There was a branch of Boots on Main Street and she stood in a queue waiting to ask the pharmacist what she should get for Moira’s cough, listening to the conversations buzzing around her. She still had a slight headache, but was surprised that she actually felt pretty good. Better than good. She felt bloody marvellous. That was what a bit of unexpected sex did for you, when you thought you were only going out for an afternoon stroll.
It had been a while since she’d been told she was attractive, let alone slept with anyone. Things had never got that far with Dave, he’d been too intense, too obsessed with talking about himself and astrophysical engineering. She grimaced at the memory of his squashy lips planting themselves against hers; she really must stop thinking about Dave.
People in the queue in Boots were shuffling their feet and sighing. The woman at the front appeared to be buying enough painkillers to knock out an elephant. Lily tapped her fingers against her purse. The only downside about last night, was that she couldn’t remember every single second of it in detail. Why had she got so drunk? Not that she’d intended it to happen, but it was a shame she could only remember fleeting glimpses of gorgeous Jake and the things they’d done to each other. God, it felt good to have sex again.
Although she hadn’t had much of a love life since she and Nick divorced, thirteen years ago, the same couldn’t be said for him. Nick had deserted Lily and Eleanor to set up home with someone called Josie, whom he’d chatted up in a supermarket. She was barely out of her teens, and Lily – still raw from the rejection and shattered at how easily he’d been able to walk away from his home, his marriage and his child – was relieved when the relationship broke down within months. Shortly afterwards, when she was on the point of suggesting to Nick that for Eleanor’s sake they probably ought to try again, her daughter coldly informed Lily that her father was seeing someone called Sophie, who was twenty-four and a ballerina. Lily met her the following weekend when they came to pick up Eleanor. However unhappy her marriage to Nick had been, seeing another slim, pretty young woman draping herself across her former husband, did nothing to help Lily’s feelings of low self-esteem.
By the time the decree absolute came through, Nick and Sophie were engaged. His second wedding was a grand affair; Lily attended – against her better judgement – but at the time she’d felt she needed to be there to support Eleanor. Her daughter was a prima donna of a fifteen-year-old bridesmaid, but Lily was sure that, deep down, she was struggling with the whole thing and would need support. As it turned out, Eleanor seemed to enjoy every second of the day, while Lily spent most of it feeling out of place, humiliated and on the point of tears, from the moment the bride and groom arrived at the church, to the elaborate first dance. Eleanor took great pleasure in telling her that Nick – who’d always insisted he loathed dancing – had been taking lessons and he certainly swirled his young bride around like a contestant on Strictly.
But despite the extravagance of the ceremony and the fact that Nick had boasted to Lily that he and his second wife were at it like rabbits, his marriage to Sophie lasted for less than a year. The resulting divorce was messy. Lily never spoke to Nick about it, but heard some of the details indirectly from Eleanor. She had to bite her tongue when Sophie’s lawyer managed to get such an over-generous financial settlement that Nick couldn’t afford to contribute to Eleanor’s Year 12 geography field trip.
Nick seemed cowed for a year or so but, by the time Eleanor left school, he had moved in with someone called Rachel. After that, when things went tits-up with Rachel, hadn’t there been an Adriana? Over the years – and well over Nick – Lily had lost track of his dalliances; the girlfriends were invariably half his age, always blonde and pretty, and she couldn’t for the life of her work out what they saw in him.
Just a few weeks ago, a glossy invitation had landed on the doormat. It was for Nick’s wedding number three, which was taking place at the end of October in a large country house near Worthing. Lily knew nothing about the next victim, Helen, and had no idea why the happy couple had even invited her. The whole thing felt a bit weird and she had no intention of attending.
The woman in Boots finally left, armed with a bulging paper bag full of drugs. The queue started moving forward more swiftly and, when Lily reached the front, the pharmacist sold her a bottle of cough linctus but suggested that, in view of her mother’s age, a call to the GP might be in order. ‘Just to make sure there’s nothing more unpleasant going on,’ he said.
As she went back out onto the pavement, her mobile rang. Her heart sank as she saw Eleanor’s number come up and she rejected the call. She didn’t have the energy for a grilling. As she walked up the hill towards the guest house, Eleanor called again, and when the phone rang for the third time, as Lily was walking into the badly painted car parking area, she gave in.
‘Hello, darling,’ she said, sitting down on a low wall behind the campervan.
‘What are you doing? Why haven’t you been taking my calls?’ Her daughter sounded out of breath, as well as angry. ‘Honestly, Mum, this is ridiculous. You can’t just ignore me. What’s happening with Granny? Have you persuaded her to come home?’
‘We’ve had a couple of conversations about it, but…’
‘That clearly means no. Why are you being so weak? You should be the one in charge of this situation. She’s an old woman who’s not in full command of her senses and you can’t let her bully you.’
Lily almost laughed out loud, Eleanor was still completely oblivious to the irony of what she was saying. ‘We’re going to stay in Keswick for a few more days, and then we will probably head home. Granny isn’t well, she’s got a cough. So, I’m making her stay in bed.’
‘Ha! So, she’s now ill? I knew this ridiculous trip was a mistake. What have you been letting her get up to?’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ said Lily. ‘I’ve just been to get her some cough medicine and she needs to take it easy. Anyway, it was nothing to do with what she’s been getting up to. She had the cough before she went out this morning.’
‘What happened this morning?’
Oh shit. Lily frantically wondered how she could backtrack. ‘She just went out for a walk. But it was quite cold and the grass was wet in the park.’
‘What do you mean the grass was wet?’ Eleanor’s voice was terrifyingly calm.
‘It was dewy, that was all. Her feet got a bit wet.’
‘Her feet?’
‘She forgot to put her shoes on.’ As the words came out of her mouth, Lily wanted to swallow them back in again. Why did Eleanor have the ability to make her say exactly what she wanted to keep to herself?
‘So, you’re telling me that you let Granny, who has dementia and isn’t capable of behaving sensibly, go out for a walk with no shoes?’
‘I didn’t let her do it, Eleanor! She went off without me knowing. When I got back I…’
‘When you got back? Bloody hell, Mother, where were you? I don’t believe this. I knew it was a mistake to let the two of you go off together – you’re as bad as each other. You need to stop this nonsense and bring her home right now.’
‘I agree!’ said Lily. ‘But Mum won’t leave, she wants to finish the trip. She’s not well, so we’ll stay here for a couple of days, then I’ll persuade her to go home. I do understand how important it is to her that we’re here, she’s writing so many notes in her book about all the places we’ve visited.’
‘She’s an old woman; you just need to tell her what’s going to happen, don’t give her a choice!’
‘Eleanor that’s an awful thing to say.’ Lily stood up and started pacing across the car park. ‘She’s a human being, I can’t just impose my will on her.’
‘Yes, you can, she’s demented and doesn’t know what’s going on.’
‘That’s ridiculous and cruel. She’s fully of aware of everything that’s going on. Well, most of the time.’
‘I’m coming up to sort this out, you clearly can’t deal with it on your own.’
‘You really don’t need to do that…’
Eleanor was calling out to someone else, away from the phone. ‘Find out how I can get up to the Lakes tomorrow! I don’t want to drive, I’ll need to do some work en route.’
‘Darling,’ said Lily. ‘There is no need for this. I can cope.’
‘There is every need, Mum. You clearly can’t.’ She yelled away from the phone again. ‘Can I fly to Manchester and hire a car? Or else look up train times from London?’ Lily didn’t know whether she was yelling at her brow-beaten boyfriend, Paul, or at her poor secretary. Either way, someone down in Brighton was jumping to attention.
‘Eleanor, stop! I’ve got things under control.’
‘You clearly have nothing under control, Mum, which is why I need to get up there and sort everything out.’