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Dominic dropped his girlfriend in town, as requested, and waited for her to disappear into the crowd before he pulled away. Should he have tried to discourage her from interfering? So far as he could see, Tania’s past was none of Emily’s business. He could imagine his mother’s horror at the idea of interfering in someone else’s relationship. It’s not my place ... that’s what she’d say. His ringing mobile interrupted his thoughts. ‘Hello.’
‘Dominic, it’s your mum.’
‘I can see that. Hold on.’ He pulled the car in at the side of the road and switched his phone off speaker. ‘Is everything okay?’
He heard his mother sigh on the other end of the phone. ‘Well I don’t like to grumble.’
Dominic closed his eyes and zoned out slightly as his mother launched into an extended anecdote about the mother of somebody who was in Dominic’s class at primary school, and had now apparently been caught shoplifting from the discount supermarket. Dominic couldn’t escape the impression that it was the cheapness of the produce stolen, rather than the actual shoplifting that his mother disapproved of. Tittle-tattle about strangers was much more his mother’s style than actual messy involvement in her loved ones’ day to day lives.
His mind wandered. He didn’t remember the kid whose mother she was talking about, but he remembered the school vividly. The pictures in his mind of primary school were fiercely techni-coloured. The reds of bloodied knees. The fluorescent yellow of school dinner custard. The green of dinner ladies’ overalls. The blue of the big mats they hauled out across the hall at the start of PE. Secondary school was different. More austere. More ordered. The memories were calmer. They didn’t scream with life.
He knew why he was thinking about school. It was both a missed opportunity for the future and a turning point in his past. Thousands of pounds, that they could ill afford, his parents had spent to send him to a fee-paying secondary school. Thousands of pounds worth of expectations now sat on his shoulders. Thousands of pounds that had led all the way to his full professorship. Thousands of pounds his mother would think were being thrown back in her face if he walked away now.
Dominic forced his attention back to his mother’s voice on the end of the line.
‘Well I’ll let you get on,’ she muttered. ‘I know how busy you are.’
‘It’s not that bad.’
She tutted away his disclaimer. ‘No. No. You’ve got to keep working hard. You always do. You’re your father’s son. No doubt about that.’
No, thought Dominic, no doubt at all.