‘Ah, here you are. How the hell did you find this place? It’s like Fawlty Towers.’
Eleanor swept into Moira’s bedroom like royalty. She was wearing a smart red suit with a pencil skirt and high-heeled red shoes. Her hair was bundled up on top of her head into what could pass for a casual bun but, looking at the wisps of hair trailing delicately down on either side of her face, Lily reckoned the hairdo had probably taken ages to get just right.
‘What is she doing here?’ asked Moira.
‘Lovely to see you too, Granny,’ said Eleanor, swooping down towards the bed to air kiss her cheek.
‘Eleanor thought she’d come and join us for a couple of days,’ said Lily. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ It wasn’t, and none of them would have claimed otherwise, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Didn’t you tell her I was coming?’ Eleanor asked, turning to Lily and delivering a second – even more distant – air kiss in her direction. ‘Honestly, Mum. I sometimes wonder if you’re losing the plot too.’
Lily deliberately hadn’t mentioned Eleanor’s impending arrival to Moira. It was partly because she didn’t know how to explain the visit, and also because she was half hoping something else would crop up and her daughter would be summoned to a work meeting of such crucial world-changing importance that she would need to cancel her travel plans. Sadly, that obviously hadn’t happened.
‘Hello, darling, how are you?’ Lily said. She knew her smile wasn’t reaching her eyes. She was still furious about their phone call the previous morning, as well as the fact that Eleanor was here at all. But as usual her daughter had outmanoeuvred her. ‘You look very smart. How did you get up here in the end?’
‘Caught an early morning flight to Manchester from Gatwick, then a train into the city, then another one to Penrith, then a bus to Keswick. Bloody long journey.’ Eleanor had wheeled a large hard-shell suitcase through the door with her, and now threw her handbag and laptop case onto the end of Moira’s bed. ‘This is a godforsaken place. How did you end up here? I need a coffee – haven’t you got anything other than those horrid little plastic sachets?’
‘No, that’s all there is,’ snapped Lily, slamming shut her paperback. ‘Apologies if this isn’t up to your usual standards, Eleanor. But no one asked you to come.’
‘I certainly didn’t,’ Moira said.
‘You clearly couldn’t cope up here on your own,’ continued Eleanor, ignoring her grandmother. ‘So, I decided it was the only option. Believe me, I could have done without all this travelling and being away from the office.’
Moira was glaring at Lily. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was coming? We don’t need her here, she’ll interfere with my writing.’
‘I won’t interfere with anything,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’m just here to make sure you both stay out of trouble. I hear you went wandering off on your own yesterday, Granny? What on earth were you thinking? You know you shouldn’t do that sort of thing. Don’t you remember how worried everyone was back in the summer, when you went to the swimming pool and didn’t tell anyone what you were doing?’
‘I can go wherever I want!’ Moira sniffed and crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘I don’t know why you keep on about the swimming pool – it was a hot day! I only wanted to have a little dip.’
‘Granny, you were stripping off in the men’s changing rooms!’ Eleanor said. ‘Then you jumped into the shallow end wearing just your underwear! I don’t understand how you can possibly think something like that is normal, let alone acceptable.’
‘I was trying to cool down,’ muttered Moira.
‘Even if Mum was careless enough to lose you yesterday, I’d have thought that after all the trouble we’ve had recently, you would realise that you can’t do that sort of thing.’
‘I didn’t lose her!’ Lily said.
‘There were only a couple of men in the changing rooms,’ said Moira.
‘Well, I sort of lost her, but you’re making it all sound much worse than it really was,’ added Lily. As she said the words, she could feel her face colouring, it was every bit as bad as Eleanor was making it out to be. Thank God her daughter only thought she had taken her eye off Moira briefly. If she knew that Lily had spent the entire night elsewhere in the arms of a strange man, she would be – rightly – appalled.
‘I spoke to Dad when I was on the train, and he wasn’t surprised by any of this,’ Eleanor said. ‘He reminded me about that time when you left me on a bus when I was a baby, Mum. Do you remember that? I mean, what kind of mother forgets her own child on public transport!’
‘That’s typical of your father to bring that up,’ said Lily. ‘Anyway, I didn’t actually leave you on the bus, I remembered you were there when I’d got to the bottom of the stairs and I went straight back up to get you. Lots of women do things like that when they’ve just had babies – it’s the hormones. There was no harm done – why do you always exaggerate?’
‘I remember that.’ Moira cackled. ‘It was so funny! We teased you about it for months afterwards.’ Her laugh turned into a coughing fit.
Eleanor raised her eyebrows at Lily. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘I’m fine,’ Moira wheezed.
‘And I do wish you wouldn’t talk about all this with Nick,’ Lily continued. ‘It is none of his business.’ She didn’t know why she was bothering to make a fuss. Eleanor had always taken his side and always would. When she was younger, Lily had sometimes wondered if she was a bit scared of her overbearing father? But that wasn’t it, they were just too alike. Eleanor was a pea right out of Nick’s arrogant, critical, self-obsessed pod.
‘Young lady, you are very bossy!’ Moira said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions.’
‘But you aren’t, are you, Granny?’
The two women glared at each other across the bed. Eleanor gave in first.
‘I’m going to freshen up. Is this the bathroom, through this door? God, this place is grim. I don’t think I can bear to stay here. The taxi passed a nice five-star hotel on the way from the station. I may book in there.’ She went into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
Lily looked at Moira and saw her mother’s mouth twitching. The two of them burst into snorts of laughter before Lily put her finger to her lips. ‘Shh! She’ll get even more cross if she hears. She hates it when she thinks people are laughing at her.’
‘That child of yours,’ said Moira, shaking her head. ‘She’s like a mini hurricane in a posh frock. If she didn’t look so much like you, I’d think you were sent home from hospital with the wrong baby.’