Mothers & Daughters (50 page)

When we got inside, Nat was feeding Matty chocolate buttons in front of the TV. The arms of the sofa were covered in scrunched-up tissues. ‘How's he been?' asked Jaz, bending to kiss his filthy face.

‘Snotty,' said Nat.

‘Apart from that?'

‘Yeah, fine. We went into town, looked at the Christmas lights. But it was brass monkeys so we didn't hang around long.'

‘Shall I go run his bath?' I said.

Jaz nodded. ‘That would be a help. I'll be there in a minute.'

I made my way to their poky bathroom and started the water running, then I went next door to Matty's room to collect his slippers and pyjamas. Those I laid out on the bathroom floor ready, and then I thought I'd have a quick tidy round while I was there. I was on my knees cleaning the base of the
sink pedestal with a sheet of baby wipes when Jaz appeared, carrying a pile of towels.

‘I keep thinking about Grandma,' she said.

‘What about her?'

‘That she can't have been happily married if she was always such a misery-guts.'

I struggled to my feet and dropped the wet wipe in the toilet bowl.

‘So I reckon,' she continued, ‘it
is
a pattern. I'm unlucky in love; you were; Grandma was. It's genetic. Either that or I'm cursed.'

‘Don't be silly,' I said. ‘Grandma and Grandad got along fine. It may not have been a movie-style romance, but they stuck it out for thirty-six years. Anyway, Grandad's lovely, he'd never have done anything to hurt Grandma, never. And Ian – Ian's situation isn't the same as your dad's. For all sorts of reasons.'

Jaz sighed, opened the airing-cupboard door and began to stack the towels on the top shelf.

I said, ‘I understand the urge to look for a broader explanation, but sometimes there is none.'

‘I'll go get Matty,' she said.

She kept his bath toys in a colander near the taps, so I picked out a few I knew he liked – a polythene kitchen jug and funnel, a wind-up turtle, a flannel frog – and dropped them in the water. Matty burst in, trouserless, and peered over the edge while I swirled the water round. ‘Froggy all wet,' he said. He bobbed against the bath rim in anticipation.

‘Let's get your top off,' I told him.

He stood, jiggling impatiently, while I knelt again to undo the press-studs at his neck. His mouth was smeared with chocolate and his nose was running. When I reached for a wipe, he saw it coming and jerked his head away.

‘No, come on, be a good boy, let Nanna clean you up.'

‘Determined, isn't he?' said Jaz, poking her head round the door and watching us wrestle.

‘Oh yes. I can't think who he reminds me of.'

While Jaz moved back and forth between rooms putting away dried washing, I whipped off his nappy, hooked my hands under his armpits and lowered him gently into the bath. ‘Not too hot?' I asked him. For answer Matty grabbed the jug and splashed it base-first into the water.

‘Watch out,' he said. ‘Watch out!'

I pretended to duck, and shake my hair, which pleased him. He splashed some more, rubbed his eyes, then his attention lighted on the soggy frog. He pulled it out so it lay across his leg.

‘Is Froggy having a rest from swimming?' I asked.

Matty said something I didn't understand, and raised his knee so the frog slid off with a plop. ‘Oh dear,' he said. Then he scooped the frog back out and repeated the exercise. I got hold of the turtle and began to wind its key.

Suddenly he raised his head and said, ‘Where Swir-Fish, Nanna?'

I looked about me. ‘I'm not sure, love.'

‘Swir-Fish.'

‘Let's see if he's in the colander.' I reached over and rummaged about.

‘Swir-
Fish
, Nanna.'

‘I know, sweetheart, I'm doing my best.'

‘Swir-Fish!'

I stood up and cast my eyes around the room; there wasn't much room for even a small toy to hide itself. Without much hope I peeped inside the airing cupboard, but there was nothing in there except towels and toiletries.

‘Nanna!'

‘OK, OK, I'll just nip and have a look in your room,' I told him.

Matty's bedroom was probably no smaller than his old one had been, but it felt cramped because Jaz had put a lot of her belongings in there. Some of it was boxed and some wasn't: some of it spilled out over the floor. A pile of clothes lay across a pair of speakers, and behind those she'd stacked half a dozen framed prints and a weekly planner blackboard. There was a suitcase labelled
imp docs
, another labelled
cupboard 2
, and a beaten copper umbrella stand she'd filched from Sunnybank and seemed to be using to store DVDs. She'd pushed piles of foreign language books between the end of Matty's bed and the wall. His dismantled cot she'd shoved down the side of the wardrobe. And overlaying all this was what looked like an upended bin-full of toys and toddler equipment. I didn't know where to start.

Speedily I began to work my way across to the bed, shifting this bag of Duplo, that basket of trains, this dislocated drawer of socks, that bundle of parenting magazines. The item I was trying to locate was only three inches long, but on the plus side, it was bright orange.

Something I trod on mooed, and a tower of boxed games fell over. I gained the low bed where Dawg lay flat on his back, legs splayed as though pinned for dissection. Then I pulled down the sheets and scuffled a few teddies aside. Nothing. I lifted the pillow, and there was the blessed fish. ‘Got him!' I called.

Jaz met me at the bathroom door. ‘You shouldn't leave Matty on his own in the bath,' she said.

‘I went to get this,' I said, waving the toy at her. ‘He was asking for it.'

‘Then you should have called for me.'

‘I was only gone thirty seconds.'

‘More than that. It's OK, I've been here, I saw you go so I
left the washing and came to watch him. But don't do it again, Mum.'

‘I was twenty steps away.'

‘Makes no odds. You shouldn't leave him in water even for a moment.' She must have seen the upset on my face because her tone softened. ‘Like I said, I was here, he's all right. Just, in future—'

Limply I held out the plastic fish. ‘I'm really sorry.'

‘OK, well. I'll see to him now. There's no harm done. But you really mustn't leave him unattended like that, ever – yeah?'

I nodded.

‘After all,' she said playfully, ‘I don't want to have to cut you off again, do I?' She pulled a mock-tragic face, and disappeared into the bathroom.

For a moment I couldn't take in what she meant. Then the impact of her words hit me, and I had to steady myself against the wall. I could hear Matty twittering, and Jaz responding, the slosh of water, the gurgle and clunk of the plug coming out. I pictured her lifting him up, setting him on the bathmat, wrapping the towel around his pink body. Her tone was bright and cheery, untroubled. And all the time the heat of rage was spreading over me like a fever, leaving my throat tight, my breath shallow. After a minute, she came out carrying him, his pyjama bottoms draped over her arm. ‘These have got porridge stains down them,' she said as she passed me. I stayed where I was.

His bedroom light went on again, then dimmed as the curtains rattled against the rail. His musical bear-lamp started up, and when the tune finished, I could make out the story she was reading,
Runaway Bunny
. Found myself mouthing the words, while inside my head raged and whirled. Silence after, as she closed the book, took him over to the bed, then Matty asking
some sort of question, too low for me to hear, Jaz murmuring something soothing. She'd be kissing him now, patting Dawg, pulling the cover up tight. I waited.

I caught her as she was closing the door.

‘Oh!' she said. ‘You made me jump.'

‘How dare you,' I said.

‘What?'

‘How
dare
you joke about it.'

‘How dare I joke about what, Mum? What's up? You look—'

‘Joke about cutting me off from Matty. Stopping me from seeing him.
It's nothing to joke about
.'

Jaz's eyes had gone wide with surprise. I let her steer me away from Matty's bedroom door and round the corner, into the lounge.

‘Sit down,' she said.

‘No.'

She hovered uncertainly by the sofa. ‘Look, I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to say. Obviously I didn't mean it, I wouldn't take Matty away again.'

‘How do I know that, Jaz?' I shouted. ‘How am I supposed to know? I never guessed you were going to do it before! Why should now be different from then?'

She began to say something, but I swept on.

‘You have no idea,
no idea
what it did to me when you and Matty went on the run. I didn't know where you were, whether you were safe, whether I'd see either of you again. You could have been lying dead somewhere – anything. You'd told me I'd never see my grandson again – yes, you did, it was your parting shot, don't deny it. And you meant it.'

‘I didn't.'

‘You did when you said it.'

I'd backed her up against the edge of the sofa; she had nowhere to go.

‘I didn't, Mum. I was just really angry. I get angry, it's the way I am.'

‘We
all
get bloody angry, Jaz!
I
get angry! What am I supposed to do? Swallow it down, smile? Carry on pretending it doesn't matter; forgiving-and-forgetting? Oh, I forgot, that's another of my failings, isn't it, stoicism? Well, I've
had
it. I'm sick of you taking advantage of my honest concern. You turned your own son into a weapon, your own son, it's unforgivable. What you did to me was horrible. You took my love and used it to hurt me, when you know I'd do
anything
for you and Matty, lay down my life if need be, and that's not being dramatic, it's a simple statement of fact.

‘You had no
right
to threaten me that way! Not answering my calls, no word, nothing. If you'd planned for weeks, you couldn't have hurt me more profoundly. You need to be told. It was beyond cruel.'

Behind Jaz, on the cushion, I could see one of Matty's socks, sky blue with a penguin motif on the ankle. For a second I imagined him next door, his lashes fluttering against his cheek, his thumb in his mouth, and my momentum faltered. What in God's name was I doing, risking everything after I'd been so careful all these months to keep control?

But this wasn't just a matter of indulging my temper. I thought of a letter in a problem page I'd read a few days ago, where a woman had written in to ask about tackling agoraphobia. ‘It's like a bully,' the agony aunt had told her. ‘Step back to give it room, and it'll only advance further.' The comparison had stuck in my mind. If I spent the rest of my life avoiding confrontation with my daughter out of fear, I'd always be in this same place: a click of her fingers away from losing Matty. David was right. I had to make a stand.

‘Since you were born,' I said, ‘you've been my first priority. Everything I've done has had you as the central consideration.
You must know that. If I've made mistakes, it's not because I haven't cared, it's because I'm human, and we all make mistakes.'

I saw again Jaz raging about my living room, kicking my albums, barking accusations at me while Matty cowered behind the long curtain. Gathering now were all the lines I'd rehearsed over and over, the defences I never got to deliver, till they'd become a litany which sent me nearly mad. ‘Good God, love, how could you possibly accuse me of not sticking up for you or protecting you? You've been my
life
. I've done my damnedest to give you the best of everything – maybe I tried too hard and spoiled you, that's what your dad always said. But to claim I taught you to make bad choices, just because I was trying to protect you! Would you really have been happy if your dad and I had split up, like Nat's parents did? No, you wouldn't, and you'd have blamed that on me as well. Oh yes, you would. I'm sorry, desperately sorry about what happened with Ian, but to argue it's somehow my fault is as ridiculous as it's insulting. And the idea that I'd
ever
deliberately want to hurt you – it would be like hurting myself, Jaz, only worse.

‘I would
never
betray you, I would never stand aside and watch someone cause you pain. How could you even contemplate those things? All I've ever wanted, from the moment I first held you when you were a tiny baby, was your happiness. That's been my focus and my direction. I can't imagine how you could ever think otherwise. To say the things you've said to me, to treat me the way you have – it's got to stop. Enough. I don't want a medal, I just want you to be fair and decent,
the way you were brought up
.'

Jaz hadn't moved at all while I was speaking. Her face was rigid now, her pupils shrunk to tiny unreadable points. I needed my words to have gone below the surface, snagged somewhere in her conscience. Out of nowhere I remembered
Dad reaching through brambles to get me blackberries, pulling his hand back and there being a line of welling red beads across his knuckles.

A swoop of dizziness passed over me and I knew I had to get out. Without waiting for her to respond, I grabbed my coat and turned towards the hall.

The last detail I saw, out of the corner of my eye, was the kitchen door opening a fraction, and Nat's shocked face peering out. I'd completely forgotten she was there.

CHAPTER 40

Photograph 315, Album Three

Location: Jaz's bedroom

Taken by: Nat

Subject: a head and shoulders shot of Jaz, draped in a red velvet dressing gown, her hair crimped and swagged up on each side with enamel combs. Today she is the Lady of Shalott, because they have been doing it at school and Jaz thinks it is the most tragically beautiful story she has ever heard. The death scene's obviously interesting, and the hazy circumstances of the curse, but it's the twist in the end that's bothering her most, the fact that Lancelot kills her and he doesn't even realise it. How could you inflict that amount of damage on someone and not be aware of what you'd done? How might he be made to find out, and pay? She's been turning the question over in her mind ever since
.