A Gift to You

by Patricia Scanlan

  My heart melted as I thought of my beloved daughter. She was such a good kid and a loyal friend and Kristen had never valued her, had only nagged and niggled at her, comparing and contrasting her own edgy, unsatisfactory existence with Joanna’s happy-go-lucky, and very secure environment.

  Don’t get me wrong. Kristen has a very affluent lifestyle. Victoria and her husband Stuart are both well off, successful lawyers with a flourishing practice. They’d met at college and Victoria had found a soulmate, someone as ambitious and driven and hungry for success as she. They married when they qualified and set up practice together. Now theirs is the biggest legal practice in town. They have three foreign holidays every year, a villa on a golf club near Puerto Banus, flashy cars, a big house and private schooling for Kristen.

  Kristen has her own TV and DVD in her bedroom, a computer, Wii, iPod, iPhone, everything her little heart desires, while my Joanna shares a bedroom with her younger sister Rosie, is allowed computer time and TV time, and goes to the country for six weeks in the summer, to a mobile home.

  ‘I’m so lucky I have my own room and all my own stuff, I can watch what I want and do what I want, that’s much better than your stupid “family time” ’, Kristen had boasted recently. Joanna had been fire-engine red with rage.

  ‘Mam, Kristen said our family time is stupid. She’s really rude. I’m sick of her saying things about us all the time.’

  ‘And what do you think? Do you think our family time is stupid?’ I enquired, used to their squabbling.

  ‘No, I think it’s fun,’ Joanna declared, little freckled nose flaring in indignation.

  We have a rule in our house that everyone sits down to the family meal together. The TV is turned off, computers put to sleep, and for an hour or two my husband, Sean and I sit and natter with our kids about their day at school and our day at work.

  Kristen had stayed for dinner once and had been aghast that the TV had been turned off in the middle of Drake and Josh.

  ‘I’ll eat my dinner on a tray,’ she insisted.

  ‘No, you won’t. You can sit at the table with us. This is our family time,’ I’d explained.

  ‘But I always eat my dinner in front of the TV. My child-minder lets me,’ she whined.

  ‘Nope, come on, sit with us and eat up,’ I’d instructed firmly, watching her cross little face and thinking how like her mother she was at that age. She’d sat sulkily, while the girls and I began to talk about the events of our day as Sean ladled spoonfuls of tasty chicken casserole onto her plate.

  In spite of herself, she began to eat. She always cleared her plate in our house. Her childminder fed her pizzas and processed meals that could be heated up in a microwave so a home-cooked meal was a rare treat.

  Kristen hadn’t made her ‘family time is stupid’ announcement in my hearing. She knew better. I always took her to task if she stepped over a boundary, much to her annoyance, but I could imagine her superior little face, with her blonde hair tossed back, as she made her cutting remark to Joanna. She knew how to push my daughter’s buttons, and as they got older their relationship was becoming more fractured and factitious.

  ‘She’s only jealous because she doesn’t have family time,’ I pointed out to Joanna. ‘Her mam and dad are too busy. They don’t get home from work until late.’

  ‘Yeah, well, she says her mam says you don’t have a proper job, you only work for peanuts,’ Joanna said crossly.

  Smug bitch, I thought, feeling an uncharacteristic flash of fury, and a frisson of hurt. OK, so my mornings-only job-share as an office administrator in a busy primary school might not pay the huge salary Victoria was accustomed to but it was certainly more than peanuts and, more importantly for me, it meant I was at home in the afternoon when my daughters were finished school and I cooked their dinner and did their homework with them, and not some poorly paid childminder who didn’t give a toss.

  I know Victoria had made the remark. Kristen wouldn’t have come up with it herself and it was that dismissive observation I suppose that made me take a good long hard look at our ‘friendship’.

  I take another sip of latte and glance at my watch. Twelve fifteen. Victoria was supposed to be here at twelve. Typical. She’s always late when we arrange to meet. She is firmly of the opinion that her time is far more precious than mine. She is, after all, a lawyer. They now live in an exclusive gated estate just outside of town. They go to all the posh dinner parties and hold even posher ones themselves. Needless to say, Sean and I never get invited to them. I get invites to meet in coffee shops.

  I’d been invited to lunch every so often, in the Taj Mahal, as Sean had christened it, when they’d first moved into it, but the invites had dwindled over the past few years. I can’t even remember when I was there last.

  No, a coffee shop was deemed suitable for me, not even the chic new wine bar on Abbey Lane that was doing a roaring trade, where Victoria might see colleagues or clients and would have to introduce me to them.

  It was now twelve twenty-five. I had taken a precious day’s leave to visit the dentist and buy Joanna’s birthday present and order her cake. I could be having a manicure or even a mini-facial, or a tapas lunch, in my favourite haunt, Domingo’s Tapas Bar down in the Square. Instead, I was twiddling my thumbs, sipping a now cold latte, waiting for someone who didn’t value my friendship or my time.

  It helped that by the time Victoria arrived, I was steaming.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said airily, as she dropped her Louis Vuitton briefcase by her skyscraper heels and sat down opposite me. She was wearing a sharply cut black trouser suit with a cream silk cami. Her hair, in a short feathery style, was perfectly highlighted. I felt almost dowdy beside her, although I had dressed with care in a long straight black skirt, and a short, nipped in at the waist burgundy jacket that gave me a good shape and drew the eyes away from my ass, which was starting to head south.

  ‘I won’t be able to stay too long, seeing as I’m running late,’ Victoria announces, waving imperiously at a young waitress. I seethe with resentment. She delays me by almost half an hour and she has the cheek to tell me she’s running late.

  ‘That suits me. I’m short on time myself. I didn’t think I’d be twiddling my thumbs here for twenty-five minutes,’ I say curtly.

  ‘Oh!’ She looks at me in surprise. I don’t think she’s ever heard me use that tone before.

  ‘Sorry. Our conference call ran over. It’s a very important case. Very hush-hush but there are planning implications for the town,’ she confides.

  Her cases were always ‘very important’, I thought, unimpressed, as the waitress stands poised to take our order. ‘Green tea for me and no chocolate on the side,’ Victoria declares briskly, eschewing the big round chocolate sweet that always accompanied the teas and coffees, my favourite part. I love the taste of melting chocolate and hot coffee.

  ‘Regular coffee for me please,’ I smile. I’m certainly not ordering another latte in front of Victoria.

  ‘So, great to see you, Claire, what’s new? What’s hip and happening?’ Victoria sits back in her chair and studies me, eyes moving up and down, noting the empty latte glass the waitress is removing. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she says in an almost accusatory tone. She had always hated if I lost weight. As I’ve said before, Victoria’s friendship is based on her sense of superiority; in her eyes I’ll never be thinner, more successful, or more affluent than she is so I’m no threat.

  ‘So what are you doing swanning around Abingdon mid-week?’ She grins, showing perfectly even, laser-whitened teeth.

  ‘Dentist appointment,’ I murmur, knowing the time has finally come to do what I should have done a long time ago. ‘And I was buying Joanna’s birthday present.’ That brings up the subject of the birthday, the whole reason I’m here.

  ‘Ah, yes, the famous birthday party. Kristen’s been pestering me about her outfit; she wants a pair of Uggs. I’ve told the childminder to take her shopping. Honestly, they’re so fashion-consc
ious at that age. What should I get for Joanna? Could you make life easy for me and give me some pointers?’

  ‘Well . . . er . . . actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Victoria .’ I sit up straight and take a deep breath. I think about the look on Joanna’s face when she said to me, ‘Mam, I really don’t want to invite Kristen to my birthday this year. She always ruins thing and starts fights with Lisa. She’s very mean to Lisa.’

  I love Lisa Delaney, Joanna’s best friend. Wide-eyed, breathless, full of enthusiasm, there isn’t a malicious bone in her body and Kristen is supremely jealous of her. I remember a couple of weeks ago Victoria had asked me would I pick Kristen up from school, as the childminder was sick. I was regularly asked to pick Kristen up from school and Victoria took it for granted that I’d do it.

  I listened to the three of them in the back of the car discussing Britney Spears. ‘She has implants, you know, not as big as Jordan’s though. I saw it in one of my childminder’s magazines,’ Kristen declared. She’s so precocious, I thought, reading those sorts of magazines. Joanna and Lisa read comics.

  I saw Lisa turn wide-eyed to Joanna and declare breathlessly. ‘I know a celebrity that flew to America and her implants exploded and the heart came out with it. There was blood everywhere.’

  ‘OMG!’ exclaimed Joanna, agog, eyes like saucers. ‘I’m never getting them.’

  ‘That is so stupid, Lisa. You’re very, very silly.’ Kristen dripped contempt and sarcasm. ‘That’s not true, sure it’s not, Claire?’ Kristen tries to get me onside.

  I ignored the question. ‘Kristen, it’s rude to call someone silly. Apologize to Lisa please.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Apologize, please.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘But she is silly,’ she said under her breath.

  ‘Mam, I really, really don’t want Kristen at my birthday ’cos she’s very rude and she fights with my friends and please, Mam I know that you always tell me too be kind to her but she’s not a very kind girl and I just don’t like her any more.’

  Out of the mouths of babes. I knew exactly what Joanna meant as I sat looking at Victoria. Victoria and Kristen are users, pure and simple. What is the point of holding on to the friendship when neither of us had anything in common and when Victoria clearly looks down her nose at me, just as Kristen does with Joanna?

  Why should I allow my daughter’s birthday to be ruined by forcing a relationship that is not good for her? Why do I let Victoria walk all over me and treat me with such disrespect? She has never appreciated any of the ‘kindness’ shown to her. Even my mother has gone off her. ‘Got above herself, the little madam,’ she said to me one day when we met Victoria in town with a client and she barely said hello to us.

  My voice is surprisingly firm as I say calmly, ‘Actually, Victoria, Joanna’s birthday party is one of the things I want to have a little chat with you about.’

  ‘Oh, yes, planning something special? I’m going to have a marquee with a selection of entertainers for Kristen’s next one,’ Victoria boasts, when the waitress places our hot drinks in front of us.

  ‘Nope, Joanna just wants to go to the pictures and come home and order pizza and “hang out with the gang”, as she says herself,’ I explain.

  ‘Oh . . . lucky you. Kristen wouldn’t put up with that.’

  ‘I know, she’d think it’s boring,’ I agree. ‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. You must have noticed over the past year and more, that they haven’t been getting on very well.’

  Victoria looks startled. ‘Er . . . no . . . they squabble, but all kids do that.’

  ‘It’s more than that, Victoria.’ I didn’t want to say bluntly that Kristen is a spiteful little bitch. I couldn’t be that hurtful.

  ‘What do you mean?’ She straightens up in her chair, brows drawn together in a frown.

  ‘They have nothing in common any more. You’ve hit the nail on the head when you said Kristen would find the kind of party Joanna’s having boring and yet Joanna, Lisa and her friends are looking forward to “hanging out eating pizza” immensely.’

  ‘Oh, it’s just that the parties she’s invited to are always catered and there’s always some sort of entertainment provided; it’s what the parents in our circle do. It’s a pain in the ass actually, trying to come up with even bigger and better parties.’ Victoria throws her eyes up to heaven and I realize that success and affluence brings its own problems. Still, that’s not my worry, so I plough on.

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m saying, Kristen moves in different circles and has higher expectations and she can be quite dismissive of Joanna and her friends and it leads to a lot of arguments,’ I point out.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Claire, cop on, you’re not letting childish bickering become a big issue!’ Victoria snaps, beginning to see where the conversation is headed.

  ‘It’s a lot more than childish bickering, Victoria,’ I say, eyeballing her, annoyed by her dismissive attitude. ‘And it’s constant. For example, when a child tells another child that their “family time” is stupid, that’s dismissive, rude and superior. When a child constantly tells a child that her best friend is a “silly twit”, that’s undermining, nasty behaviour. When a child taunts another child by saying that her mother earns “peanuts”, that’s a lot more than childish bickering, in my view,’ I say quietly.

  Victoria blushes to the roots of her dyed-blonde hair. ‘Oh, you know the things kids say. I’m surprised at you for listening to them,’ she mutters, taking a sip of green tea.

  ‘Kids often repeat things their parents say, Victoria.’ I’m not letting her get away with that one and think how mean of her it is to let Kristen take the blame for her spiteful remark.

  ‘Kristen didn’t come up with the “peanuts” remark herself. I know you think my job pales in comparison to yours. I know you think Sean and I wouldn’t fit in at your dinner parties. I know you didn’t even give it a thought that you were twenty-five minutes late meeting me today, but my time is as precious as yours, Victoria, believe it or not.

  ‘Now I think it’s time to do the mature thing and admit that we have very, very little in common any more. Our daughters have even less, so what’s the point? What’s the point of hanging onto a relationship that can’t by any stretch of the imagination be called a friendship any more? You won’t miss me and I won’t miss you. Be honest.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Virginia protested hotly. ‘I—’

  ‘What’s my telephone number?’ I interject.

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’ she snaps, flustered.

  ‘You don’t know it because the only time you ever use it is when you need me to pick Kristen up. When was the last time you rang me for a chat?’

  ‘I’m very busy, Claire, I don’t have time to be ringing people for chats.’ She scowls.

  ‘I’m very busy too, Victoria, believe it or not, but I always have time for my friends. I like talking to them. I need them and I’m glad to have them.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Bloody Perfect, aren’t you? You always were. You with your “perfect” family growing up, and your dozens of friends and your family time and your home cooking that I never hear the end of when Kristen comes home from your place.

  ‘ “Claire makes lovely dinners why don’t you?”

  ‘ “Why can’t we stay in a mobile home for the whole summer?”

  ‘ “Joanna has family time in her house; why don’t we?”

  ‘ “Why can’t I be Joanna’s best friend?” On and on and on . . . it does my head in!’ she explodes.

  ‘Well, then, it will be as much a relief for you as it will be for me if the girls don’t mix any more,’ I say calmly, taking a slug of much-needed coffee.

  ‘Just because you’re jealous of me is no reason to ruin our kids’ friendship,’ Victoria counters snootily.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I almost choke on my coffee.

  ‘Well, that’s what this is all about, isn’t it, if you’re honest? Now that
we’re down to the nitty gritties. It galls you that I’ve made it; I’m successful and wealthy. You can’t deal with it, clearly, but I think it’s extremely childish of you to let it affect Kristen and Joanna’s relationship.’

  ‘You think I’m jealous of you?’ I repeat, not sure if I’m hearing correctly.

  ‘Aren’t you . . . even a little bit?’ she challenges.

  Am I? Is that what this is all about . . . jealousy? Now she’s made me question my motives and myself. For a moment, I’m unsure and then I recognize her usual modus operandi: to challenge and undermine.

  ‘Not even the tiniest bit, Victoria. Well done on everything you’ve achieved. You’ve worked hard and you deserve it, but I love what I have and I wouldn’t swap it for the world. Now, you must excuse me, I’m pushed for time,’ I say standing up. ‘Don’t rush your tea. I’ll pay for it on the way out. See you around.’

  Victoria’s jaw drops. And that’s the way I leave her. I don’t give her time to answer. I pay the bill at the cash desk and emerge into the street, breathing in the clement breeze scented with spring and the promises of long, hot days to come.

  I feel light-hearted, unburdened. I’ve done something that will affect my daughter in the most positive way and I feel really good about that. I won’t miss Victoria. And that’s the sad thing, I suppose. I’ve known her for thirty-five years and I’m walking away from our relationship with not an ounce of regret. We didn’t have a friendship in the true sense of the word we were just . . . a habit.

  I walk briskly towards the bakery and order an extra-large chocolate buttons cake, Joanna’s favourite.

  ‘Mam, this is “The Best Birthday Ever”,’ she whispers to me a week later, as she and the gang ‘hang out’, chomping on pizza and wedges and discussing the pros and cons of choir and singing class versus speech and drama, and the various teachers involved.

  ‘And you know something, it’s great Kristen couldn’t come, ’cos there’s no fighting, and Lisa was so relieved,’ my daughter confides.