Happily Ever After

by Harriet Evans

  Mandana stood over her, her arms crossed. “I don’t believe you!” she said, her tone betraying how pleased she was with this detective work. “I think you’re lying to me! Who is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Elle. “Honestly.”

  Mandana sat down next to her. “Is it a girl?” she said, her brown eyes peering through her fringe. She stroked Elle’s cheek. “It’s fine if it is, love. You know that stuff’s fine with me.”

  “What? No, it’s not a girl!” Elle said. “God, Mum! I don’t have a boyfriend so I must be a lesbian? Isn’t that a bit of an insult to lesbians, apart from anything else?”

  “Don’t be snappy with me, Ellie,” Mandana said shortly. “I’m only asking because you’re so closed off—it’s like you don’t tell me anything about your life and I worry that—”

  “Mum,” Elle said, crossing her arms. “I’m not a lesbian. I don’t have a boyfriend. Everything’s fine. You always want there to be something wrong. And there’s not.” She knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words had left her mouth. And don’t call me Ellie, she wanted to add.

  But Mandana didn’t react as she’d expected her to—by flying off the handle. She pursed her lips and stood up. “Sorry you think that,” she said. “Listen, I couldn’t care less if you’re a lesbian, you know. I’m not your father. I don’t mean that. I mean—I was in San Francisco just after the Summer of Love, you know. Half my friends were gay.”

  One of Elle and Rhodes’s few private jokes had always been about Mandana and her references to her time in San Francisco. When she talked about it, she’d always make it sound as if she’d been present at the writing of the Ten Commandments. They never quite understood what was so amazing about it. They were children of the seventies. Hippies didn’t interest them.

  “Yes, I know,” Elle said, not wanting to sound rude about the golden months in San Francisco, especially in light of Tuesday’s announcement at the Savoy. It occurred to her how little she actually knew about it despite her mother’s tendency to make extravagant claims: for example, that she’d dropped LSD with Timothy Leary. She looked at the photo of Mandana outside the classical building again. “Was that taken there?” she asked, interested despite herself.

  “Could be actually, I think that’s City Hall. We were protesting about the war. My friend Kathy was arrested.”

  “How long were you there for, before the… before you had to leave?”

  Mandana put her hands on her hips and stared at the ceiling. “Ooh. Not long. About four months. Arrived in October.”

  “Wasn’t the Summer of Love over by then?”

  “Well, yes. It was in ’67. So, long over.” Mandana paused. “I probably missed the best of it, if I’m honest. There were loads of people out of their heads, tie-dye everywhere. And it was freezing, too. I thought it was sunny all year round in California. Not in San Francisco. It snowed. I only had a raincoat. That’s my main memory, the cold. Not very blissed out, man.” She smiled.

  “You always make out you were there in the thick of it, Mother,” Elle said. “So you’re telling me you were two years late and it was winter, not summer. What a pack of lies you’ve fed us.”

  “I know,” Mandana said cheerily. “But it felt like something amazing was still in the air, even then. It was… special.”

  “Where did you live?”

  Mandana sat down on the sofa, and tucked her feet up underneath her. “Oh, right in Haight-Ashbury, along with all the other kids who’d run away to find the hippie dream,” she said, hugging herself. “This old Buddhist guy owned the house. He didn’t want rent, he just wanted us all to cook and clean, enjoy each other’s company.” She sighed. “It was a great place. Overlooked the Panhandle. Shared a room with a girl called Jackie, she was from Liverpool. Everyone else was American, and they loved Jackie’s accent because of the Beatles. Jackie’s sister went to school with Paul, you know. People used to come by just to meet her.” Her eyes grew misty at the memory. “And they loved my accent too, it was much more Northern back then. I ironed it out afterwards. Later. A guy told me once I looked like Jane Fonda. From Liverpool. I wasn’t from Liverpool, but I didn’t correct him.”

  Elle shifted on the seat. “What did you do all day, though? I mean, didn’t your parents mind? Grandma and—”

  She’d never really had a name for her grandfather. Though they were supposed to call him Grandpa, they hardly ever saw him, and it seemed too—cozy a name for someone you didn’t know.

  “I’d run away. There wasn’t much they could do,” Mandana said. She looked slightly ashamed. “They thought I was going to secretarial college after university, and I was going to learn Spanish, they’d paid for my ticket to Madrid. I forged a check and changed the ticket to a flight to New York, then I hitchhiked my way across the country. Just wanted to get as far away as I could.”

  “Your dad—wasn’t he furious?”

  “I didn’t care,” she said simply. “I hated him. Hated Mum too, but him mostly. He was a horrible man.”

  “Why?”

  “He drank.”

  “Drank? He was—” Elle didn’t know how to phrase it. “Badly?”

  “Yes, badly.” Mandana gave a small smile and hurried on, before Elle could interrupt. “Anyway, where was I? San Francisco. Oh, yes. I’d been at home, in Nottingham, and I thought I’d never get out. All my friends were at college, learning how to do things. Dad wouldn’t let me go, so I was working at Boots instead. Coming home every evening to that house, eating dry cardboard food, sitting in the near dark, listening to him, wishing he was dead. And I couldn’t take it anymore, so I made up the secretarial course in Spain and I just kept lying.” Her accent was stronger, as though she was nineteen again. “Dad wouldn’t let me leave the house without my hair all neatly tied back, I had it bouffant in a bow, you know? And always in these horrible court shoes, I hated them. God, I hated them. No sun, no one smiling, cracks on the pavements and weeds everywhere. Then a month later there I am, two blocks from the Grateful Dead, by the ocean, where no one cares if you wash your hair or wear a bra or any of that shit. They just want you to be yourself. There’s no lies, no fakes, no society. Everyone’s at peace.” Her eyes were glazed; she blinked slowly. Elle watched her, transfixed. “I met Ken Kesey, you know. And I was at Altamont, that’s my one claim to fame.”

  “What was Altamont?”

  Mandana came to, as if she’d forgotten Elle was there. “Oh,” she said. “Just—yeah. It was a free Stones concert out past Oakland. Big disaster. Some Hells Angels stamped a couple of guys to death. People say it’s when the love stopped, you know. December, yeah. And then it was so cold in January, and I was working as a waitress, but then I got busted—” She stopped. “And that’s when I got sent home. You know it all now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. About the arrest.”

  “That’s OK, Mum,” Elle said awkwardly. “It’s fine. You could have told us, you know. It’s not, after all, for God’s sake, not heroin or something. It’s not a big deal.”

  Mandana moved closer next to Elle. She took her hand. “It was to me. I think it was like, here’s this great life, you’ve tried it and now you’re never, ever going back to it, you’re going back to your shit world in Nottingham, and Dad’ll still be drinking and Mum’ll still be lying like everything’s all OK, and that’s your punishment, more than how angry they are. And I’m sorry. I sometimes think—anyway. But you see, I wasn’t drinking all evening at the Savoy, now was I?” She knelt down and patted her knees, her brown eyes full of concern. “It’s fine, Ellie. I’m not like Dad.”

  “Dad hardly ever drinks.”

  “My dad, not yours.”

  Elle barely remembered her grandfather. She knew her grandma, who was quiet and meek, afraid of shadows, a door slamming, children running. She lived in a poky house on a dark side street in Nottingham. They hardly ever went there.

  “So, he was… an alcoholic?”

  “I suppose so. He was a dr
unk, for sure. We didn’t really talk about it. He was either in the sitting room reading the Express and drinking his whisky or he was down the pub, and he was a thug, you got out of his way. I hated him.”

  Elle put her arm round her. “Mum, I didn’t know any of that. Why didn’t you say?”

  Mandana shrugged. “I didn’t particularly like remembering it. I wasn’t the only one, you know. There wasn’t much money for years after the war, no jobs. He’d been injured in France. When he got back everyone was worn out, everything was different. He wanted to manage a picture palace, something glamorous where the stars would come to visit. He didn’t want to work in a shop. I think he was a disappointed man. But I still didn’t love him. I couldn’t. He wasn’t nice. And that’s the way it is.”

  Elle didn’t know what to say. “But—poor Mum. Do you ever wonder if it made a difference… I don’t know, to your life?”

  “How so?” Mandana pulled away a little.

  “Well—” Elle held her breath, and then she said, “Why you drink so much, or why you used to. The bad times when Dad left, all of that.”

  Mandana patted her knee. “I know what you’re like, and you shouldn’t worry. Those bad times, they were ages ago.”

  Elle swallowed. “I just never know with you,” she said.

  “I know I was drinking too much back then, and there’s lots of things I screwed up. But he left over ten years ago now. And I’ve got it under control.” Her mother’s brown eyes were fixed on her face.

  “Have you?”

  Mandana said, “I promise I have.” She nodded.

  Elle didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled, trying not to let her shoulders slump with relief. “OK.”

  “I’m not drinking, there’s lots to look forward to and everything’s going to be OK. You mustn’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do, you worry about everything, Ellie. And I can’t stand you worrying about me, OK? I’m your mother, and I’m absolutely fine.”

  Elle hugged her, smiling into her shoulder. “I’m sorry, I won’t. I don’t. You’re right.”

  “In fact,” Mandana said, “I wanted to talk to you about something, Ellie.” She jumped up and went over to the kitchen, picked up a cloth, and started wiping down a surface. “I want you to do me a favor.”

  “Sure, of course, what is it?” Elle got up and went over to her.

  Mandana patted her flat short hair with the hand that held the cloth, awkwardly. “Well, I need you to email your father. Tell him I don’t want his money.”

  “What?”

  “He sends me money every month.” Her jaw was set. “I don’t need his guilt payments anymore.”

  “But Mum—that’s your alimony,” Elle said. “He agreed to pay it till you were sixty. It’s very generous of him. You shouldn’t give it back.”

  “I want to!” her mother shouted suddenly. She dropped the cloth in the sink, wiping her hands on her cords. “I’m doing all right! I don’t want any more bloody money from him! I want him to leave me alone! Just leave me ALONE!”

  She used to say that all the time, when Elle brought her a cup of tea after she’d been crying, or when someone bothered her about something. Leave me ALONE!

  “Mum,” said Elle, steadily. “I’m only trying—”

  “I’ve got a new life, you know. I want to put the marriage behind me. Things are going well with Bryan, and—”

  “Oh,” said Elle. “Right. Wow, that’s—”

  “It’s not a big romance at the moment, love.” Mandana held up her hand. “I just want you to know I’ve got other things going on. I’ve got more hours at the library, you know, that pays more. And Anita in the village and I, we’re setting up a company, Ellie. You don’t know anything about it. We’re setting up an import company.”

  “OK,” said Elle slowly. “Right. That sounds interesting. What is it?” She checked herself, aware that she sounded like a disapproving teacher.

  Mandana said proudly, “Indian textiles. Mainly bedspreads. Anita goes to Rajasthan all the time. She’s going to buy them and bring them back and we’ll sell them here. We’ll have open days, this will be like a—a very exotic warehouse. We’ve already sold three to people who are interested.” She went back to her cleaning, leaving Elle watching her. “So it would be very kind of you if you could email your father. I don’t like living off him, Ellie, a man shouldn’t be the plan. I need to make it work by myself now.” She took a deep breath. “It’s time for me to start over again. Stop the bad behavior. Forget the past.” She raised her head. “He’s obviously been poisoning Rhodes against me, and that American girl. So I want you to speak to him.”

  “Did you mind, about last Tuesday?” Elle asked.

  Mandana laughed quietly. “It’s my fault, all of it. It’s just I feel so ashamed it happened. I didn’t like the way she looked at me, either.”

  “Melissa? Oh, I don’t think she’s so bad,” Elle said, hoping this was true rather than believing it.

  Mandana shook her head. “I hope I’m wrong. She looks at you like she thinks she’s better than you. She just seems like trouble.” Her eyes narrowed. “And it’s pathetic, but I don’t want to communicate with your father, especially not after the things he said to me at the Savoy.” She poured herself some more wine. “I know we’ll have to be civil at the wedding, if they do go ahead with it here, but in the meantime—well, I’d be very grateful. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Elle, nodding. “Of course I do, Mum.”

  She picked up her tea mug, wondering what Rory was doing right now. He hadn’t replied to her texts, and she was kind of glad. As she looked around the room, she tried to picture him here, chewing the fat with her mother, by the fireside. She couldn’t see it.

  “It’s lovely to have you here, Ellie,” her mother said, interrupting her train of thought. “Thanks for coming. Thanks for putting up with me.”

  “Me too,” Elle said. “I’m the one who should be apologizing.”

  “No, love, it’s me,” said Mandana. “But like I say, it’s all fine now.” She looked out of the window and laughed. “The future’s bright. I just want you to believe me, Ellie love.”

  She touched her wineglass to Elle’s mug of tea, in a silent toast. From outside came the steady hum of more rain, pattering on the roof, the path, the puddles.

  BY MID-DECEMBER, they were “definitely in the bleak midwinter,” as Bernice, the lady who cleaned the phones and the computer keyboards, told Elle on her weekly visit. It was so cold, the sun barely appeared for days on end, and in Bedford Square especially, the tall buildings cast long shadows against the naked black branches in the square.

  One particular Thursday morning, Elle was feeling especially bad. She had a cold, the kind that seems to muffle your brain so that everything appears to happen in slow motion, somewhere out of your grasp. She hadn’t seen Rory since Tuesday; he’d been out of the office the day before, not in yet this morning, and she hadn’t had a moment alone with him since the previous week. She had wanted to buy her first book, a spoof novel she’d read called Regency Romance, and both Rory and Posy had said no, dismissed her as if she were an irritant, like a fly. She was fed up. The phone rang and she sneezed loudly. Opposite her, Helena moved back a little, as if Elle had the pox. Elle wearily picked up the receiver.

  “Hellouh, Edditoreull,” she sniffed.

  “Hey, Bee,” said a voice. “God, you sound awful. What’s happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Elle. “Libs, is that you?”

  “Yes,” said Libby. “I was ringing to see how you are.”

  “I’m fine.” Elle looked round her. It was impossible to have a decent conversation with someone in an open-plan office. “Actually, I’m not fine, I’ve got a terrible cold. That’s all.”

  “Ohhhhh.” Libby sounded almost disappointed. “Right then. Well, I was only ringing… to…”

  Sh
e trailed off. Elle sighed. It was over four weeks since Felicity’s announcement at the editorial meeting, and nothing had happened. In the office and out of it, rumor and counter-rumor still swirled around like heavy mist in a creaky horror film. It was exhausting. Every time Elle talked to an author they asked plaintively, “Any news yet?” When she went for lunch with an agent, or had a meeting with anyone connected with publishing, they’d say, “You know, I heard it’s Rupert Murdoch. He’ll strip the company assets and just use the name.” “I saw Liz Thomson from Publishing News yesterday. She said it’s definitely WHSmith. You’re moving to the Euston Road.” “Did you see that piece in the ‘Books and Bookmen’ column in Private Eye? It’s definitely Rory. He’s trying to split the company up, sell it for cash.” This morning alone, Elle had had two different conversations about the takeover.

  “Were you ringing to get the gossip?” Elle said flatly. “There isn’t any. I promise you.”

  Libby said, “Sorry. That’s rubbish of me. It’s just everyone at Bookprint’s desperate to know. They think we’re taking you over and you’re all going to come in and make us publish erotic romances and sagas. I keep telling them that’s not all Bluebird does, but they won’t listen.” She cleared her throat. “What are you doing this evening? It’s been ages, Elle, can’t remember the last time I saw you. In fact, I can. Booker Prize night, and I hardly saw you then, either. I’ve been rubbish. You around for a drink this eve? Just the one?”

  “I’d love to, Libs, but I—I really can’t,” Elle said. “I’m knackered, and I’ve got to work late anyway. I think I’m just going to—yeah, go home and flop. If that’s OK.”

  “No, that’s fine,” Libby said. “Poor thing, have you got loads to do?”

  “It’s a nightmare at the moment, yeah.” Elle glanced round the office, not wanting to say more. She wished she could moan about Regency Romance but now wasn’t the time, and how to explain that you were sick of your bosses, and you thought one of them didn’t really know what he was talking about, even though you were sleeping with him? Besides, she couldn’t entirely rely on Libby not to call up the agent and buy it herself. She was a bit like that, these days.