Twenty-five years earlier
There’s a knock on my bedroom door, and Mum’s voice: “Kate, you busy? Mind if we have a quick chat?”
For a second I think the “we” is me, her, and him. Then I remember it’s Saturday morning and she’s got work in an hour. He won’t be coming round till later. I’ve got the day to myself but I don’t fancy going into town or to the park. I just want to hide in here and read my library book.
“Come in,” I call.
“Can you put my hair up for work?” she asks, walking in. “I’m so rubbish at doing it myself.”
She sits down at my little dressing table, in front of the cracked mirror that Becca always deems bad luck. I stand behind her and brush the frothy dark waves I’ve only semi-inherited—my hair is light mousy brown with a halfhearted kink. Mum closes her eyes. She loves me playing with her hair, though I’m not particularly good at styling and she doesn’t really care what it looks like anyway. Becca’s much better, of course, especially now she’s finished her training. Auntie Rach wanted her to go to university and become a teacher, but Becca dreams of her own salon with gleaming surfaces and a galaxy of spotlights in the ceiling. “You’re not the boss of my brain cells, Mother!” she always says. “I can use them how I like!”
I stick a row of bobby pins into my mouth, spitting them out when Mum says, “I know you’re not keen on Nick.”
As I try to protest, she studies my expression in the mirror. “It’s okay, love.” She reaches back to put her cool hand over mine. “It must be hard for you, having a man around after all these years of just the two of us.”
I shrug and blush, trying to focus on holding all her wild hair on top of her head. Strands break free, spill down to her neck. I notice again how narrow her back and shoulders seem.
“I haven’t had a relationship since your dad left, have I? So I know it must feel strange.”
I’m squirming now. I don’t like it when she talks about my dad—or lack of—at the best of times. Now she’s using the word relationship, sinking my hopes that Toyboy Nick’s a temporary blip in our lives. I wrestle a bobble around the thick ponytail and catch her reflected gaze.
“Will you make an effort to be nice?” she asks. “For me?”
“I am making an effort.”
“More of one? I really need you to get along.” She smiles into the mirror, the crack bisecting her face, but something in her eyes sends a shiver through my body. For a split second she doesn’t look like herself. The light skating off the mirror carves hollows into her pale cheeks.
She forces her smile a little wider. “You’re my two favorite people after all.”
My hand jerks and the ponytail collapses. So he’s level with me now in her heart. I feel like she’s thrown back her elbow into my stomach.
After she’s gone I drift around the flat, watching dark-winged birds gather on our tiny balcony, then flap away over the city. Becca phones and gives me the latest from that side of our small family, the Derby clan. She asks how things are with us, and I can’t even bring myself to tell her what Mum said about Nick. It’s lodged in my chest, like a pain I can’t quite shake, can’t quite understand.
When Mum gets home, easing off her shoes and massaging her blisters, she announces that Nick’s coming up and we’re going to have Chinese. Takeaway would normally be a highlight of the month, but I find myself acting all negative, asking if we can afford it and claiming to be on a diet. She says Nick’s treating us, and that I need to go on a diet about as much as Mrs. Chalmers from 307 needs more cats. I try to laugh, try to show some enthusiasm for the menu that Nick arrives brandishing.
“Have whatever you want, girls,” he keeps saying. “Spring rolls? Chips?” He’s got his wallet out, waving it around in his huge hand, though we haven’t actually phoned in the order yet. And even when he’s talking to me he stands close to Mum, like they’re invisibly handcuffed together. She looks small beside him. He makes suggestions about what she could order and she shrugs along with every one, as if making her own decisions is too much effort.
When the food arrives, I have to admit it smells incredible. Shiny red sauces and sticky battered chicken and fluffy egg-fried rice. Mum seems pleased to see me shoveling it down, as though enjoying the meal Nick’s paid for is the same as liking him. With the glow of food in my belly, and the drop of cider Mum lets me have, I begin to soften. A couple of times I accidentally laugh at his jokes.
My smile dies when I notice that Mum’s hardly eaten. Nick keeps looking at her plate too: “Not hungry, babe?” I wonder if he’s annoyed she’s hardly touching the banquet. Mum says she’s got a stomachache and he suggests she just have some plain rice, so she chews slowly while Nick watches every mouthful. I feel my own appetite nosedive.
After tea I offer to do the dishes because I always do them on a Saturday; Mum usually dries. Tonight, though, Nick grabs a towel and orders Mum to put her feet up. She glances uncertainly between us. “Well . . . I am a bit knackered . . .” Still she’s hesitating. I wonder if she thinks I’m going to drop the friendliness as soon as she’s out of the way. I long to do the dishes with her instead, hip to hip at the sink, slipping into a familiar washing-drying rhythm.
Nick makes a shooing gesture, and she relents. “If you insist, then . . .” She leaves the room and I hear the TV crackle on as I plunge our plates into the lemony suds.
For a while the only sounds are the clink of crockery and the slosh of water, Nick humming something repetitive and tuneless. We’re rarely alone together. The itchiness creeps over me, same as when I watch him cup his palm around the back of Mum’s neck. I try to relax, try to recall the funny thing he said that almost made me choke on my black bean pork.
“You don’t need to worry about your mum, you know.”
A cup slithers out of my grip and splashes back into the water.
“She’s still not quite recovered from that bug she had,” he adds. “That’s all.”
I frown over at him. “What bug?”
“She was under the weather last week.”
“I . . . I didn’t know anything about it.”
“Well, she knows you worry about her. She probably didn’t want to make a big deal of it. But that’s why she seems a bit tired.”
I squeak my cloth around the inside of the glass, trying to cast my mind back.
“I’m just saying,” Nick continues, leaning on the edge of the draining board, “you shouldn’t worry. Because I’m around now. I’m here to make sure you’re both okay.”
Sourness floods my mouth, like a reflux from all the rich food. I yank the plug out of the sink, watching the murky water slip away.
Once all our mismatched dishes are dry, Nick goes through to the living room and I stay in the kitchen, staring out of the small window. The view makes me feel suspended in the black sky. Only if I move forward and lean over the sink can I see the twinkle of the city below.
Mum and Nick talk in low voices in the living room. I shuffle closer to the wall but can’t hear what they’re saying, so I slip out of the kitchen and sneak up on them. They’re standing now, though, sliding open the door to the tiny balcony. I hang back to watch them step through and light cigarettes, the glowing ends floating like fireflies. And I feel a twinge of satisfaction when I realize Nick’s leaning on the spot where the birds always splatter their white goo.
Then I see him grab my mum’s arm. See her step back, shaking her head. He moves closer, gesticulating, while she turns her face away. I stand watching the shadow-puppet theater of their argument, a screen of stars behind them, and I feel that reflux again, that acid searing up into my throat.
Two days later I’m whirling about getting ready for school and Mum’s racing around getting ready for work. The flat feels extra tight in the mornings. We’re both disorganized, in a hurry. We keep colliding.
I know it’s not the right moment to bring it up, but Nick’s been here all weekend, so this is the first time I’ve managed to get Mum on her own. As she’s flinging things into her handbag, I ask, “Were you ill last week?”
“What?” She’s checking she’s got her cigarettes and the shabby umbrella she carries everywhere.
“Nick said you had a bug, but I didn’t know.”
“Nothing to know, really. Got your PE kit?”
“Yeah, I can’t find my new shorts, though. The blue ones are too small . . .” I bend over to riffle through the washing machine, discovering the newer shorts scrunched up inside, still damp.
Mum’s face falls. “I’m sorry, love, I completely forgot to empty it yesterday.”
I stuff them into my bag anyway, hoping they’ll dry before second lesson. Then I glance sidelong at Mum, who’s shaking her head, cross with herself. “Nick said you’re out of sorts because of being ill,” I venture.
She snaps alert, turning back to her own handbag, which has fallen onto its side and is spitting out loose change. “I’m not out of sorts. I’m fine.”
She reaches to get her tea flask down from the shelf, and that’s when I see it. I’m frozen as her post office shirt rides up, exposing her lower back. There’s a shiny, plum-colored bruise rippling across its width.