The Mum Who Got Her Life Back

by Fiona Gibson

  ‘Yeah,’ Lori exclaimed, all indignant. ‘Poor Gran!’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t to know,’ I said.

  ‘Imagine, someone coming out with something like that, after what your mum and dad went through,’ muttered Aunt Hilary, who loves a bit of intrigue. ‘D’you think it’ll ruin their holiday?’

  ‘No, absolutely not,’ I murmured, just wanting everyone to leave so I could get some kip on the sofa bed – my parents were sleeping in my room – and for them to head off for their flight to Southampton in the morning. I wished I’d never had the damn party.

  And now, as I price up bone china crockery in the shop’s back room, I remind myself that Alfie was just being ‘passionate about the cause’, and that he had no way of knowing that shouting about dead children and roadkill was possibly the worst thing he could do in front of my parents.

  I’ve never told Nadia that I started volunteering at a charity shop because Sandy had been obsessed by dogs. It might have seemed weird or maudlin and, anyway, I have never felt the need to explain it to anyone. It was just something I wanted to do – for me and for him.

  Sometimes we’d have a dog on the farm who wasn’t up to much, but Sandy wouldn’t allow him to be re-homed. The most clueless, erratic collie would end up being his pet – allowed to sleep on his bed – and he was brilliant with them. He wanted to work with animals, like at a rescue centre, or training guide dogs or police dogs, something like that. He’d planned to visit all the dog rescue centres in Glasgow to see if he could volunteer over a summer. He was always desperate to get to the city. So desperate, in fact, that he made up his mind to come, even when I said he couldn’t.

  Alfie didn’t know any of this, so it’s not really his fault, and it’s not Nadia’s either. After all, it’s not as if she could have lassoed him and dragged him, still shouting about lactating cows and why my dad should grow carrots, out of my garden. It’s going to make things difficult, though, with me and Alfie. I think it’s safe to say that we’re probably not heading for the beers-together scenario I’d envisaged at some point down the line.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Nadia

  Although we still haven’t seen each other since Sunday, I can sense the chilliness emanating from Jack. I understand why, of course. No one wants to see their mum reduced to tears. But I’ve apologised over and over, and even suggested I call his mum, or write her a note – but of course she’s at sea for fifty-odd days (I have a mad vision of sending, I don’t know, an albatross or something with an airmail letter) and anyway, he doesn’t want me to. It’s fine, it’ll blow over, he said on the phone, rather brusquely. And now I’m at a loss as to how I can make things right.

  At least we’ve been in touch sporadically, and our trip is on the horizon; that’s sure to smooth things out. I’ve texted to suggest he stays over on Saturday night, as our flight is early Sunday morning from Glasgow airport.

  Okay, he replied.

  U sure? I texted back. We are okay, aren’t we?

  Sure, talk to you soon, xx. Well, a couple of kisses at least. I decided to try to amuse him:

  Off to clinic with Corinne this afternoon. She’s having coil removed, bit nervous. Says it’s been there since Blair was Prime Minister and she’s built it up to a massive thing. Well, not really massive. I think they’re pretty tiny …

  Installed at the kitchen table, I sip my first coffee of the day on Thursday morning and pause before sending. Pre Alfie’s outburst, I’d have just pinged it off without a second’s thought, knowing he’d find it amusing. Jack likes Corinne, finds her scatty and fun and entertaining. Now, though, I wonder if it’s a bit much.

  Still, I press send.

  Half an hour later he replies: Hope all goes well.

  He’s just busy, I tell myself, figuring that he might have gone to open up the shop early, as he does sometimes, when there’s a backlog of donations to sort out.

  And now Molly emerges from her room, a little dozy but at least up – in contrast to her brother, who’s never appeared before I’ve set off for the studio.

  ‘Hey, Mum.’

  ‘Hi, sweetheart.’ She pushes back her tangled hair and smiles. I’ve enjoyed having her around, although I glimpse her rarely. Most evenings she’s been catching up with her old friends. Sometimes she’s hauled Alfie along, after nagging him to ‘tidy yourself up a bit’, and off they’ve gone, tumbling back in way after I’ve gone to bed.

  At least he’s out and about, I’ve told myself. It has to be better than lying about in that wretched onesie.

  ‘How’s work going?’ I ask her, pouring her a coffee from the jug.

  She smirks. ‘It’s crap, Mum. Totally crap, but it’s money.’

  ‘Oh, really? Why’s it so bad?’

  She slurps her coffee and tips a mound of muesli into a bowl. ‘The greenhouse is roasting, even when it’s not that hot outside. The trolleys with plants on are impossible to move without crashing into things, and customers keep coming in with plants they’ve killed – sometimes ones they haven’t even bought from us – blaming it on us …’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I say, laughing.

  ‘Yeah! They’ll go, “Look at the state of this jasmine. Totally wilted and dead!” And it’ll still have its IKEA label on.’

  ‘The cheek …’

  She spoons cereal into her mouth. ‘But you know the worst thing?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Kids,’ she exclaims, ‘running about, riding on trolleys, kicking over geraniums …’

  ‘Oh God, I can imagine,’ I murmur, remembering the one time Danny and I took her and Alfie to such a place. I’d had a notion of planting herbs in our shared garden for all the residents’ use, and needed pots, compost and plants. Jesus wept, Danny wailed, as our pre-schoolers careered about, knocking over a concrete Buddha and cracking his head.

  ‘That’s what they think of all that mindfulness shit,’ some bloke announced, laughing.

  ‘This is seven degrees of hell, Nadia!’ Danny blasted. ‘Fuck the compost. Get in the sodding car, you lot – right now!’

  Garden centres joined a list, which already included IKEA, Clarks shoe shops, DFS sofa stores, department store china departments and all the tea rooms in the world as Places The Ravens Would Never Go To As A Family Ever Again. ‘You can go on your own next time,’ Danny thundered, while I protested, ‘I just thought it’d be nice to have fresh herbs. The ones in packets always go off.’

  ‘I’m never having kids,’ Molly declares now.

  I glance at her, all slender and lovely in her vest top and jeans, her skin genuinely radiant, as opposed to the sort of radiance promised by the way of extortionate creams. ‘I felt the same,’ I tell her, ‘when I was your age.’

  She tips her head and looks at me. ‘So what changed your mind?’

  ‘Um … meeting Dad, I guess?’ It feels a little odd to admit this, given our circumstances now.

  ‘Huh.’ She seems to digest this like some kind of interesting but rather odd-tasting sweet.

  ‘I’m never going to change my mind,’ she declares. ‘I always thought babies were lovely, but not now, not after working at that place.’

  ‘A few shifts at a garden centre have altered the whole course of your future …’ I smile.

  ‘Well, yeah!’

  ‘Aren’t there any parts of the job you enjoy?’

  She wolfs the rest of her muesli and dumps her bowl in the sink, for those ever-obliging washing-up fairies to attend to. Whilst she doesn’t cause quite the levels of devastation that Alfie does, I really need to establish a few house rules. ‘I quite like arranging the seed packets in alphabetical order,’ she decides.

  ‘Sounds therapeutic.’

  ‘It is! It’s soothing. It should be offered as a treatment for people who are under stress.’

  ‘Maybe Alfie could do some shifts there?’ I suggest, not entirely joking.

  She shakes her head and pulls an expression of mock-horror. ‘No way am I working with
him.’ She hugs me briefly, stuffs her hair into a ponytail band, and is gone.

  Before leaving for the studio, I alert Alfie to the fact that I am off to work, and perhaps he could get up soon and follow up his job applications?

  ‘Mmm, yeah,’ he drawls from his room. My phone rings as I stride towards the subway; it’s Danny.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Um, Kiki wants to know about that facial?’

  ‘Are you the messenger now?’ I ask, faintly amused.

  ‘Looks like it,’ he says. ‘Can you just agree to a time slot?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Danny! I don’t even want one. This is crazy, that you’re haranguing me about it just to get her off your back …’

  ‘Uh, she just seems to think you’d benefit from it. Look, I’ve got to go to a meeting in a minute. We’re just starting casting; it’s mental at the moment …’

  ‘You called me,’ I remind him. Is anything more annoying than someone phoning, then implying they’re too busy to talk?

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Okay, can I just ask, does she do those facials on herself?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean, does she put her own fingers in her mouth and massage them about?’

  He splutters. ‘Jesus. I’ve no idea … Okay, look – she said how about Saturday, ten a.m.?’

  ‘All right.’ Hell, why not? I am intrigued, and if it’ll help to erase a few crevices from my face in time for Barcelona, then why not?

  ‘Brilliant. Oh, and there’s something else …’

  ‘No, just a facial,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t want any kind of acid peel, or my epidermis sanded off. There’s too much potential for things to go wrong.’

  ‘No – I mean for the auction thing,’ he explains.

  At the subway’s entrance now, I stop and frown. ‘What auction?’

  ‘Your boyfriend’s celebrity auction thing? For the charity?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’d forgotten about that!’

  ‘Well, I have something for him,’ he says, adopting a brisker tone now.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A denim jacket,’ he replies. ‘Just an old thing, Levi’s I think, covered in rusty old badges, looks like it’s been lying in the corner of a club having beer sloshed on it since about 1995. But if he wants it …’

  ‘Whose is it?’ I ask, stepping into the station now, expecting some industry bod I’ve never heard of.

  ‘Seb Jeffries.’

  I stop again. ‘The Seb Jeffries?’ Christ, I know they’re mates, sort of – at least he’s appeared in several of Danny’s films. ‘Danny, that’s amazing!’

  ‘Well, it’s all I could get,’ he mutters.

  I hear voices in the background, someone calling his name. Danny, can we get things started now, please?

  ‘Just a minute,’ he says distractedly, then to me: ‘I hear there was some kind of fracas at a party for your boyfriend’s parents?’

  ‘Yeah, it was all pretty awful.’

  ‘Well, Alfie feels terrible, you know. Look, Nads – we know what he’s like, thinking he bloody knows everything, but he’s not all bad, is he? I mean, he has a good heart, underneath all the bullshit and bluster.’

  ‘Yes, of course he does,’ I say quickly.

  ‘Mmm. Yeah. Well, he called me, nagging about that bloody auction, said we had to help Jack out. Went on about some face-of-waffles woman’s gloves …’

  ‘Mittens,’ I correct him, my stomach beginning to fizzle with excitement now.

  ‘Gloves, mittens, whatever, and I said yeah, I’d try and come up with something. So, Seb said he could have the jacket …’

  ‘This is way better than an apron or mittens,’ I gush now, barely able to contain myself. This will make everything all right. Jack will be delighted, and Alfie forgiven, and …

  ‘Well, okay,’ Danny says, ‘I’ll get Kiki to bring it along to the salon on Saturday and you can pick it up then.’

  ‘Great, thank you,’ I say, overwhelmed with gratitude now. ‘Thank you, Danny. I can’t tell you how much …’

  ‘Okay bye,’ he barks, switching back into professional mode now, and he’s gone.

  We’re in the sexual health clinic waiting room, Corinne and I, although we’re not behaving in a terribly clinicy sort of way. While the only other person here – a man in his early twenties – looks decidedly glum, we are giddy over the thought of Seb Jeffries’ jacket, and the fact that on Saturday my mouth will be probed by Kiki’s fingers – and, on top of all that, Corinne is determined to ‘get a good look at that coil when it comes out’.

  ‘Why d’you want to?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice low. I don’t wish to traumatise the young man.

  ‘Because it’s interesting,’ she declares. ‘I haven’t seen it since it went in, and I’m pretty sure that was pre-decimalisation.’

  He slides his gaze towards us and he shuffles on his plastic chair.

  ‘It’ll be like being reunited with an old, long-lost friend,’ I murmur. ‘Like that programme with Cilla Black …’

  ‘Surprise Surprise,’ she reminds me. ‘It’ll be like a shipwreck, covered in barnacles, being dragged up from the seabed …’ She shudders. ‘I should donate it to somewhere.’

  ‘Jack’s auction?’ I suggest, and we both splutter. ‘Actually, he does have some crazy things donated to the shop,’ I add. It strikes me now that it’s been a while since he sent me a picture of a quirky donation, to amuse me: a jigsaw depicting the Blue Peter tortoise, a box of plastic knickers. Perhaps nothing funny has been handed in – although I realise it’s more likely that we’re not in a ‘sending amusing pictures’ phase just now.

  ‘I was thinking more of a museum,’ Corinne adds. ‘Oh, thanks for being here with me. I was freaking out last night, but it really has to come out. It’s way overdue.’

  ‘If it were a library book,’ I whisper, ‘you’d owe thousands.’

  The young man’s name is called, and he stands up with a barely perceptible smile, before disappearing around the corner. And then Corinne is called. Thankfully, she hasn’t asked me to go in with her, so I’m left to mull over the good news I’ll be able to tell Jack, when we speak.

  I have already decided to hang back and wait until the jacket is actually in my possession – post-facial – just in case it doesn’t actually happen. The last thing I want is to promise something wonderful, and then not deliver. But I still fiddle with my phone, fighting an urge to text Jack.

  Corinne emerges remarkably quickly, all smiles. ‘It was easy,’ she reports. ‘There are two little strings, I’d forgotten about those …’

  ‘Like a light pull? That’s handy!’

  ‘Yeah. The nurse just told me to cough and it pinged out.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’

  ‘It nearly hit her in the face,’ Corinne chuckles as we step out into the late afternoon sunshine. We continue in this vein, discussing mid-life sex as we wander towards the city centre and find ourselves occupying a table at one of the pop-up bars in the busy street. Just across from Lush, as it happens.

  ‘She wanted to talk to me about contraception,’ she adds, after we have ordered a glass of white wine each, ‘as if I’m twenty years old. Christ, I’m nearly fifty, Nads! I’ve been single for three years, I’m not looking for a serious partner – and if I fancy a fling, then obviously, condoms are fine …’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ I chuckle as the waiter heads over. ‘Fancy some wine?’

  ‘Oh my God, yes,’ she declares, grinning. ‘After today, I fancy all the wine.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jack

  There should be a celebratory atmosphere in the shop, what with Iain showing up for his shifts again following Pancake’s return, and it being Mags’s birthday on this sunny Thursday. But there’s a kind of tension in the air, and I’m getting a sense that Mags preferred it when Iain was off, Pancake-hunting. Then she could tamper with his books and hover arou
nd me far more than usual, as if in his absence I needed ‘extra help’. It was all, ‘Like a coffee, Jack?’ ‘Can I get your lunch when I’m out? Doesn’t Iain always get you the wrong thing?’ And now he’s here again, she seems to be sulking, eyeing the supermarket cake I brought in and saying merely, ‘Thank you, is it lemon or plain sponge?’

  There’s still no sign of that wedding ring, much to Jean’s consternation when she pops in again. And Dinah has called to tell me that the Dumfries shop has managed to get hold of a diamanté tiara donated by some model-cum-TV-presenter, who has also agreed to come to the actual event.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure we’ll manage to get hold of something.’ Hmm. Ratty old T-shirt donated by the drummer of a Glasgow band no one’s heard of? Realistically, it might come to that.

  As I lock up the shop, I wonder – with a prickle of shame – whether the flatness in the shop today might have been down to me.

  It’s later, when I’ve been home and changed into my running gear, that Nadia calls me. ‘Hey, how’s it going?’

  I can tell immediately that she’s had a few wines, and I’m a little envious; I’d far rather go out for a drink than a run tonight. ‘I’m good,’ I reply.

  A small pause. ‘I’m out with Corinne. We’ve ended up having a couple of drinks after that, um, that thing she had done – you know?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I say.

  Nadia chuckles, and I’m overcome with a snag of sadness. She’s so … buoyant and alive. From that first night we went out, I’ve felt as if the world around me has had a filter applied. Not one of those crappy Instagram ones that Lori always scolds me for using – ‘They’re awful, Dad! Here, give it to me!’ – but a subtle brightening, entirely natural and filling me with joy.

  ‘Corinne says to tell you,’ she adds, ‘d’you think that thing she had removed could be donated somewhere? To a museum, or displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square?’

  In the background, Corinne barks with laughter.