Becca's fears that she might have to give up the play proved unfounded. Over the next few weeks home life reached some sort of equilibrium. Martin went running, Lily mooched around presumably dreaming of Kevin, Becca got to know the students and dreamed of the days when she went to rehearsal. Being Lady Fidget was fun. She wasn't called each evening - the Fidgets were a subplot, not the main story, and she only went to about one in three rehearsals - but the sessions had become characterised by her turning up around seven, and then suddenly looking up at the clock and realising it had miraculously become nine thirty and the intervening two or so hours had evaporated. Freed from the responsibilities of carrying the main plot, Becca was able to relax and enjoy herself. Paul was a wonderful director.
Not that she had many others to compare him with, but she gathered from her fellow cast members that they were impressed. And he was funny. Brian had a tendency to quibble interminably over some teeny element of Paul's direction, which could make Becca feel she was losing the will to live, but Paul was good at deflecting him. Once he'd told Brian that acting wasn't a democracy. 'It's a dictatorship,' Paul said with a carefree grin. 'My personal fiefdom.' It was a bit like Bill, and his comment that people wanted to be led, except that Bill was serious and Paul had made them all laugh. Well, everyone except Brian of course.
The only flaw in Becca's life was June, who said she was determined to leave Frank, and Frank, who refused to take June seriously. Frank had a point, as June hadn't instructed a solicitor, although she had moved out of their bedroom and into what had once been Becca's room. Becca trotted between the two of them trying her best to keep them together. She deliberately didn't tell Lily, hoping that the situation would blow over, but on her last visit June had said she was going to live elsewhere and Becca knew she had to let Lily know at least some of what was going on between her grandparents. But it was hard to find a good time.
'Just tell her the truth,' Martin said, filling his water bottle up at the kitchen sink.
'Whose truth?' Becca said, thinking she ought to start cooking supper. 'June's or Frank's?'
'The truth as you know it - that June's not happy and is going to move out for a while, maybe for ever, maybe not. You don't have to give her details. Where is she, anyway?'
'Upstairs, making herself beautiful in the bathroom.' Becca looked up, as if she could see Lily through the floor. 'When do you want supper?'
'Half an hour? I'm starving.'
'I was going to do a casserole this evening, but it won't be ready in time... you could always eat something now and then supper could be later.' Becca looked at the clock.
'I've already had a banana - the book says to eat carbohydrate an hour before running so you don't get hypoglycaemia. Couldn't we have the casserole tomorrow?' Martin turned towards the kitchen door as it opened and Lily came in. 'My God,' Martin croaked, voice harsh with shock.
'Oh no,' Becca said weakly, eyes wide, hand over mouth in horror.
It looked like Lily, but instead of the pretty light-brown hair was a shock of jet black. 'I dyed it,' she said, unnecessarily.
'Go and wash it out this minute,' Martin said, his finger pointing towards the door. 'It looks dreadful.'
'Can't,' Lily said, looking horribly pleased with herself. 'It's permanent.'
'It'll have to be chopped off.' Martin turned to Becca. 'You'll have to sort something out.'
'Me? Why me? Why not you?'
'It's a girl thing.' He shrugged as if floundering. 'I'm off for my run.'
'You can't say it's up to me and then run off,' Becca said. 'She's your daughter too.'
'Stop arguing,' Lily butted in, cheeks flushed. 'It's my hair and you've got no right to tell me what to do.'
'We're your parents, we've got every right,' Becca snapped back.
'I can't be doing with this,' Martin said, panic flaring in his eyes. 'See you later.' The back door slammed behind him.
'Martin!' Trust him to go just when he'd got everyone upset. There was an inexorable feeling about the situation, as all the arguments she'd had with her own parents whooshed back. Platform shoes and dog collar chokers and: 'You're not leaving the house dressed like that, young lady.' It was like the nightmare where you suddenly find yourself on stage performing a role that you haven't rehearsed, except in her case she felt she was taking part in a play she had rehearsed years ago, but now she was playing a different role.
Lily's chin was high in the air, but her eyes were miserable and her mouth downturned. We mustn't argue in front of Lily, Becca thought. What did I want when I was her age? I wanted them to see me, not a child. She shook her head, letting the heat dissipate and fade. 'Why?'
'Why not?' Lily shrugged, less defiant now her father had gone.
Becca touched the jet-black spikes, close to tears. 'Your hair was such a lovely colour.'
'I'm a goth,' Lily said as if that explained everything.
She stroked Lily's hair again, remembering the baby fine softness of fourteen years ago now transformed into damp black strands. There was a sense of overwhelming sadness and - yes - a strange tingling fear. Her child, her only child, was growing up and away from her.
'I don't see why it's such a problem for Dad. It's not his hair.' Lily's lower lip stuck out. 'Anyway, you dye your hair.'
'Yes, but...' Becca's hair was an artful selection of honey, caramel and toffee. Sweetie shades, to hide the grey that was starting to emerge. A few years ago she'd been to a school reunion and everybody had looked exactly the same, but blonder. 'It's different.'
'Why?'
'I'm an adult. Look,' Becca said, swiftly moving on as she knew it wasn't a particularly good answer but unable on the spur of the moment to come up with anything better. 'I'd rather you hadn't, but I suppose in the greater scheme of things it could be worse. Can you lay the table for supper please?' Becca deliberately kept her voice flat and non-confrontational, so she didn't give Lily anything to react to, and went to the cupboard to pull out carrots and onions, not looking at her. They'd have pasta - again - tonight, but she'd get a casserole ready for tomorrow when she'd got back from her rehearsal. She began to scrape the carrots, keeping her back towards Lily as if there was no question about her laying the table as asked. After a short silence she heard the cutlery drawer open, and the clatter of forks and knives.
Becca began to chop up the carrots, enough to make two casseroles, one for tomorrow night, and the other for the freezer. At least that would be two home-made meals. Carrots done, she moved on to the onions. Lily came back into the kitchen and rested her head against her mother's arm.
Becca smiled, knowing it was a peace gesture. 'Put your hand out.' Lily obediently put her hand next to Becca's, and Becca stopped chopping onions and laid her hand over Lily's. 'Look,' Becca said. 'They're the same.'
'No they're not,' Lily replied, wriggling her fingers. 'Your fingers are longer than mine.'
'My hand is bigger overall, but it's the same shape.' She compared the two hands. Lily's nails were bitten down to the quick, the rough cuticles red in places as if sore. 'See?'
Lily inspected their hands. Becca wondered what she was thinking. Did she want to have hands that were like her mother's, or did she long to be different? Hard to think that you were predetermined by your genetic material, that however much you rebelled against your parents you were stuck with being a product of them. Fifty per cent from each. But which fifty per cent?
Becca tried to picture June's hands, wondering if they too were similar, but could only conjure up an image of wrinkled skin, the wedding ring embedded deep in the flesh, so deep you wouldn't have thought it could be removed. But that was what June was intending to do. She was going to have to tell Lily sooner or later about June and Frank.
She squeezed her hand, remembering the baby Lily had once been, the simplicity of dealing with childish problems: grazed knees, a melted ice-cream cone. So unlike the prickly teenager she had become. 'I've got something to tell you,' she said. 'It's about Gran and Grandpa. The thing is, Gran feels that she wants to live on her own for a bit.'
Lily frowned. 'What do you mean, live on her own? Where? And what about Grandpa?'
Becca shook her head. 'I don't know where Gran's going. I'm not sure she knows herself. And I don't know what's going to happen to Grandpa. We just have to see how things develop.' God, that sounded lame. Becca bit her lip. It was hard to articulate things you didn't really understand yourself. She supposed it was like being a politician, having to defend a position you didn't agree with because your party had voted for it. That, or resign. But you couldn't resign from being a mother.
Lily looked at her with the blue eyes she'd inherited from June. 'Are Gran and Grandpa getting divorced?'
Becca started chopping onions again. 'I don't know,' she said.
'Aren't they too old?'
'I don't think there's an age limit.' She peeled the papery skin off another onion. 'Be a love and grab me a bit of kitchen paper. These onions are stinging my eyes.' Lily handed her the paper and Becca wiped her eyes. She began to brown the ready-cubed meat.
'By the way,' Lily announced. 'I've become a vegetarian.'
- ooo -
'So you're now the child of a broken home.' Crystal stuffed a pile of exercise books into her pigeonhole in the staffroom. 'Join the club.'
'Do you think Bill would let me off lunch duty because of it?' Becca said. They were now five weeks into the term, with half term coming up. Becca glanced at Crystal's bag. Why did she always seem to have twice as much to take home as Crystal?
'Fat chance. You'd have to be suddenly orphaned at the bare minimum. One parent buggering off wouldn't get a look in,' Crystal said, collecting her coat from the hat stand. She flicked her hair out over her collar. 'I put it down to too much reading of Saga magazine. It gives unreal expectations of life past retirement, all trips to Cuba, and Petra by moonlight. I wish.'
'Speaking of expectations, what are you up to tonight? A date with David?' Becca gathered a stack of exercise books together, thinking about unrealistic expectations.
'You're so behind - didn't I tell you? He was all right at first, but whenever we went on dates he'd start to tell me something and then kept saying “You're going to love this” and “This is so funny”, and then tell some long-winded story that wasn't at all funny. I couldn't stand it. In the end I said: "I can decide for myself if it's funny or not, I don't need you to tell me." Then he went off in a huff, and I just went off.'
'So you're back on the hunt.'
'I'm not sure I ever left it to be honest. Are there any nice blokes at your drama group?'
'Only if you're looking for either a toy boy or an old boy.'
'What about the director? He sounds quite nice.'
'Paul? He's all right.' It was now mid-October and Becca had had six rehearsals to date. At the heart of each rehearsal had been Paul, encouraging, coaxing, teasing. And then afterwards in the pub, he was the centre around which they all revolved. Not that he put himself forward, but it was natural that they as amateurs should defer to him, the professional. Becca had been surprised that he came to the pub afterwards, given that he attended every rehearsal, but Angela told her that he didn't always. She remembered the last time, when he'd worn that velvet striped jacket again, the one that brought out the colour of his eyes. Becca giggled. 'Actually, a bit more than all right, to be honest.'
'Mmm,' Crystal said smacking her lips as if eating a particularly delicious chocolate with a cream centre. 'Tell me more.'
'Nothing to tell - and if there was, you'd be one of a long, long line. I think all the women have a bit of a crush on him. Expect some of the men do too!'
'Sounds promising. Introduce me.'
Becca shook her head. 'Married. And I've seen his wife. I don't think I'd be wandering if I was him.'
'Gorgeous?'
'Yes.' Becca remembered the woman who'd burst in on the audition, her glossy hair, her stylish clothes, her perfect make-up. 'But also scary. Apparently she's a terribly high-powered lawyer, one of those women who make me feel completely inadequate. An alpha female.'
'I hate her already. Us beta girls have to stick together.' Crystal linked her arm in Becca's. 'And how's Martin? Still running?'
'He does lots of something called fartlek, apparently. That's a mix of running and walking,' she said in mock seriousness to the sniggering Crystal. 'You wouldn't believe how much there is to know about running, you could write a book about how to choose a pair of shoes, and that's not including everything else.'
'I went out with a runner once,' Crystal said. 'Nice bum.'
Becca thought about Martin's bum. It did seem to be shaping up a bit. 'I must get a move on, I've a rehearsal tonight and I need to grab a shower after wrestling with Othello all afternoon.'
The traffic home was kind to her so she got back, hoicked something out of the freezer for supper then nipped upstairs for a shower. Lathering her body all over, she thought she might as well wash her hair. She poured shampoo into the palm of her hand and massaged it into her hair, feeling like a girl in an advert. At the pit of her stomach was a feverish throb of anticipation. I love acting, she thought. Rehearsal evenings had become the highlight of her existence.
Washing, and then blow-drying her hair had nearly made her late for the rehearsal. Downstairs she grabbed her bag, then put it down again to go to the loo before setting off. Quickly she ran back up the stairs.
Why was it that she never noticed the loo paper had run out until the critical moment when it was too late? Knickers round her ankles, she hobbled over to the airing cupboard and reached for the stack of loo rolls. She snapped the roll of paper on to the holder. It was a simple but necessary job, so why was it always her who got landed with it? Something stirred in Becca's memory. She could just remember her mother muttering in the same way: 'Why is it only me who changes the loo rolls?' This was the definition of domestic drudgery, the changing of the loo roll, a necessary function that everyone else was oblivious to. I bet if I asked Martin or Lily, they'd not be able to say where the loo paper was kept. She took a couple of rolls from the packet in the airing cupboard and placed them prominently in the bathroom cabinet. One of the loo rolls kept falling off the shelf despite her pushing it back. She reached inside the cabinet. Yes, there was something at the back of the shelf, like a pencil. It took a few seconds for her to register what it was.
A pregnancy-testing stick.