‘I’m back,’ Mirren called, placing her keys in the bowl by the door.
The little kitchen was spotlessly clean. The strip light buzzed above her. She tiptoed over the vinyl tiles and onto the landing at the foot of the stairs. The television was on in the otherwise dark living room and through the glass door Mirren could make out the broad Scottish accents of the gritty detective serial her mum was currently addicted to.Should I go in and tell her about getting the feature?Mirren wondered.Will she be pleased?
‘You didn’t come straight home then?’ her mum called from the living room and at the slurred sound of the greeting Mirren dismissed all thoughts of sharing her good news. She pushed the door open and popped her head round the frame. Jeanie Imrie didn’t look round from her armchair where she sat with her legs curled beneath her.
‘I had a wander down Princes Street to see the sales. Didn’t get anything though.’ A little white lie was needed, Mirren knew. She couldn’t tell her mum what had happened; how her full heart had turned back into a broken one after her autopilot journey towards Preston. She was about to pull her head back out of the room and climb the stairs to bed when her mum spoke again.
‘You missed him.’
‘Who?’ Mirren made her way into the living room now, but stood behind her mum’s chair. She couldn’t mean her father, could she? Not when he hadn’t shown his face once in almost a decade?
Jeanie, eyes fixed on the screen, nodded towards the pile of clothes neatly folded over the arm of the sofa, exactly at the moment Mirren spotted them.
‘Some of your things were mixed up with his when he packed his bags. So he brought them round.’
Mirren looked towards the door she’d just come through. ‘Preston? How long ago was that?’ Her mind raced. Could she catch him up? Was he still walking to his car? She hadn’t seen it out on the street as she’d pulled around the back of their row of houses and into the garage.
‘An hour since.’
‘Oh.’ Mirren tried to shrug off the sudden hope and the disappointment. Before she could ask how he’d seemed or where he’d been going, Jeanie was on her feet and walking over to the TV, switching it off with the button at the side.
‘You didn’t deserve a nice laddie like that.’ Jeanie Imrie sailed past her daughter towards the door, and as she passed by Mirren caught the familiar sickly smell of whisky and cola. She hadn’t needed to look for the glass by the side of the armchair, but she did see the unsteadiness in her mother’s steps and the dark glaze over her eyes that she’d known since her childhood.
It had been a few weeks since she’d seen her like this – not drunk, not by any means, but what her dad, long ago when he still lived with them, called ‘topped up’. But she knew the pattern, the steady daily drinking, a few whiskies every night, gradually building up into a whole bottle at the weekend, and her mother never being entirely sober for weeks at a time. When had she started again? Mirren couldn’t be sure. But she knew it meant she was going to hear her mum’s opinions on Preston tonight and there was very little she could do to avoid it.
‘OK, well I’m going to bed now. Night night,’ Mirren said weakly.
‘He asked after you. Don’t you want to know how the poor laddie’s doing?’ Jeanie didn’t meet her daughter’s eye, not once, as she bustled around the living room, rearranging the ornaments and the box of tissues with fumbling fingers, repositioning a vase of tall gladioli on its crocheted mat.
Mirren said nothing, mentally calculating how long it would take her mum to run through her routine – there was still the compulsive bedtime wipe-down of the kitchen surfaces with neat bleach to go – and she could quietly take herself off to her childhood bedroom upstairs.
‘You just couldn’t look after him though, could you? Couldn’t control yourself. He was a perfectly nice boy, but did you want him? No, not you, not Mirren. She always wants what she can’t have, and look where that’s got you,’ said Jeanie, a slur slowing her speech, and all the while she was tidying the magazines in the rack by the side of the sofa.
‘All right, well, I’m tired, I’m going to get to bed.’ Mirren knew not to challenge her mum, it was easier just to listen and try to deflect the worst bits, try not to let it sink in. But, as she also knew from long experience, some things stick in your mind, especially when it’s your own mother saying them.
At last, Jeanie was on the move into the kitchen, and Mirren followed her through the door and turned for the stairs, but she knew there would be a parting shot.
‘If you were meeting another of your dates tonight, you ken exactly what I think of that. Don’t eventhinkabout bringing one of your men friends here. You treat this place like a hotel as it is, don’t be turning it into a brothel too.’
Mirren paused halfway up the stairs, but didn’t turn round. Her mum was gone anyway. She heard the sound of the cupboard under the sink being opened and the hollow thud of the bleach bottle being placed on the draining board. Her mum was busy, cloth in hand.
By the time Jeanie had scrubbed the already gleaming kitchen taps, Mirren had her teeth brushed and was changed into her pyjamas. She slid under the covers in the dark and listened for her mum making her way to her own room, accompanied by the chink of a glass against a whisky bottle at every step.
She lay in bed thinking over every word that had been slung at her. All true. She couldn’t just be happy with her lot, she always selfishly wanted something, or someone else.
She hadn’t needed to ask her mum how Preston was, she already knew. She’d seen his band’s Instagram and Facebook pages; they were in the middle of a tour of clubs and bars across Scotland. In the pictures Preston was smiling, or looking cool and moody, his Gibson low on its strap across his body. He’d been waiting for this moment all his life, when the local gigs, demos and studio time began paying off. Before she’d set off for that fateful weekend in Stratford in August she’d known there was an indie label showing interest in them. Preston must be having the time of his life. She hoped with a sad pang that the broken heart she’d handed him wasn’t tainting the newfound success he’d worked so hard for.
She’d seen the pictures, posted by women, tagging him. Blurry, dark nightclub scenes, tables cluttered with glasses. Beautiful young women and the boys from the band, cheek-kisses and heads close together, white-teeth grins. It stung to be reminded how much she missed being that close to him, but she wouldn’t let herself regret setting him free. The band had a following of fans already. He’d soon be on tour in England too, and then… anywhere. The world was at his feet, now she’d let him go. He’d taken to being single as though it hadn’t just been Mirren waiting for their life to begin.
It was too late to call Kelsey, and she was crying too hard to make sense anyway, so she reached for her phone, as she always did late at night now she was installed back at her mum’s house. Opening the app, she started scrolling, swiping left, looking for a stranger to talk to.
Chapter Seven
‘All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me’
(Sonnet 43)
