The kids are finally in bed. Unfortunately, the moment after the police told us about Diana, they decided to show up and demand our attention, so Simon and Stella kindly offered to hang around until the children had been fed and put to bed (Simon even went as far as to serve up the burgers and chat to the kids while they ate). It had been hell, having to wait for the details, but we couldn’t see any way around it. When it came to bedtime, Ollie took Edie without consultation (the easiest of the three to put to bed, requiring nothing more than a chorus of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, her lambie, and a dummy) and I let him because, after all, his mother has just died. I took the older two, who, it seemed, had finally twigged that the police must have come to our house for a reason. At a loss, I told them they had come to ask us about a stolen bike.
‘Whose bike?’ Archie demanded as I piled the covers on him, trying to push him down with them. ‘Not mine?’
‘No, not yours.’ He popped up again.
‘Harriet’s?’ I pushed him back down. ‘She probably dumped it somewhere and is pretending it was stolen. She’s been wanting a new one. If she gets a new one, I want a new one.’
‘No one is getting a new bike.’
He regarded me sceptically but remained in a lying position. I was about to kiss his forehead when, bounce, he was upright again.
‘Do they think I stole the bike?’
‘No, Archie.’
He settled after I managed to convince him that Harriet was not, under any circumstances, getting a new bike.
Harriet’s concerns were a little different. As I tucked her under the covers, she shifted and squirmed. ‘Why would the police come to our house about a bike that isn’t even ours?’
‘Well . . . they thought we might know where it is.’
‘Why would they think that?’ There was something all-knowing in her unblinking, blue eyes. Harriet often caught me off guard with this look. ‘Maybe,’ she said before I could answer, ‘they are just saying they are here about a bike, but really they are gathering information about something else.’
Harriet had watched Spy Kids at a sleepover last weekend and I suspected that was responsible for all this ‘gathering information’ talk. But who knew? Harriet has always been a perceptive little thing. Too wise for her four years.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ I told her. ‘I’ll speak to them and let you know tomorrow. You get some sleep.’
She nodded slowly and slipped under the covers, looking anything but sleepy. She actually looked a little rattled. Which was odd, considering she didn’t even know that her grandmother had died.
I look up as Ollie emerges from the hallway, his phone in his hand. He sinks into a kitchen chair. I sit beside him. ‘How was Nettie?’ I ask.
Ollie puts his elbows on the table, rests his forehead in his left hand. ‘She’s on her way over.’
‘Nettie is?’
‘And Patrick.’
I inhale, ignoring the tiny flutter of panic this kicks off in me. For goodness sake! Of course Patrick and Nettie are coming over. Nettie’s mother has just died. It’s a good thing, us being forced together like this. Haven’t I been hoping for weeks that Nettie would reach out to us?
Simon brings my cup of tea to the table, and he and Stella pull out chairs and sit. We all square up, preparing ourselves. Any informality we adopted with each other while the kids were awake is gone and we’re ready for business.
‘So . . .?’ Ollie prompts.
‘I’ll get straight down to it,’ Simon says. ‘We don’t have all the information yet. What we do know is that a neighbour alerted police just after 5 pm this afternoon, reporting that she’d seen your mother’s unmoving body through a window. By the time the police got inside it appeared she’d been dead for several hours.’
‘Yes, but what caused it?’ Ollie can’t keep the frustration out of his voice. I reach out and place a hand over his.
‘We won’t know for certain until the results of the autopsy come in,’ Simon says, ‘but some materials were found, as well as a letter, which appear to indicate that your mother may have taken her own life.’
In the silence that follows I find myself aware of everything, the faint sheen of sweat on Simon’s temple, the fly caught between the curtain and the window, the blood pulsing wildly around in my head.
‘I realise this must be a shock,’ Stella says.
‘Yes,’ I say.
I turn my attention to Ollie, who is oddly still. I put an arm around him, rubbing his back in rhythmic circles, like I do to the kids when they fall over and hurt themselves. Still, he doesn’t move.
‘Are you sure?’ he asks finally. ‘That she . . .’
‘The note was quite clear about what she’d decided to do. And the . . . materials must have been purchased in advance, which indicates this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act.’
Ollie stands suddenly and begins walking with purpose in one direction, then back the other way. Then, abruptly, he plants his feet.
‘What materials did you find?’
‘Unfortunately we’re not permitted to tell you that at present. Until the coroner rules it a suicide we have to treat it as a potential homicide—’
‘A potential . . .’ Ollie’s mouth hovers open, but he can’t seem to finish the sentence.
‘It’s just something we can’t rule out until we’re told to. I understand this is difficult to hear.’ Simon’s demeanour is competent and professional, yet I find it difficult to take him seriously. He is just so young. How much could he possibly understand with that youthful, unlined face?
‘Can you think of any reason your mother might have wanted to take her own life?’ Stella asks. Her focus is on Ollie, but her gaze flickers to me every so often, as if surreptitiously. ‘Maybe she was depressed? Did she suffer from mental or physical illness?’
‘She had breast cancer,’ Ollie says. ‘But she wouldn’t take her own life. I don’t believe it.’
Ollie drops his head into his hands. But a moment later, when headlights beam in the front window, he looks up again. Patrick’s car is pulling into the driveway.
‘They’re here,’ I say needlessly.
‘Go ahead,’ Stella tells us.
Ollie and I walk to the door. Patrick unpacks himself from the driver’s side, standing a full head and shoulders above the vehicle. He walks around the car to open the door for Nettie, but she is slow to emerge. When she finally appears, it’s a shock. Her face is gaunt; her eyes are sunken. It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve seen her but in that time she must have lost a stone.
‘Nettie,’ I say as she makes her way up the steps. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Thank you.’
She keeps her eyes down so it catches her off guard when Ollie throws his arms around her. Perhaps because of the surprise, she allows it. Patrick waits a few paces behind, greeting me with a single nod.
I turn and head back into the house.
Inside, Simon and Stella are gathering up mugs and talking quietly. I slip into the bathroom instead. Bath toys are scattered all over the floor and the kids’ toothbrushes are lined up on the vanity, still loaded with toothpaste because we forgot to brush their teeth. I rinse them off and put them back into the plastic cup where they live. Then I open the cupboard under the sink and reach for an old yellow towel, one so threadbare I’ve only been keeping it for those occasions where one requires an old towel—mopping floors or shining shoes or cleaning up vomit. Ollie, of course, doesn’t understand the concept of old towels and somehow always manages to select this one to put on display when we have guests over. But all of this is insignificant, of course, because Diana is dead.
‘Lucy?’ I hear Ollie call out from the next room. ‘Lucy? Where are you?’
‘Just a minute,’ I say and I press the yellow towel to my face so no one will hear me cry.
4
DIANA
The past . . .
‘Oh that’s right,’ Jan says. ‘You me
t the new girlfriend last night, didn’t you? How did it go?’
Kathy, Liz, Jan and I are on the deck of the Baths, with the water a pane of blue-green glass behind us. We’ve ordered a seafood sharing platter, a bowl of shoestring fries and a bottle of Bollinger, and the whole affair is both extremely pleasant and frightfully pretentious. A seagull hovers over Jan’s right shoulder, watching the fries with interest.
I lift my hand to block the sun from my eyes and notice the girls all looking at me intently.
‘Yes, do tell, Diana,’ Kathy says.
The girls lean forward and I feel the self-conscious prickle of being the centre of attention. At the same time I feel indignant. One of the reasons I enjoy the company of this particular group of friends—the wives of Tom’s friends—is that they are usually far too interested in their own business to care about mine, and if there’s one thing I loathe, it’s people knowing my business.
‘Yes, I met Lucy,’ I say vaguely. ‘It was fine.’
I sip my drink. It’s the first Wednesday of the month, our usual meet-up at the Brighton Baths. Once upon a time our meet-ups had, ostensibly, been a book club, and I was quite keen on that idea. The first book I suggested was a biography of Clementine Churchill, and I came to the Baths prepared with a list of discussion points, only to find no one had read the darn thing. At the end of the meeting no one suggested another book, and since then Jan has started calling it ‘drinks club’.
‘Fine?’ Jan whistles. ‘Oh dear.’
‘Why “oh dear”?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong with fine?’
‘Damning with faint praise,’ Liz mutters.
‘Nothing good ever started with fine,’ Jan agrees.
I don’t understand. As far as I am concerned, fine is an appropriate seal of approval for my son’s new girlfriend. What else am I to say? Love is obviously too strong a word, and even like would be overstating it after a mere evening together—heaven forbid I be one of those overbearing women who fawn over the new girlfriend, begging to be best friends and shop together and go to the spa. As far as I am concerned, if Lucy loves my son and he loves her, she is fine by me. Absolutely fine.
‘Come on, we’re talking about Diana,’ Kathy says, lifting the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and finding it empty. She signals to the waiter to bring another. ‘Fine is actually very high praise.’
Everyone chuckles, which I find perplexing. What is so wrong with fine? This is the problem with new friends. New, admittedly, is a stretch, as I’ve been friends with Jan, Kathy and Liz for thirty years, but there is nothing like the friends you’ve known all your life, the ones you never have to explain things to. Cynthia would have understood what I meant by fine. To this day, I still miss Cynth a lot.
‘Did you give her a hard time?’ Kathy asks. ‘Ask her about her intentions toward your darling son?’
Why, pray tell, does everyone care so much what I think anyway? Surely it is Ollie’s opinion of her that matters? In the grand scheme of things, after all, what I think of her is largely unimportant. Some parents—including my own, Maureen and Walter—make their opinions count a little too much if you ask me. I grew up Catholic, with a mother who kept a close eye on what everyone in our neighbourhood was up to, especially her child. I promised myself long ago I wouldn’t be like that. And, indeed, I’m not.
‘Were you pleasantly surprised?’ Jan asks. ‘Horrified?’
‘Neither,’ I reply, because Lucy is exactly what I expected—pretty, neurotic, desperate to impress. Ollie’s type to a tee. Born clever and attractive and a little bit quirky, she’d have spent her life being adored—by her parents first, and later, by the boys. She’d have been the teacher’s pet, a school prefect, a sporting champion. Things come easily to girls like her. And while I’d have liked to be happy for her, I’ve seen too many girls for whom things didn’t come so easily, for this not to irritate me.
‘Not good enough for your son, is that it?’ Jan asks knowingly.
‘No one ever is,’ Liz agrees, bizarrely, as she doesn’t have a son.
‘I don’t know,’ Kathy says, ‘I’d pay someone to take Freddie off my hands. I’m terrified he’s going to want to move in with me one of these days so he can quit his job and sit on his backside and watch reality TV all day, calling himself a “carer”. I’d give anything for a daughter-in-law. Someone to pluck the hairs from my chin and put on my lippy for me when I’m old and grey. Sons are useless at that sort of thing.’
I munch on a couple of fries and hope they’ll argue it out amongst themselves. The bottom line is, it always takes a little adjustment when a new person joins the family. They have different values, different histories, different opinions. It might all work out wonderfully, but, of course, it might not. Patrick has been around a few years now and while I’d been less than thrilled about him, we’ve adjusted. I don’t doubt it will be the same for Lucy if she sticks around. Still, it’s natural to brace a little. A change is coming—of course we’re going to be on our toes for a while.
‘Do you think she’s a gold-digger?’ Jan lays a hand on my forearm, making the comment a little more sinister and exciting.
‘No.’
The girls can’t hide their disappointment. ‘Not another Patrick then?’
I don’t respond. I have my own feelings on Patrick’s little bookkeeping business, which he runs with the enthusiasm of someone who is expecting a sizable inheritance to rescue him from his problems, but that’s none of my business, and it’s certainly none of Jan’s. Besides, no matter his work ethic, Patrick is family and Nettie loves him. As such I owe him a little loyalty.
‘Well, the only thing that matters is that she makes Ollie happy,’ Kathy says after a long pause, and everyone hums in agreement. Everyone except me.
If you ask me, everyone is a little too interested in their children’s happiness. Ask anyone what they wish for their kids and they’ll all say they want them to be happy. Happy! Not empathetic, contributing members of society. Not humble, wise and tolerant. Not strong in the face of adversity or grateful in the face of misfortune. I, on the other hand, have always wanted hardship for my kids. Real, honest hardship. Challenges big enough to make them empathetic and wise. Take the pregnant refugee girls I deal with every day. They’ve been through unimaginable hardships, and here they are working hard, contributing and grateful.
What more could you want for your kids?
The engagement came faster than I expected—within the year. Ollie announced it at dinner one night, wearing the same proud smile he’d worn at two years old when he’d carried in a dead bird from the garden. Tom, of course, just about combusted at the news, at one point bursting into actual, flowing tears. For heaven’s sake! That was five months ago. Before the real work of the wedding planning began.
‘Ready, Mum and Dad?’
I’m sitting beside Lucy’s father, Peter, in a Louis XV upholstered armchair, angled toward a blush velvet curtain. At intervals, Lucy comes out from behind the curtain and stands on a stage while Rhonda, the assistant, fusses around her. It is, quite frankly, agonising, for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that Rhonda continues to refer to us as ‘Mum and Dad’ despite that fact that I have twice pointed out that I am not Lucy’s mother, and I am certainly not hers.
‘Ready,’ we chorus.
I think of what my mother would have said if I’d invited her to a place like this. (What a load of nonsense! I’ll make your wedding dress, and Ida and Norma from church will help. Ida did the most beautiful little rosettes for her niece Geraldine’s wedding dress, you should have seen them! Of course she had to let it out because the poor dear had thickened up around the middle by the big day. Got everyone talking, you know . . .)
I’ll admit I was surprised when Lucy invited me today (apparently the matron of honour’s daughter broke her arm falling from the monkey bars this morning and is currently at the children’s hospital awaiting surgery, and Lucy wants a female opinion). It is quite the unorthodox
little group actually, with Lucy’s father in attendance as well, but Lucy was firm about that. ‘He’s been my mother as well as my father since I was thirteen years old, I think he’s more than earned his place here.’
Fair enough too, I think, though I daren’t give my opinion either way. Mothers may weigh in on such matters. Mothers-in-law must wear beige and shut up.
Funnily enough, Lucy was quite shy when she asked me to come. ‘I’m sure you’re really busy, but just in case you are free, I’d love it if you could make it.’
As fate would have it, I wasn’t busy, and I’ve never been much good at making up excuses. Nettie was invited too, apparently, but she has a conflicting doctor’s appointment, much to her chagrin.
‘Here she comes!’ Rhonda cries, flinging open the velvet curtain and frogmarching Lucy onto the stage in a dress that looks exactly like the last one—strapless and full skirted, like Barbie pressed into a child’s birthday cake. She forces Lucy to do a ridiculous twirl.
‘Do you like it?’ Lucy asks shyly.
Peter tears up, predictably. He rises to his feet, the archetypal ex-professor, from his tweed jacket to his soft white beard and leather lace-up shoes. He produces a handkerchief from his pocket and presses it to his eyes.
‘I think we can take that as an approval,’ Rhonda says, thrilled. ‘And what do you think, Mum?’
Everyone looks at me.
All I can think is the whole thing is monstrously indulgent. The dress, the blush curtains, the Louis XV chairs. But what am I supposed to say?
The Mother-in-Law Page 3
