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And this feels familiar. It reminds me of rows we’d have, when I was a teenager. When I’d sleep in too late, lose homework, wanted to take street dance classes, instead of French, like Kieran did; when I quit uni and came home sad and drained. She’d never really say it, she’d even deny it, but Mum carried the disappointment there on her face. And I’d fire things at her, as she sat there, calm and stoic and impenetrable. I wanted something– anything– from her. To chop it all open like a ripe watermelon, set it free. I sometimes wonder if she’s afraid to love me fully. As if, she was to love me entirely, as I am, I might stop trying to be the thing she secretly wants me to be.
‘Perhaps .?.?. since the – the spring?’ Mum is almost child-like. Like a caught-out teenager. ‘March.’
Oh. March.Easter.The email Dad had been confused about .?.?. ‘Did you see him on the Easter weekend?’
‘Easter?’
‘The bank holiday. You told Dad you were with me.’
She swallows then. Does a tiny shudder of a nod. Shame drains colour from her cheeks. ‘Millie, I’m sorry—’
‘You need to tell Dad. Like, you have to.’ I feel cold now. As if I’m turning to stone. I’m a university drop-out, in a job she never asks about, with hobbies she always seem mildly disappointed by, and yet I was perfect as a pawn to help her craft a perfect little lie.Let’s use Millie as an alibi. She never has anything of worth going on anyway.
Mum’s eyes shimmer in the sunlight and she reaches for my hand. I retract it, towards my midriff, and she leaves her own where it lands, an inch of tabletop between us, an ant crawling in a crack of the wood.
‘I will tell him,’ Mum says. ‘I promise, I will .?.?. just .?.?. I will soon.’
There’s a cheer from next door. ‘Hello!’ squeals someone. I imagine the barbecue, families arriving, shirted children with side-partings, perfumed people in dresses and sandals and open-collared shirts. Families. Friends. Celebrating a birthday, or an anniversary. No lies, no secret lives. I feel jealous. Of their uncomplicated lives. But then –wealways looked so uncomplicated, The Chandlers, didn’t we? Who’s to say they don’t have all these unsaid things, too? Who’s to say they don’t have things they’re hiding? Ex-husbands and dying lovers?
‘I just don’t understand why you’d lie,’ I say. ‘Dad gets things like this. Dad’s a helper, he’s .?.?. kind and—’
She shakes her head, rigidly. ‘Your dad was his friend, Millie. Julian and your dad, they used to be friends, back then. He remembers how Julian used to be. What that did to me .?.?.’
I stare at her, my mother, across the table. I have her brown eyes; her mouth, the pronounced Cupid’s bow. We might look the same, but right now, she feels like a stranger. Someone pretending to be my mum. An imposter. ‘And, what, does he still love you?’ I ask. ‘Is that why he asked after you?’
Mum stares at me, tearfully. ‘He says so. But I do not, Millie. I love yourfather—’
‘Did you get my email?’ And I’m not sure why it comes out then. Something about Mum, of all people, caught in this. The bar she set so high. Another man who loves her. Lying to the man she does love.
‘Your email?’
I nod.
And her eyes slide left, then to her lap. She starts fumbling with a flower-shaped button on her dress. ‘Was it .?.?. one about brunches?’ she asks, a small tight, false laugh in her voice.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I asked if you’d still love me if I continued to be a failure.’ And I feel I can say anything now. It’s like the veneer of everything is cracked and I can see right through.
‘I have never said I think you’re a failure, Millie,’ she says, flustered. Then, just when I think she isn’t going to say anything else, she adds, stiffening, ‘But do I want more for you?Yes.Yes, I do. But only because I think you’re wonderful. I know how much youcoulddo. How much you could be.’
And I nod. Just once.
I leave after half an hour – feign a pretend dinner with Cate.
When I get home, I drop the entire chicken in the compost bin, throw off my shoes, and sit on the balcony, looking out to sea, eating a tub of charred artichokes with my fingers, no cutlery, get a mess of oil on my T-shirt. I think of Dad. I think of what Mum said; about what Icould be, and I let the waves of Leigh drown out the sound of all the unsaid things creaking the floor under our feet, ready to burst through.
Chapter Twelve
Text message from Brownie Babez:Your Royal Mail Brownie Babez delivery to Alexis Lee, Canary Wharf, LONDON failed. Reason: code 45: delivery refused
*
Text message from Jack:Hey Millie, if you still have availability, we could really use you at the rugby game tomorrow. 9 a.m. start. No pressure, appreciate this is short notice, but let me know and Petra will forward details. If not, catch you Monday. Jack
*
This morning, I set five alarms. Yes.Fiveseparate alarms, and on the fourth one, Ralph appeared, dishevelled, at my bedroom door, pulling his dressing gown around his midriff. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked. ‘It sounds like a bank vault’s been busted in here.’ And when I told him I was fine, that I just wanted to be absolutely sure I got up early enough to make the rugby game, in my quest to paper over yet another email-induced crack, he gently insisted on making me some coffee.
None of us slept much last night – Ralph, Cate and I were up talking until midnight. Firstly, about how Nicholas’s family put on a barbecue spread to end all barbecue spreads (and then suddenly, assembled, like an army, and tried to convince Cate to change her mind about the break-up over a toffee cheesecake, Cate’s favourite, because Nicholas ‘wants to be a better man’). Then, I’d told them about Julian. Ralph had listened carefully. Cate had hugged me, wanted every detail, asked me over and over, as Cate always does, howIwas doing. I played it down a little though, the sinking, weird, feeling of betrayal in my chest. I felt a bit like the odd one out. Cate is so close to her two brothers and sister and her parents, and although Ralph doesn’t see much of his mum, dad and three sisters, they’re all pretty functional. A solid unit, despite it all. Christmases and meals and birthdays. A family of spidered threads, but all anchored and tied at the centre. Yet, our threads, The Chandlers, at the moment feel like a scatter of Poohsticks. Separate and drifting. Mum, lying, Dad, oblivious, Kieran, thousands of miles away, and me, spinning in a current, with no idea what the hell I’m doing.
