For the first few days of her visit, Bea’s mother, Hannah, had been mysteriously absent in the evenings, catching up with old London-based friends, probably propping up a few bars somewhere. In fact, Bea had only spent one actual stretch of time in the company of her mother – Christmas Day itself – and even that had been down the pub. But when Bea came home from work on the Thursday Hannah was in, sitting on the sofa in an unnecessarily elaborate and floaty kaftan-style top with gigantic gold rhinestones around the neck. She’d helped herself to a glass of red from somewhere. (Bea half-hoped she’d gotten her own supplies in rather than cracking open the bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape that Bea had been hoarding in the back of a cupboard for over six months, but she knew better than to expect that really.)
“There you are!” Hannah exclaimed crossly, like she was playing at a mother waiting up for an errant teenager twenty minutes after curfew (which was wonderfully ironic, as she had never bothered being that sort of mother before, even when Bea was an errant teen). “God, you work late.”
Bea double-checked the time on the kitchen wall clock before answering. “It’s only 6.45. This is a pretty normal time for people to get home from work, Mum.”
Hannah frowned. “Is it? Well, I suppose people have different priorities on the continent.”
Bea allowed herself an eye-roll as she turned her back on her mother to throw her handbag onto the kitchen table. For someone who lived somewhere that was a sleepy fishing village in the winter and a Club 18-30 pissfest in the summer, Hannah was growing increasingly up herself with these imagined ‘continental’ habits and quirks.
“What are you up to tonight?” Bea decided to change the subject as she made her way back into the living area, collecting up the detritus of her Mother’s Day: several mugs with milky, filmy puddles in the bottom; a Peperami wrapper; two empty packets of Wotsits (seriously, it was a wonder Bea hadn’t developed scurvy as a child).
“We’re having a girls’ night,” Hannah announced airily; Bea almost dropped the collection of mugs she was holding precariously by their handles with her splayed fingers.
“Girls’ night?” she echoed, alarmed.
“Yes, a girls’ night,” Hannah repeated, her usual fractious tone already bleeding back into her voice. “Don’t you want to spend any time with your mother, for Christ’s sake?” Bea dodged the question neatly by ferrying the washing up into the kitchen.
“Okay, fine, so what’s the plan?” she asked, on returning to the living room. “Are we going to watch Dirty Dancing and do a Ouija board?”
“Mainly I thought we’d just chat.”
“Okay. Chat. What do you want to chat about?”
“Well, I thought we could talk about you sleeping with Cole.”
Bea blinked. And blinked again. “Me sleeping with Cole?”
“Yes, you sleeping with Cole.”
“Who told you about that?” Bea snapped, in a panic. (Damn. There goes the option of pretending it didn’t happen.)
“Eileen told me,” Hannah admitted. Damn Nora and her bloody big Irish gossiping mouth.
“Oh. Right. Of course. In which case, I’d better get a drink.”
Feeling a little punch-drunk, Bea returned to the kitchen, ignoring the bottle of wine sat open on the counter (which was her bloody Châteauneuf-du-Pape) and making a bee-line straight to the fridge. She rummaged at the back and fished out a small individual sized bottle of Coke that had accompanied some ancient takeaway and then reached for Kirsty’s emergency bottle of vodka from the bottom drawer of the freezer (sorry Kirsty, Bea mentally apologised to her flatmate, but this most certainly counts as an emergency). She didn’t even get a glass right away: she just swigged first from one and then the other, standing in front of the fridge-freezer, the icy vodka causing her sensitive teeth to pang, the cheap sweetness of the cola making the inside of her cheeks feel furry, and neither making her feel particularly better about what was to come.
“Why do you want to talk about me sleeping with Cole?” Bea decided it was safer to lead the conversation rather than risk her mother dragging her through it. “That was years ago. And, might I add, none of your bloody business.”
Giving her daughter a doleful look while she folded her legs up under her on the sofa, Hannah placed her glass of wine on the coffee table. “What were you thinking?” she asked, but at least she sounded more curious than judgemental.
Bea sat heavily in the old armchair that filled one corner of the modest living space. “I don’t know. Not a lot, obviously.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“Cole? God, no!”
“Were you in love with him?”
“No. I’ve never been in love with Cole Norris. I was pissed off my face. I barely remember it. You’d think, the bloody trouble it’s caused, it should’ve at least been the best shag of my life…”
“Did he come on to you, or did you start it?”
“I’ve already said, I can’t remember,” Bea snapped. A scattershot of hazy memory: Bea dropping her keys at the front door; Bea almost falling off her stool at the bar, and the solidity of Cole’s body against hers as he supported her; Bea staring at her mobile phone early that night, the harsh blue light from the screen hurting her eyes in the dimly-lit bar, feeling lonely like it was a physical thing, like something she’d eaten and not quite managed to digest; the words she couldn’t remember, the ones that Cole had mouthed against her lips, her neck, her breasts; the way those first few kisses up against her front door had somehow tasted sad and desperate.
“He kissed me,” she assured Hannah, after a minute. “But it was such a weird night, Mum; you can’t really blame him.” You can’t really blame me, was the unspoken echo.
“Bea. I just wish I knew how to help you,” Hannah said, after a moment’s thought. “You’re so self-destructive.”
Bea recoiled, both from the sting of the words themselves and the fact that they parroted Nora’s immediate reaction, back in Paris. “Well where do you think I get it from?” she spat. “My brilliant role-model mum?”
Hannah looked surprised. “Hey, don’t take this out on me. I have a great life.”
“Oh yeah,” Bea scoffed. “Bar-tending to pay the bills and shagging Portuguese supermarket bagging boys?”
“But I’m happy,” Hannah said, mildly. “I love where I live. I love the lifestyle, and the sun. I wanted to take you to live abroad when you were tiny but before I knew it, you were at school, and it would have been too much of a disruption for you.” Hannah’s eyes glazed over. “You would have loved it. You should see the local kids. Brown as nuts, and in and out of the sea all year long! And I love my job, too,” she continued. “You may not think that working in a bar is particularly impressive, Miss Hotshot-in-the-office, but it’s social, it’s flexible. It keeps me active. And I’m never lonely anymore.” That last word chimed against Bea’s frustration; it was almost impossible to think of her draconian mother as feeling something as familiar to Bea as loneliness.
“And I may not have ever gotten married. And I may not have exactly been lucky in my search for long-term love,” Hannah continued. “But I do alright. And, most importantly,” she added, after a moment’s pause, “I have a wonderful daughter.”
Bea snorted derisively, even as the compliment warmed her. “A wonderful daughter?” she echoed. “I’m sorry, but isn’t this entire conversation revolving around how fucked up I am?”
“You’re not fucked up,” Hannah told her, firmly. “You’re just a little lost. Look, I know I was never the best mother. I never made roasts, like Eileen on a Sunday, or popped out little brothers and sisters for you to play with. I didn’t have much money for nice things, and I worked shifts so I wasn’t always home with you. I didn’t know what to do with you really. I was young, and my mum wasn’t around, but I loved you fiercely all the same and I always wanted what was best for you. But I know you grew up lonely, and – come on, let’s face it - maybe too attached to the Dervans. I’m not surprised you panicked a little when you thought that Nora was growing away from you. Nora will always love you, honey, but she has her own life. It’s time for you to have yours. Stop beating yourself up. Live a little. Take some risks.”
Bea rolled her eyes dramatically, even as she fought against a hot thickening in her throat. “Okay, okay. That’s enough clichés now. Point taken.”
Hannah watched her carefully. “And you know, you could always come and live with me. It’s never too late for you to get tanned and skinny-dip in the ocean. We could open a bar together. I could do the serving and you could do all the accounts and stuff.”
Bea laughed, feeing the knot inside her chest loosening. Funny, how it was such a balm simply being reminded that there was somebody in the world who loved you. “Yeah, that sounds about right. You have all the fun, and I’ll do all the work.”
Hannah smiled and sat back against the back of the sofa, her bejewelled top glinting like something out of Arabian Nights. “Well, it’s just good to have a Plan B in life, isn’t it? Even if it is just your old mum.” She reached forward again and picked up her wine from the coffee table. “Do you actually have Dirty Dancing on DVD, by the way? I quite fancy that now you’ve said… Oh, and have you got any face masks?”