SEVEN
I don’t get to the sex plan straight away, because 1. we’ve agreed to have a few days’ rest from surprises and 2. I have a few other things to deal with first. Like giving the girls breakfast and plaiting their hair and stacking the dishwasher, all while avoiding looking at the snake. If I look at the snake, the snake will have won, is how I feel.
Which I know is irrational. But what’s so great about being rational? If you ask me, being rational isn’t always the same as being right. I’m almost tempted to share my little maxim with Dan, but he’s frowning moodily at the Sunday paper, so I don’t disturb him.
I know why he’s in a mood. It’s because we’re seeing my mother this morning. I’m actually getting a bit tired of his attitude. It’s the same as with Daddy. Dan used to be OK with Mummy – but now, forget it. Every time we visit, this horrible cloud of tension grows around him beforehand. When I ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ he scowls and says, ‘What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong.’ So I persist: ‘Yes there is, you’re all grouchy,’ whereupon he snarls, ‘You’re imagining things, it’s fine.’ And I can never face a great big argument, especially when it’s the precious weekend (it’s always the precious weekend), so we leave it.
And OK, it’s only a tiny kink in our happiness – but if we’re going to be married for another zillion years, we really should iron it out. We can’t have Dan wincing each time I say, ‘Let’s visit my mother this weekend.’ Soon the girls will start noticing, and saying, ‘Why doesn’t Daddy like Granny?’ and that’ll be really bad.
‘Dan,’ I begin.
‘Yes?’
He looks up, still frowning, and instantly my nerve fails. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not the best at confrontation. I don’t even know where I’m planning to start.
Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t tackle this openly, I suddenly decide. Maybe I need to operate by stealth. Build trust and affection between my mother and Dan in some subtle way that neither of them notices. Yes. Good plan.
‘We should get going,’ I say, and head out of the kitchen – still managing to avoid looking at the snake by fixing my eyes on a distant corner.
As Dan drives us to Chelsea, I stare ahead at the road, mulling on marriage and life, and how unfair everything is. If anyone was destined to have a long and perfect marriage, it was my parents. I mean, they were perfect. They could have been married for six hundred years, no problem. Daddy adored Mummy, and she adored him back, and they made an amazing couple on the dance floor, or on their boat in pastel polo shirts, or turning up at school parents’ evenings, twinkling and smiling and charming everyone.
Mummy still twinkles. But it’s the kind of bright, unnerving twinkle that might shatter at any moment. Everyone says she’s coped ‘marvellously’ since Daddy died. She certainly coped better than me, Go-to-pieces Sylvie.
(No. Not ‘better’. It’s not a competition. She coped differently from me, that’s all.)
She still talks about Daddy, in fact she loves talking about Daddy. We both do. But the conversation has to be along her lines. If you venture on to the ‘wrong’ topic, she draws breath and her eyes go shiny and she blinks very furiously and gazes at the window and you feel terrible. The trouble is, the ‘wrong’ topics are random and unpredictable. A reference to Daddy’s colourful handkerchiefs, his funny superstitions when he played golf, those holidays we used to spend in Spain: topics that seem utterly safe and harmless … but no. Each of them has brought on an attack of furious blinking and window-gazing and me desperately trying to change the subject.
Which is just grief, I guess. I’ve decided that grief is like a newborn baby. It knocks you for six. It takes over your brain with its incessant cry. It stops you sleeping or eating or functioning, and everyone says, ‘Hang in there, it’ll get easier.’ What they don’t say is, ‘Two years on, you’ll think it’s got easier, but then, out of the blue, you’ll hear a certain tune in the supermarket and start sobbing.’
Mummy doesn’t sob – it’s not her style, sobbing – but she does blink. I sometimes sob. On the other hand, sometimes I go hours, or even days, without thinking about Daddy. And then, of course, I feel terrible.
‘Why are we going for brunch?’ says Dan as we pull up at the lights.
‘To have brunch!’ I say, a little sharply. ‘To be a family!’
‘No other agenda?’ He raises his eyebrows, and I feel slight misgivings. I don’t think there’s another agenda. On the phone last night I said to Mummy, at least three times, ‘It is just brunch, isn’t it? Nothing … else?’ And she said, ‘Of course, darling!’ and sounded quite offended.
She has history, though. She knows it and I know it and Dan knows it. Even the girls know it.
‘She’s at it again,’ says Dan calmly, as he finds a parking space outside her block.
‘You don’t know that,’ I retort.
But as we enter her spacious mansion flat, my eyes dart around, searching for clues, hoping I won’t find any …
Then I see it, through the double doors. A white, kitchen-type gadget perched on her ormolu coffee table. It’s large and shiny and looks totally out of place sitting on her old, well-thumbed books about Impressionist painters.
Damn it. He’s right.
I deliberately don’t see the gadget. I don’t mention it. I kiss Mummy, and so does Dan, and we get the girls out of their coats and shoes, and head into the kitchen, where the table is laid. (I’ve finally got Mummy to give up trying to entertain us in the dining room when we have the girls with us.) And the minute I enter the room, I draw breath sharply. Oh, for God’s sake. What is she up to?
Mummy, of course, is playing completely innocent.
‘Have some crudités, Sylvie!’ she says in that bright sparkly voice that used to be real – she had everything to sparkle about – and now sounds just a little hollow. ‘Girls, you like carrots, don’t you? Look at these ones. Aren’t they fun?’
There are four huge platters on the kitchen counter, all covered in strangely shaped vegetables. There are courgette batons, etched with a criss-cross design. Discs of cucumber with scalloped edges. Carrot stars. Radish hearts. (They do look super-cute, I must admit). And as the pièce de résistance, a pineapple carved into a flower.
I meet eyes with Dan. We both know how this is going to go. And half of me is tempted to harden my heart, be brutal, not even mention the extraordinarily shaped vegetables. But I can’t. I have to play along.
‘Wow!’ I say, dutifully. ‘Those are incredible.’
‘I did them all myself,’ says Mummy in triumph. ‘It took me half an hour, if that.’
‘Half an hour?’ I echo, feeling like the second presenter on a QVC show. ‘Goodness. How on earth did you manage that?’
‘Well.’ Mummy’s face lights up. ‘I’ve bought this rather wonderful machine! Girls, do you want to see how Granny’s new machine works?’
‘Yes!’ cry Tessa and Anna, who are so easily persuaded into new ventures, it’s ridiculous. I know if I said to them, ‘Do you want to study QUANTUM PHYSICS?’ in the right tone of voice, they’d both yell, ‘Yes!’ Then they’d fight over who was going to be first to study quantum physics. Then I’d say, ‘Do you know what quantum physics is?’ and Anna would look blank, while Tessa would say defiantly, ‘It is like Paddington Bear,’ because she always has to have an answer.
As Mummy hurries out, Dan shoots me an ominous look. ‘Whatever it is, we’re not buying it,’ he says in a low voice.
‘OK, but don’t …’ I gesture with my hands.
‘What?’
‘Be negative.’
‘I’m not being negative!’ retorts Dan – totally lying, as he couldn’t look more negative. ‘But nor am I spending any more money on your mother’s—’
‘Ssh!’ I intervene.
‘—crap,’ he finishes. ‘That apple-sauce maker …’
‘I know, I know.’ I wince. ‘It was a mistake. I’ve admitted it.’
Don’t get me wrong: I’m as big a fan of the heavyweight retro American-style gadget as the next person. But that bloody ‘traditional apple-sauce maker’ is huge. And we hardly ever eat apple sauce. Nor do we use it for ‘all those handy purees’ that Mummy kept on about in her sales pitch. (As for the ‘liquid spice’ sachets … It’s best to cast a veil.)
Everyone works through grief in their own way. I get that. My way was to have a meltdown. Mummy’s way is to blink furiously. And her other way is to sell one weird product after another to her friends and family.
When she started holding jewellery parties, I was delighted. I thought it would be a fun hobby, and distract her from all the sadness. I went along, I sipped champagne with all her friends and I bought a choker and a bracelet. There was a second jewellery party which I couldn’t make, but apparently it went well.
Then she held an essential oils party and I bought Christmas presents for all Dan’s family, so that was fine. The Spanishware party was OK, too. I bought tapas bowls and I’ve used them maybe once.
Then there was the Trendieware party.
Oh God. Just the memory makes me shudder. Trendieware is a company that makes garments out of stretchy fabric in ‘modern, vibrant’ (vile) prints. You can wear each item about sixteen different ways, and you have to choose your personality (I was Spring Fresh Extrovert) and then the saleswoman (Mummy) tries to persuade you to throw out all your old clothes and only wear Trendieware.
It was horrendous. Mummy has a sylphlike figure for her age, so of course she can wear a stretchy tube as a skirt. But her friends? Hello? The place was full of ladies in their sixties, glumly trying to wrap a lurid pink stretchy top over their sensible bra or work out the Three-Way Jacket (you’d need a thesis in mechanics), or else flatly refusing to join in. I was the only person who bought anything – the Signature Dress – and I’ve never worn it even one way. Let alone sixteen.
Not surprisingly, after that a lot of Mummy’s friends dropped off. At the next jewellery party there were only half a dozen of us. At the scented candles party it was just me and Lorna, who is Mummy’s oldest and most loyal friend. Lorna and I had a hurried conversation while Mummy was out of the room, and we decided that this selling obsession was a harmless way for Mummy to process her grief, and it would come to a natural end. But it hasn’t. She keeps finding new things to sell. And the only person dumb enough to keep buying them is me. (Lorna has claimed ‘no more room’ in her flat, which is very clever of her. If I did that, Mummy would come round, clear out a cupboard, and make room.)
I know we need to stage an intervention. Dan’s suggested it, I’ve agreed, and we’ve sat in bed many times, saying firmly, ‘We’ll talk to her.’ In fact, I was all geared up for it, last time we visited. But it turned out Mummy was having a bad day. Lots of blinking. Lots of window-gazing. She looked so piteous and fragile, all I wanted to do was make her life better … so I found myself ordering an apple-sauce maker. (It could have been worse. It could have been the nine-hundred-pound special-edition retro ham-slicer: a unique and distinctive focus for any kitchen. I’ll say.)
‘So!’ Mummy arrives back in the kitchen, clutching the white gadget that I noticed before. Her cheeks have flushed and she has that focused look she gets whenever she’s about to pitch. ‘You may be thinking this is an ordinary food processor. But let me assure you, the Vegetable Creator is in a league of its own.’
‘The “Vegetable Creator”?’ echoes Dan. ‘Are you telling me it creates vegetables?’
‘We all get so tired of vegetables,’ Mummy ploughs on, ignoring Dan. ‘But imagine a whole new way to present them! Imagine fifty-two different chopping templates, all in one handy machine, plus an extra twelve novelty templates in our Seasonal Package, free if you order today!’ Her voice is rising with each word. ‘The Vegetable Creator is fun, healthy, and so easy to use. Anna, Tessa, do you want to try?’
‘Yes!’ yells Tessa, predictably. ‘Me!’
‘Me!’ wails Anna. ‘Me!’
Mummy sets the gadget up on the counter, grabs a carrot and feeds it through an aperture. We all watch speechlessly as it turns into tiny teddy-bear shapes.
‘Teddies!’ the girls gasp. ‘Teddy carrots!’
Typical. I might have known she’d get the girls onside. But I’m going to be firm.
‘I think we’ve got too many gadgets already,’ I say sorrowfully. ‘It does look good, though.’
‘A study has shown that owning a Vegetable Creator leads to thirty per cent more vegetable consumption in children,’ says Mummy brightly.
Rubbish! What ‘study’? I’m not going to challenge her, though, or she’ll start quoting some stream of made-up figures from the Vegetable Creator Real Proper Lab with Real Scientists.
‘Quite a lot of waste,’ I observe. ‘Look at all those bits of carrots left over.’
‘Put them in soup,’ Mummy retorts like a shot. ‘So nutritious. Shall we try making cucumber stars, girls?’
I’m not buying it. I know I’m her only customer, but I’m still not buying it. Resolutely I turn away and search for a change of subject.
‘So, what else is up with you, Mummy?’ I say. I head across to her little pinboard and survey the notices and tickets pinned there. ‘Oh, a Zumba class. That looks fun.’
‘All the unused pieces collect in this handy receptacle …’ Mummy is still doggedly continuing with her pitch.
‘Oh, Through the High Maze,’ I exclaim, seeing a hardback book on the counter. ‘We did that at my book group. What did you think? A bit hard-going, I thought.’
Truth be told, I actually only read about half of Through the High Maze, even though it’s one of those books that everyone has read and is going to be a movie, apparently. It’s by this woman called Joss Burton who overcame her eating disorder to set up a perfume company called Maze (that’s the play on words). She’s stunning, with cropped dark hair and a trademark white streak. And her perfumes are really good, especially the Amber and Rose. Now she hosts events where she tells business people how to succeed, and I suppose it is quite inspirational – but there’s only so much inspiration you can take, I find.
Whenever I read about these super-inspiring people, I start off all admiring and end up thinking: Oh God, why haven’t I trekked across the desert or overcome crippling childhood poverty? I’m totally crap.
Mummy hasn’t responded to my gambit – but on the plus side, she’s paused in her chat about the chopper, so I quickly carry on the conversation.
‘You’re going to the theatre!’ I exclaim, seeing tickets pinned up. ‘Dealer’s Choice. That’s the one about gambling, isn’t it? Are you going with Lorna? You could get a meal deal beforehand.’
There’s still complete silence from Mummy, which surprises me – and as I look round I blink in shock. What did I say? What’s up? Her hands have frozen still and there’s an odd expression on her face, as though her smile has been petrified in acid. As I watch, she glances at the window and starts blinking, very fast.
Oh shit. Obviously I’ve strayed on to another ‘wrong’ topic. But what, exactly? The theatre? Dealer’s Choice? Surely not. I glance at Dan for help, and to my astonishment, he seems frozen, too. His jaw has tensed and his eyes are alert. He glances at Mummy. Then at me.
What? What’s this all about? Did I miss the memo?
‘Anyway!’ says Mummy, and I can tell she’s pulling herself together with an almighty effort. ‘Enough of this. You must all be hungry. I’ll just tidy up a little …’
She starts sweeping things off the counter with an indiscriminate air: the Vegetable Creator, a load of Tupperware which was out (no doubt to store her vegetable creations) and the copy of Through the High Maze. She dumps them all in her tiny utility room, then returns, her face even more pink than before.
‘Buck’s Fizz?’ she says, almost shrilly. ‘Dan, you’d like a Buck’s Fizz, I’m sure. Shall we go through to the drawing room?’
I’m baffled. Isn’t she even going to try to sell me the chopper thing? She seems to have been utterly derailed, and I can’t work out why.
I follow her through to the drawing room, where champagne and orange juice in ice buckets are waiting on the walnut Art Deco cocktail cabinet. (Daddy was very big on cocktails. When he had his sixtieth birthday party, almost everyone who came bought him a cocktail shaker as a present. It was quite funny.)
Dan opens the champagne and Mummy makes the Buck’s Fizz and the girls rush over to the big dolls’ house by the window. It’s all just like normal – except it isn’t. Something weird happened just now.
Mummy is asking Dan lots of questions about his work, one after another – almost as though she’s desperate not to let any gaps into the conversation. She swigs her entire drink, pours herself another (Dan and I have barely begun on ours), then flashes me a bright smile and says, ‘I’ll make some pancakes in a moment.’
‘Girls, come and wash your hands,’ I call to them, and lead them into Mummy’s powder room, where they have the usual fight to go first and squirt far too much Molton Brown soap everywhere. Tessa’s hair has become a wild tangle, and I go into the kitchen to get my hairbrush from my bag. On the way back, I glance into the drawing room and see something that makes me slow down … then stop altogether.
Mummy and Dan are standing close together, talking in low voices. And I can’t help it – I inch forward, staying out of view.
‘… Sylvie finds out now …’ Dan is saying, and my stomach flips over. They’re talking about me!
Mummy replies in such a quiet voice, I can’t hear her – but I don’t need to. I know what this is. Now I get it. It’s one of Dan’s surprises for me! They’re planning something!
The last thing I want is Dan thinking that I’m eavesdropping, so I hurriedly head back to the safety of the powder room. It’s a surprise. What kind of surprise? Then it hits me. Are Dan and I going to see Dealer’s Choice? That would explain Mummy’s frozen expression. She probably pinned the tickets up on her board, not thinking, and I went and blundered in, asking her about them.
OK, from now on, I’m noticing nothing untoward. Nothing.
I tidy Tessa’s hair and then lead the girls back into the hall, and my gaze falls on the massive framed photo of Daddy which sits on the hall table like a sentinel. My handsome, dapper, charming father. Killed while he was still in his prime. Before he had a chance to really know his grandchildren, write that book, enjoy his retirement …
I can’t help it, I’m starting to breathe harder. My fists are clenching. I know I need to let it go, and I know they never proved whether he was using his phone or not, but I will hate Gary Butler forever. Forever.
That’s the name of the lorry driver who killed Daddy on the M6. Gary Butler. (He was never prosecuted in the end. Lack of evidence.) At the height of my ‘bad time’, as I think of it, I found his address and went and stood outside his house. I didn’t do anything, just stood there. But apparently you’re not supposed to stand outside people’s houses for no reason, or write them letters, and his wife felt ‘threatened’. (By me? What a joke.) Dan had to come and find me and talk me into leaving. That’s when everyone got alarmed and gathered in corners, murmuring, ‘Sylvie’s not coping well.’
Dan, in particular, went into overdrive. He’s a protective type naturally – he’ll always open a door for me or offer a jacket – but this was another level. He took time off work to look after the girls. He negotiated extra leave for me from Mrs Kendrick. He tried to get me to go to a counsellor. (Really not my kind of thing.) I remember the doctor told Dan I needed to sleep (of course I wasn’t sleeping, how could I sleep?) and Dan took it on as his responsibility, buying blackout blinds and calming music CDs and asking everyone in the street to keep the noise down. He still asks me every morning if I’ve slept. It’s become his habit, like he’s my sleep monitor.
Mummy, on the other hand, didn’t want to know. I don’t mean that to sound bad. She was grieving herself; how could she worry about me too? And anyway, it’s her way. She doesn’t cope well with outlandish behaviour. We once had a lunch guest who got so drunk he fell over the sofa, which I found hilarious (I was nine). But when I mentioned it the next day, Mummy just closed the conversation down. It was as if nothing had happened.
So when I went to stand outside Gary Butler’s house, she wasn’t at all impressed. (‘What will people say?’) It was Mummy who was keen for me to take some pills. Or maybe go abroad for a month and come back all better again.
(She herself seemed to process her grief like a caterpillar in a cocoon. She disappeared into her bedroom after the funeral and no one was allowed in for two weeks, and then she emerged, fully dressed, fully made-up, blinking. Never crying, only blinking.)
‘Grandpa is in heaven,’ asserts Tessa, looking at the picture of Daddy. ‘He is sitting on a cloud, isn’t he, Mummy?’
‘Maybe,’ I say cautiously.
What do I know? Maybe Daddy is up there, sitting on a cloud.
‘But what if he falls off?’ queries Anna anxiously. ‘Mummy, what if Grandpa falls off?’
‘He will hold on tight,’ says Tessa. ‘Won’t he, Mummy?’ And now both of them are looking expectantly up at me, with absolute trust that I know the answer. Because I’m Mummy, who knows everything in the world.
My eyes are suddenly hot. I wish I was what they think I am. I wish I had all the answers for them. How old will they be before they realize I don’t? That no one does? As I survey their questioning little faces, I can’t bear the idea that one day my girls will know about all the shit that the world really involves, and they’ll have to deal with it, and I won’t be able to fix it for them.
‘All right, Sylvie?’ says Dan as he and Mummy come out of the drawing room. He glances swiftly at the picture of Daddy, and I know he’s realized my train of thought. Photos of Daddy do tend to catch me out.
Well, to be honest, anything can catch me out.
‘Fine!’ I force a bright tone. ‘So, girls, what are you going to put on your pancakes?’
Distraction is crucial, because the last thing I need is Tessa talking about Grandpa sitting on a cloud in front of Mummy.
‘Maple syrup!’
‘Chocolate sauce!’
Anna and Tessa dash into the kitchen, all thoughts of Grandpa forgotten. As I follow them I glance at Dan, still walking right by Mummy’s side, and the sight suddenly cheers me up. Will Project Surprise Me have an unexpected side benefit? Will it bring Dan and Mummy closer together? Seeing them just now, huddled in the drawing room, they had a kind of directness and openness with each other that I’ve never seen before.
I mean, they do get on, as a rule. They do. Kind of. It’s just …
Well. As I’ve mentioned, Dan can be a bit prickly about Daddy. And money and … lots of stuff. But maybe he’s over that, I think optimistically. Maybe things have changed.
Or maybe not. By the time we’ve all finished eating, Dan seems more prickly than ever, especially when Mummy finds out about the snake and teases him about it. I can tell he’s struggling to stay polite, and I don’t blame him. Mummy has a habit of picking one joke and making it too many times. I almost find myself coming to the wretched snake’s defence. (Almost.)
‘I always wanted a pet when I was little,’ I say to the girls, trying to broaden the conversation. ‘But I didn’t want a snake, I wanted a kitten.’
‘A kitten,’ breathes Tessa.
‘Your snake would probably eat the kitten!’ says Mummy merrily. ‘Isn’t that what you feed snakes, Dan, live kittens?’
‘No,’ says Dan evenly. ‘It is not.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mummy,’ I say, frowning at her before she freaks out the girls. ‘Granny’s joking, girls. Snakes don’t eat kittens! So anyway,’ I press on. ‘I wasn’t allowed a pet and I didn’t have any brothers or sisters either … so guess what? I made up an imaginary friend. Her name was Lynn.’
I’ve never told the girls about my imaginary friend before. I’m not sure why.
No, of course I know why. It’s because my parents made me feel so ashamed about it. It’s actually taking me some courage to mention her in front of Mummy.
In hindsight – especially now I have children of my own – I can see that my parents didn’t handle the whole imaginary friend thing well. They were great parents, really they were, but that one issue, they got wrong.
I mean, I get it. Things were different then. People were less open-minded. Plus Mummy and Daddy were super-conventional. They probably worried that hearing voices in my head meant I was going mad or something. But imaginary friends are perfectly normal and healthy for children. I’ve googled it. (Lots of times, actually.) They shouldn’t have been so disapproving. Every time I mentioned Lynn, Mummy would freeze in that awful way she had, and Daddy would look at Mummy with a kind of disapproving anger, like it was her fault, and the whole atmosphere would become toxic. It was horrible.
So of course, after a while, I kept Lynn secret. But it didn’t mean I abandoned her. The very fact that my parents had such an extreme reaction to her made me cling on to her. Embellish her. Sometimes I felt guilty when I talked to her in my head – and sometimes I felt defiant – but I always had a horrible feeling of shame. I’m thirty-two years old, but even now, saying ‘Lynn’ out loud gives me a queasy frisson.
I even woke up dreaming about her the other day. Or remembering, maybe? I could hear her laughing that happy gurgle of a laugh. Then she was singing the song that I used to love, ‘Kumbaya’.
‘Did you talk to her in real life?’ says Tessa, puzzled.
‘No, just in my head.’ I smile at her. ‘I made her up because I felt a bit lonely. It’s perfectly normal. Lots of children have imaginary friends,’ I add pointedly, ‘and they grow out of them naturally.’
This last is a little dig at Mummy, but she pretends not to notice, which is typical.
I’ve promised myself that one day I’m going to have it out with Mummy. I’m going to say, ‘Do you realize how ashamed you made me feel?’ and ‘What was the problem? Did you think I was going mad or something?’ I have all my lines ready – I’ve just never quite had the guts to say them. As I say, I’m not brilliant at confrontation, and especially not since Daddy died. The family boat’s been unsteady enough without me rocking it more.
Sure enough, Mummy has blanked this entire conversation and now changes the subject.
‘Look what I found the other day,’ she says, zapping at the wall-mounted TV, and after a few seconds, a family video appears on screen. It’s from my sixteenth birthday, the part when Daddy stood up to give a speech about me.
‘I haven’t seen this one for ages,’ I breathe, and we all fall silent to watch. Daddy’s addressing the ballroom at the Hurlingham Club, where my party was. He’s in black tie, and Mummy’s all shimmery in silver and I’m in a red minidress, which Mummy spent Saturday after Saturday helping me look for.
(Now I look back, it really doesn’t suit me. But I was sixteen. What did I know?)
‘My daughter has the wit of Lizzy Bennet …’ Daddy is saying in that commanding way of his. ‘The strength of Pippi Longstocking … the boldness of Jo March … and the style of Scarlett O’Hara.’ On screen the guests break into applause and Daddy twinkles at me and I gaze back up, speechless.
I remember that moment. It blew me away. Daddy had secretly gone through all the books in my bedroom, looking for my heroines and writing a speech around them. I glance over at Mummy now, my eyes a little hot, and she gives me a tremulous smile back. My mother can drive me mad – but there are times when no one gets it like she does.
‘Good speech,’ says Dan after a few moments, and I shoot him a grateful smile.
But as we’re watching, the screen starts to go blurry, and suddenly the voices are distorting, and the video becomes unwatchable.
‘What happened?’ demands Tessa.
‘Oh dear!’ Mummy jabs at the remote, but can’t improve the picture. ‘This copy must be damaged. Never mind. If everyone’s finished, let’s go into the drawing room and we can watch something else.’
‘The wedding!’ says Anna.
‘The wedding!’ shrieks Tessa.
‘Really?’ says Dan incredulously. ‘Haven’t we done family DVDs?’
‘What’s wrong with watching the wedding?’ I say. And if I sound a little defensive … it’s because I am.
So, yet another key fact about my family: we watch our wedding DVD a lot. A lot. Probably every other visit to Mummy’s place, we all sit down to watch it. The girls love it and Mummy loves it and I have to admit I do, too.
But Dan says it’s weird to keep replaying one day of our life. In fact, Dan hates our wedding DVD – probably for the same reason that Mummy loves it. Because while most wedding videos are about the happy couple, ours is basically all about Daddy.
I never even noticed to begin with. I thought it was just a lovely, well-produced DVD. It wasn’t until about a year after our wedding that Dan suddenly flipped out on the way home from some gathering and said, ‘Can’t you see, Sylvie? It’s not our DVD, it’s his!’
And the next time I watched it, of course, it was obvious. It’s the Daddy show. The first shot of the whole DVD is of Daddy, looking gorgeous in his morning suit, standing by the Rolls-Royce we used to get to the church. Then there are shots of him leading me out in my wedding dress … shots of him in the car … the pair of us walking up the aisle …
The most moving moment of the whole DVD isn’t our vows. It’s when the priest says, ‘Who gives this woman to be married?’ and Daddy says, ‘I do,’ his resonant voice all choked up. Then all the way through our vows, the camera keeps panning over to Daddy, who is watching with the most poignant expression of pride and wistfulness.
Dan thinks Daddy went into the editing suite and made sure that he featured prominently. After all, he was paying – he was the one who insisted on hiring an expensive video team, in fact – so he could have it just the way he wanted.
I was incredibly upset when Dan first suggested this. Then I accepted that it was possible. Daddy was … not conceited, exactly, but he had healthy self-esteem. He liked to be the centre of attention, always. For example, he was desperate to be knighted. Friends would mention it and he’d brush them off with a lighthearted joke – but we all knew he wanted it. And why not, after all the good he did? (Mummy’s really sensitive about the fact that he missed out. I’ve seen her blinking while reading the Honours List in the newspaper. Let’s face it, if he had been knighted she’d be ‘Lady Lowe’ now, which does sound pretty good.)
Even so, I have a different theory about our DVD. I think the video team were just naturally drawn to Daddy, because he dazzled like a movie star. He was so handsome and witty, he whirled Mummy around the dance floor with such aplomb, no wonder the cameraman, or editor, or whoever it was, focused on him.
To sum up, Dan’s not the greatest fan. But the girls are obsessed by watching the wedding – by my dress, mainly, and of course my hair. Daddy was insistent that I should wear my hair – my ‘glory’ – down for the wedding and it did look fairly spectacular and princesslike, all wavy and shiny and blonde, with braids and flowers woven through it. The girls call it ‘wedding hair’ and often try to do the same with their dolls.
Anyway. So what usually happens is that we start the DVD, Dan absents himself and after a while the girls get bored and go off to play. Whereupon Mummy and I end up watching together in silence, just drinking in the sight of Daddy. The man he was. It’s our indulgence. It’s our tin of Quality Street.
Today, though, I don’t want Mummy and me to gorge on watching Daddy all alone. I want things to be different. Together and relaxed and more … I don’t know. Unified. Family-like. As we head into the drawing room, I put my arm through Dan’s.
‘Watch it today,’ I say coaxingly. ‘Stay with us.’
Mummy’s already pressed Play – none of us comment on the fact that the DVD was already loaded in the machine – and soon we’re watching Daddy and me stepping out of my childhood home in Chelsea. (Mummy sold the house a year ago and moved to this flat nearby, for a ‘new start’.)
‘I had the local paper on the phone yesterday,’ says Mummy as we watch Daddy posing with me for pictures in front of the Rolls-Royce. ‘They want to take photos at the opening of the scanner suite. Make sure you get your hair done, Sylvie,’ she adds.
‘Have you mentioned it to Esme?’ I ask. ‘You should do.’
Esme is the girl at the hospital who is organizing the opening ceremony. She’s quite new at her job and this is her first big event and almost every day I get an anxious email from her, beginning: I think I’ve planned for everything but … Even over the weekend. Yesterday she wanted to know: How many parking spaces will you need? Today it was, Will you need Powerpoint for your speech? I mean, Powerpoint? Really?
‘Dan, you are coming to the ceremony?’ Mummy says, suddenly turning to us.
I nudge Dan, who looks up and says, ‘Oh. Yes.’
He could sound more enthused. It’s not every day your late father-in-law is honoured by a whole hospital scanner suite being named after him, is it?
‘When I told the reporter everything that Daddy had achieved in his life, he couldn’t believe it,’ Mummy continues tremulously. ‘Building up his business from nothing, all the fundraising, hosting those wonderful parties, climbing Everest … The journalist said his headline would read, “A remarkable man”.’
‘It wasn’t exactly “from nothing”,’ says Dan.
‘Sorry?’ Mummy peers at him.
‘Well, Marcus had that massive windfall, didn’t he? So, not quite “nothing”.’
I glance sharply round at Dan – and sure enough, he’s all tentery. His jaw is taut. He looks as though he’s sitting here under total duress.
Whenever I spend time with Dan and Mummy, my sympathies constantly swing back and forth between the two, like some wild pendulum. And right now, they’re with Mummy. Why can’t Dan just let Mummy reminisce? What does it matter if she’s not 100 per cent accurate? So what if she romanticizes her dead husband?
‘That’s lovely, Mummy,’ I say, ignoring Dan. I squeeze her hand, simultaneously eyeing her warily to see if she’s going to start blinking. But although her voice is a bit trembly, she seems composed.
‘Do you remember the time he took us to Greece?’ she says, her eyes lost in memory. ‘You were quite little.’
‘Of course I do!’ I turn to Dan. ‘It was incredible. Daddy chartered a yacht and we sailed round the coastline. Every night we’d have these fantastic candle-lit meals on the beach. Crabs … lobster …’
‘He invented a new cocktail every night,’ adds Mummy dreamily.
‘Sounds fantastic,’ says Dan tonelessly.
Mummy blinks at him, as though coming to. ‘Where are you going on holiday this year?’
‘Lake District,’ I say. ‘Self-catering.’
‘Lovely.’ Mummy gives a distant smile, and I sigh inwardly. I know she doesn’t mean to look disparaging, but she doesn’t really get our life. She doesn’t understand living on a budget, or keeping the girls grounded, or taking pleasure in simple things. When I showed her the brochure for a French campsite we went to once, she blanched and said, ‘But, darling, why don’t you hire a lovely villa in Provence?’
(If I’d said, ‘Because of the money,’ she’d have said, ‘But darling, I’ll give you the money!’ And then Dan would have got all prickly. So I don’t ever do that.)
‘Oh, look.’ Mummy points at the screen. ‘Daddy’s about to make that funny little joke before you go into the church. Your father was always so witty,’ she adds wistfully. ‘Everyone said his speech made the reception, absolutely made it.’
I feel a movement beside me on the sofa, and suddenly Dan has risen to his feet.
‘Sorry,’ he says, heading to the door without meeting my eye. ‘There’s an urgent work call I should make. I forgot earlier.’
Yeah, right. I kind of don’t blame him. But I kind of do blame him. Couldn’t he put up with it for once?
‘That’s fine.’ I try to sound pleasant, as though I’m not aware he’s just totally invented this call. ‘See you in a moment.’
Dan leaves the room and Mummy looks over at me.
‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘Poor Dan seems a little tense. I wonder why?’
This is how she often refers to him: ‘poor Dan’. And she sounds so patronizing – even though she doesn’t mean to – that my pendulum instantly swings the other way. I must stick up for Dan. Because he has a point.
‘I think he feels … he thinks …’ I trail off, and take a deep breath. I’m going to tackle this, once and for all. ‘Mummy, have you ever noticed that our wedding DVD is quite focused on, well, Daddy?’
Mummy blinks at me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Compared to … other people.’
‘But he was the father of the bride.’ Mummy still looks perplexed.
‘Yes,’ I press on, feeling hot and bothered, ‘but there’s more of Daddy on the DVD than there is of Dan! And it’s his wedding!’
‘Oh.’ Mummy’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, I see! Is that why poor Dan is so prickly?’
‘He’s not prickly,’ I say, feeling uncomfortable. ‘You’ve got to understand his point of view.’
‘I do not,’ says Mummy emphatically. ‘The DVD represents the spirit of the wedding perfectly, and, like it or not, your father was the centre of the party. Naturally the videographers chose to focus on the most entertaining character present. Poor Dan is a lovely chap, you know I love him to bits, but he’s hardly the life and soul, is he?’
‘Yes he is!’ I retort hotly, although I know exactly what she means. Dan is really funny and entertaining when you get to know him, but he’s not out there. He’s not going to sweep three women on to the dance floor all at once while everyone cheers, like Daddy did.
‘What a ridiculous thing to mind about,’ Mummy says with just a trace of disdain in her voice. ‘But then, poor Dan is a little sensitive, especially about Marcus and all his achievements.’ She sighs. ‘Although … can one blame him?’ She’s silent for a moment, and her face becomes softer and more distant. ‘What you have to remember, Sylvie, is that your father was a remarkable man, and we were lucky to have him.’
‘I know.’ I nod. ‘I know we were.’
‘Of course, Dan has many fine attributes too,’ she adds after a pause. ‘He’s very … loyal.’ I know she’s making an effort to be nice, although clearly in her mind ‘loyal’ ranks several fathoms below ‘remarkable’.
We lapse into silence as the DVD plays on and a lump grows in my throat as I watch Daddy on screen, watching me marrying Dan. His face is noble and dignified. A shaft of light is catching his hair in just the right place. Then he glances at the camera and winks in that way he had.
And even though I’ve seen this DVD so many times before, I feel a sudden fresh, raw hurt. All my life, Daddy used to wink at me. At school concerts, at boring dinners, as he left the room after saying goodnight. And I know that doesn’t sound much – anyone can wink – but Daddy’s wink was special. It was like a shot in the arm. An instant spirit-lift.
My inner pendulum has stilled. I’m gazing speechlessly at the screen. Everything has fallen away to the sides of my brain, leaving only the headline news: my father died and we’ll never get him back. Everything else is irrelevant.