I was surprised to hear my phone ringing, because I’d thought it was completely flat. Gabby and I had been working hard all day at the market, and though the lunchtime rush was over, Gabby was hopeful of a few more punters. I fished the phone out of my pocket, and nearly dropped it when I saw it was Dad. He never phoned.
‘Hello, Dad? Is everything OK?’
There was a silence. I was about to speak when I realised I could hear something – a very weird noise. Was Dad crying?
‘Dad! What’s wrong?’ No answer. ‘Listen, my battery’s almost run out—’
‘Stella?’ he said. He was crying. ‘I really need to—’
My phone cut out, and I stared at it in disbelief. It was doing that maddening thing where the little circle in the middle goes round and round, before it turns itself off.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ I felt cold all over. ‘Gabby, please can I use your phone?’
‘Well, not really,’ Gabby said, stirring one of the pots of food on the stall. ‘I’m using it.’ She gestured to her phone, which was plugged into the card reader.
‘There’s no one here.’
‘But what if someone comes and wants to pay with a card, while you’re using my phone?’
I stared at her. Our banner – ‘Yummi Scrummi Authentic Sri Lankan Street Food’ – flapped in the breeze above her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not sounding it. ‘If you can wait half an hour we’ll pack up and you can borrow it then.’
I took off my apron. ‘I’ll find a phone box.’
‘So nineties,’ Gabby said. She turned her attention to a woman who was walking past the stall. ‘Hello, madam, can I interest you in some delicious fresh…’
‘No thank you,’ the woman said, walking faster.
I hurried off down the precinct, past the other stalls: Jamaican food, Indian food, noodles, Japanese. Phone box, phone box. Did the town actually have one? Did anywhere? I couldn’t think when I’d last seen one. I certainly hadn’t used one since I was a child. I walked quickly through the market and into the main shopping street. Maybe Mum was ill. Or, oh God, perhaps she was dead. Car accident, brain haemorrhage, a hold-up at the shop. I found that I was crying, and tried to get a grip. What would Bettina say? You’re catastrophising, Stella, imagining the worst. The worst rarely happens. Deep breath, now.
Bettina was right. Mum was never ill. Nothing ever happened to her; she was reliable, safe. It was more likely something to do with Edward, or his kids. Jesus. Or maybe Dad had discovered that he himself was ill: prostate cancer, or bowel, could be anything.
Thank God, there was a phone box outside the library. I ignored the horrendous smell inside the cabinet and dialled my parents’ number. But every time I pushed money in, it came out again. One pound coin rebounded out so violently that it fell on the floor, and seeing the pool of unspecified liquid it landed in, I decided to leave it there.
Trying not to give in to sobs, I ran into the library.
‘The phone box isn’t working,’ I barked at the dark-haired guy behind the desk, as though it were his fault. He seemed willing to accept full responsibility for it, in any case.
‘I know, it hasn’t worked for ages, I keep telling them. Borrowers can use our payphone over there.’ He pointed to the far side of the room. Despite my panic I couldn’t help noticing that he was rather young and hot for a librarian.
‘I’m not really a borrower,’ I said, thinking foolishly of the tiny people in the children’s book, The Borrowers.
‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘It takes pound coins and fifty pences. Do you have enough money?’
The overly solicitous way he said it made me realise that he thought I was a homeless person. OK, so I’d slept in my make-up and got up way too early to bother doing anything about it, and I was wearing a cardie and baggy jeans. But surely it wasn’t that bad… I became aware of an old smelly man waiting next to me, his tweed trousers tied round the waist with washing line, holding a large-print copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. I was only marginally better-dressed than him.
‘Yes, thank you, I have money,’ I said and walked over to the phone in what I hoped was a dignified manner. I pushed in a pound coin and dialled the landline – we’d all given up long ago trying to get Dad to use a mobile phone – but he didn’t pick up. Instead I heard my mother’s ancient and formal answerphone message: ‘This is the telephone of Richard, Kay, Edward and Stella. We cannot come to the phone right now, but we will call you back.’ A pause, then ‘How do you turn it off, Richard?’
My static, unchanging parents. It was ten years since Edward had gone to university in Scotland. He’d stayed there, got married and started a family, yet his name was still on their message. Mind you, my name still being on the message made sense, embarrassingly; it wasn’t that long since I’d finally managed to move out.
Dad’s voice came in, cutting off the machine. ‘Oh, thank goodness, Stella.’
‘What’s happened, Daddy? Tell me quickly.’
‘It’s your mother. She’s left.’
‘Left?’ I felt my heart sink into my feet. ‘Left for where?’
‘Left.’ He started crying properly. ‘Gone. Gone and left me.’
I staggered back to the stall. I wished I knew Gabby well enough to fling myself into her arms. But I didn’t. We’d hit the ground running when we started working and living together; we hadn’t been friends for much more than six months. One thing I did know about her, because she’d told me often enough, was that she wasn’t a fan of drama. So, as we packed up, I told her as calmly and rationally as I could about the awful phone call.
‘I think my parents have split up.’ My eyes welled with tears again, just saying those words.
‘You think? Or definite?’
‘I don’t know. Apparently Mum’s walked out, and Dad doesn’t know where she’s gone.’
‘Then they have split up.’
‘It could be a temporary thing.’
‘Yeah, probably not.’ Gabby untied one side of the banner.
‘My parents have been married forever,’ I said. ‘Almost thirty years.’
Gabby whistled. ‘Bloody hell, she’s done her time. Guess she had enough.’
‘That makes no sense, though. They were great together.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes!’ I said. ‘God, I feel so weird. My parents have always just been, well, my parents, you know?’
‘Mine split when I was six, so I don’t really remember them being together,’ Gabby said. ‘I suppose if they’ve always been all right, you take that for granted.’
‘I didn’t know I was taking it for granted! I thought things would just carry on as they were.’
Gabby shook her head. ‘That’s pretty much the dictionary definition of taking something for granted.’
I couldn’t think of a reply to that, and we carried the stuff to her van in silence. Once we were on the way back to our place, she let me borrow her phone to call Theo. Luckily I knew his number by heart, but of course, his name came up anyway when I put in the last digit. Theo and Gabby had known each other for years; he was the one who’d introduced us to each other.
He picked up straight away and said, ‘Gabs! So good to hear from you,’ rather more enthusiastically than one would want one’s boyfriend to address another woman. I tried to ignore any worry about this because my anxiety bucket was already full, and said, ‘Theo, it’s me.’
‘Hey, babe! What’s up?’
I told him, and started crying again, and he was lovely and kind, saying all the right things. I told him I’d be going to my dad’s as soon as possible and he offered to come right over, as he was working at home.
At the house, Gabby and I lugged in all the gear, my mind full of logistics and fears. I was startled when she broke into my thoughts.
‘Stell, listen, I’m sorry, I know you’ve had a shock. It’s a shitty thing to happen. But I heard you tell Theo that you’re going to your dad’s. What about the stall? We’ve got loads of events coming up. How are you going to work?’
‘I don’t know.’ I bit my lip to stop myself from blubbing again. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do anything. But I can’t not go home.’
There was a pause, then Gabby nodded. ‘OK. I’ll think of something.’
I went to my room, plugged in my phone and started packing a bag. As soon as I got a tiny bit of charge I called Mum’s mobile but she didn’t pick up. I left her a voicemail, and messaged Edward and Rose, Mum’s best friend. I could hear Gabby talking downstairs in the kitchen, presumably telling Piet what had happened, because a few minutes later there was a quiet knock on my door and he came in, stooping under the doorframe. Theo always called Piet ‘the Flying Dutchman’, because he was so tall – six foot six – that his head was way up in the sky. It was a handy feature in a housemate because he could clean cobwebs off ceilings, but you didn’t want to be sat behind him at a gig. Oh, and also he was Dutch. He handed me a mug of coffee and offered me one of his comforting hugs, which I gladly accepted. Piet made up for Gabby in the humane-housemate stakes.
‘I am so sorry to hear of your bad news, Stella.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, muffled against his chest – actually I was closer to his waist. ‘I’ve got to go and look after my dad.’
He let me go, and sat on the bed. ‘This happened to my parents also.’
I carried on putting random stuff into my bag. I didn’t know what to bring, because I didn’t know how long I’d be away. ‘When you were little?’
‘No, not at all,’ Piet said, crossing his long legs. ‘It was only two years previously.’
‘Oh! When you were already grown-up,’ I said. ‘Like me.’
‘It is becoming more common, I believe, amongst older couples,’ Piet said. He continued in his usual calm tone, ‘My father had an affair with the aunt of my mother.’
‘My God, your mother’s aunt?’
‘She is ten years younger than my mother. My family is a little complex. But so are all families.’
‘That’s the thing, Piet. I didn’t think mine was.’ I wiped my leaky eyes and tipped some bits of make-up into the pencil case that served as my sponge bag.
‘I am much older than you, Stella,’ Piet said – he was only six years older, actually, ‘and I have found that everyone has the complicated story, if you dig low down enough.’
‘Not my mum, though!’ I said. ‘This is totally out of the blue. I’m worried she’s had a funny turn. She’s always been completely, well…’
‘Predictable?’
‘I was going to say stable. Sensible.’
‘A woman in her prime,’ Piet said, ‘has many layers.’
‘Is that a quote?’
‘Yes, it is a quote from me, Piet Jansen.’
There was a knock at the front door. ‘Piet, that’s probably Theo, could you let him in?’
‘Certainly,’ Piet said. He unfolded himself from the bed and patted my shoulder. ‘Try not to worry, Stella, I’m sure your mother will be all right.’ He ducked under the doorframe and disappeared. Theo came running up the stairs, and seconds later I was in his arms.
‘Ah, babe, don’t cry,’ he whispered, but I couldn’t seem to stop. I sobbingly poured out all my anxieties about my dad, my fear that Mum had lost the plot, and my worries about my work with Gabby. Theo knew only too well how shatteringly relieved I’d been to get the chance to go into business with her, and thus drag myself out from the well-meaning but suffocating atmosphere of my parents’ house. Even if I’d only been able to get my independence with financial support from them and Gran, it was my new hard-fought for life and I didn’t want to jeopardise it.
‘Look, Stell, I think I have a solution.’
‘To what?’ For one wild minute I thought Theo had a plan to convince my mum to return home.
‘I’ll take your place till you get back. Gabby suggested it.’
‘Huh? When did you speak to her?’
‘She called when I was on my way here.’
I pulled out of his arms. ‘But you don’t have catering experience.’
‘I worked in a bar, remember?’
Theo and I had met in a bar, in fact, in our second year at university, when we’d both been working there to earn extra money. But now he was a junior designer at a graphic design place in London. All he knew about Sri Lankan food was from eating Yummi Scrummi leftovers.
‘Come downstairs,’ he said, ‘we’ll talk it through with Gabby.’
‘Gabs, you mean?’
‘Ha ha,’ he said, utterly unabashed.
I knew I should be grateful that there was a solution to my taking time off work, at least, but I felt a bit weird. I avoided looking at Gabby when we went into the kitchen. Instead I went and filled the kettle, to top up Piet’s lukewarm coffee. There was a mirror over the sink that Gabby had put up – she liked to be able to check her face in every room – and I caught a glimpse of myself. I hurriedly looked away, but not before I saw exactly how successful my sleeping-in-my-make-up-then-crying-every-ten-minutes regime was. I should probably switch to waterproof mascara until this thing with my parents, whatever it was, had passed.
I nodded at Gabby. ‘Thanks for coming up with a solution.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first,’ Gabby said, and she did sound genuine. ‘It’s just, we’ve got so many markets on this week. And the weekend after next is our first party.’
‘I’ll be back long before then.’
‘What if you’re not, Stell? I can’t do the whole thing on my own. Theo is a godsend.’
‘But he doesn’t really cook.’
‘You love my Thai green curry,’ Theo said, grinning.
‘Well, yes, but that’s just following a recipe.’
‘So’s our food,’ Gabby said. I could see she’d already decided this was a brilliant idea. ‘It’s on a bigger scale, is all. And Theo has great people skills.’
The scream of the kettle boiling on the stove made me jump.
‘How have you got time, though, Theo?’ I said. ‘You’ve got your own work, after all.’
‘They love me, Stell, and you know how flexible they are.’ Theo came and put his arm round me. ‘Long as I get the work done, they don’t mind.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased we’ve sorted it,’ Gabby said.
‘I am! It’s a great idea,’ I said, trying my best to feel it. ‘Thanks, both of you, I really appreciate it. I won’t be away long.’
‘It’s fine, take as long as you need. It’s a family crisis,’ Theo said.
‘Yeah,’ Gabby said as I went out, under her breath but loud enough for me to hear, ‘but, you know, no one’s died.’
I finished packing, and Theo dropped me at the station.
‘Good luck, babe,’ he said. ‘I know this is going to be a tough one for you.’
‘You don’t want to come with me, I suppose?’ I wrestled my bag out of the back seat.
‘I can, if you like, but that means I can’t stand in for you at work…’
‘No, OK. That’s all right, thanks,’ I gabbled, and got out of the car.
‘Text me when you get there, OK?’ he said, and his eyes were full of concern, which made me feel a little better. I nodded, and went to catch the train.