Gigi

A few weeks before the official end of the term, Megan asked both her parents to pick up a load of the stuff that she no longer needed with her at university. She just had exams, then parties, to come, she said, and she could get herself home if they’d leave her the basics. The house had to be deep-cleaned if they had any chance of getting their deposit back, and that would be easier ‘with less crap in it’. She asked them separately, and afterwards none of them – except Meg – knew whether it was self-absorbed student ditziness on her part that she’d asked them both, or a daughter’s calculated move to force them to spend the day together. Perhaps it didn’t matter which it was.

Megan was in a rented house. Rented hovel, Richard called it. She was sharing with two guys and three girls. She’d lost the room ballot and got the attic room – slightly bigger than the three on the next floor down and the cupboard of a room next to the kitchen, which smelt permanently of fried food – but draughty as hell, with rattling windows and peeling wallpaper. And a hatch instead of a door, and something more like a ladder than stairs leading up to it. Potentially fatal after a drunken night out, Richard had said, when she’d first shown it to them. Megan had winked at him and thrown an arm around his shoulder. ‘Good job I don’t drink, then, isn’t it, Dad?’

Three emails and two phone calls after Megan’s double booking was first uncovered, they’d agreed to go together, in one car. Gigi had said she’d prefer to drive, but really she wanted to pick up Richard, not have him collect her. She hadn’t told Adam they were going together. She hadn’t lied, exactly, but she’d definitely said ‘I’ and not ‘we’. He hadn’t pushed her, although he’d had to have known she would be dropping Megan off at Richard’s. He’d said he’d be home that evening if she fancied a drink after all the exertion of the day. His tone was light, but his face had the shadow of something sad across it. Gigi tried to ignore the guilt, forcing herself to remember Emily’s words, but the feeling persisted.

Richard was waiting by the front door when she pulled into their driveway in the early afternoon. He kissed her cheek when he got into the car. She wondered whether to mention his flowers, but decided not to in case it embarrassed him. They made small talk for a few minutes, chatting over the safe territory of the kids, and of Ava, but neither of their hearts were in it, and by the time they got to the M25 Gigi had put the radio on and lost them both in the chatter of Radio 4. Politicians evaded answers and blamed their opposite numbers for everything that was wrong. This was a shared interest – they had both voted the same way for the last forty years, except for 1997, when they’d fought over Tony Blair and his New Labour vision – and for the rest of the journey they were on the familiar ground of hectoring Jonathan Dimbleby and his guests. Gigi fleetingly wondered how Adam voted. They’d never talked politics. Never gone together to vote. Gigi always got emotional when she voted. Richard could repeat the speech she made every time, about the suffragettes and the black South Africans in line for hours in 1994, word for word. How many times had he heard it?

Megan was not as ready as Richard had been. She wasn’t ready at all despite the hour. She answered the door in a dressing gown, her hair at its ‘hedge backwards’ best, her eyes bleary from the end-of-exam celebrations the night before.

‘Mum. Dad. Hello … you are …’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oh shit. Exactly on time.’ Her breath was boozy.

She sent them to the café at the end of the road, promising she’d be entirely ready in the time it took them to order and drink a cappuccino.

Gigi sat at a table in the corner and watched Richard order. Joke with the waitress about something. Search in his pocket for some change for the tip jar. He weaved through the tables with a tray and sat beside her. Two cappuccinos and two cakes. Eccles for him, a piece of carrot cake for her, with a perfectly iced carrot atop the cream-cheese icing. Her favourite.

‘I’m glad we’re doing this.’ He smiled at her.

She smiled back. ‘Me too.’

‘Are you?’

‘Richard …’

‘You’re not just tolerating having to spend this time with me, for Megan’s sake?’

‘Please.’

‘And really hating every moment.’

‘Of course not. There’s absolutely nothing to hate, Richard.’

He smiled again, relieved. ‘We’ve done a fair bit of this, haven’t we? You and me.’

Gigi laughed. ‘God. Bags of it. Literally. Bags. Although the boys never had as much stuff as Meg.’

‘No, but that bloody drive.’ Christopher had studied in Durham. Hours and hours, on the very best day, and the M1 didn’t have many best days.

‘And did we ever once get there and it wasn’t raining?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He loved it, though, didn’t he?’

She nodded, remembering. ‘He did.’

They were quiet for a few moments. They were both, she supposed, playing the cine films of their shared history in their own minds. Listening to the laughter, the map squabbles – the soundtrack of their past. Wondering when it went wrong. Wondering how the hell they’d ended up here.

There was a rack of newspapers on the wall behind the table where they were sitting. The truth is, if they’d been here even a few months earlier, Richard would have taken one out and started to read it, his head and shoulders disappearing behind a broadsheet. Almost as soon as he sat down. He’d have been irritated that Megan wasn’t ready. Hell – he might not even have come: he might have been playing golf, asking her if she could manage without him. Which was really telling her that she should be able to. If he had come, he wouldn’t have bought her a slice of cake. Not without her asking for one, at least. She didn’t even know that he knew it was her favourite. They’d have been sitting at the table together but alone. Now he was watching her. Looking for reactions. Trying to please her. Eking out time together.

Everything she’d said she’d wanted and needed. Only she could decide whether he was too late.