Mothers & Daughters (35 page)

‘That's because she
has
power!' I cried, flinging the plate downwards so it smashed onto the floor. The impact was startling. Shards of white china shot across the tiles in all directions.

‘Jesus wept, Carol,' he said. ‘Listen to me. I'll say it for the last time: I love Matty. Right?' I gripped the edge of the table, trembling. ‘I'm just maybe not as obsessed with him as you are.'

‘I'm NOT obsessed!'

‘You've seen a lot of him, had him round two, three times a week—'

‘Which makes it harder.'

‘So, like, you've had a good run—'

I threw a second plate and it exploded into the jamb near his feet, making him jerk with shock. ‘Shit. There was no need for that.'

‘Had a good run? Had a
good run
?' I yelled.

‘I didn't mean – oh, I don't know what I meant. Only, you're always on about him. Always. But the bottom line is, he's not your child.'

‘He's my
grandson
! If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't
exist
!'

‘That still doesn't make him yours.'

Images whirled around my head of Matty, me, Jaz. I thought of the early days when I'd watched her trying to breastfeed, and how I'd tried so hard not to show disappointment when she gave up at three months. I remembered him taking his first steps and not telling her because I wanted her to think they happened when she was there, and how I had to pretend surprise when she showed me his first tooth breaking through the gum. Stocking up with the very particular brand of baby food she wanted him to have, taking off the cot bumper because she said it might make him over-heat. Doing as I was told, to the letter, on every occasion. ‘You talk as though I'm one of these interfering types who flout their daughter's rules and constantly tell them where they're going wrong. I've never done that. I never would.'

‘It's more subtle than that, Carol. You, you act as if he's yours.'

‘But—' I floundered for a moment. ‘Don't all grandparents feel that way? It's a special bond, it's like
double
the family tie. That's why Matty's so special: he's mine, and mine again.'

When I looked up, Phil's eyes were roving over the mess of splinters that fanned out across the floor.

‘Oh,' I said, ‘this is pointless. I can see you don't get it at all. But then, why should you? You were a bloody awful dad, so why should you be any better at being a grandad?'

Accusation crackled between us. Snatches of past rows needled back through the airwaves, as though the house had absorbed and kept them inside its walls, waiting for a fresh bout of fighting. Suddenly the desire to hurt Phil overwhelmed any sense of the damage I might do to myself. Even when you
think everything's been said about a break-up, it's amazing how much more can be dredged to the surface by a burst of real temper. Here came the rest of it, unstoppable:

‘If you'd been a better father to Jaz, I bet you this situation would never have happened. She wouldn't have grown up so resentful, she'd have chosen a better husband, we'd have been a normal, stable family.'

‘Jaz is just Jaz; she is who she is. Same as your mother was just your mother. You're not being fair.'

‘What's fairness got to do with anything? When was fairness ever a factor in our marriage?' I saw again Mavis Pearson, that bright green blouse, her coral lipstick mouth making sympathetic shapes at me, and felt the hot prickle that comes from realising you're an object of someone's pity. ‘Twenty-four years of shambles and lies; what a bloody waste of everyone's time!'

‘So why did you stay, Carol?'

‘I don't bloody know. Because when you want to believe someone, you do. I kept thinking it would peter out, you'd come to your senses. But you didn't.'

He was shaking his head as if he couldn't fathom things either.

‘I mean, why
her
?' I'd rehearsed the question a thousand times, but never spoken it out loud because it sounded too humiliating. Now, though, I felt I had nothing to lose. ‘
Why her
? What in God's name makes you prefer
her
to me?'

‘I don't. Not now. Not for a long time.'

‘You did; of course you did. You made a choice.'

‘It wasn't as simple as that. I got, I don't know, tangled up.'

‘See, I can understand a slip, a one-off, like Ian made. But to go back to her, and keep going back when you said you wouldn't, and the lies are worse than the infidelity, they hurt a hell of a lot more. And everything you could have wanted was here. God, when you think of how some wives are.'

‘I couldn't seem to get myself out of it.'

‘You didn't want to.'

‘I did. It was difficult. She wasn't—'

‘Wasn't what?' I hissed.

‘She wasn't strong like you are. You always got on with things. She fell apart every time I tried to finish. She couldn't cope. She needed me.'

I couldn't believe my ears. ‘
We
needed you! Jaz and I. Your
family
.'

‘She used to threaten suicide, all sorts.'

‘And you fell for it.'

‘She's not—'

‘Not what?'

‘Stable,' he said, avoiding my gaze. ‘Well, you know, don't you? Ringing Jaz up. She's very jealous, very unpredictable. She does stuff, and then she's sorry afterwards.'

‘And this is the woman you chose over me?' I caught sight of my face in the glass of the oven door and I hardly recognised myself. ‘So what you're saying here is, my mistake was to behave too well? I was too dignified and contained? That if I'd thrown myself down on the floor, wailing and carrying on like a lunatic, you'd have stayed? Bloody hell, Phil. Have you any idea what you've just said?' I took a step towards him, and he flinched. ‘You know what? Don't
ever
let her come round here because I will kill her.'

‘I've not seen you like this before,' he said in a small voice.

Before I could say any more, a tower of Worcester tea cups I'd stacked earlier toppled over, and two fell off the edge of the table and broke.

‘Fuck you,' I heard myself say. Then I sat down and covered my face with my hands. I wasn't crying, I just needed to block him out for a moment.

‘What if I told you,' he said cautiously, ‘that she really had gone this time. For good.'

I kept my hands where they were and spoke between my fingers.

‘You say what you
want
to be true.'

Now I sensed him come forward, heard him pull the chair out from under the other side of the table and sit down.

‘This time it's different, Carol: I told her to go. She's taken all her gear.'

‘Yeah yeah.'

‘Come round and see.'

‘The day hell freezes over.'

‘I haven't even a washing machine.'

‘You're confusing me with someone who gives a damn.'

Faint thudding rap music was coming from Laverne's. Through the open back door I could hear a lawnmower doing the last cut of the season. Opposite me, Phil sighed noisily.

‘I don't know what I can say.'

‘Best keep it shut, then. You've done enough damage.'

‘Carol, I always loved you. I still do. It just got complicated. I painted myself into a corner.'

‘Stop, please.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm damn sure you are.'

‘If you ever took me back—'

‘I said, stop it.'

He shifted on his chair and cleared his throat.

‘Well. Whatever – whatever
we
are, I'm still Jaz's dad and I'm still Matty's grandad, and I'll do what I can to help you get them back. I'm fitting this grid so if you have to go to court, you can say you've taken safety measures, yeah? . . . I'm doing my best.'

When I took my fingers away from my eyes, he was bowed over the table. ‘God,' he said, ‘I wouldn't mind, but I've been that fucking miserable.'

It was the line I'd waited nearly all my married life to hear. I pictured him sitting alone in his empty flat, the walls marked with the shape of departed furniture, the carpets dented and unhoovered. Excellent. Served him right.

‘Anyway,' he said lamely. ‘It's a fucking mess, in't it?'

The rap music from Laverne's rose in volume.

‘I'd best get on and finish the grid.' He pushed the chair back, got to his feet and lumbered out.

There I sat between my trembling towers of china. Outside, the drill began to whine again.

In the end I went and fetched a dustpan and brush, and began to sweep up the shards of my marriage.

‘Do you mind if I ask you something?' said David as we strolled back down the High Street together one quiet Sunday afternoon. Once again he had charge of my clipboard; this time we were taking photographs of town landmarks for the Beavers' Local History Hunt.

I snapped my lens cap over the shutter.

‘Go on.'

‘Do you think I'm too controlling, Carol?'

The question took me by surprise. ‘Controlling?'

‘A controlling person.'

‘In what way?'

‘With Ian.'

‘Whatever's made you say that?'

‘It's something he came out with yesterday evening.'

I waited for more, but he obviously felt he'd given me enough, that any more detail was superfluous.

We walked on a few paces while I thought about what he'd said. In one sense it was deeply flattering he trusted me to answer a question like that, a question which admitted a vulnerability I hadn't seen before. But at the same time I was
alarmed because I wasn't at all sure what to say.
Was
David too controlling a father? I had no idea. Not from where I stood, certainly. No, no, he wasn't. In fact, the more I considered, the crosser I felt on his behalf.

‘You're not, no,' I said. ‘And I hope you stuck up for yourself.'

‘I told him it was nonsense.'

‘Good. What was his reaction?'

David shrugged. ‘Hard to tell; he didn't say a great deal after that. He's fine today. I was just interested in your take.'

We walked on past the card shop with its oriel window and 1720 date stone, past Healey's café and the Civic Centre, till we were within sight of the Victorian arcade.

‘I'm sure it's the stress talking, that's all. Ian's lashing out at you because you're around, you're available to be lashed out at.'

‘Yes, it might be that.'

‘Hey, don't you lose confidence, or we're all done for.' I smiled to show this was a joke, even though I kind of meant it. I'd come to rely on his mild brand of arrogance over the past weeks. Another ditherer like me on the case would have spelled disaster.

David gazed past me, down towards the precinct with its hanging baskets and new heritage-style litter bins. After a moment, I slid my arm through his, and the furrows on his brow eased a fraction. He looked down at my arm, and laughed ruefully.

‘What?' I asked.

‘Well, God help us, Carol, someone needs to pretend they know what they're doing,' he said.

CHAPTER 28

Photograph: unnumbered, from a page inside a pile of old newspapers at the bottom of Carol's cleaning cupboard

Location: the Long Room, Chester Race Course

Taken by: the
Chester Chronicle

Subject: a crowd of people in evening dress, including Pippa Williams, her husband Lionel, and David, stand grouped around a signed football shirt donated by Wayne Rooney. The shirt is the star prize in the after-dinner charity auction, which they hope will raise in the region of £2,000 towards the Wirral and North Cheshire Prostate Cancer Group's Doppler Scanner appeal
.

‘It's the most common male cancer,' Pippa tells the reporter. ‘Very treatable if caught early, so it's vital we raise public awareness.'

Lionel says nothing. Even before he became ill he wasn't the sort to stand up and give speeches. He simply watches from the sidelines, full of admiration. His wife's been a marvel, as tireless in the role of campaigner as she's been in nursing him. She could not have been more supportive, more loving. As yet they have not talked about how she'll manage when he's gone, but she seems so strong he can't imagine her not coping and that gives him some relief
.

Pippa is not feeling strong at all. Two evenings before, she was sobbing in David's kitchen. ‘It's so bloody awful, trying to put on a brave face. So exhausting. Never letting up. You must know what that's like.'

David does. He loves them both. He hates seeing his friends suffer like this. He puts his arms around her and lets her cry it all out against his shoulder
.

‘I need somewhere to come sometimes,' she says. ‘Lionel mustn't see me like this.'

‘Whatever I can do to help,' says David
.

He feels her grip tighten around him, her hot breathing in his ear; then, hesitantly at first, her lips moving across the fresh-shaved skin of his neck
.

He does not know how to push her away
.

My parents' most important documents – the birth and wedding certificates, their old insurance policies and household receipts – were in an old briefcase under the spare bed. When someone dies, it's not always easy to know what to throw away and what to keep, and a lot of my mother's everyday bits and pieces had been bundled up and stowed away in odd corners. Over the years I'd disposed of a few items, a few pockets, as I came across them, but the bureau was where most of her things lived, and I'd forgotten what I'd stowed away in there.

In starting to clear it now I'd already unearthed a bag of hairnets, several dozen parish magazines, a sealed packet of triple-absorbent-super-mega-maxi Dr Whites, assorted cigarette cards, nine sachets of Atrixo, six cologne sticks used and unused, corn plasters, a felt corsage, her second-best purse, a giant bottle of Quink and a bundle of memorial service sheets. Rubbish, it was. Tat, junk. Why ever had we both given it house room?