Catherine kept busy all day long.
She renewed the car insurance. She put in a half-load of washing and assuaged her eco-guilt by turning the temperature down to 30. She planned a menu. Janet and Rhod were coming over on Friday but she wasn’t going to push the boat out. They were level-two friends – inviteable but not investable. She’d worked with Jan at the estate agency, but Rhod was just part of a couples package that was likely to be upgraded at some point in the future. Catherine had only met him once. He did something dull in an office – even Jan wasn’t sure what.
Catherine thought she’d do risotto. It was easy, yet somehow people were always impressed. So she had to buy the right rice. And lamb’s lettuce and feta and butternut squash and pomegranate seeds. She’d get it all on Friday morning so it would be fresh.
Or maybe she’d practise first to avoid another dinner-party disaster like the one Adam always called the Great Pork Fiasco. Dinner on that occasion had been pulled pork. She’d got it a bit wrong and it was like shoelaces, but Adam had saved the night by making a joke of it so that nobody had felt obliged to clear their plate.
Adam never minded her kitchen misadventures. He would shrug and finish every bit and say, You’ll get it right next time. At Christmas he’d bought her a cookery book, with an Ann Summers gift voucher marking the page on pulled pork.
After that she’d got it right.
After that they’d got everything right …
Catherine patted her tummy and smiled and looked at the clock. It must be nearly lunchtime.
It was half past ten.
She called her mother.
‘Oh, hello!’ said Helen Pitt. ‘To what do I owe this honour?’
It was her default greeting – designed to provoke guilt in her daughter. But instead of her usual irritation, Catherine felt a sentimental little welling-up at the sound of her mother’s voice.
Delayed shock, she imagined. Silly, really.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘Months!’
It had been months. But her mother was an easy woman to avoid. She was impatient, self-absorbed and judgemental. She disapproved of Adam because he’d been in debt when they’d married, but had cut him no slack for working all the hours God sent to pay it off since then.
Once she’d told Catherine that she’d left her own husband because he moved his lips while reading.
‘Drove me absolutely crazy!’ she’d said with a melodramatic wave of her arm. ‘Irretrievable breakdown!’
Whether the reason was true or not, the breakdown had been irretrievable, and Catherine’s father had removed himself to a safe distance – Canada, in fact – before he could apparently feel confident of a bit of peace and quiet. So Catherine had grown up with only one parent – and often suspected that it may not have been the better one.
Almost unconsciously she touched her bump, reassuring the baby that it would always have two parents who loved it very much.
‘How are you, Mum?’
‘My hands are fat,’ her mother grumbled. She had arthritis, which meant that sometimes she experienced the agony of her diamond rings not fitting. She complained to the doctor about it constantly; she’d paid good money for those rings and somehow felt that the NHS simply didn’t want her wearing them – socialist cartel that it was.
Catherine made a sympathetic noise for the fat fingers and changed the subject.
‘How was Palma?’
‘All right,’ said her mother. ‘Although I don’t know why it has to be so hot there.’
Catherine ignored the discontent.
‘Weren’t you going somewhere?’ said Helen vaguely.
‘We were going to Sidmouth this weekend for our anniversary, but we had to cancel at the last minute. We’ll go after the baby’s born.’
‘Why did you have to cancel?’
‘Adam took a job up north.’
‘Hm,’ said Helen darkly. ‘Let’s hope that’s all he’s got up north.’
Bitch!
Catherine refused to rise to the bait.
Finally her mother asked, ‘How are you?’ Better late than never.
‘Good,’ said Catherine tightly.
‘When’s it due?’
She knew when it was due. Catherine had marked it on the calendar on her mother’s fridge.
‘Eight weeks now.’
‘You peeing all the time?’
‘All the time.’
‘Bloody awful, isn’t it?’
Catherine shrugged. ‘It won’t last for ever.’
She wondered whether she should tell her mother about the burglary. She was a woman, after all – and a mother, albeit a poor one – and it would alleviate the guilty burden of silence. At least her mother would never tell Adam—
‘I’m going shopping,’ said Helen suddenly. ‘Shall I bring you in a fish pie?’
‘No thanks, Mum, I’m not eating fish while I’m pregnant.’
Helen snorted. ‘You and your fads!’
‘It’s not a fad. I want the baby to be healthy, that’s all.’
‘Fish pies are healthy! There’s no fat in them, it’s all fish! And lovely puff pastry.’
Her mother thought pastry was a food group.
‘Thanks, but fish contains mercury.’
‘Really!’ Helen snorted. ‘You’d think nobody had ever had a baby before!’
‘Look, Mum, everyone’s different. I’ve never had a go at you for smoking while you were pregnant with me, have I?’
‘Why would you?’ said Helen breezily. ‘You were perfectly healthy.’
‘I weighed six pounds.’
‘That was normal in those days.’
‘Because everybody smoked!’
‘My God, Catherine, stop making a fuss! People have been having babies for thousands of years without all this hoo-hah about fish and cigarettes.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Catherine hung up, incandescent. And then, as quickly as it had flared, her anger fizzled out to nothing and she laughed instead.
The call had certainly taken her mind off the break-in! And even if she’d told her mother about it, she shouldn’t have expected any sympathy from her. After all, people had been getting murdered for thousands of years without all this hoo-hah about knives and death threats …
The next day, when Adam came home, Catherine didn’t tell him – for the very same reason.
Hoo-hah.