The Bad Mother (15 page)

‘Go away.’

‘Mum says supper’s ready. Why don’t you come down with me?’

There was silence, so he waited. He heard the sound of a tap running, then the toilet flushing, but Lauren did not appear. Disappointed, he made his way down alone to the kitchen.

‘Hey, Mum,’ he greeted her. Tessa turned from throwing open the windows as wide as they would go. He thought
she looked unusually pale and tired. ‘Anything I can do?’ he asked.

‘Thanks, love. Just move the bake to the top oven so the top crisps up a bit. Don’t know about you, but I’m starving!’

As Mitch concentrated on sliding the dish out of the bottom oven and onto a shelf above, taking care not to burn his wrists on the metal, he was aware of his mother watching him, studying him as if she wanted to draw him or something. As he hooked the Aga door closed and flicked back his hair, she laughed. ‘So like your dad.’

Lauren entered the kitchen and went straight to the fridge to begin what Mitch now recognised as her ritual of building a semicircular barricade of bottles and jars around her place at table. He had noticed that although she seldom added any of the condiments to her plate, they had to be set out in the same precise order and position every time. What drove him mad was not so much the fact that she did it at every meal – he half expected her to start surrounding her breakfast cereal with chutney, mayo and ketchup – but the intensity with which she focused on placing them just so.

Tessa placed salad on the table and Mitch laid out the plates as she took the hot pasta out of the oven. It smelt delicious, and used to be one of Lauren’s favourite meals. But sure enough, half-hidden behind her wall of jars, Mitch could see her start to separate each individual piece of penne, scrape off the sauce and clinging vegetables, and then halve it before putting it in her mouth. He stared at Tessa, willing her to see, but she merely smiled at him again.

‘Ready for your first paper? English Lit, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. The Great American Novel.’

‘You’ll be fine with that, won’t you?’

Mitch sighed. He had read all the books, and enjoyed them, but that didn’t guarantee that the questions would be straightforward. ‘Sure.’

‘Good. Once they start, you’ll get in the swing of things and the adrenalin will carry you through. We ought to celebrate when you’ve finished. What would you like to do?’

Mitch could see Lauren’s head drooping lower behind her barricade, and guessed she felt left out.

‘Maybe we could all go off for a day somewhere at half-term?’ Tessa suggested, looking at Mitch.

‘No!’ Mitch spoke without thinking, but half-term was sacred to Tamsin. Lauren raised her head to glare at him. He knew he had turned red, and tried to recover himself. Desperate to get Tessa to pay attention to Lauren, to notice what was going on, he asked his sister to pass the ketchup, and instantly saw his mistake as her expression turned to panic.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said quickly. But Tessa reached out automatically and lifted the plastic bottle out of its place.

‘No!’ Lauren made a grab for the bottle.

‘Don’t be silly!’ said Tessa, passing it to Mitch.

Mitch didn’t want any, but squeezed some onto the side of his plate before reaching over to put the bottle back carefully into position. He noticed Tessa lick a finger to rub away a funny mark on the back of her hand.

‘Honestly, Lauren,’ she chided. ‘I hope you’re going to put all those away again.’

Lauren made an inarticulate noise of protest.

Tessa shook her head. ‘I had to do it yesterday. And the day before.’

‘I forgot.’

‘That’s what you always say. It’s not asking much, especially when you’re the only one with nothing else to worry about.’

‘I’ll do it!’

‘You don’t know how lucky you are – no exams, no business to run …’

‘I said I’ll do it!’

‘Once the brasserie opens, your dad won’t have time to chase you about stuff either.’

‘Ok!’ Lauren hunched over her plate and, using her knife to scrape the small pile of discarded sauce and vegetables onto her fork, crammed as much as she could into her mouth. In two more mouthfuls she had swallowed the lot.

Tessa looked away. ‘I suppose Nula lets you get away with those kind of table manners,’ she said. ‘But it’s not how I brought you up to behave.’

Lauren ran out of the room, leaving Mitch to feel as if the walls of the only civilisation he had ever known were crumbling around him. The rubble was falling onto his shoulders, a crushing weight, and he had no idea how to stop it.

TWENTY-ONE

Pamela was trimming back the forsythia that grew beside the front porch, and had left the door open so she would hear if the phone rang. She was still waiting for Erin to respond to the messages she had left about Roy Weaver, and hoped she might call while Hugo was out. She’d never made any secret of how often she spoke to her sister, but when he picked up the phone he seldom greeted Erin with more than a brief hello, and Pamela always felt their chat was constrained by his presence.

She heard the first ring and darted indoors. She recognised Erin’s voice immediately. ‘You’re there!’ she cried.

‘Yes, been in Hong Kong for a while. Rather good fun, actually.’

‘Did you not get my messages?’

There was a slight pause. ‘Sure.’

‘And my email?’ Pamela had sent Erin the link to the article about Roy Weaver’s trial.

‘Yes.’

Pamela couldn’t believe that her sister could sound so casual. ‘Did you recognise him?’ she asked. ‘Is it him?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t be certain. All too long ago.’ Erin paused again. ‘How did Tessa find him? Did you know about him?’ Pamela thought she heard a note of rebuke in her sister’s voice.

‘No,’ Pamela assured her. ‘I knew nothing about him. I simply never dreamt she’d try to find him.’

‘And that’s all you know? The stuff you sent me?’

‘Yes. Do you remember him?’ Pamela held her breath, waiting for Erin, ten thousand miles away, to respond. She looked out of the open front door into the soft May sunshine. ‘Erin, I’m sorry we’ve never spoken about the past before,’ she said.

‘Don’t be.’

‘But he’s killed someone.’

‘There was a guy in the advertising agency we work with,’ said Erin at last. ‘I used to have lunch with him regularly. Never heard him utter an angry word. Then one day he killed his wife. Turned himself in and is doing six years for manslaughter. I heard they’re even going to give him his job back when he gets out.’

‘You really think that’s all this is?’ Surely Erin must know that, with Averil dead and gone, she could tell her sister anything she wanted?

But Pamela could almost hear Erin’s shrug. ‘Why not?’

Pamela wanted so much to believe her, but something caught in her chest, preventing her from breathing freely. ‘Why don’t you come back? So we can talk properly.’

‘Tessa’s not planning on meeting him, is she?’

‘No! I don’t think so. I don’t know.’

‘So it’s Ok then.’

‘She wants to know you too. She asked for pictures of you the other day. She wants to know her mother. Please come back, just for a while.’

Pamela waited expectantly, but then heard the careful distancing in Erin’s voice. ‘I’ve thought of her all these years as your child – yours and Hugo’s. It’s better this way.’

Pamela stared at her spring garden, the tall clump of pampas grass so symbolic of domestic security. ‘I don’t know what to do!’ she cried, as much to the docile scene before her as to Erin, so far away in an apartment she had never visited.

‘Let’s speak again soon, Pamela,’ said Erin in a managerial tone. ‘I’ve had a long trip. I’m all tuckered out. Let’s speak another time.’

Pamela could only agree and hang up. She ought to feel relieved. There was no reason why Roy Weaver’s crime should not be similar to that of Erin’s colleague in the advertising agency, no reason not to believe the account Erin had given Tessa a few weeks ago of a summer romance. But Pamela couldn’t go back to pruning shrubs or dividing up the thick clumps of Michaelmas daises in the border and pretend that the world was a safe place.

She headed for the kitchen. Hugo would be home soon, but she dared not discuss her fears even with him. Should she have pressed Erin for an answer, or was this one secret that must go on being kept forever? Opening the cupboard
and lifting down the comforting bottle, she told herself that perhaps her nagging doubts were groundless after all, and merely the residue of her years of guilt at Erin’s expulsion.

TWENTY-TWO

When Sam rang, Tessa felt a rush of joy. They used to speak most days, but once Nula’s presence had been openly acknowledged, Tessa had been forced to accept how abruptly their relationship had atrophied. Even the brasserie, which she had regarded as a joint venture, something she co-owned, part of a shared life, would be officially signed away in the divorce settlement. The other day she had driven past and seen the new nautical blue-and-white sign –
Sam’s Place
 – positioned over the entrance to the courtyard. She knew it had been designed by the firm Nula worked for because Sam had shown her the drawings some time ago and she’d approved of the jaunty lettering, knowing it would attract the right kind of clientele; but now it seemed to take on the power of a
No Entry
sign, denying any last claim she might have to belong beside him.

Everyone else took Sam’s unavailability for granted, leaving her no one to whom she could admit the sense of loneliness that lodged in her chest like a block of ice.
She recalled an expression she’d heard of a theatre ‘going dark’, and considered that the sadness of a cold, deserted space once filled with passion and applause perfectly described how her heart felt now.

Yet Sam’s voice on the phone, asking if he could pop round, sounded unchanged, and Tessa invited him gladly. Although he’d said he’d come right after lunch, she made a fresh batch of the lemon biscuits he liked and had the kettle ready on the Aga. It still felt strange for him to ring the bell to be let in, but he had insisted on relinquishing his key. He followed her down to the kitchen, showing his usual perceptive interest in business, and sat himself familiarly at the table while she made coffee. Tessa smiled fondly as he absent-mindedly helped himself to the biscuits.

‘I’m a bit concerned about Hugo,’ Sam announced, once she’d sat down beside him.

‘You still see him?’ Tessa was surprised, and a little put out.

‘We meet for a jar now and then.’ He had the grace to look sheepish. ‘He told me some rigmarole about a guy in prison.’

‘My father,’ replied Tessa firmly, trying to repudiate her bitter disappointment that Sam’s primary concern was not for her.

In the few days since the prison visit, Tessa told herself it had been right to establish her true identity and meet the man who sired her, but she had decided to leave well alone. If there had been a wider family for her to meet then she might have felt differently, but it was unnecessary
to pursue a relationship with a man in gaol, a man who did not belong in her life, nor she in his.

‘Oh, come on!’ Sam laughed. ‘Even if your biological father had turned out to be some Nobel prize-winning brain surgeon, what does it matter? Hugo’s your dad.’

‘Except he’s not. And Pamela’s not my mother.’

‘But that doesn’t mean you ought to get in contact with some psychopath or whatever.’

‘I have a right to pursue this if I want.’

‘Can you honestly say you learnt a whole lot about yourself from meeting Erin?’ asked Sam. He picked up another biscuit, waving it around as he spoke. ‘Plus there’s the kids to consider.’

‘Roy Weaver is their grandfather,’ Tessa informed him, recalling how she and Roy had looked at each other and known immediately she was his flesh and blood. While he had remarked on the colour of her eyes, she had seen similar shaped hands, a familiar upward fleck at the corner of his left eyebrow, the same cheekbones. It came back to her vividly how unexpectedly visceral and even joyful her sense of their genetic bond had been. ‘Eventually they might want to know who he is.’

‘What, even if he’s some serial killer?’

‘He killed a girlfriend, not a stranger.’

‘I don’t think you should tell Lauren and Mitch anything about him.’

‘It’s not your decision. It’s nothing to do with you.’

‘They’re my kids too. And Hugo agrees.’

‘Well, he’s not been bothered enough to discuss it with
me,’ Tessa responded. ‘Nor did I see you asking my permission before you dragged Nula into the kids’ lives!’

Sam said nothing, and Tessa knew well that his refusal to engage masked a stubbornness she could never penetrate; knew too that to hear him defend Nula would destroy her. She leant closer. ‘It’s about me, Sam,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like, discovering this kind of stuff. And I feel very alone with it.’ She wished he’d touch her, at least take her hand; if he did, she’d tell him everything. The need for concealment was unwelcome and made her queasy. She did not want her connection with her father to be shady or devious. She longed to describe her hopes, doubts and fears, and to ask Sam’s advice about how to separate the idea of Roy Weaver the murderer from Roy Weaver her father.

But although Sam nodded sympathetically he sat back, maintaining his separateness, so she said nothing.

‘Sorry,’ he offered. ‘Anyway, as I say, it’s Hugo I’m bothered about. He’s pretty cut up about this whole business.’

‘Well, maybe he should be.’

‘Look, Tessa, the point is he blames himself. For everything.’

‘Did he ask you to speak to me?’

‘No.’ Sam paused. ‘But I hoped maybe you’d listen if it was me.’ He gave his trademark upward glance from under the hair that fell across his forehead, but Tessa was too hurt to be manipulated by the old charm. Besides, that all belonged to Nula now.

‘Hugo’s big regret is that he didn’t stand up to your
grandmother right from the start. I told him it wasn’t his fault. Pamela didn’t want him to, and Averil was a bulldozer. And now he believes that what he wants shouldn’t matter.’

Tessa rose from the table, busying herself with topping up the half-full milk jug. As she went to replace the plastic container the cap fell on the floor, and she swiped at it viciously before becoming aware that Sam was watching her.