‘Even then.’
‘And it’s only your friends who can see that?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s fine, Mum. I’m not broadcasting my whereabouts to the world. I’m not leaving myself open to grooming by online gangs or people smugglers. I’m just telling my friends where I am and what I’m doing through the medium of a single image. It’s social media – being sociable. It’s how we stay in touch.’
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘No need to get all salty about it.’
I could almost hear her eyeballs rolling back in her head.
‘I just want you to be careful,’ I said as we pulled up at the traffic lights. ‘When you – when you’re away from home – it worries me, that’s all.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I will be careful. I’ll monitor my drinks to make sure nobody’s spiked them.’
‘Or any of your friends’ drinks,’ I said.
‘Or those. And I’ll make sure we always go out in a group. And that nobody’s left behind.’
‘Like the army,’ I said.
‘Just like the army. But with fewer press-ups.’
I laughed. ‘Accommodation might be similar.’
She put her phone down on her lap so I knew she must be serious. ‘Mum. Iwillbe fine,’ she said.
‘Iknowyou will,’ I said, and we carried on making our way to the restaurant, neither of us entirely sure who was trying to reassure whom.
By the time we arrived, driving through a deer park to the restaurant my brother had booked, it was pissing down with rain.
‘There’s Uncle Rich,’ Layla said, pointing to the Tesla silently cruising across the gravel towards my second-hand Vauxhall.
‘And Aunty Jaqueline,’ I said, my heart sinking as I spotted my sister-in-law. ‘And the boys.’ I could just make out the face of my six-year-old nephew, Hugo, peering forlornly through the torrents lashing his window.
Making small talk with my brother and his chilly French wife didn’t exactly fill me with joy, and The Braised Fig didn’t look like my kind of venue – all tiny portions served on, or inside, bizarre household objects – a ‘sausage roll in a specimen jar’ restaurant as Farah would say. Still, I always enjoyed seeing my nephews, who were both very sweet but very serious little boys. And these were my last few days with Layla, so I wanted to make sure I was present for every moment, absorbing the tiny details of her voice, her face and her lovely bread-and-vanilla smell – adding them to my memory vault, banked for future withdrawals as needed when she wasn’t around. I have been trying to be subtle about this gathering of sensory data, aiming to avoid weird stalkerish vibes, but I’m not sure it’s gone entirely unnoticed. I was hugging her for so long a few days ago that she had messaged two friends and ordered a new top on Vinted bythe time I released her. And yesterday when we were watching television together, her head on my shoulder, I inhaled so deeply and for such a sustained period that I nearly passed out due to lack of oxygen. I obviously draw the line at tiptoeing into her room to watch her sleep though. (Reader, I don’t.)
‘Richard,’ I called as I wrestled myself out of the car and into a cagoule whilst battling with a recalcitrant umbrella and dropping my handbag into a puddle.
There are few less edifying sights than that of a slightly overweight middle-aged British woman struggling against the elements. A fact reinforced by the sight of my very thin, very glamorous, and distinctly un-British sister-in-law gliding across the gravel in a chic little designer mackintosh complete with fur trimmed hood, seemingly avoiding even the merest droplet of muddy water. The fact that this woman has two little boys and yet always manages to look pristine leads me to the conclusion that she’s either trained Hugo and Lawrence to self-clean, like an expensive oven, or that she spends no time in their company at all. Knowing Jaqueline, both these things could be true. Her views on children are that they should be seen and not heard. Apparently, she’s already asking Richard about boarding school, which makes me sad to the point of actual chest pain, but it’s not my place to interfere, of course (as Joe has to keep reminding me).
My attitude to parenting (and indeed, my attitude to most things) is very different to hers, and that’s fine, but sometimes I think she is a separate breed of woman entirely. Where I am conciliatory, she is brusque to the point of being offensive. Where I am needy, she is aloof, and where I am indulgent, bending and yielding to the tiniest of pressures, she is firm and resolute. In the cat world she would be very much the haughty Margaret to my clingy Clarence. Jaqueline knows that I have differing views to her, she knows that I silently disagree withher on many topics, and she couldn’t give less of a toss. Which means that I have a quiet and begrudging respect for the woman – far more so than she does for me.
We made our way into the restaurant where we were greeted by a tall thin person sporting a full body tattoo and a man-bun (or perhaps just a bun) who introduced themselves as Zee. They gruffly showed us to our table and muttered something incomprehensible about the Braised Fig vibe before giving us each a piece of slate with a QRS code as our menu. When my eyebrows flickered upwards, I was told that this was all part of their sustainability ethos, along with the compost toilets, which I later found out consisted of a freezing shed that smelled like an unemptied nappy bin. I duly smiled ingratiatingly, said ‘of course’ a lot of times, and took my seat.
‘This place has had excellent reviews,’ said Richard confidently. ‘The food is amazing.’ His voice wavered a fraction when he caught sight of Jaqueline’s expression which clearly said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘Fairly pricey,’ I said, having successfully scanned the QRS code, downloaded the sodding app onto my phone, signed in as a guest and sworn a blood-oath to the CEO of the restaurant chain. I was now peering in horror at the magnified numbers on my phone screen as I navigated the taster menu.
Richard sensibly had put on his reading glasses whereas I’d forgotten mine. Jaqueline, I’m sure, does not need reading glasses, but if she did ever choose to wear them purely as a fashion accessory they’d either be delicate frames inlaid with mother of pearl or one of those ridiculously cool chunky neon sets that manage to look both retro and entirely on trend. While Richard was scrolling through the menu as happy as a pig in muck (or an affluent person in an expensive restaurant perhaps), I was glaring daggers at him for being so insensitive as to book somewhere like this when he knows Joe and I arestrapped for cash at the best of times, but particularly when we’re about to fork out thousands of pounds on university accommodation.
I wished Joe was here just to make a funny joke about the cost and suggest that we Harpers stick to the bar snacks, but he’d gone to play a round of golf with a client from work, not an ideal situation but one that he felt was necessary to securing a particular contract. I had reacted with mild surprise when he told me. He’s never shown more than a passing interest in golf previously and I suspected he was just trying to get out of lunch with my brother. Which would have been entirely reasonable. I would do the same to avoid spending time with his family, although I’d have to come up with a better excuse than playing golf. Anyway, Layla clearly picked up on my subtle distress signals – sweaty hyperventilation, clutching of the throat, cries of ‘we’ll be destitute, we’ll end up in the workhouse’ – and murmured ‘I’m not really that hungry actually, Mum,’ across the table. ‘I’ll probably just have something small.’
‘Nonsense!’ boomed my brother. ‘We’re here to celebrate, Layla! To send you off in style! Anyway, it’s my treat, so fill your boots.’
‘Oh, Rich, are you sure?’ I said, considerably cheered by the fact that I wouldn’t end up spending hundreds of pounds on some flavoured froth served in a watering can, just to be polite to my brother.
He nodded his head, a wry acknowledgement of his largesse. ‘Of course,’ he said, holding aloft a glass of champagne that had magically appeared from somewhere (at least the drinks were served in conventional vessels as opposed to sustainable hemp bags). ‘I am hugely proud of my niece. Congratulations, Layla!’ He tilted his glass in her direction. ‘You’re about to embark on the best years of your life.’
This seemed to be an unduly pressurising statement, the whole idea of enforced fun and people insisting that something ‘will be amazing’ often being a guarantee that it will instead be a bit shit, and that if you don’t enjoy it, it’s your fault – but that’s probably just me being churlish and neggy. Richard does take a genuine interest in his niece’s educational progress and bizarrely seems to feel that any level of success achieved is due to the small number of genes she shares with him. This situation has only been reinforced by the fact that the university she is heading off to is the same one he attended as an undergraduate.
