by Hazel Osmond
‘You’re too bloody nice, Fran. Have I told you that? And that I love you.’
‘Come and see me tomorrow after dropping off Hattie. Say it in person … No, show me in person.’
There were more endearments until he saw Steph coming towards the house with Hattie and he wound up the call.
Steph shivered dramatically as she walked in. ‘Getting a bit cold out there. So, are you going to show me your bedroom, young lady?’
There was enthusiastic nodding and shouting from Hattie and she was pulling Steph by her hand towards the kitchen door. Too late for Tom to remove the designer clothes from the soft toys.
‘If you’re staying,’ he shouted after Steph, ‘you can help with bedtime.’
‘Of course,’ Steph said, slowing down her progress. ‘That would be lovely for me. Bathtime first and then we’ll snuggle up with a story.’
‘She has head lice,’ he shot back. ‘You’ll need to comb those out as well.’
It was the second time Steph’s poised demeanour had taken a hit and her hand went involuntarily to her own hair before she put her face back in order and said, cheerily, ‘Oh poor Hattie. Never mind. Mummy’s here to chase the horrible things away.’
Hattie curled into her mother’s body, luxuriating in the contact, and then Steph was chasing Hattie up the stairs, Hattie giggling and whooping.
Tom stood in the kitchen and felt as if the walls were coming in on him. He should be happy that, right now, Hattie was ecstatic – except if this was the up, how swift and bad would the down be?
Why hadn’t he kept his mouth shut during that phone call?
He slowly went up the stairs, listening to the laughing and screeching, but stopped halfway and sat down. He was like the Grand Old Duke of York, neither up nor down, back in a state of limbo once again.
CHAPTER 48
Thursday 19 June
1) For something that started off as a joke, ‘Aunt F’ does the job. It makes me feel much older than Jamie, even though there is only a gnat’s wing dividing our ages.
2) If Edward Mawson were to give me a name, it would probably be ‘Aunt F-off’.
3) Having a small child put her hand in yours does weird things to your stomach and your tear ducts. Being ignored by that same child an hour later has the same effect.
4) What comes in through a side gate can kill a party quicker than someone peeing in the punch bowl (no idea where I got that phrase from, certainly not one of my mother’s).
5) First impressions can be the right ones. See Thursday 29 May. Point
6) It is to be doubted whether a person who needs to be the centre of attention all the time is ever going to win prizes for Mother of the Year.
7) It is possible to look at the kind of woman the man you love, once loved, and wonder if you know him at all. Or perhaps you know the person he is now and not the one he was then.
8) Victoria and Steph may have been separated at birth – from any sense of decency and fair play.
9) The likelihood of Jamie and Natalie having had ‘words’ in the car on the way home is very high.
10) It is very hard to take a step back when you know someone has already broken the people you have come to love and, most probably, is going to have a go at breaking them again. And may even try messing up your life too.
CHAPTER 49
Just before Tom fell asleep, the little red numbers told him it was 01:30.
At 02:04, he was woken by a small finger jabbing his shoulder. Hattie was out of bed and sniffing as if she had either been crying or was about to.
‘What’s up, big girl?’ he asked, trying to jolly her along.
‘I went to see Mummy, but her door’s closed.’
What, she’s not doing twenty-four-hour parenting?
He sat up to let Hattie get in beside him. She was normally like a little hot-water bottle, but she felt cold, particularly her feet which she placed on his leg. She must have been out of bed for a while. He pictured her standing outside Steph’s bedroom door and put his arm around her. He clocked the fact that Gummy was in her right hand.
‘Going to tell me what you’re sad about?’ he asked, knowing roughly what it would be.
‘What if Mummy’s not in her room? What if she’s gone?’
‘She won’t be,’ he said, but the sniffing continued and she was starting to gulp. ‘Stay there,’ he told her and went to look out of the landing window. He came back, going via the bathroom to get some toilet paper. He handed it to her. ‘Mummy’s car is on the drive. She’s definitely in her room, asleep.’
‘She will be here in the morning, won’t she?’ Hattie was running her fingers over Gummy.
‘She’ll be here in the morning.’
‘Can she take me to school?’
‘Probably.’ Steph was not famous for her early-morning starts.
‘Can she stay for ever?’
‘We’ll talk about it another time, Hattie.’
Gummy was now in the palm of one hand, and she was stroking it with the fingers of her other one. ‘I want her to stay.’
‘Hattie, let’s go to sleep now. I’m tired, you’re tired. This is a visit, Hattie. A visit.’
The hand holding Gummy was straying to her mouth and he gently reached across and stilled its progress. ‘Have a snuggle up,’ he said, ‘and just enjoy having Mummy here, don’t think about anything else.’
How could you make a five-year-old understand that concept?
‘I want to snuggle up to Mummy.’
Steph had been here less than nine hours and had already supplanted him in Hattie’s affections. He was trying to take it on the chin, but by God it hurt.
He had continued to sit marooned on the stairs during bathtime and hair-washing and delousing, during story-time and tucking-in and felt utterly excluded. ‘Mummy will get my drink. Mummy will sit here while I go to sleep.’
Steph would tire of this very soon. Trouble was, what would she have wrecked before she left again?
*
When Tom woke up next, he could smell cooking. He went downstairs to a scene of domestic bliss. Steph, her hair in a ponytail, was frying pancakes. Hattie, with an identical ponytail, was sitting at the table eating them.
‘There you are, Daddy,’ Steph said. ‘Isn’t he a sleepyhead, Hattie?’
‘Look, look.’ Hattie held up her plate. ‘Pancakes.’
‘Do you want this one, Tom? It’s nearly done.’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Oh dear! Daddy’s a bit growly this morning, isn’t he? Growl, growl.’ Hattie’s response to that was to giggle and it felt like an early-morning kick in the teeth. Up ten minutes and he was already irritated, particularly by the way Steph talked to Hattie as if her synapses were not yet connected.
‘Perhaps Daddy would like some coffee?’
Yes, that was irritating too – talking about him in the third person.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
‘You used to like me making your coffee.’
He had, he’d liked anything she did for him, to him, with him. He had been besotted and amazed that someone so out of his league would bend down from the heights and choose him.
He let her make his coffee – watching her move easily around the kitchen. Today she had on some jeans and a white T-shirt and managed to look sophisticated rather than as if she was off for a trip round B&Q.
When she turned off the heat under the frying pan, she retrieved a silver bangle from the table and slipped it back on her arm.
‘Here you are,’ she said after she had poured the coffee and as she walked away, she ruffled his hair. It was done so quickly, he couldn’t stop her.
‘You always had lovely hair, Tom. Doesn’t Daddy have lovely hair?’
Hattie had her mouth full, but nodded. He couldn’t take this at breakfast. He told her what time they had to leave and that they couldn’t be late because he had two meetings early on (only he knew one of them was with Fran) and then went into the si
tting room to check his emails.
This was a remarkable charm offensive and, worryingly, it not only seemed to be targeted on Hattie, but also him. Steph hadn’t even mentioned the way her presents were adorning the soft toys.
When breakfast was over, the logistics of the trip to school reminded him of that old riddle – how to get a fox, a chicken and bag of corn over a river safely. He didn’t know who was the chicken or the corn, but the cunning fox was definitely Steph.
His plan had been for Hattie to come in his car and Steph to follow on behind. But Hattie wanted to go with Steph. Tom reluctantly agreed, but Steph couldn’t find her car keys.
He didn’t want them all to go in his car like some happy family. And it would mean coming back to drop Steph off before he went on to work.
They all looked for the keys until they had to go or they would be late. He wanted to say, ‘You did this on purpose,’ but there was Hattie watching him. This was how it went – Steph using his fear of upsetting Hattie to trap him into doing what she wanted.
In Tom’s car, Steph played the role of perfect mother and as they passed the turning for Fran’s bungalow, Fran walked up the track and to the main road. She had her back to them and although his impulse was to beep the horn and get her to turn round, he suddenly didn’t want her to see them all together like this. He said nothing and kept on driving hoping that Fran would only see the car after it had gone past.
Steph was opening the window. ‘Fran! Fran!’ she called. ‘Look Hattie, there’s Fran.’
Fran turned and Tom saw her take in everything that he hadn’t wanted her to. She raised her hand in a stiff wave.
*
In the playground, Steph sought out Josh’s mother and Hattie’s teacher and schmoozed her heart out.
‘I’m taking you back home,’ he told her after they left Hattie. ‘You can have another look for those car keys.’
‘But I want to come along to Tynebrook. Maybe we could have a spot of lunch together?’
Tom pulled over to the side of the road, not even bothering to wait for ‘his’ lay-by. He put on the hazard-warning lights. ‘Steph, I’m pleased you’ve come to see Hattie, but let’s get this straight – I don’t want to have lunch with you, tea with you or any other bloody meal. I don’t want you staying in my house and I’m not particularly happy being in the same car with you. For the last three and a half years, you’ve dragged your feet to wield some kind of power over me and take advantage of the fact that I don’t want anything to hurt Hattie. I can live with that, but I’ll never forgive you for the way you’ve messed Hattie about too. And now you’re Mother of the Year suddenly?’
He didn’t need to look at her to know that she was crying.
‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ she said, between the tears, ‘I know how much of Hattie’s growing up I’ve missed. I’m just trying to make up for it.’
This was ‘sincere Steph’, the one he’d believed for years.
‘Really? And how long can we expect this masterclass in mothering to go on for?’
‘I’m staying till Tuesday, Tom, if that’s what you mean. Then I’m going to see Mummy and Daddy. I can go to a hotel if you want – although I think that will really upset Hattie—’
‘Have you told her when you’re leaving?’
There was no answer to that, just a prolonged period of crying.
Tom took that as a ‘no’. Fantastic, so if he turfed her out and made her stay somewhere else, Hattie was going to be upset now and again when she left on Tuesday.
He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Damn, this was eating into his Fran time. He took off the handbrake and pulled out into the road and there was the blare of a horn behind him and the sound of someone trying to stop and he managed to get part of the way back up on the verge before there was a thud, a jolt and the noise of a car hitting them.
CHAPTER 50
Tom stood by the dent at the back of his car and looked at the piece of paper in his hand. On it were the name and contact details of a very irate guy whose only other communication with him had been to shout, ‘You bloody idiot! Hazard-warning lights on, no use of indicator, sharp right turn into the road. What kind of fuckwit are you?’
He remembered Fran’s accident up in the forest and looked at Steph sitting in the passenger seat rubbing her neck. She said she had whiplash, which was possible. After all, there must be the odd thing that came out of her mouth that was true.
It was too late to go to Fran’s now, and if he took Steph home, it would make him late for his other meeting, the one at work.
He got back in the car. ‘How’s your neck?’
Steph winced. ‘Quite painful. Is there a doctor in Tynebrook?’
‘Yes,’ he said, dully, aware his own shoulder was aching, and this time he checked the mirror before he pulled out into the road.
*
Once Steph was out of the car, he rang Fran. Damn voicemail again. He told her what had happened and apologised for not coming round. Next he called his mother and filled her in on Steph’s arrival.
She swore so badly that he wondered what the rev. thought of that.
Like Tom, she wanted to know what Steph was after. The two women had never bonded, and after Steph had more or less absented herself from Hattie’s life, Joan had little time for her.
‘It’s jealousy about Fran,’ Tom said. ‘But there must be something else going on because she’s being nice to me too. So, just warning you, Hattie will be fairly hyper when you pick her up from school later.’
‘Poor, poor Hattie,’ was his mother’s closing remark. ‘She’ll be over the moon.’
Tom decided not to tell Rob and Kath that Steph was around; Kath’s blood pressure was high enough as it was. He didn’t tell anyone at work about his visitor either, although he half expected her to put in an appearance.
As he worked, another potential worry surfaced. Up until Steph’s arrival, there had been six people who knew about him and Fran. Now there were seven. How could he ask Steph to keep quiet when that would alert her to what a very juicy piece of information she had hold of?
There were few points of light in his bleak day. One was that Felix and Derek had scouted out some good images from the end-of-year show. Another, that Kelvin had sweet-talked some new advertisers on board. After he’d told Tom that news, he continued to sit looking out into the main office at Victoria.
‘I’ve still got quite a bit to do,’ Tom hinted and Kelvin nodded.
‘Yeah, me too.’ And then, ‘What do you think of Vicky?’
Vicky?
‘Well … she’s talented and determined and she’s got a good eye for what does and doesn’t work in a magazine—’
‘Yeah, but her and me? Think we could make a go of it?’
Kelvin did something enthusiastic with his eyebrows.
‘I have no answer to that,’ Tom replied and Kelvin agreed that it was ‘a bloody curly one’. When he left, he made his usual detour via Victoria’s desk. Tom was still no wiser about what ‘make a go of it’ meant. And now his shoulder was really aching.
*
Just after school had finished, his mother rang back.
‘We’re home,’ she said, ‘and so is she. And I’ve got a bone to pick with you: why didn’t you mention you were in an accident? Madam is lying on the sofa, says she’s got slapdash.’
‘Mum, it’s … yeah, whatever.’
‘She’s not injured so badly that it’s stopped her shopping though. Looks like Hattie’s getting a whole new wardrobe.’ There was a sniff that said it all. ‘Don’t be too late, will you, Tom? You can imagine the lovely chats we’re having.’
Tom checked his mobile again. The Steph effect was already kicking in – Fran hadn’t contacted him when she knew he’d been in an accident, so she must be really hacked off. He stared at his phone as if he could hypnotise it into ringing.
Once home, he found that his mother had summoned reinforcements. Rob and a very uncomfortable-looking Kath were
sitting, arms folded, watching Steph like sheepdogs.
Steph was lying on the sofa, Hattie with her, and they were going through a fashion magazine. His mother, mouth drawn into a cough-drop suck, was in a straight-backed chair brought in from the kitchen.
‘Does your neck hurt too, Dad?’ Hattie asked and he said ‘No, my shoulder is just a bit sore.’ She didn’t reply and went back to pointing out what she liked in the magazine. It was obvious that Hattie’s sudden interest in fashion was to keep her mother’s attention. She was modelling another T-shirt and skirt, and although these fitted her better, the outfit was still some way off the coast of her personality.
‘We’ve all been having a nice chat, haven’t we?’ Steph said looking around Tom’s family. ‘Catching up.’
‘A nice chat’ didn’t seem to sum up the mood of the party. Kath’s expression was stone-like.
Now it seemed incredible to Tom that there had been a time when he had absorbed Steph’s views of his family – provincial, limited and limiting – and his trips north had grown infrequent.
‘Make you a cup of tea, mate?’ Rob asked and jerked his head towards the kitchen.
‘What the hell is she doing here?’ he said as soon as Tom joined him. ‘It’s not right her turning up like this. And then what? Bugger off again and leave you to pick up the pieces?’
‘She has a right to see Hattie, Rob.’
‘Yeah. Doesn’t use it much though, does she? When I think how casual she is about having a child, when some of us …’ Rob took his feelings out on a teabag.
‘Take Kath home,’ Tom said gently. ‘This isn’t helping her. I appreciate the support, but please, take her home.’
Rob and Kath did go not long after that, Kath telling him she was just on the other end of the phone if he needed her. Steph had given them a gracious goodbye from the sofa – ‘My neck, you see. I won’t get up.’
Tom knew where this neck injury was now leading. There would definitely be no move to a hotel – that would be a nice image for Hattie to savour: her father ejecting her injured mother on to the doorstep.
