‘She’s fifteen, not five.’
‘You just wait.’
‘Still, I don’t think we can start trying to control who she sees. That never ends well.’
Kate inserted a pair of earrings and they went downstairs. Stuart was filling Nelson’s water bowl when the doorbell sounded. Kate answered it.
‘Good evening, Mrs Henderson.’
‘Hello, Jed.’
Of course he was called Jed. He was six feet tall with enough hair gel to keep a toiletries company in business for a year.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m very well, thank you, Mrs Henderson.’
His polite and sincere smile seemed at odds with the tattoo wrapped around his neck, and the numerous piercings. Ashamed of herself, Kate tried to smile back. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Is Fi around?’
‘I’m here!’
Fiona came down the stairs at speed, barely dressed and waving a sheet of paper. ‘There,’ she said, shoving it at Stuart as he came to join Kate at the door. ‘The Tudors. An illuminated manuscript.’
‘That must explain the ink splotches. But where exactly do you think you’re going?’
‘Out!’
‘Wait!’
Kate turned back to the tattooed youth. ‘Jed, I’m very sorry, but would you mind holding on a moment?’
She closed the door and faced her daughter again.
‘You said I could go out if I finished my essay,’ Fiona told Stuart. ‘And, look, I have finished it.’
‘I did not say you could go out if you finished it. I merely said you couldn’t because you hadn’t.’
‘What’s that? Russian?’
‘You’re not going out with him,’ Kate said.
Fiona swung back towards her mother. ‘I’m not going out? Or I’m not going out with him?’
‘The distinction is academic. Because you are not going out, full stop.’
‘Why not?’
‘At this point, honestly? Because I say you’re not.’
‘And that’s, like, an argument?’
‘Kate …’ Stuart said.
‘She’s not leaving this house, Stuart, and that’s—’
‘I can’t spend the rest of my life wrapped in cotton wool,’ Fiona said.
‘Let her go for an hour,’ Stuart said. ‘And no more.’
Kate hated it when Stuart did this, but continued to face her daughter. ‘I’m not trying to wrap you in cotton wool.’
‘Yes, you are. You always do. You come home and treat us like porcelain dolls. Well, he’s not the Russians and he’s not the Chinese and he’s not ISIS. He’s a really nice seventeen-year-old boy.’
‘He’s nearly eighteen, and you are only just fifteen.’
‘And you are two years younger than Dad. That’s how it’s supposed to be!’
Stuart took hold of Kate’s arm. ‘Let her go for an hour.’
Kate shrugged him off and stepped back. She went to get her coat, trying without success to hide her rage. She heard Stuart open the door, give the boy strict instructions on when to return his daughter and scold Fiona for the incredibly sloppy presentation of her essay. ‘You’ll have to do it again when you get back.’
All Kate heard after that was ‘Thanks, Dad,’ and the front door banging.
Stuart was waiting for her in the hall.
‘I hate it when you undermine me.’
‘You were being unreasonable and you know it. You can’t protect her from poor judgement, and you’ll make her choices worse if you try. Besides, he seemed like quite a polite lad to me.’
‘I shan’t let it go because you did undermine me.’
‘I steered us both to a more reasonable course of action that will reduce the chances of her running away to Gretna Green with him. Or the nearest tattoo parlour …’
6
They bowled into the restaurant with profuse apologies to Imogen and Harry.
‘I don’t know why you bother saying sorry,’ Harry said. ‘You’re always late.’
‘It’s Jed’s fault.’
‘Of course it is … Who the hell is Jed?’
‘You may well ask. It’s a story for the third bottle.’
Harry wasn’t much to look at – his nose was flat and wide and he’d long since lost his once-flowing locks – but Imogen was very pretty, with dark hair cut in a neat bob, long lashes and startling green eyes. Kate had met her about seven years ago, when Imogen had first been appointed as a junior minister in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Stuart had been her private secretary. She had moved on to Health and eventually into the cabinet as the secretary of state for Culture, Media and Sport. She’d graduated to Education a year ago in the last reshuffle, and had asked Stuart to join her.
Since their children were young and the badlands still some distance away, Harry and Imogen were always hungry for tales from Planet Teenager. Stuart got a great deal of mileage out of Fiona’s love-struck angst and the appearance of the tattooed Jed on their doorstep.
Kate didn’t say much. Her attention drifted back to Lena on the super-yacht. She wondered what she was doing. Only the progression of the conversation to politics and the security of the prime minister’s position brought her back. Imogen was in full flow, hiding her ambition none too convincingly behind protestations of loyalty as much now, in private, as she did in public. With a small majority and a lot of self-generated errors, the prime minister’s fate was a matter of almost constant debate.
‘How long do you think he’s really going to stay on?’ Kate asked.
‘Out by Christmas, we said, then Easter. But he’s still there. I think the basic truth is that our beloved foreign secretary will never force the issue because he’s not as confident as he pretends to be that he would win.’
