Most men, she imagines, would try to placate her at this point. Scott waves the restaurateur away and allows her to sit in silence until she feels the need to continue. ‘And you … you said that she was 85% going to fail and that I have an 79% chance of needing antidepressants … And what if—’ she sniffs again, ‘What if …’ she blows her nose noisily into her tissue. ‘What if it’s true?’
SCOTT
You couldn’t make it up. The woman he’d inadvertently offended online (note to self: never post while stressed or angry) ends up being the hot mother of his daughter’s new flatmate, sits beside him at the restaurant, ruins his career critical quotation (what kind of doofus doesn’t save in this day and age?) and NOW she’s crying to him over her life choices. And, unlike most women, she’s extremely beautiful when she cries.
Some people attract trauma like a magnet. This woman, what’s her name – Heather? – seems to be an absolute case in point. And man, can she cry. He hasn’t seen tears like that since … since …
Scott can’t complete the sentence. He knows for a fact he hasn’t cried for over seven years. But even though she’s the epitome of what he dislikes in a woman (needy, overprotective, insubstantial), she wants to do better, and she is at least trying. Besides, there’s something else that keeps his attention focusedon her – because in all other circumstances, Scott would have packed up his stuff and left her to it tonight – but there’s something about her face. Smooth, smiling and worry-free in her online profile picture; cross, humiliated and wary in the kitchen when his hands were on her butt trying to prevent a fall; bothered and exasperated when she arrived at the restaurant wearingthatdress and noticed him at the neighbouring table. (He might have feigned ignorance, but yes, he saw her arrive, no decent man could allow a transformation likethatgo unnoticed). There’s something captivating about the way her emotions are just there – open for the entire world to see. Scott, who takes pride in his inscrutability and keeps his emotions tightly sealed away in a metaphorical box in his head, finds this total disregard for masking utterly compelling. What you see is what you get. No mystery. No surprises. Not all women are as straightforward as this. And it’s her face, her absolute honesty, that keeps him there.
‘Do you know what I think?’ he says.
‘I’m guessing you’re going to tell me whether I want to hear it or not,’ she replies, more to her tissue than to him.
‘I reckon you’re terrified. You’re terrified of Georgia navigating the big scary world out there, but I reckon you’re scared for yourself, too. I reckon you’re afraid you’re going to arrive at a lonely, echoing house tomorrow morning and think, what the heck’s my life about now?’
His words are meant to calm her, to restore the gentle glow on her cheek, but instead, they have the opposite effect: she becomes near hysterical. Her loud, shuddering sobs need napkins from two neighbouring tables to absorb them.
‘But don’t you think,’ he says carefully once the tears eventually stop, ‘that all this stuff on social media – that parents' forum in particular, actually makes it worse?’
Heather looks up from her wodge of tissues and tilts her head.
‘No. Why? I mean, I know some of them can be over the top, but overall, these are well-meaning people, don’t you think?’
Well-meaning is one way of putting it.
‘I believe sometimes they promote over-parenting based on an assumption their kids can’t cope, and the whole thing spirals into one big self-fulfilling prophecy.’
Heather’s chin dips, and a small furrow appears between her light green eyes.
‘But some kids can’t cope. That’s the thing.’
He nods slowly. ‘Yeah. But why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why can’t they cope?’
Heather’s shoulders rise and she lifts her hands in an exasperated shrug.
‘I don’t know … neurodiversity, health reasons, anxieties, mental health issues.’ She counts out her evidence on slim, extended fingers.
‘Uh, huh. Uh, huh,’ he nods, ‘but how much ofthatis caused by the parents?’ Her forehead crinkles.Cute. ‘Okay, imagine this. A kid can’t do something or has a problem, like maybe they have a lumpy bed at university, so their parent, mother, father, whoever, sorts it for them. Good thing, right?’
She nods. ‘Yes.’
‘No. Wrong.’ This is where he excels at work. Logic, reasoning, statistics. He’s on a familiar roll. ‘The thing parents need to do is teach, model, scaffold, so the kid can do this thing on their own. So they can source their own darned mattress topper in the future.’ (At what point was he going to admit he has a near pathological issue with mattress toppers?)
Heather shakes her head, clearly exasperated.
‘Okay, forget mattress toppers. But what if those tasks are impossible, whatever they are? What if it harms the kid’s self-esteem to keep trying at something they just can’t do?’
Scott is proud because he knows the answer. This describes how he’s parented himself ever since … ever since he’s needed to.
‘Then you teach it in smaller bits, discrete chunks, and build up to the complete picture.’
Heather nods.
‘Takes so much time.’
