Moira shrieked and spat out some of the cough mixture. ‘That is fucking disgusting!’ she yelled at Lily. ‘I’m not drinking that muck!’
‘The chemist said it would help, so you need to take it. Stop making a fuss.’
‘I wouldn’t be making a fuss if you weren’t trying to poison me!’
‘Mum, please don’t shout at me. I’ve got a headache and we’re both tired and stressed, so let’s just try to be civil to each other. Look, you’ve got medicine all down the front of your nightie now.’
‘I would be fucking civil if you weren’t trying to kill me!’ Moira took the spoon and hurled it across the bedroom. It clattered against the wall, then dropped down and landed on a side table, on a tray that held the kettle, cup and saucer and a neatly arranged selection of tea and coffee sachets. ‘Would you look at that?’ Moira turned to Lily, beaming. ‘A perfect shot!’
Lily smiled and nodded. Today she was being treated to an extraordinarily unpredictable array of Good Mum/Bad Mum. In the dining room earlier, Moira had wolfed down an enormous fried breakfast and asked for more toast, before telling Joan she’d never eaten such an awful meal.
‘Sorry!’ Lily had whispered to Joan, raising her eyes to the ceiling. ‘We’re a bit grumpy this morning.’
Moira was now propped up in bed with her notebook open on her lap.
‘Are you going to show me any of what you’re writing?’ asked Lily.
‘No.’
‘I’d love to see how it’s going?’
‘No. Bog off. You’ll have to wait until it’s finished. There’s a long way to go yet – I haven’t even got to the bit about you.’
‘But I was born when you were living in Chepstow. I thought you said you’d written about that?’
‘Oh no, not that.’ Moira waved her hand dismissively in Lily’s direction. ‘The rest of the bit about you.’
‘What rest?’
‘Oh, Lily.’ Moira sighed. ‘You’re so impatient. You will find out all about it, in good time. I’m getting along pretty well but you can’t hurry genius.’
‘Right,’ said Lily. She was sitting in the armchair by the window, with the book she was reading open on her lap. It was hard to concentrate and she would have given anything to be able to go outside and wander back down to the lake. In the distance, she could see the sun sparkling on the water, and resented being cooped up inside. But there was no way she was leaving this bedroom again. Joan had said she’d bring up a couple of trays at lunchtime and, in the meantime, Lily had to resign herself to a quiet morning, keeping an eye on her mother.
She picked up her phone and stared at the screen. No one had called, of course they hadn’t. Anyway, the only person she wanted to hear from couldn’t call because he didn’t have her number and had no idea where she was staying. Lily clicked onto the internet and searched for the Hamilton Hotel. A website appeared with photographs of the hotel’s garden and the views across Derwentwater. There was a link to Accommodation and when she clicked on that, a picture came up of one of the hotel bedrooms. It could well have been the one in which she’d spent the previous night – the curtains looked identical, the carpet was the same colour. She’d been pretty close to that carpet a few hours ago, when she’d been on her hands and knees in a panic, scrabbling around under the bed and coming across her knickers, which were still scrunched up in the pocket of her coat. Mortification flooded over her again. How was she ever going to forget about this, or forgive herself? Although, if truth be told, it was only the forgiving bit that mattered. She didn’t want to forget about any of it, not one wonderful, thrilling, pulsating second.
Where would Jake be now? She was sure she must have asked him what he did for a living, but by that time she was already pretty drunk and she had no idea what he’d said. Did he have an office job or was he outside doing something more physical with those strong arms and gentle hands? Despite the hangover and the tiredness, she felt a tickle of something stirring in her loins. Stop it, she told herself. This is doing no good at all.
Moira was muttering to herself. ‘I need to make sure he’s happy about all this, I need to go over it all with him.’
‘Who?’
‘Oliver, of course.’
‘Are you writing about our visit to him?’
Moira shook her head with irritation. ‘No, that wasn’t very interesting. I’m writing about the old him. The him I used to know.’
‘I’m sure he won’t mind that.’
‘It was good he finally met you,’ Moira was saying. ‘That was important. I don’t think he knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Knew any of it.’
‘Mum, you are making no sense whatsoever. Why did Oliver need to meet me? And what didn’t he know about?’
‘You don’t understand,’ Moira said, shaking her head and breaking into another bout of coughing. ‘You have no idea.’
‘Tell me, then?’
‘No, you’ll have to wait to read my book.’
Lily sighed, this damned book was taking on a life of its own. She picked up her own paperback again and flicked back through the previous few pages, trying to remember where she’d got to. She’d been enjoying it back in Brighton, but hadn’t managed to read for a couple of days.
What did Moira mean about Oliver? She wanted to probe further but knew her mother wasn’t in the right mood. She had been particularly bolshy since Toby Campbell had found her singing to herself on a roundabout in the park. Lily glanced up and watched for a few seconds as Moira scribbled energetically in her notebook. Irritatingly, her mother was right, she would just have to be patient and wait until this cough was better and Moira had forgotten about her barefoot bid for freedom.