My mother sniffed as only my mother can.
‘What on earth do you want to do that for? I would have thought,’ she continued, without waiting for an answer, ‘that you had enough to be getting on with here, what with the house to keep clean –‘ here she paused to look in the corners for dust ‘– and your son to look after, now you are on your own.’ The last three words were weighted with disapproval.
I breathed deeply. My mother spent the entire 18 years Daniel and I were together delivering regular, if veiled, criticisms of him, our marriage, and our lifestyle. But since he left, she has switched tack and makes it very plain that I was careless to lose him, because he is, after all, a man, which affords him a far greater status than I will ever have, even if he does happen to be a very poor example of the species.
Any man is better than no man, her warped thinking goes, which is why she spent 40 years complaining bitterly about my father’s shortcomings yet refused to let him out of her sight. I sometimes wonder if he died of sheer desperation.
I spoke as cheerily as I could. ‘Because it will be interesting and a bit of fun and I might win some money to buy Stanley the new mobile phone he wants for his birthday.’
‘Hmm,’ said my mother, crossly, knowing I had got her on that one because Stanley, being her only grandchild and a male, could do no wrong.
My brother, Anthony, the other light of her life, had so far failed to produce any offspring, being too busy drinking and chasing unsuitable women – a fact my mother resolutely refused to acknowledge — and had very sensibly gone to live 200 miles away in Nottingham.
So, in the absence of either him or a second generation of geniuses sprung from his loins, all her love – grandmotherly and otherwise – was lavished on Stanley.
‘I think he’s looking a bit peaky,’ she said now. ‘Are you feeding him properly?’
‘Don’t you start,’ I said. ‘I’ve had Daniel on at me about too many pizzas and not enough vegetables.’
‘Well he can talk,’ my mother said. ‘I can’t ever remember a Christmas when he finished his sprouts.’ Here she paused again to see if there were any other festive misdemeanours she could dredge up and relive for the enjoyment of us both. Clearly disappointed that there weren’t, she continued briskly, ‘I’ll make sure he has something proper while I’m in charge.’
“Something proper” was an expression she had brought Stanley up on without realising that, for him, it had become synonymous with all he didn’t like. As in “please don’t make me have something proper, I want chicken nuggets”. Or “Connor’s mum is cool. She doesn’t make us have anything proper – we had ice-cream and crisps”.
‘So you’ll do it then,’ I said quickly, before she could start going through menus. She’d been here for half an hour so far and not yet taken off her coat but I could feel we were in for a long haul. ‘Charlotte would have him but he gets a bit fed up going round there too often and there’s Boris to think of.’
I eyed the sprawled form of my slumbering cat, who always seemed to look even larger by the time he’d been under my mother’s tender care for 24 hours. ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be back.’
‘I’ll get him some chopped liver,’ said my mother decisively. ‘All this tinned rubbish isn’t any good for him either. Our cats always had proper scraps from the butcher’s.’ She looked me up and down and gave one of her sudden laughs. ‘Do they know you can’t cook?’
It is always a double-edged sword asking my mother to do anything. On the one hand she’ll clean the entire house, weed the garden, and rediscover the carpet in Stanley’s bedroom but, on the other, will then provide a full catalogue of undusted ornaments, unmatched socks, and rose bushes inexpertly pruned, as well as her personal insights into where I am going wrong on the mothering front, which can last for several weeks.
Which is why I hesitated before asking her to step into the breach while I went for the Cook Around the Clock audition with Alicia. But Stanley hadn’t seen much of his grandmother lately and I felt oddly uncomfortable about the idea of asking Charlotte.
Quite aside from the fact I knew Stanley would moan about having to share airspace with Becky again so soon, I was feeling guilty about keeping secrets from my best friend and didn’t want my son saying anything unfortunate about having spotted Roger emerging from our shed.
He’d seemed perfectly satisfied with my explanation that there was a large, hairy spider in there, preventing my reaching the secateurs unscathed a result, no doubt, of having witnessed me screaming over many an arachnid over the years and accepted my good fortune in spotting Roger driving past at exactly the right moment to rescue me with equanimity. But I couldn’t be sure that Charlotte would be quite so convinced.
I’d sent Roger a long, fervent text, detailing the cover story should we be forced to provide one – he having hastily returned Stanley’s wave and then scuttled down the side path before you could say “squashed it” – while reminding him that comforting strange single women when you had a wife like Charlotte was a very bad idea and urging him to keep this Hannah at arm’s length.
I’d heard nothing from him since and had barely seen Charlotte. She’d dashed in once between appointments, had half a cup of coffee, talked non-stop about the problems of trying to sell a two-bedroomed maisonette that housed 27 parrots and reeked to high heaven, and shot off again, but we hadn’t had any sort of proper conversation and I felt awkward at the thought of one.
I wondered what she would have done if she’d seen Daniel in action with The Twiglet before I’d got wind of it and I couldn’t help feeling that yes, she’d have got him by the short and curlies and demanded to know what was going on, but she’d probably also have told me. This made me feel bad.
On the other hand, what, so far, was there to say? It wasn’t a crime to listen to a colleague’s boyfriend problems and even if this Hannah was a bunny-boiler flake and had made that phone call, it didn’t mean Roger had done anything wrong. Charlotte might be upset and furious with me for even suggesting it. I just had to hope that Roger had taken my words of wisdom to heart and was now giving Hannah a wide berth instead of one-to-one therapy on a nightly basis.
I decided that I would get myself round there once I’d been to London and try to have a quiet word with him to find out the latest.
In the meantime, my mother had agreed to be in the house to greet Stanley after school. She was insisting on staying the night too – “you know I don’t like going home in the dark” – so, on the downside, she’d be there for breakfast but, on the upside, I wouldn’t have to worry about what time I got back and she’d do the hoovering and very probably defrost the fridge.
‘I’ll put you on a diet when I get back,’ I told Boris when she’d finally gone. He purred loudly as I looked ruefully over my shoulder and viewed my backside in the hall mirror.
I’d put myself on one too.