Mum in the Middle Page 7

  ‘She’s only saying that,’ Ben looked at me, ‘so she can have this room. She’ll go back for the hot social life she’s always on about.’ He lay back and stretched out his limbs. ‘Mmmm a lovely double bed …’ Ben grinned. Tilly threw a trainer at his head.

  ‘You can sleep in Oliver and Sam’s till they get here.’

  ‘No, he can’t,’ I said at once. ‘That’s ready for them. Don’t mess it up.’

  ‘How come Golden Boy gets all the special treatment?’ said Tilly. ‘Flowers, candles …’

  ‘I was trying to make it nice for Sam,’ I told her. ‘Since they haven’t got a proper bedroom.’

  I’d bought a sofa bed and new blinds for the funny old conservatory-type sunroom that led off the dining room, determined there would be room for all my offspring to stay. I even had a blow-up double mattress stowed away in a cupboard in case they brought strays. I had been moved to tears by the tale of one of Ben’s friends whose mother and new boyfriend had turned his bedroom into a home gym the moment the poor lad went to university and who now had to camp out with friends during the holidays.

  ‘My children will have a home with me for as long as they need one,’ I had declared to Caroline, who had not been as traumatised by this story as I was.

  ‘My friend Liz actually pays her teenagers to go away with their father,’ she told me. Just so she can have an empty house. ‘The minute they get pads of their own, she’ll be changing the locks!’

  This had made me cry more – and Ben hadn’t even left yet. Caroline had bought me another cocktail and insisted I went to have my eyebrows threaded. ‘Your lot will still be hanging around you in their thirties,’ she’d said. ‘And see? It takes five years off you!’

  But how wrong she was. All three of them now had bedrooms elsewhere.

  ‘On future visits, you could take turns to be down there,’ I told Ben and Tilly now.

  ‘Don’t mind. I really don’t care where I sleep,’ said Ben.

  Tilly pounced. ‘Get your arse in that spare room, then!’

  ‘But it’s more convenient to stay where I am now …’

  I left them bickering and went downstairs, just happy to have them back. I poured a small glass of red and put two onions on the chopping board. I would make Tilly’s favourite pasta tonight and do shepherd’s pie tomorrow for Ben. I’d make a vegetarian lasagne for Sam at the same time. Or perhaps we could all have fish? Sam ate a lot of that – it was just meat she didn’t like. On the other hand, Oliver wasn’t over-keen on seafood – he preferred chicken …

  As I crushed garlic and tore basil leaves, I heard Ben come downstairs. Soon the sound of his guitar floated through from the sitting room. I stood in the doorway watching him leaning back, eyes closed, fingers moving over the strings. ‘Want a beer?’

  ‘Yeah, great,’

  ‘Have you given in?’

  ‘I rubbed my feet on the pillows. She doesn’t want to sleep there now.’

  ‘Ugh! Ben! How old are you?’

  ‘I’m joking, Mum’

  ‘He’s not – he really did. He’s such an animal.’

  Tilly flounced past me into the kitchen and cut off a piece of Parmesan. ‘Can I have some wine, Mum?’

  I leaned up and kissed her. ‘Of course.’ I poured a can of cold lager into a tall glass. ‘Give this to Ben and then you can tell me about Danni.’

  I kept my face serious as my daughter gave me the full lowdown on her flatmate’s bursts of hysteria, but as I sliced and stirred I wanted to beam. I’d forgotten how good this made me feel. Tomorrow Sam and Oliver would make it complete. I could hear Ben singing a James Blunt song in the background, as Tilly wagged her empty glass at me. ‘I mean, I did use the last of the hair gel but you’d think I’d stolen money from her handbag the way she carried on.’

  ‘Why don’t you buy her some more?’ I suggested. ‘Make her an Easter basket of nice products and say sorry?’

  Tilly got off the stool, refilled both our glasses and picked at the cooked pasta. ‘Because she uses my stuff all the time and I don’t go mental and I haven’t got any money.’

  I took a sip of the Valpolicella she’d put in my hand. ‘Sometimes it’s worth being the first to climb down.’ I tried to remember what my balance had been at the cash point earlier. ‘I expect I can help you.’

  ‘I’m broke too, Mum,’ Ben stuck his head over Tilly’s shoulder and gave me a wide grin. ‘I need money for Easter baskets and shampoo too or all the guys in my flat will cry as well.’

  ‘Fuck off, Ben,’ said Tilly. ‘Loser.’

  I didn’t go to the pub with them. I cleared up and made coffee and lay on the sofa, full of rigatoni and contentment.

  Caroline was off to a glittering awards ceremony tonight, one of the many invites she got in her job as PR director for a cosmetics company. She’d be drinking champagne, in a fabulous frock and killer heels, looking a million dollars. She’d despair of me sitting here in my pyjama bottoms, waiting for my grown-up kids to come in and raid the fridge again. Instead of putting my energies into getting a man.

  But I couldn’t imagine a partner sitting here. It might be nice to share things. But relationships were fraught with complications. Was the sex worth it? I couldn’t really remember …

  Caroline, on her regime of organic, botanical, libido-boosting synthetic hormone injections – ‘like having a shot of testosterone, darling, without the facial hair’ – boasted an insatiable appetite and Jinni had said she kept a list of willing participants because she needed it at least once every couple of months or she got cranky. I hadn’t had any for years.

  My mother shared a bed with Gerald if they went away but had implied it was for warmth and to save a single supplement, and that even with my father ‘that side of things’ had dwindled quite early on. What, she had enquired, while vigorously scrubbing an already-pristine milk pan, was wrong with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit?

  I suddenly had a bleak feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Suppose this was as good as it was going to get? The kids would come home less and less – Ben would finish university and live permanently elsewhere – there would just be me stuck in small market town, a slightly batty old lady with not many friends …

  ‘You’re 47, not 80!’ I heard Caroline’s voice as clearly as if she were in the room. I gave myself a shake and took a swallow of coffee.

  If it didn’t work out I could move back to London. I frowned. It would have to be somewhere bloody small.

  These cheering thoughts – I was now visualising a bedsit in a dodgy tower block miles from the tube, having been made redundant because I couldn’t think up gripping Facebook posts – were brought to an abrupt halt by my mobile ringing. Fran sounded furious and close to tears.

  ‘I have had ENOUGH. Jonathan isn’t supporting me AT ALL. The kids are a nightmare. Bella is so indulged and he lets her speak to me however she likes …’

  I shifted into a more comfortable position with another cushion under my knees and made soothing grunts.

  Jonathan had done nothing since coming home except sit and watch TV with his two older children, leaving Fran to deal entirely with the other four AND cook dinner. He had eventually bathed the twins but only because Fran had told him to, and Silas only grunted and Bella was far too used to getting her own way. Fran was phoning because she damn well was going to have an evening out with me next week and Jonathan could bloody well get back early and babysit.

  ‘That would be really great,’ I said. ‘But I’m sorry you’re having a hard time.’

  ‘I suppose he feels he has to make the most of his time with Bella and Silas,’ I went on cautiously. ‘Could Bella help you with the twins?’ I added, inspired. ‘Teenage girls sometimes like looking after little children. You could ask her to–’

  Fran let out a long, exasperated sigh. ‘Oh she’ll jig them about for five minutes, then she gets bored. More interested in getting back on her phone. Oh bloody hell now Freya’s calling. Jona
than!’ her voice resounded shrilly against my head, making my eardrum vibrate. ‘Could you please attend to your OTHER daughter …’

  I winced as I said goodbye. Fran took no prisoners once she’d wound herself up.

  I lit the white jasmine candle my neighbour Paula had given me when I Ieft Finchley and lay back again, suddenly relishing my own peace and waiting for the perfume to drift towards me.

  There was someone on Radio Four talking about keeping a gratitude diary to promote inner peace and enhance happiness. Each night you had to write down three good things that had happened that day. I ticked them off. I didn’t miss the train and nobody near me was eating burgers. I had a nice time with Caroline. Two of my children were home and the room smelled lovely …

  The programme rumbled on. I realised I’d been dozing when I heard them talking outside the door and fumbling with the key. They came in on a waft of beer and a scent I’d not had clinging to the carpets since Ben departed. Tilly was rolling her eyes while looking enviously at the white paper bundle in his arms.

  ‘He’s got chips,’ she told me unnecessarily, ‘AND a kebab!’

  Within an hour of being in the house, Oliver was rolling his eyes too. ‘You two,’ he told his younger siblings, ‘regress to 12-year-olds when you’re back with Mum. Make him do it,’ he told me, as I pulled Ben’s jeans out of the machine.

  ‘She runs round you too.’ Tilly, sitting at the small table in the now- crowded kitchen, did not look up from her make-up mirror. ‘So don’t get all bloody superior.’

  Ben, standing by the kettle, his mouth bulging with toast, threw open his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  Oliver, leaning his tall frame against the doorway, met my eyes and shook his head. ‘Sam and I are going down the town. Do we need anything?’

  ‘You can collect the turkey for me,’ I said, reaching for my purse. ‘I’ve got everything else.’ I glanced at Ben, who was refilling the toaster. ‘Though, possibly another loaf of bread. Or two.’

  I watched my eldest son and his girlfriend as they went down the path. Oliver did seem so adult compared to the other two and yet he was only eighteen months older than Tilly. Maybe it was Sam, who always seemed so grounded, who had made him grow up.

  I liked Sam. She was calm and smiley, much quieter than my daughter, and far more sensible. I sometimes worried that she couldn’t get a word in edgeways with Tilly carrying on, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was very girl-next-door with her pale skin and shiny brown hair and though she didn’t always say much, had an infectious giggle once she’d relaxed.

  Even Tilly, who was usually disparaging about any woman who, as she put it, was ‘stupid enough to fancy one of my brothers’ was fond of her.

  Sam took Oliver’s hand as they turned out of the gate and he leant down and kissed the side of her forehead. I watched, touched, but felt a sudden pang – half longing, half loss – that I couldn’t quite explain.

  Ben came up behind me as I closed the door and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘So, Mumsie,’ he said in a comic child’s voice, and giving me a squeeze. ‘Where are the Easter eggs?’

  Chapter 10

  I’d eat two, Tilly at least three, Ben six, Oliver five, maybe, Sam probably wouldn’t really need any as there was topping on her fish pie, but perhaps she’d have one …

  Twenty well-roasted potato chunks should be enough but somehow didn’t look it. Ben, clearly depleted from the endless re-runs of Top Gear, and Tilly, in need of sustenance after an exhausting morning using all the hot water, were already ‘starving’. And I could never shake off the notion that someone else might turn up. And, indeed, I’d just grabbed two more Maris Pipers and started chopping when the prophetic ringing of the doorbell brought forth another potential spud-muncher.

  Gabriel, ushered through to the kitchen by my daughter and proffering a rather manic-looking chocolate rabbit, gave me an apologetic smile. ‘You said to pop in and meet Ben but … but I can see you’re busy …’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Tilly decisively. She jerked her head towards the tray of uncooked chipolatas. ‘We won’t be eating for hours yet.’ She sighed and looked at Gabriel curiously. ‘What would you want to meet Ben for?’

  ‘Shall we invite him to eat with us?’ I asked Tilly, when she reappeared to get beers. ‘I feel sorry for him on his own.’

  ‘I’d feel sorry for him being with us lot!’ She swung open the fridge door. ‘Have you got any crisps?’

  I listened to them laughing in the other room as I stirred flour into meat juices a couple of hours later. I could hear Gabriel doing his Malcolm impression, Oliver’s deep chuckle, Sam giggling. I heard Jinni’s name mentioned and had a twinge of conscience about her too.

  I put an extra plate in the bottom of the oven, announced the plan to the assortment of bodies sprawled across sofas and issued instructions.

  ‘Ben – get the vegetables on the table will you? Oliver can you open another bottle of wine, darling. And get another chair out of the conservatory. Tilly, lay another place?’

  My daughter began to gather up empties nudging her brother into action with her foot as she did so. ‘She might say no.’

  ‘She might say yes and then she won’t feel welcome if we’re scrabbling about looking for cutlery …’

  ‘I’ll do it!’ Gabriel sprang to his feet. ‘Show me where it is …’

  I left Tilly solicitously leading Gabriel in the direction of the dining room and ran over the road.

  Jinni opened the door wearing a paint-splattered man’s striped shirt over a long orange skirt, looking surprised. ‘I thought you’d be up to your armpits in kids.’

  ‘I am – and I wondered if you’d like to be too. I’ve roasted a turkey and thought you might like to join us …’

  ‘Oh!’ Jinni looked simultaneously pleased and disappointed. ‘I’ve just eaten cheese on toast.’

  ‘Come over anyway? Glass of wine and pudding?’

  ‘But I could probably manage a little bit …’ Jinni grinned. ‘I need a quick shower. Start without me.’

  ‘I’ll leave the door on the latch.’

  ‘This is wonderful,’ Gabriel gave me a beaming smile. ‘Haven’t had turkey since last Thanksgiving and then it wasn’t anything like this.’

  He waved a hand at the now decimated bird, and the array of half-empty dishes and tureens.

  I smiled back, flattered. ‘You’d better not say that in front of your mother,’ I said, attempting modesty, although I had to admit it had all come out rather well. ‘I’m sure hers was wonderful.’

  ‘It was my grandmother who cooked it,’ said Gabriel. ‘She was over from the States. She said later it was the jetlag, but really it was the gins … she makes a dry Martini that takes your head off. It’s all gin. She brought her own cocktail onions.’

  ‘Ah a Gibson! Good woman!’ Jinni appeared in the doorway with a bottle of Rioja in one hand and a port in the other. She put them on the pine chest and headed for the empty chair, gazing at the table with relish.

  ‘Look at those potatoes! Haven’t had a roastie for months …’

  For someone who wasn’t sure if she was hungry, Jinni tucked in with gusto. ‘Marvellous,’ she said, spooning cauliflower cheese onto her plate. ‘Love this stuff and can never be arsed to make it …’

  ‘Mum’s is the best,’ said Tilly. ‘Grab some sausages before Ben eats them all.’

  ‘And what’s this?’ Jinni was peering at the earthenware oven dish next to Sam.

  ‘Fish pie.’ Sam held it out, smiling. ‘Do have some. I can’t possibly eat it all. It is delicious, though,’ she said, looking at me. ‘It’s got all sorts of things in it.’

  Jinni ladled a small helping on to the side of her plate and took a forkful. ‘Mmm. I love fish pie too. Especially with mussels. You kept that quiet, girlfriend – didn’t know you were one mean cook.’

  ‘Oh, not really.’ I murmured, suddenly embarrassed by all this praise. ‘It’s very easy …’

 
; ‘Mum says you’re doing wonderful things to your place …’ said Oliver, helpfully jumping in. ‘It looks huge.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s lots to do.’ Jinni turned back to me. ‘That reminds me. Guess who I saw driving past as I came over the road? Had the fucking cheek to wave!’

  ‘Who?’ said Tilly.

  ‘Local wanker.’

  ‘I saw him at the station,’ I said. ‘He was all friendly.’

  ‘Huh!’

  For a moment Jinni looked poised to launch into another Ingrid-fuelled diatribe, but then she picked up her glass and smiled.

  ‘You must come over before you go back.’ Jinni took a large swig of wine. ‘I’ll make you all gins.’ She grinned at Gabriel. ‘I can give your gran a run for her money …’

  By the time I’d got the chocolate tart on the table, Jinni and Gabriel were almost family.

  ‘I think I might come,’ Jinni was saying, as Gabriel was extolling the virtues of the open mic night to Oliver and Ben. ‘I like a bit of live music – especially when it’s a free-for-all.’ She’d opened the bottle of port and was pouring generous measures. ‘There’s always someone convinced they’re the next Susan Boyle, bringing out the neighbourhood cats.’

  ‘It’s usually Tilly,’ said Ben, as Tilly stuck a finger up at him. He threw back his head and let out a high-pitched falsetto. ‘I know him so well …’

  He nudged me. ‘Do you remember, Mum? Longest night of my life.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad, you saddo.’ Tilly turned to Jinni. ‘It was a charity show when I was at drama school – we had to do songs from the musicals and I was with this ghastly girl who could only sing in one key.’

  ‘But at least she could sing in one …’ said Ben.

  Tilly made another rude gesture.

  ‘When I was at Guildford, we had to choose a song at the beginning of term and then that was what we worked on every week for ever,’ Jinni told her. ‘I ended up with ‘Bright Eyes’. I didn’t like it, never could sing it and the singing teacher hated me. Put me off for years.’

  ‘Sadly that didn’t happen to Tilly …’ Ben got up and waved his empty pint pot at Oliver. ‘Want another beer?’