by Fiona Gibson
By the time Sally and the child had emerged from the loo, Hannah felt reasonably confident that she looked normal. Moments later, Jane was saying her goodbyes and hurrying in the reception area. “Hi, darling,” she said, kissing Hannah’s cheek. She pulled out her ponytail band and dragged her fingers through her hair like some primitive comb. “So,” she said, “all set?”
Hannah rose awkwardly to her feet. “Happy birthday, Mum.”
“Thanks, love. Where shall we eat? I haven’t booked anywhere. Didn’t think I’d need to this early.”
“I don’t mind,” Hannah said, wondering when she should bring up the lack-of-present issue.
“Shall we just walk, see where looks good?” Jane swiped her coat from its hook.
“Okay.”
After the heat and squall of Nippers, the outside world felt pleasantly cool. They walked without talking, passing a noodle bar with black-and-white portraits evenly spaced along its white walls. Trees were shedding their leaves. In the window of a Russian restaurant sat an enormous gilded tureen. “I think your dad’s seeing someone,” Jane ventured.
“Who?”
“That neighbor of his, the one I told you about? She brings round meals, is worried he can’t take care of himself.”
Hannah giggled. “God, how pathetic.”
“She answered the phone last time I called,” Jane added.
“Not living with him, is she?”
“Of course not,” Jane said quickly. I hope not, was what she meant. Hannah could tell that she really minded this woman answering the phone. Her mother’s eyes and voice revealed her every thought; she was virtually transparent.
“Let’s try down here,” Jane said, turning down a side street. The blue-and-white lettering of the Opal’s sign came into view. Please, no, Hannah thought.
They stopped outside, and Jane perused the menu on the wall. Under the ‘light suppers and snacks’ section a dish caught Hannah’s eye: pan-fried mushrooms with garlic and parsley on toasted ciabatta. She was aware of a staggering sensation in her stomach.
Through the frosted glass door she could see and hear people chatting and laughing: people like Ollie and those rhyming-name girls—Lara/Cara—who could negotiate wine lists and never threw up. “I don’t like the look of it,” Hannah murmured.
“Why not? It looks cosy—”
“I just…” Fragments of excuses jerked around her head. “It’ll be smoky,” she said firmly. “I can smell it out here.” She felt lousy, playing her asthma card.
“Oh,” Jane said, “sorry, Han, I didn’t think. Anyway—” she glanced at the menu again “—it looks a bit poncey. Let’s go for a blow-out Indian.”
“That sounds great,” Hannah said, trying to keep the swell of relief from her voice as they wandered off down the street.
In the restaurant Jane squinted at the menu. She was taking an age to decide, as if this were some Michelin-starred place and she was revving herself up to savor every bite. After much deliberation—“Ooh, this sounds lovely, what are you having, Han?”—she’d always go for the same viciously hot lamb dish with pilau rice and a naan bread filled with almondy stuff. To Hannah, that tasted all wrong—like a marzipan sandwich.
She stole glances at her mother as she tore into her meal. She really could pack it away—even that horrible belly pork at Granny Nancy’s with a thick slab of fat round its edge. It was a wonder she wasn’t twenty stone. She had a lovely figure, Hannah reflected, at least for someone of nearly forty: a narrow waist, a slightly rounded bum and perky breasts. In double art last week, Ritchy Harrison had leaned over and growled, “Hey, Han, I saw your mum the other day. She looked hot.” Hannah had refused to respond to a crass comment like that. She’d scowled at his sagging lips and turned back to her Still Life With Trainer.
Watching Jane shovel in rice, Hannah felt a stab of guilt. She burrowed in her bag for the card. “Oh, Han,” Jane enthused, taking it from her, “that’s lovely. You haven’t made me a card since you were—”
“Yeah, Mum, I know.”
“Remember the last one you made? You’d cut out all these tissue paper shapes and stuck them on a—”
Hannah fazed off, wondering why parents were so fond of reminiscing about their children’s younger days. It was if they wanted to keep you that way, frozen in time, still clutching Biffa and driving your pedal car.
“Han,” Jane was saying, “did you hear what I said?”
“Sorry, what?”
Jane smiled uncomfortably. “Your dad’s having a housewarming party. That new girlfriend’s helping with the food and stuff.”
“When?” Hannah asked.
“Saturday, around seven.”
The announcement rolled over Hannah like a horrible wave. “But I can’t,” she stumbled, “it’s—”
“Not busy, are you?”
Hannah’s head milled with excuses. She’d arranged to go shopping with Amy…no, extra rehearsals for Little Shop of Horrors…Damn, she didn’t even have a proper part. “Just a couple of hours,” Jane added. “Veronica has a daughter around your age. Dad seems to think you’d get on.”
This was getting worse, if that were possible. Instead of spending a long, virtually endless Saturday night at Ollie’s house, Hannah would be forced to make friends with some spoiled-princess-stranger. She glared down at her rice. She usually loved it—the grains colored orange, yellow and green—but now it looked fake and unappetizing. “Do I have to?” she asked weakly.
Jane nodded firmly. “We’ll escape early if it’s awful. We’ll have a code.”
Poor Mum, Hannah thought; this can’t be much fun for her either—feeling obliged to show up at a party arranged by her ex-husband’s new woman. She knew she still had feelings for Max. Her parents weren’t exactly how you’d expect a divorced couple to be. They weren’t even legally divorced. “We haven’t got around to it,” Jane had said casually when Hannah had asked, as if she was referring to having the front door repainted.
Jane ripped off a hunk of naan the size of a mitten. She looked pretty with her lovely clear skin and peppery freckles across her nose and cheeks. She deserved more than a crappy card scrawled in the restaurant’s toilet cubicle. Hannah was seized by an urge to tell her about Ollie: how she could hardly sleep for thinking about him, and even when she’d finally drifted off she’d wake at weird times like 5:37 a.m. with eerie light creeping into her room. Yet telling her would change everything. It felt too fragile to share.
Jane asked for the bill and re-read the message in her birthday card: To my wonderful mum, all my love, Han xxx. She looked up; their eyes met. Hannah detected a flicker of knowing, as if Jane was fully aware that the card had been hurriedly scrawled on the Bengal Star toilet.
As they left, Hannah could feel shame weighing her down, like a scratchy blanket she couldn’t shrug off.
13
“Jane!” gushed Veronica in the hallway—formerly Max’s hallway, now seemingly Max-and-Veronica’s hallway—as if they were long-lost friends who’d been reunited on some cheesy TV show.
“Veronica!” Jane said, her entire body tensing with the effort of trying to exude warmth.
“You look wonderful,” the hostess announced. Veronica’s eyes made the journey from Jane’s strappy suede shoes through long, purple skirt and black velvet top at astonishing speed.
“Thanks, so do you. Your dress is gorgeous.”
She gave a little shrug. “Just a little old thing I found at the back of the wardrobe. Anyway, don’t just stand there. Come in, join the throng. You must be Hannah. Gosh, aren’t you like your father? Those astonishing dark eyes, an absolute beauty. There’s a fruit punch in the kitchen, Han. Come through and I’ll pour you a glass. Now, Jane, what are you drinking?”
“I’ll just have a—” Jane began, but Veronica had already swished into a kitchen populated by glossy strangers. Most of the women had backs and shoulders on display. No one appeared to weigh more than eight stone. The guests were chatting enth
usiastically as if they’d known each other since babyhood; despite all these people, Jane noted with surprise that the kitchen had been refurbished with glossy white units, granite worktops and twinkling spotlights sunk into the ceiling.
Hannah hovered behind her like an anxious cloud. Max, who looked especially handsome in rumpled linen trousers and a pale blue cashmere sweater—Max in cashmere?—was engaged in an animated conversation with a man wearing domino-shaped specs. Jane tried to catch Max’s eye. He turned away to open a curvaceous silver fridge and hand the bespectacled man a beer.
A cluster of women with gym-toned arms and deep tans were cackling throatily by the island unit. A couple of girls of around Hannah’s age were sipping mysterious puddle-colored drinks. Who on earth were these people? Max wasn’t party man. He wasn’t a cashmere man. He was a biffing-around-the-shop-until-all-hours man, a man who’d cycle down to Kent—as if Kent were at the end of the street—and come home with a coating of mud and dead insects. Jane knew most of his friends, obsessive biking types who kept their hair cropped and their legs shaved. These party guests looked as if they’d need emergency counseling if they happened to encounter an oil can.
“Here you go,” Veronica said, emerging from the throng to hand Jane a champagne flute and Hannah a glass of the puddly stuff.
“Thanks.” Jane grinned fiercely at her, hoping it didn’t look like a snarl.
Fixing on a wistful smile, Veronica gazed around the kitchen with a pride that suggested she’d refitted it all by herself. She was wearing a silver halter-necked dress and had somehow piled up all that tumbling hair on top of her head, although no clips or alternative holding devices were visible. Her skin was light brown and utterly smooth. She looked like she’d been molded out of toffee.
“Han,” she murmured, leaning conspiratorially toward her, “my daughter Zoë’s dying to meet you. Be a darling and pop over. She’s the blond one in the pink top.” Throwing Jane an uncertain glance, Hannah obediently threaded her way across the kitchen.
Veronica turned away to chat to a man with dense ginger hair and most of his shirt buttons undone. Jane made her way toward Max, but by the time she’d journeyed to the fridge he’d moved on. “Suzie Dellaware?” asked the domino-specs man enthusiastically.
“No, I’m Jane. Jane Deakin, a, um, friend of—”
“Ah, wrong person.” Despite her not being Suzie, he mustered the energy to give her hand a halfhearted shake. “Simon Hatterstone. Old friend of Veronica’s. We’re looking into production opportunities, hoping to strike up a deal. We’re pretty confident in the product. What we’re looking for now is a manufacturer with the same passion and energy.”
Jesus, did he always talk like a machine? She took a huge gulp of champagne, which crackled down her throat. “What’s the product?” she asked.
“Snack range, top-quality ingredients sourced from all over the world—Chile, Peru, West Indies. Aphrodisiac qualities. Did you know that pine nuts are supposed to revive the, um, libido, Janet?”
“No, I must get some.”
“You’ll notice a big difference.” His luxuriant eyebrows did a mini-dance.
“I hadn’t realized Veronica made snacks,” Jane added, focusing on a fragment of crisp that dangled from his bottom lip. “I thought she treated people with mineral deficiencies.”
“She’s expanding,” Simon explained. “Aiming for a major aphrodisiac line in leading health food stores by the end of next year. It’s a big leap—” his hand bounded from the worktop toward the newly quarry-tiled floor “—but she’s a gutsy woman.”
“I’m sure she is,” Jane managed to say, but Simon had already turned away and was exclaiming, “Ronald!” with livid enthusiasm, as if this might be the manufacturer with passion and energy that he’d been looking for.
Jane drained her glass, swiped another from a tray on the island unit and headed for the living room. This, too, had been spruced up with remarkable speed. Sofas were festooned with oatmeal throws and furry oatmeal cushions—everything, Jane realized, was a slight variation on the oatmeal theme. She felt as if she was drowning in porridge.
An oval tray drifted toward her as if carried on some mysterious air current. It took her a moment to register than the tray was being carried by a boy; an embarrassed-looking boy with doleful brown eyes and a blunt, heavy fringe. He slumped to a halt next to Jane. “Oh, thank you, um…sorry, I don’t know your name—”
“Dylan,” the boy said flatly.
“Hi, Dylan.” Jane peered at the canapé tray. On closer inspection these revealed themselves to be miniature versions of ordinary foods: tiny chips and slivers of fish wrapped in doll-sized newspaper cones; sausages like sections of earthworm emerging from mashed potato mounds. There were pizzas the size of milk-bottle tops, teeny twirls of spaghetti piled on to some kind of biscuit base. All this Lilliputian food was making Jane feel enormous and unwieldy and suddenly not hungry at all. “I might have something later,” she said. The boy showed no sign of continuing his journey.
Max was doing the rounds, refilling glasses. He greeted Jane with a fleeting kiss on the cheek before being swiftly redirected by Veronica to talk to the ginger-haired man. Hannah had sidled off somewhere; the loo, probably, and Jane didn’t blame her. They shouldn’t have come. It had seemed important to Max, but what did it matter whether she was here or not? Veronica’s hand was clamped firmly upon his right shoulder. Jane decided to track down Hannah and escape; it was her only hope of feeling normal again.
“The packaging will be crucial,” Veronica was saying. “It’s a lifestyle we’re selling—a dream.” And Jane got it, finally: this wasn’t Max’s housewarming party but one enormous, mingling business deal. Max probably hadn’t realized it himself.
“So,” Dylan murmured, giving Jane a start, “what d’you think?”
She’d forgotten he was there. “Think of what?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes and indicated Veronica. She was laughing heartily now, her entire body aquiver beneath its flimsy silver covering. “Mum,” he said.
“That’s your mum? I didn’t realize. I’m Jane, Hannah’s mum—you’ve probably met her…” Dylan nodded. “I can’t find her anywhere,” Jane added. “She must’ve sloped off on her own.”
“I’ll look out for her.” Dylan picked up a minuscule pizza, nibbled its edge and dropped it back onto the tray.
Max had worked his way to the window, where he was standing alone. He looked tense, Jane decided, as if interior designers had forced entry while he was at work and filled his home with things he’d neither chosen nor wanted. Out of the corner of her eye Jane watched Veronica creep up behind him. Her thin, bronzed arms snaked around his waist from behind, the hands clasping at his middle like a buckle. “Come on, babe,” she chastized him, “you’re being unsociable.”
Simon with the domino-specs sidled up next to Jane. By now the champagne had surged to her head. “Veronica,” he mused, “has astounding vision, doing this place up….”
“It’s actually Max’s house,” Jane said before she could stop herself.
“Max?” The man frowned.
“You know—Max who’s standing by the fireplace. You were talking to him by the fridge.”
“Oh, that Max.” He laughed heartily, as if the party was stuffed with several hundred interchangeable Maxes, and Jane had foolishly omitted to specify which one she meant. He frowned at her. “I forgot to ask. What do you do?”
“I work in a nursery.”
“Ah, horticulturist?”
“No, it’s a day care. You know—for little children and babies.”
For a moment he looked as if he were struggling to clear a blockage in his throat. “Right,” he muttered. Then, clearly registering that nursery workers didn’t feature in his realm—and were unlikely to be bristling with passion and energy—he adjusted his specs, brushed the crisp crumb from his lip and lurched to the safety of Veronica’s glittering entourage.
14
T
he girl was wearing jeans and a tight pink T-shirt with the words You’re Only Jealous emblazoned across the chest. From her seated position on the back step, Hannah gave the T-shirt a fleeting smile. She’d seen the girl in the kitchen—been ordered by Veronica to talk to her—but had chosen to duck out to the back garden instead. The girl loomed over her now, hands firmly planted on hips. “D’you smoke?” she asked.
Hannah shifted position. “No thanks,” she said.
The girl bobbed down to sit beside her. “I’m not offering you one. I need one, absolutely choking for a smoke. You out here for some fresh air or what?”
“It was just…really crowded in there.” Hannah was unaccustomed to some brazen stranger invading her territory and demanding fags. Despite the cold, damp air, she’d felt quite content on the step that overlooked the dead-looking plants and half-collapsed fence at the bottom of her dad’s new garden. It looked as if no one had bothered with it for decades. A split traffic cone lay on its side in a tangle of weeds. Hannah had been imagining the nighttime creatures that might emerge and start prowling about if she was patient enough.
The girl rummaged in a sparkly purse, which dangled from a fine plaited cord from her shoulder. Her arms were bare and goose-pimpled. “Hey,” she announced, “the cig fairy’s been.” She extracted a single squashed cigarette from her bag. “Got a lighter? No, course you don’t. Shit. I’m Zoë, by the way. You must be Hannah.”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve met Veronica? That’s my mum. Complete embarrassment, forcing your poor dad to host this party only…what is it? Six weeks since they met? She’d have had it at ours only we’ve got the builders in, fitting a wet room, which Mum’s decided is an absolute must-have. Must’ve read about it in one of her stupid magazines.”
Hannah laughed, even though she didn’t know what a wet room was. It sounded like something you’d have fixed, not fitted. “How old are you?” Hannah asked.
