CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
After my bath all I want is the kitchen to myself, and Withnail sleeping on a pile of washing on the table. Sometimes I think I’d like to retire from being a person and just quietly live under the kitchen table with a book and a packet of biscuits.
What I get is – not that.
‘Honestly, Barbara . . .’ Mum’s back from the tennis tournament. She’s folding up a tea towel that’s already folded. She’s shaking it out and straightening it proprietorially, so it’s just the way she likes it. ‘I wasn’t planning on making anything much for dinner this evening. The girls don’t need to . . .’
‘It’s fine.’ Grandma takes the tea towel out of her hands, and smoothes it out slightly before sliding it into the drawer beside the oven. I can see Mum’s nostrils flaring, which is what happens when she’s pissed off and trying to hide it. They’re having land wars over kitchen equipment. ‘You have your night out with Eve,’ and Grandma sneaks me a look as she says it, just a tiny one, sideways, ‘and we’ll have a nice girly evening, won’t we, Grace?’
Mum turns round. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
My stealth mode is highly effective, but no match for Grandma-radar.
‘She’s been here five minutes, Julia.’
‘Where have you been, then?’ Mum rubs her head in confusion, so her hair fuzzes up around the crown and sticks in the air.
‘Just out,’ I say, and I stack up a pile of papers that are strewn in front of me on the dining table, more to distract myself than because I’ve suddenly become super organized.
‘Careful with those, darling,’ says Mum. I look down at the papers. They’re old, curled-up notes with Durham University Faculty of Education stamped across the top of them.
She comes over and gathers them to her chest protectively. ‘They’re notes from my teaching degree. I was just looking something up for that job I was telling you about.’
Grandma makes a disapproving sort of snorting sound as she chops onions. There’s a hiss as she slides them into a saucepan, and she turns back to the kitchen island to wipe the surface before sprinkling it with flour and rolling out a huge blob of pastry. I swear Mum rolls her eyes at this.
I like it when the kitchen is all fuggy with cooking and smells like home. Since Dad left this time the place hasn’t been right, and Grandma coming has fixed everything. The only person who seems unimpressed with it all is Mum, and that’s only because Eve’s too-cool-for-everything attitude seems to have rubbed off on her.
I look down at my phone in case there’s a message from Gabe, who must be home by now, but it’s blank. The last message I sent Anna isn’t showing as delivered, so she’s probably had her phone confiscated or something. I watch as Mum and Grandma take part in a sort of territorial kitchen war. Mum is now putting away the dishes that Grandma has just washed.
‘They’re not quite dry,’ says Grandma. ‘Let me get you a tea towel – just a moment.’
‘It’s fine,’ says Mum, and I can hear her teeth are gritted. She’s always had a sort of Grandma threshold when she comes to visit, where she goes past being delighted at having someone else to help and tips over into there’s-an-extra-person-in-this-house mode. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course, but I watch it happening from my quiet corners.
‘I can’t think how you’re planning to make this job work with Graham away as much as he is,’ says Grandma quietly.
‘Other women work.’
‘Of course they do, Julia, but other women don’t have . . .’ There’s a sort of pause, the kind of pause you get used to if you’re me. ‘Well, they don’t have the same things to consider as you do.’
‘It’s not the same as when she was little, Barbara.’
‘No, but you’re forgetting Leah. And you’ve leaned more on her than you should have, just because she’s sensible. She’s still only thirteen.’
Mum flicks a glance across the room at me to make sure I’m not listening, but I’m hidden beneath my hair, picking at a bit of loose nail, apparently oblivious. I’m feeling slightly sick at the thought that the whole Gabe thing has ended in the usual Grace disaster, but I’m trying to be zen. All right, I’m failing to be zen, but there’s not much I can do.
‘Grace is about to turn sixteen. She’s growing up.’
I sit very still because I don’t want a birthday conversation to start. It’s there on the calendar, looming. And I don’t like birthdays. Without thinking I start tapping my finger and thumb together – taptaptaptaptaptap – to try to stop my brain from shooting off into a panic. I’m not doing my birthday until Dad gets back. We’ve arranged it already. I start preparing the speech in my head just in case they’ve forgotten, but –
‘And it’s time I put my money where my mouth is. What kind of role model am I?’
There’s a puffing noise from Grandma and I can imagine her face, even though her back is towards me and she’s stirring the chicken stuff for the pie.
‘Role model?’
‘The girls have grown up thinking I’m here to be at their beck and call. I don’t have a life outside this house.’
I cock my head sideways slightly at that, before I realize that any movement might end the whispering and they’ll remember I’m party to the conversation.
‘You’ve been doing voluntary work at the centre for six years.’
‘Yes,’ Mum says, but it’s a sort of exasperated hiss, ‘voluntary work. Eve says –’
‘Eve.’ Grandma manages to make that one name into a whole sentence, and a question, all at the same time.
‘It’s supply teaching,’ says Mum carefully. ‘That’s all.’
‘And I think it’s a lovely idea in principle, but these girls need you.’ There’s a second where Mum opens her mouth to protest. ‘Leah needs you.’
‘Leah’s fine,’ says Mum, shaking her head. ‘She doesn’t need hand-holding. She’s responsible, and she’s always been the capable one.’ Mum’s voice is low.
I scowl at this. It’s true, but it still makes me feel a bit crappy. When we were little, I remember Mum would send us into soft play with Leah holding my hand, acting as protector when I didn’t want to deal with galloping hordes of other kids throwing unexpected things at me in the ball pool. And when we went swimming, even at nine, she’d be the one who remembered to fasten the locker key token round her wrist and remember where we’d left our stuff. I was unpredictable, prone to wandering off in a dream if I was thinking about something interesting, likely to forget where I’d put things. Leah didn’t have meltdowns when everything got too much and the world felt all scratchy.
‘That doesn’t mean you can just opt out because your friend Eve has come along and put ideas in your head.’
‘This has nothing to do with Eve,’ says Mum. ‘I’ll have bills to pay and two children to keep. I’ve got responsibilities. We can’t all go swanning off to the other side of the planet whenever we feel like it.’
She’s talking in that pointy way she does when she’s about to shout. Except she won’t shout at Grandma, because she never does.
‘I think the two of you should be sitting down and having a look at your priorities. In my day, you didn’t just bail out the moment things got tough.’
There’s a clang as Mum shoves the saucepan full of vegetables on to the hob and spins round. And then there’s a dangerous-feeling silence, which lasts for a long second.
‘I’d love to,’ says Mum, ‘but, in case you’ve missed it, he’s not bloody here.’
She lifts her pile of papers as I look up, realizing that I can’t pretend I’m not there any more, and she looks me in the eye for a moment. There’s an expression on her face I haven’t seen before, and it makes me feel weird in my stomach.
‘Right, then. I’m going to get ready. I’ll leave you two to get on with your baking.’
And she stalks out of the room.