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The man in front is turning in too. And so, of course, I follow.
Why isn’t she answering my calls?
I glance at what is starting to become the emblematic chicken on the passenger seat, sweating in its little plastic handled bag. And maybe it’s gut feeling, that hot, uneasiness, growing inside me. Some sort of deep spiritual knowing Ralph often talks about. The intangible feeling that precedes something going wrong. Because I feel like I want to hold back a little. Or turn around altogether. Pull into a layby, eat the chicken on the side of the road, forget I ever came .?.?.
But I keep going.
Golfers stroll from a huge sandstone estate that comes into view, others straggled on the lawn, pastel blues and khaki beiges; golf buggies lined up in the car park.
Then Mum stops; parks slowly by a stout, brick building. It’s nothing at all like the grand Darcy-esque mansion we just passed. This looks like somewhere you might go to vote, or to a small wedding reception. The sort of place that smells like churches and margarine sandwiches.
I pull up too, switch off my engine.
I should get out. Shout, ‘Mum! Haha! Hi! It’s me! I was coming to visit! I’ve been following you! What do you say to eating some charred artichokes in artisan dressing in the late summer sun?’ But I can’t. Why can’t I move?
Mum gets out of the car and .?.?. she is definitely not dressed for the gym. She’s wearing a dress that’s very her. Beautiful, strange, and lime-coloured. Art teacher meets Woodstock, 1972.
She looks down at her phone, and I wait for her to see the string of missed calls from me, her daughter, and call me back. But she doesn’t. She just .?.?. slips her phone back into her handbag and—
A man.
A man appears. He’s tall. Super tall. Six four, perhaps, Dad’s age He smiles at Mum, and they start speaking. Mum nods, and nods again. She rubs the side of his arm, and he turns, pushes open the glass door of the squat brick building and she begins to follow. Who even is he? A friend? A new friend I’ve never ever met?
I step out. Converse shoes crunching on gravel.
‘Mum?Mum?’
Mum swoops around, an almost-twirl, not even letting a beat pass. And her face – it falls. Her large, bright eyes, widening, the corners of her mouth, wilting.
‘Millie?’ What are you .?.?. I .?.?. What’s going on?’
‘I was going to surprise you,’ I call, walking towards her, breeze lifting my hair from my shoulders. ‘At home, but I saw you drive away. I called .?.?.’
Mum stares, says nothing. The man has disappeared, inside.
‘I .?.?.’ She trails off. She’s wearing lipstick. She’s wearing the necklace Dad bought her for her fiftieth birthday – the owl one. It sits at her heart, flipped the wrong way, eyes shielded.
And for a moment, I hope she’ll just say it’s the gym. A new swimming pool she takes aqua aerobics at, introduce me to this new friend, say, ‘For God’s sake, darling, your face! What on earth do you take me for?’
But then she closes the gap between us quickly, says, ‘Does your dad know you’re here?’ and then, ‘Look, why don’t we go home, Millie? Just so I can explain?’
And something rolls over in my chest, like a boat caught by a sudden wave, and overturned.
*
‘It isn’t what you think, Millie,’ Mum says. We’re sitting now, as if the last fifteen minutes of Janky James Bond car following never happened, at the old picnic table in Mum and Dad’s leafy semi-circular garden. And all I can think, is a) what the hell is going on? And b) if it isn’t ‘what I think’, then why the big drama? Why send me back here, drive in two separate cars back to the cottage, to talk, if it’s nothing? Nobody sits their daughter down to talk, privately, if it’s just, ‘So. I thought you should know, I’ve taken up a wee spot of aqua aerobics.’
I’d arrived first, burst through the stifling cottage, to the garden. And Mum, remote as ever, had said nothing as she crossed the trimmed, pitch-like lawn, and sat down.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t explain there,’ Mum says, shakily. ‘It would’ve been .?.?. difficult to. I was seeing someone. Visiting. It’s a very – private place.’
‘Visiting? The .?.?. tall guy?’
‘No.’ Mum shakes her head, teardrop amber earrings at the side of her head swaying, like a clock’s pendulum. ‘No, no, that’s .?.?. that’s Jimmy. I was visiting his brother. Julian.’
And then there is silence. Strange, empty silence. Mum always thinks before she speaks ordoes.Considers it all, lines it up in her head, like she does with her work – thinks and thinks about a scene before sketching a single line. But, right now, it feels painful, these considered, careful spaces before her words. Like everything I know about my mum is suspended in mid-air, and at any moment, the rope holding it up could be cut.
Then she says, ‘Millie, Julian .?.?. is my ex-husband.’
