Mothers & Daughters (2 page)

The sight of him asleep always makes me catch my breath. He was lying on his back with his fists balled, the way he used to when he was a tiny baby, and his lips were slightly parted. Dawg was underneath him, grey cloth tail poking out. ‘You're going to have to get him one of those toddler beds soon,' I'd said to Jaz only the week before. ‘And you reckon he'll stay there, do you?' had been her reply. ‘You think he'll lie down, stick his thumb in his mouth, and that'll be it till the morning?' She said she wanted to wait till he could climb out of the cot unaided before letting him loose with a bed. So I went along with it. He's her child, after all.

I stood there in the calm dim glow of his moon-shaped lamp and watched his little chest move up and down, up and down, till I felt ready to go back downstairs. To be honest, I could have stayed there all night.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, head in hands, her coloured scarves draping down over plates and mugs and papers and books. When she heard me, she sat upright and I thought, At least she's stopped crying.

‘Where's Ian?' I asked, drawing back a chair.

‘Fuck knows.'

I waited for her to go on.

‘It was a text.' Jaz looked as though she was about to spit. ‘We were in here, talking about his day, everything normal. A bog-standard tea-time. Next thing his phone bleeps, but he doesn't open it, he takes it off into the lounge, really shifty. And you know that way he has of pushing his glasses up when he's nervous about something? It was such a weird reaction he might as well have waved a fucking flag, though I don't think he realised. Too much on his mind. When he
went up to run Matty's bath, I got out the phone and checked.'

The lights on the baby monitor flickered briefly, settled.

‘What did it say? Can you tell me?'

She shrugged as if she was past caring. ‘It said:
What did you dream last night?
'

I was seeing it with her, imagining the letters on the screen.

‘Well, perhaps it wasn't necessarily—'

‘Then some kisses.'

‘Oh.'

‘Then a name.'

Without warning she got up, grabbed a mug off the table and slammed it onto the quarry tiles at her feet. It shattered like a bomb.

‘Her fucking
name
. Now I'll always know it!'

‘Good God, Jaz. You'll wake Matty.'

Her eyes, when she looked at me, were wild and stary, and for a moment I didn't know what to do. What
do
you do when everything you thought was safe is just falling apart?

Then I thought, Sod it, someone's got to get a grip.

I began to stack the dirty plates on the table, because I can't think straight when everywhere's untidy. While my daughter stood in the middle of the room grasping her own hair, I ferried crockery to the sink, ran the hot tap, and set to gathering pieces of broken cup. ‘You can't leave it like this,' I said. ‘If Matty walks in here with no slippers tomorrow morning—'

She bent and took a single sliver of white china between her finger and thumb.

‘Come on, love,' I said. ‘Let's clear away and then I'll make us a hot drink and we can go sit in the lounge. It'll be better there.'

I guided her to the bin, then handed her a damp cloth so she
could wipe up all the very tiny fragments. As I washed and stacked, I kept an eye on her.

‘Don't touch my papers,' she said at one point, when I reached across the table for a dirty spoon.

As if. Even when she lived under my roof I never dared interfere with her stuff.

Once I'd finished the dishes it was tempting to go through the whole kitchen, collect up all the books and toys and carry them next door, put away the pans and bowls that had been left out, stick the pot plants in for a good soak and wipe the soil off the windowsill. Some of her leaflets and postcards had fallen off the cork board; there was a pile of assorted boots on the doormat. I longed to put these small things right.

Instead I brewed two teas, picked up the baby monitor, and led Jaz through to the sofa. We sat for a while watching the television play mutely, pictures of a bossy-looking woman preparing vegetables in a low-beamed kitchen.

‘Don't,' she said, when she saw me eyeing the hearth, and the tumbler containing six wax crayons in an inch of orange squash.

‘It might tip over.'

‘And you think I care?'

The woman on TV yanked a chicken open and paused, smugly. I wondered where Ian was and what he was doing right at this moment.

Jaz said: ‘When I asked him about the text he looked – frozen. Like he had no idea what to say. I mean, he obviously wasn't expecting the question. So I asked him again and he came right out with it. I suppose he didn't have time to think up a story. No time to prepare a defence.' She laughed bitterly. ‘He could have said it was a mistake. People get phone numbers wrong, don't they? Why didn't he go for straight denial? I might have bought it.'

‘You wouldn't.'

‘No, you're right, I wouldn't.
Fuck
him. Why didn't he
delete
it?'

I said, ‘Did he tell you much else?'

‘Only that he'd seen her twice. He met her in the pub near where he works. The first time they did anything, they only kissed. Apparently. The next time, he went back to hers. It was a lunchtime. So much more con
venient
.' She flopped back against the Indian throw. ‘What I don't get, Mum, what I don't get is – you know, actually I don't get fucking
any
of it. It's so, it's out of the blue, I wasn't expecting it, I didn't think there was anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with me, is there?'

That made me want to cry. Really I needed to hold her, but she was still too spiky; she'd have pushed me away and I couldn't have stood that on top of everything else. I said, ‘Jaz, there's nothing wrong with you. Ian must be having some kind of, I don't know, crisis.'

‘I'll give him a fucking crisis,' she said.

By now the woman chef was sharing her chicken with some laughing friends at a pristine table. ‘See my glorious world,' she was saying. I'd have turned the bloody TV off if I'd stood a chance of finding the remote.

‘Did he say he was sorry?'

‘Yeah. And that he'll never see her again, it meant nothing, one-off, blah blah. Like they do.'

‘It's not always talk,' I said. ‘Sometimes they mean it.'

Jaz gave me a withering look.

‘I'm sure he'll come back.'

‘He'd better not.'

‘I don't mean straight away, obviously. When things have calmed down. Then you can talk, and try to get to the root of—'

She sat up and leaned towards me. ‘You're not getting it, Mum. Ian's gone because I've thrown him out.'

‘Well, yes, I see. And I know that just at this moment you'll be feeling—'

‘Mum, read my lips,' she said. ‘This marriage is over. Over. Ian's made his position clear.
I'm
not good enough –
this
isn't good enough for him.' She swung her arm round to take in the room with all its evidence of family life: the stack of toddler vests balanced on the chair arm, the tumbled Duplo, Ian's computer magazines mixed with her foreign language dictionaries, and cardboard wallets dumped all along the top of the sideboard and the coffee-table and the windowseat.

‘Oh, I'm sure it is enough, love, it's—'

‘The one thing I won't do,' she cut in, ‘let's be totally clear on this, is live with a man who doesn't put his marriage first. A man who lies and cheats. A man who thinks he can get away with treating me like a fool because I'll always turn a blind eye, I'll always forgive him. Make like I'm a
fucking
doormat. 'Cause that's not me and I won't have it; I've never taken shit from anyone and I'm not about to start now.' The baby monitor crackled and she nodded at it angrily. ‘Plus, I'm not bringing Matty up in that kind of a household. No way. I'm not putting either of us through that pantomime. Damaging him. He doesn't need a childhood like
that
.'

And I thought, So here we go. I might have known it would come down to this. Somehow it turns out to be my fault, again.

CHAPTER 2

Photograph 294, Album Three

Location: Acton Scott Historic Working Farm, Shropshire

Taken by: Carol

Subject: Twelve-year-old Jaz stands within a semi-circle of interested geese and ducks, her back against the wall of a pigsty. She is wearing a frilly cap and an apron, and carrying a bucket of grain. If it weren't for the jeans and the trainers showing at the bottom, she could be a dairymaid from the 1800s – which is the general idea. She has already had a go at making butter pats, and been taught the correct way to hold a chick. She's watched a demonstration of spinning and carding, and how you'd saddle a carthorse. The sun is out and it should be a top day, except that Phil is AWOL again after a fight and Carol is as blue as a wife can be
.

Not that she's letting on to Jaz. ‘Dad's having to work extra hours,' she's told her, and so they make free in the gift shop and eat triple-scoop ice creams and hire a rowing boat and order a Victorian cream tea. Every ounce of Carol's strength goes into keeping that smile
.

Meanwhile, Jaz plans what to do when they get home. She will run her own bath, put her nightie on, then attempt
to make her mother a hot drink. Perhaps she can add a snack and bring a tray through, the way her mum does when anyone's ill. It is all Jaz can think to do in the face of her mother's despair, and even now she's guessing it's not enough
.

The obvious course of action was to take Matty for a few days. ‘Give you time to get yourself together,' I told Jaz, the morning after both our lives had caved in. ‘He was due to come to me on Saturday, anyway. It's no trouble.'

‘Would you?'

‘Of course. You need some space.'

She nodded.

‘And you need to speak to Ian,' I added unwisely.

‘I'm never speaking to him again,' she snapped. ‘So you can forget that idea.'

Don't be daft, I nearly said. There's all kinds of stuff you need to sort out. Even if you both decide the marriage is finished, there'll be maintenance and access and divvying up your assets, and you can't do all of it through a solicitor – well, you can, but it costs an arm and a leg. And, in any case, I don't believe the marriage is over: I think you'll get through this, maybe with some counselling, and come back together for the sake of little Matty. I think Ian's had a stupid bloody selfish slip, that's all it is, and after you've both done a lot of soul-searching, and he's apologised and you've had a good old shout, probably lots of shouting, you'll move on. It might take months, but you will get there.

I didn't say any of that, obviously. Sometimes I think my head'll explode, all the unspoken words in there.

I keep Matty's room ready, because not only is he with me most weekends for a stopover, give his mum and dad chance
to have a lie-in, but you never know when there might be a crisis.

‘Is that new?' Jaz asked, putting the changing bag down on the chest of drawers and pointing to a wall light in the shape of a gecko.

‘It is. I meant to store it away for a Christmas present, but then I thought, well, it seems a shame not to have it out, let him have the enjoyment of it now.'

‘You're hopeless.'

‘I know.'

I straightened the cot cover and plugged the monitor in. Between our feet, Matty sat and rolled a wooden truck back and forth like someone planing floorboards.

‘Car,' he said.

‘And tonight,' I said, sinking to my haunches, ‘you're going to stay with Nanna. Won't that be nice? We can read
Dear Zoo
and
On the Road
. And you can have a boiled egg.'

The truck crashed against the leg of the cot and Matty cackled.

‘You're talking to yourself,' said Jaz.

‘He has a special egg cup,' I said, hauling myself up again. ‘Mrs Wynne brought it me back off holiday. It's shaped like a Highland cow.'

Jaz drew her hand over her face.

‘Look,' I said, ‘you need to go back home now and get some sleep. I bet you were up all night, yeah?' I'd sat up till 3 a.m. myself, watching the night sky from Jaz's old room, wondering who the hell my daughter had married. But there was nothing to be gained from sharing that. ‘Stick the answerphone on and put your head down for a few hours. You're fit for nothing at the moment.'

‘Yeah,' she said. ‘I should be working. There's a translation I need to finish for Uniflect.'

‘Can't it wait? Look, I'll make us a cup of tea.'

‘I'm still drinking this one, Mum.'

‘Can I get you something to eat?'

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘Syrupy porridge? I've got some in. Or I could do cheese on toast; Matty likes that.'

‘Brrrm brrrm,' said Matty.

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘How about if I do some, and then you see how you feel?'

Jaz looked as if she was about to speak, then she turned away and began to tug at a lock of hair.

The problem, I felt like saying, is that I don't know what to do. I'm grown up, I'm the mum, I'm supposed to know. But I don't.

I bent down and picked up Matty's beaker. ‘Cheese on toast it is, then. And an egg in the cow cup?'

‘Egg,' said Matty.

Jaz turned back to me, her face pinched and white. ‘Actually,' she said, ‘there is something I'd like. Do you mind if I crash out upstairs for a while? I can't face driving back right now. I just want my old bed for a few hours.'

I tell you, I could have wept.

After we'd eaten – after Jaz had sat and stared at her food, and Matty had spread his over a wide area – I took her up and closed the curtains.