The Things That Matter

by Andrea Michael

‘I should even say, and I am ashamed, Jakob makes better neeps and tatties than any Scotsman I’ve met,’ Sarah was defiant, holding a hand up, ‘and I stand by it, you shall not convince me otherwise.’

  ‘Goodness, Sarah, are you trying to get the boy killed?!’ Effie faux-whispered. ‘I cannot lose him, I’ve no other staff worth anything!’

  A voice from the bar yelled over, ‘Thanks very much, Effie!’

  She made a face, and called back to the young fair-haired boy scowling at her, ‘Och, not you Carl, you know you’re a keeper!’

  She turned back to us, exasperated. ‘Wee lad’s got bricks for brains, but he’s very sweet. Yesterday he put salt in someone’s coffee instead of sugar, but I don’t have the heart to fire him.’

  Jakob assumed a long-suffering look and shrugged, ‘He tries, very hard.’

  ‘But?’ I asked.

  ‘It seems to make no difference,’ he sighed, ‘the people still get the wrong order, they still yell, and there’s still food sitting cold on the side.’

  ‘Och, calm down love, he’ll get there. It’s hard for the kids round here. He’s a boy without a dream or a purpose. And I’d rather him waiting tables than signing up to the army like his brother. Even if he does a terrible job.’

  ‘As you can see,’ Kit nudged her, ‘Effie is not only our town gossip, but our town busybody and saviour.’

  ‘I would not be here, if not for Effie,’ Jakob smiled at her.

  ‘And I would not have high cholesterol,’ Fraser said suddenly, his voice lyrical and his cheeky wink making me hoot with surprise. He gave a little bow, and started clearing the plates. Jakob jumped up to help but he waved him off.

  ‘Saves the speech for moments of maximum effect,’ Effie said wryly, ‘makes him seem more clever than he is!’ she yelled after him, and Fraser blew her a kiss from the bar, where he stayed for the rest of the night.

  The evening passed more quickly than I would have liked, mainly because it felt so easy. It was people who knew and cared about each other, making conversation, catching up. There was no competition, no showing off. No one mentioned how much anything cost, or talked about holidays or investments or Instagram followers. Instead, they spoke about the land, the town, the animals, the people. Stories from long ago, and books they were reading.

  Kit and I didn’t speak about Nina, Sarah didn’t speak about her boyfriend and Jakob said nothing about the very clear crush he had on Sarah. Effie spoke about everything, of course, but always with such kindness and heart that you couldn’t help forgiving her gossiping, because she just wanted to help.

  As we drove back home, I looked down at my phone to see a message from Dan. It was a picture, a sketch in the notebook. It was simple, a copy of an old photo of me in a summer dress, twirling. I must have been about eighteen. It was during that time we spent our weekends walking London for free and doing very little at all. It was a beautiful drawing, but it wasn’t about that. It was him showing he still cared.

  It might not be enough to save our marriage, but it was enough to make me feel loved. I smiled, stroking the phone with my thumb.

  ‘It’s good that he makes you smile,’ Kit said as she pulled the car up in front of the barn.

  I showed her the photo of the drawing, and she squinted as she moved it further away from her face. ‘Wow, he’s talented. Is that you?’

  I nodded, ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘You don’t act like a woman whose husband draws portraits of her.’

  ‘How do those sort of women act?’

  Kit frowned, ‘Well, happy, I’d imagine. I’m not one for all that adoring lark, sounds a bit exhausting personally, but… you walk around with a sign above your head that says how unhappy you are.’

  ‘He’s going to leave me soon,’ I said, and as soon as I said it out loud, the fear of how huge it was lessened. ‘Nobody’s fault. We got married too young. He sacrificed too much for me, and it probably wasn’t worth it. He wants a different sort of life with a perfect wife, and I got tired of pretending to be perfect.’

  Kit raised an eyebrow, ‘I have a feeling if I asked the boy what he thinks about it, he’d have something different to say.’

  ‘Sometimes love isn’t enough.’

  ‘And sometimes things take time.’

  ‘Who knew you were such a romantic?’ I laughed, as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

  ‘And who knew the woman with the husband sending her portraits was a pessimist?’ Kit replied, and got out of the car. I followed suit and as she closed the door she leaned on the car roof. ‘Taz, do you ever think that maybe your problem is you just think about things too much?’

  I laughed.

  ‘It’s one of the things I spend too long thinking about.’

  ‘You should bring him here, your fella. Let him be part of all this.’

  ‘He’s got work. He’s always got work. Fancy clients and parties and doing X, Y and Z to get a promotion and get closer to the top.’ I shook my head, ‘Besides, this is my mess.’

  ‘It’s not mess, it’s family.’

  ‘Says the woman who won’t let me help.’ I knew I was pushing it, but I couldn’t help it. Here she was, telling me to share my woes and she wasn’t playing fair.

  ‘Good point. But I’m older and wiser, and have much more right to make stupid decisions. Like a glass of whisky before bed.’ She walked towards the front door and I followed, trailing behind her in the darkness. ‘I will say this though, love, and you can take it or ignore it as you see fit: you cannot be responsible for other people’s choices. Much as you might like to think you have control, you don’t. Your husband wants to protect you from every bad thing in the world, to be a shining white knight because it makes him feel good.’

  I thought of those months of despair, of being unable to enter that room at the end of the hallway. Of how my husband wiped my tears and stroked my hair and never once said the wrong thing. Never tried to tell me we’d try again and get it right. He was there with me, my Daniel, every step of the way. Protecting me from the outside world.

  ‘What if I need protecting?’

  Kit flicked on the light and turned back to smile at me, ‘Well it’s very lucky we’re getting you up on that horse tomorrow then, isn’t it? We’ll make you into a knight in no time.’

  Chapter Seven

  I woke up from a dream where I was being swaddled. At first it was comforting, I felt safe and warm. But the blankets got tighter and the more I wriggled, the less I could move. When I finally woke, to the sound of my phone ringing, I had tangled myself in the sheets.

  I looked down at my phone and jolted at the name: Miranda.

  Immediately, my heart leapt into my throat. Dan’s mother never called me. I literally only had her details in my phone because she’d insisted on arranging a fancy baby shower for me last year and she needed contact numbers. I’d told her I didn’t want a party, that it felt like tempting fate. Dan told me his parents were trying and I needed to try too.

  I still blamed her a little, as unfair as that was.

  The clock on the wall said it was 6 a.m., I’d already slept through my morning duties with Kit, but surely she wouldn’t be calling me unless something terrible had happened?

  ‘Miranda? Is Dan okay, has something happened?’

  ‘Yes, something’s happened, Natasha,’ her voice dripped with disdain, but not panic. I sighed, placing by hand on my chest and trying to slow my breathing. ‘You’ve abandoned my son and gone off to Scotland of all places, and he deserves better!’

  ‘I’m very aware of your feelings on that matter, Miranda, thank you. Now I’ve really got to go—’

  Miranda huffed and I felt her vitriol flowing down the phone lines.

  ‘Look, I know I wasn’t exactly thrilled when Daniel chose you, especially after everything that happened, but I have gone above and beyond in welcoming you to our family! I planned your proper wedding—’

  Because ours wasn’t good enough.

  ‘I plan
ned your baby shower, I helped Daniel with your birthday party, which you completely threw back in our faces. And now you’ve disappeared and left your husband when he needs you!’

  I took a breath. She wasn’t wrong. I mean, the second wedding was vile and she was bossy and got in any possible jibe at my expense, but I could understand her wanting to be there at her son’s wedding, wanting to be involved. It was just that her involvement seemed to eradicate so much of what made us us.

  I adopted a kinder tone.

  ‘What’s happened, Miranda? What has Dan said?’

  ‘He doesn’t need to say anything, he’s my son!’

  Yeah, when it’s convenient for you. It was easy enough to cut him out of your life for a decade.

  ‘Then when he does say something, he’ll probably explain that I’m up here visiting my mother, who is unwell, and I’ll be home soon.’

  ‘A mother who left when you were a child, who you have no loyalties to?’

  God, the woman couldn’t see the irony. I bit my tongue, the same way I had every day since she’d come back into our lives.

  It was different before. During the months Dan was incarcerated, I went every week to her house. I knocked on the door and begged her, begged her to see her son. I told her he was sad, he was struggling to survive, he needed to know he had his family’s support. She listened to me and turned me away every time. By the second month she stopped answering the door. The last time I went, I called out from the front door up to her window, knowing it would embarrass her in front of her neighbours. It was the only way to get her attention, shame her into talking to me.

  She came down, opened the door and said, ‘None of this would have happened if not for your fucked-up family,’ and shut the door in my face.

  She was right.

  But as much as Dan judged my mother for leaving, I judged his more.

  ‘Miranda, Dan is a very capable man. There are dinners in the freezer and he knows how to order a takeaway. He has a cleaner come to the flat once a week. We are talking on the phone. He wanted more time for his work, and now he can focus. I know how much he wants to impress Tim, and this way he can put the hours in.’

  ‘That’s a pathetic excuse.’

  I snorted, pacing my room, looking out of the window at the landscape and focusing on how peaceful it was. She couldn’t take it from me, she couldn’t take me back to being sixteen.

  ‘I would have thought you’d be pleased I was away – more time to parade Citronella and Margot in front of him, tempt Dan with a better life?’

  ‘It’s Petronella and she’s a friend’s daughter from the club, they have a lot in common. They knew each other as children. There’s no need to be sensitive about it. I suppose that’s always your first instinct, to attack.’

  I took a breath, closed my eyes, and thought of Dan. And then I thought of Kit, and what she’d say. I thought of what Angela would say. I thought of how many times I’d bitten my tongue, when she told me the wedding dress she’d chosen for me wasn’t flattering, when she suggested that my miscarriage was ‘for the best’.

  Every Sunday dinner when she suggested I might be more comfortable with chicken nuggets or Lambrini. When she slowly offered extra descriptions for common facts – ‘Paris, that’s in France, Natasha dear’ – I had held my tongue. But no more.

  ‘Yes, that’s what we did on the estate. Fight to the death. With rocks. The only way to settle things.’

  Miranda huffed and said nothing. There was a moment of quiet.

  ‘Can I ask a question? If my dad hadn’t died, if Dan hadn’t gone away and everything hadn’t happened. If I’d just been a girl from the estate who loved your son… would you have accepted me, eventually?’

  She paused, and I readied myself for one of two options: complete denial or a painful dismissal.

  ‘If you’d been on board with his life, with helping him achieve his potential? Yes, I would have accepted you. But you insist on trying to make him someone he’s not!’

  I settled back into an argument I knew well enough.

  ‘He’s a talented artist, Miranda.’

  ‘And he’s going to be a talented investment banker. I doubt an artist would be able to afford that flat you’ve got.’

  ‘It isn’t what he wants.’

  ‘And if that’s true, I’m sure he’s capable of telling his father. He’s not a child.’

  No, he’s just desperate to please you. To make up for everything. To make you proud.

  I blew out a deep breath, ‘Miranda, this isn’t the best use of either of our time. We both love Daniel. I’ll be home soon. I don’t really know why you felt the need to call.’

  ‘I called because my son is hurting and I don’t like it.’

  You called because I put myself first for once.

  ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Could’ve fooled me,’ she snorted, and I wondered how much longer I cared to put up with this woman. How much longer I could try to be reasonable, to feel guilty for the years I ‘stole her son from her’ when it was her choice to abandon him all along.

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ I kept my voice low and controlled.

  ‘It means you’ve bided your time and stuck with him like a limpet, and now you’re being rewarded. You’ve got the beautiful home, and you had the perfect wedding, and a husband who brings home a good salary, and you act like it’s worthless.’

  ‘Because it is worthless to me! I was happy before! When we lived in a shitty flat and we had jobs we loved and we were happy!’

  ‘Before we got involved? Before we plucked our son out of the squalor you led him into?’ Miranda was about to let her unbridled rage loose, I could feel it. When she worked herself up like this there was no talking with her. No reasoning. Dan said you just had to let it pass, like a storm or a steamroller. ‘I saw that flat you lived in, he brought us back once when you were working and it was disgusting. The damp and the drug dealers downstairs and the kebab shop. You made him into a criminal and then you made sure he stayed as low as he could. You didn’t want him to have a good life. You wanted him to suffer because you’d suffered!’

  Wow, someone had been watching a lot of daytime television, or reading a lot of crappy psychobabble. I wondered if Miranda had a therapist. Surely someone that rich just paid someone to listen to them and agree with whatever they said? I couldn’t imagine Miranda allowing anyone to tell her she was wrong, especially someone who ‘worked for her’.

  I didn’t have time for this, that anxious tightness in my chest was creeping back in, the one that had disappeared in the wake of highland breezes and alpacas and laughing over whisky and lavender lemon cake.

  ‘We wouldn’t have been living in that situation if you hadn’t abandoned your son when he needed you. Blame me all you want, but you made a choice, and we had to survive any way we could.’

  ‘He could have apologised, he could have come home if he’d just…’

  I smiled, knowing the end of the sentence before she’d even finished.

  ‘If he’d just left me behind.’

  He’d never said it. I’d guessed, of course, told him to go, told him I’d be fine. I didn’t need pity or a protector. I was the savvy one now, the one who looked after us. But I was fine with the life we had. At first, I spent so much time worrying that he was unhappy, that it wasn’t enough for him. But he was as happy as I was.

  It was impossible for Miranda to comprehend, that two teenagers could be happy in a small, damp room living off noodles and dented beer cans, as long as they could curl around each other at night. I imagine Miranda had never loved anyone enough to lower her standards.

  ‘Why would you call me to come back? You get everything you’ve ever wanted if I disappear.’

  Miranda laughed, a dry hiccup of embarrassment, ‘Believe me, I’m as shocked as you are. I spent the last ten years thinking my son would be better off without you.’

  I said nothing, waiting for some sort of reasoning. This w
as the most honest we’d ever been, and even though the dislike was palpable, it was real. It wasn’t hidden barbs and misdirection and her passive aggression and Dan making excuses and thinking me paranoid. It was clear down the line: her vs me.

  ‘I still think that. I still think he would have been better off if he’d never met you,’ she said, her voice trembling just a little. ‘But he’s in pain, and I’d rather he wasn’t.’

  It would have been so easy to return to the status quo, to throw in her face that she didn’t care when he was in pain before. She didn’t care when he was behind bars and had no one else to talk to but me, when he thought he’d disgraced his family. When he had no one to invite to his art show, or call on a Sunday afternoon. When his siblings had kids and he only found out through social media. It would be the easiest thing in the world to remind this woman that she gave up any right to her son the day she failed him.

  But what did that mean for Nina, and what would it mean for me?

  ‘Thank you for calling, Miranda,’ I said gently, and hung up the phone.

  An honest conversation between me and the wicked witch. Who would have guessed?

  I ran out to join Kit for the remainder of the morning round, apologising. ‘I overslept,’ I said, and she gave me a look like she didn’t believe me, but said nothing. I chucked my energy into every activity, every stab of the fork into the hay.

  When we got back to the kitchen, it was clear Kit had something to say.

  ‘Where are you this morning?’ Kit said over coffee after our work on the farm, and I focused on her.

  ‘Nothing, what? I thought you were happy with companionable silence?’ I sounded like a teenager.

  Kit’s lips twitched, ‘Oh aye, but usually my own. You’re usually a chatty one in the mornings.’

  I shook my head, ‘Chatty?’

  ‘Well, by comparison,’ she refilled my cup, ‘so what’s up?’

  I ignored the question, looking out of the window. ‘No Effie this morning?’

  Kit raised an eyebrow, as if acknowledging the change of subject, but humouring me. ‘She’s busy at the café, one of the girls called in sick. Is that what it is, you’re missing a decent breakfast? I’d attempt to make something but I think the best I can do is toast and jam. Maybe some porridge?’