‘I need time to digest things’ Effie wrote in her diary the next day. This assertion was translated into action as a period of several weeks in which she retreated from some of her normal activities, went onto a kind of auto-pilot at work, excused herself from seeing Oliver on grounds of not feeling too well and made strenuous efforts in the gym to drop some unwanted kilos, braving the treadmill despite, or perhaps because of, its associations to the dream about Cathy. She turned down an invitation from Bea to go to another private view on the grounds that she did not need any further stimulation. She looked after the girls a couple of times at Cathy’s request but made it a point not to stay and chat when the parents returned. She found herself regarding her grandchildren with more than usual attention. Were they all right? did they display any signs of disturbance? What did they convey about their parents? She could not resist asking Daisy how her mother was, and then regretted it because Daisy seemed to feel it was not the usual sort of question.
‘Mummy? Well, she was cross with me for forgetting my homework book but then she said she was too tired to be cross which doesn’t make sense, does it, ‘cos she already was.’ Effie couldn’t fault the impeccable logic. She refrained from asking how Daddy was. Rosie chipped in, however, to tell her that her daddy was cross too when she and Daisy had been fighting over a comic which got torn, ‘and he said we have to share ’cos we don’t know how lucky we are. Are we lucky, gran’ma?’ Effie felt obliged to reply that, yes, they were very lucky, but added that her mum and dad were also very lucky to have them, and she was a lucky grandma...
She was partially re-assured by Daisy telling her an appropriately innocent joke: ‘gran’ma, what’s the kindest vegetable?’ ‘I don’t know, darling, tell me.’ ‘A sweet potato!’ she giggled. This was followed by a less savoury offering which Daisy excitedly informed her was ‘dirty’. ‘Gran’ma, what did the willie say to the condom?’
‘Good gracious, Daisy, I’d no idea you knew what a condom was.’
‘Oh everybody knows that.’
‘They do? So what’s the answer?’
‘Cover me, I’m going in!’ Daisy tittered and Effie tutted. Did the child really know about such things? She hoped she was just showing off.
‘Nothing obvious to worry about’ she wrote in the diary ‘and I notice Cathy did not make a big point about me bringing the children back late. Is there a mellowing, or am I just looking for reassurance?’ Many of her diary entries were in the form of questions like this while what she wanted was the comfort of answers. ‘You’ve made the connections, so get on with it.’ This was partially Susie’s voice. She knew her friend was expecting her to get on with things now that she had helped her make the crucial link to Cathy and Hilary. Quite how that played into events with her daughter’s husband was scarily fuzzy and it was easier to pursue her thoughts about her brother. She could see how Jack and her brother were almost joined at the hip in her mind. It was so obvious that she was amazed she hadn’t noticed before. Not that there was anything wrong in marrying someone who reminded her of her brother. What was less clear was how that linked in to what had happened with Jim.
She had left Jim till the last in her diary. What to write? How to understand? She knew she had been a bit surprised, though pleased, that Cathy and Jim had got together. ‘Not an obvious match’ she wrote. ‘Always felt he was a lovely man, kind and intelligent. I think I had a soft spot for him from the start. Those lovely blue eyes. Of course, that’s Victor.’ And she saw the scene again on the beach as they stared naked at each other. She had seen not only his penis but the expression on his face, his gaze.
‘So Jim reminds me of Victor and they are both forbidden’ she wrote. ‘In fact Jim is a much kinder version of Victor. When I think about it, Victor wasn’t such a nice brother. He tricked and manipulated me a lot of the time. My mother never defended me against him. So, back to my mother, I see, and I’m trying to think about Jim. I think Jim really does like me and appreciates me which my mother never did and my father took his cue from her.’ She re-read what she had written and frowned. Did it sound too much like an exercise in excusing herself? She could imagine Susie pointing this out. What’s the idea of the diary? Not much point if you’re not going to be honest. All too easy to pass the buck.
This thought seemed to trigger a dream that night in which Effie saw her family, including her parents. They were playing a game of ball on a beach and were throwing it around from person to person getting faster and faster and more and more angry. The ball gradually changed into a grenade which no one wanted to hold nor dared to drop. ‘None of us want to take responsibility for what’s happened. Just passing things round from generation to generation. So what if the buck stops here with me?’
‘You know that it damn well has and there nearly was a terrible explosion.’ She saw that moment in the car with Jim and the flash of the headlights. Had she been saved from disaster only by that chance beam of light? What if the neighbours hadn’t pitched up at that moment?
I don’t know.
Would you have stopped if they hadn’t?
I’m sure I couldn’t really have gone through with it.
You’ll never know for sure.
Oh god.
She closed the diary with a flourish, got up from her desk and burrowed in her bag to fish out her phone. She texted a message to Oliver, telling him she was feeling better and expressing the hope that they could meet up again soon, and another one to Susie, apologising for being anti-social. The final text was to her daughter. She felt an overwhelming agony of remorse at how close she had got to catastrophe. What could she say? What she wanted to say was something like:
‘sorry for being such a stupid, thoughtless, unprincipled, un-boundaried, reckless, dangerous mother...’
But since she had every hope that Cathy would not have a clue what she was talking about, she eventually settled for:
‘Sorry if I’ve been a bit off recently. Would love to have the girls for the day on Sat.’
As she pressed the ‘sent’ button the phone rang and it was a chirpy-sounding Susie. ‘Effie, where have you been? I’ve been wondering what you’ve been up to and hoping you are not just ruminating like a morbid cow.’
‘I have needed to think.’
‘Well, darling, I was hoping I could doff my Dr Freud hat and get back to more superficial things.’
‘Can’t think of anything I’d like better, actually.’
‘So, look, there’s my new collection going to be on display at the end of the week. You must come and look. Fantastic new stuff.’ Her voice was excited and fast. ‘But where have you got to, then, with all this thinking? If you can tell me in three minutes, love to hear. Got’a photographer coming.’
‘Yes, to the collection, and ‘no’ I can’t tell you in three minutes.’
As she rang off Effie knew she was disappointed that Susie was not more available, that she was busy again with her own life. She sighed as she rose to busy herself with her own domestic affairs, gathering up washing and tidying her desk which usually gave her a degree of satisfaction that she could replace disorder with order. As she shuffled papers, the phrase ‘tell me in three minutes’ stuck in her head. Of course you couldn’t describe or explain a process of trying to resolve a deep emotional problem in a matter of minutes. And yet, when she thought about it, a lot can happen in three minutes. She spoke out loud to no one in particular: ‘it took Jack precisely three minutes to tell me he was leaving me to go and live with Hilary. The bastard. The bitch.’