by Carmen Reid
She hated to sit in chairs for any length of time and always ended up lying across sofas or cross-legged on the floor sitting quite easily and comfortably with perfect posture. He had taken so many photos of her like that, straight-backed, rising effortlessly out of her folded up legs, head balancing lightly on her neck, shoulders loose.
Eve ran up most of the long escalator at Holborn tube station and was scrabbling in her bag for her ticket when the couple snogging on the other side of the turnstiles caught her eye. Well, it was the ponytail. The two and a half feet or so of smooth chestnut silk flicking as the kiss went on.
Eve fed her ticket into the machine and walked through, hardly taking her eyes off the ponytail. This was some snog. Surely Patricia was going to come up for air in a moment though, wasn't she?
Finally, as Eve walked right up to them, the couple stopped kissing and were laughing into each other's eyes. She tapped Patricia on the shoulder and the porcelain perfect face, with lips still wet from this other man's kiss, turned to her.
Eve watched her eyes widen and her colour flush up to pink, then blotchy red. At last, there was a thing she didn't do prettily. Blush.
'Er ... hello,' Patricia said.
'Are you going to tell him, or am I?' Eve asked now, feeling her stomach lurch and her own face tingle with heat.
'What's this?' the man asked. Eve's eyes swooped up and down him for a moment, just long enough to register that he was older, very smartly dressed and definitely not Denny.
'Nothing, Peter.' Patricia pulled the lapels of her jacket protectively up around her neck. If Eve hadn't been so furious, she might almost have felt sorry for this girl. So pretty, so thin, she was like an impulse summer buy. A gorgeous skirt you had to have even though you knew it wouldn't stand up to a single trip round the washing machine.
'Nothing?' Eve heard herself demand.
'Eve... I'm sorry. I didn't want this...' Patricia tailed off.
'Patricia? D'you want to tell me . . .' the man began.
But Eve broke in: 'OK. Well, tell Denny as soon as you can, please, it's only fair.' Then, holding her bag tightly under her arm, she turned on her heel and almost ran out of the station.
She pounded along the pavement, thoughts whirling, all the way to the dance school. What a horrible thing to happen. She still couldn't decide if she should have approached Patricia or not. But then if she hadn't, wouldn't that have been like cheating on Denny herself?
'Goodness me, you don't look happy,' was Jen's greeting when they met outside the yoga class.
'No? Well I've just bumped into Denny's girlfriend with her tongue down another man's throat.'
Jen took a little moment to register this.
'No!! Did she see you?'
'Of course she bloody well saw me,' Eve stormed. 'I marched up to her and told her she'd better tell Denny about this, or I would.'
'Oh my God,' was Jen's reply. 'Never, ever meddle with your children's love affairs. That is the rule.'
They sat down, side by side on the bench, pulling off their outdoor shoes.
'I wasn't meddling. I just wanted her to know I knew. What do you expect me to do, Jen?' Eve was yanking at a shoe. 'Sneak around for weeks with the information that my son is being cheated on when I could just clear the air and put a stop to it all? I mean, I don't mind if he still wants to go out with her, just so long as he knows. I hate secrets. They make me nervous.' She stood up now, faced her friend and wondered if she was going to confess to the steamy sofa clinch with Joseph.
'Come on, you silly moo. Time to "stretch ... stretch out and reeeeelax".' Jen did her best imitation of their teacher, Pete the Geek, then stood up and smiled at her.
After yoga, they went to tango class where they partnered each other, as usual, and gossiped in whispers in between the tiny dance teacher's instructions to: 'Squeeze . . . squeeeeeeze your pardnah . . . like you are making lufff', which made them both quake with suppressed laughter.
'The solution to your troubles lies in the sock drawer,' Jen told her.
'What?!'
"There is dating truth in every sock drawer. All the single socks,' Jen explained. 'You've just got to keep putting them back in and, almost always, they do eventually find their partners. Have faith! It is very, very rare to have a truly single sock ... over the long term.'
'No. It's going to happen to me,' Eve said gloomily, 'I just know it. I'm the turquoise and purple stripy handknit which can't just be lumped alongside the other blue knee-lengths.'
'Who are you calling a blue knee-length?'
'Oh you know what I mean!'
'Why don't you go out with Pete the Geek?' Jen asked her as they sashayed from one end of the room to the other, cheek to cheek, like the twenty-five or so other couples around them.
'No way!' was Eve's horrified reply.
'Why not? You're both yoga buffs, he's thirty-something, single, clearly interested ...'
'Oh my God, Jen! This is a man who "douches" his nose with salt water.'
'No!' Jen's turn to be horrified.
'And, he only drinks Echinacea tea kept overnight in a copper bowl and always "eliminates" before breakfast. And you think I'm a freaky health nut.'
'OK, OK, he's not quite right then. But I do see you turning into the kind of woman who tours Nepalese craft fairs to seduce the ponytailed talent behind the counters.' They both started giggling at this.
'Two . . . three . . . four . . . bend, bend those backs and squeeeeeeze.' The dancing teacher gave Eve a stern prod.
'Nils is not a hippie,' Eve whispered when they were out of range again. 'He's completely scientific and square. Well, no, he sometimes uses homoeopathy on cats.'
'But he's not quite Mr Right, is he?' Jen was asking from the depths of a backward bend with Eve leaning right over her.
'No.' Eve hoicked her up out of it. 'But he's Mr OK... I think.'
'Been for any more appointments?' Jen asked.
'I'm not telling,' Eve answered.
'Ooooh ... what's eating you then?'
'I snogged Joseph,' Eve said, before she could really weigh up the pros and cons of coughing to this.
Jen braked so hard midway through her twirl, she almost snapped the heel off her shoe.
'NO!'
'Ah ha ... I have no idea what that was about,' Eve told her. 'I don't think it's a sign. Because we pretended that nothing happened.'
'It's a sign that you both need your heads examined,' was Jen's verdict. 'And at your age,' she added. 'God, you really need to get a grip. He's practically married, Eve. I have got to find you someone else. Quickly.'
'And how's your dad?' she asked in a deliberate attempt to not dwell on this Joseph muddle that Eve seemed so desperate to get into again.
'We're waiting,' was Eve's answer. 'His op is in two weeks' time.'
'Oh, I'm so sorry.'
'Yeah... I know.' She caught the teacher's eye. 'Let's dance for a bit,' she said, and with that she gave Jen – who was always the girl – a hard spin and for the next half an hour they tried to concentrate on the lesson.
When Eve got back home that evening, she found Denny drinking tea and smoking a cigarette in the kitchen, which was totally against house rules even though the windows were wide open.
She hated the fact that her son smoked and considered it a personal failing on her part, but she didn't nag him this evening, just poured herself a cup and made him come out to the garden with her because she had pots to water in the warm dark.
'Janie phoned,' he told her. 'Grandpa isn't well ... she got a call from the GP. They're trying to move his surgery forward.'
'Oh my God.' Eve gripped the sides of her mug, feeling panicked.
'She says she'll be there at the weekend, and she's hoping you'll go down too.'
'Did she say what was wrong?'
'He's a bit breathless and confused. A neighbour phoned for the doctor or something. She's pretty upset,' Denny told her.
'Does she want me to phone?'
/> 'No, she said she'd call in the morning, she was off to bed.'
Eve bent down to the coils of the hose and started unwinding it slowly.
'Are you going to be OK?' he asked.
'I think so. Hope so ...'
He let her water in silence, then when she had finished they went to the bench at the end of the garden and sat together in the dark.
'How are you anyway?' she asked him, with a little pat on his arm. 'You look tired.'
'I'm so-so.' He shuffled a hand through his dark hair and took another drag on his cigarette. 'Lots of work on,' he added, 'but hardly any of it has been used yet, so no big pay cheques.'
'Oh Denny.' She tried to rally him: 'You're a photographer, an artist. You can't expect to make the same money as a finance director, or ... a company law expert. But maybe you get to keep a bit of your soul.'
'Ah well,' he let out a sigh of smoke. 'Maybe I'd rather trade my soul for a bit of filthy lucre.'
'Not if you're my son, you wouldn't,' she smiled at him. 'It's about being not having, remember.'
'Wise words, but they aren't going to pay for the surfing holiday.'
'Oh – are you going away?'
'Well, I suggested surfing and I was thinking Cornwall, whereas Patricia was thinking California. Bit of a difference.'
'Hmmm.' With a lurch of nerves, Eve wondered if she should say something about Patricia.
'So . . .' he added and she couldn't read his expression in the dark, 'maybe that's why I got dumped.'
'Oh no.' Boy, Patricia hadn't wasted any time. 'Tonight?' Eve asked.
'No! I've been here all night. Last week. She's finally succumbed to the charms of her agency boss.'
'Oh.' Eve suddenly had to take an intense interest in deadheading the flowers in the pot beside her. What a total tit I am!
'Are you OK about it?' she managed.
'Yeah. Bit sad, but it's not the end of the world or anything.' He stubbed his cigarette out on the paving then flicked it over into next door's garden.
'Denny!'
'Oooops, sorry.'
'Are you really OK?'
'I'll be fine, honest.' He turned and smiled at her. 'It wasn't love or anything... I was basically sleeping with a very attractive friend. I think you know about that kind of thing, don't you?'
'Who? You mean ... ?'
'The vet. You're doing the vet, aren't you?'
'Denny! Doing him?! I'm your mother.'
'Well, you know.'
'I've had a few dates with Nils. It's not a big thing.'
She got up now and went in search of her snail bucket to avoid further questioning. He watched from the bench, taking yet another cigarette out of his packet and lighting up with difficulty against the breeze. 'What are you doing now?' he asked as she foraged into her shrubbery with a torch.
'Drowning snails. It's best to hunt them at night.'
'And I thought gardening was such a gentle hobby!'
'It's nature – dog eat dog out here ... or more like snail eat shoot.'
'Anyway . . . Mum?' he asked, but she interrupted him.
'You're smoking too much,' she scolded as she plopped another snail into the bucket.
'I know, I'm going to give up really soon.'
'Anyway, what?'
'Are you OK about our dad coming to the wedding?'
'Are you?' was her reply.
'I asked first!'
'Well... I think so.' She didn't turn from her snail search. 'I'm quite interested in meeting his family and seeing him again, I suppose. I'm not wild about it, though.' That was something of an understatement. 'He's not my favourite person on the planet, but if you and Tom want to be in touch with him, I don't want to get in the way of it.'
Denny blew out a mouthful of smoke: 'I feel the same,' he said. 'If this guy wants to get to know us a bit better, fine. If not, fine.'
'I'm sorry about your dad,' he added.
'Yeah.' Plop, another snail hit the bucket. 'You and Tom should come down and see him once the op is over.' She felt the little sob at the back of her throat as she said this.
'I know,' Den replied.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eve and Janie spent the day before their father's surgery at home with him, trying not to panic at how unwell he looked – thin, tired, a yellow tinge to his face which had never been there before.
The sun broke through after lunch, so they moved deckchairs and a lounger out to the lawn and sat there with him, drinking tea. Eve was taking in the garden: one of those formal, suburban affairs with a bright green lawn, trimmed to a clean-edged square and rose bushes, shrubs and bedding plants spaced neatly round the borders. 'My children,' she heard Janie complaining. "They're probably going to spend the whole weekend in the sitting room with the curtains pulled shut, watching TV and eating their body weight in cheesy tortillas.'
'It's a phase,' Eve soothed. 'Only a few more months, then they'll be doing the organic vegan thing, promising to "never eat another victim of torture" or tune into "this hypocritical exploitation of the masses pumped into our homes by the government."'
Janie snorted at this and added: 'And I can never get them to go to bed or get up in the morning.'
'Well, that's normal,' Eve smiled at her. 'All teenagers have the right to a lie-in enshrined by the Geneva Convention or something. Tom's going to get a horrible shock when the baby—' She bit the rest of the sentence down. Her father still didn't know about Tom's impending arrival and she had no intention of announcing it to him just yet. He was quite unwell enough.
She gave Janie a brief finger on lips signal, but their father didn't seem to have heard.
'Anna reminds me so much of your mother,' he said all of a sudden, glancing up from his newspaper. 'The same fair-haired seriousness. A bit bossy and strict.' He smiled at Eve. 'Elsie would have loved Anna.'
Her father might not be here either to see Anna grow up or even grow much older. Now, the thought was out there in the open, all raw and awful, and all three of them felt choked up with it.
By 4p.m. it was time for the sisters to drive him to hospital and help him to settle in for his pre-op night. They sat for a while in the rhubarb pink ward, ignoring the brown tea in plastic cups and struggling to keep up a cheery chat.
Back at his house, Eve and Janie did what they could to keep themselves occupied: cleaned out the kitchen cupboards, ironed. They had filled the fridge with food, but decided to go out for supper, because at least it was a change of scene.
In bed that night, Eve could only think about all the people she loved and the unchangeable fact that one day she would have to say a final goodbye to every single one of them.
