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‘Is Dad okay?’
How to answer that one. ‘Yes, he’s working today.’
‘Right.’ A beat. ‘Are you very busy at the moment?’
There it was, that change of tone that Shay knew so well, too well. The sweep on the ice before the curling stone came into play.
‘No, I’m only reading the newspaper, why?’
‘I could just… do with a chat.’
‘I’m never too busy for a chat.’
‘I’m parked around the corner. Okay to come in?’
‘Of course. You don’t have to ask if you can come into your own home.’
‘I’ll see you in a minute then,’ said Courtney and ended the call.
Shay got up to look through the front window and saw her daughter’s powder-blue Fiat roll into view from up the road. They’d bought it for her twenty-first birthday, a safe, immaculate, little car. As it drew nearer, Shay noted the crunched bumper and the ugly black impact marks scrawled along the side panel. Courtney got out of it, her hair now flamingo-pink, a colour that would be visible from Mars. A weight of dread landed with a bump in Shay’s stomach and she thought, ‘Here we go again.’
‘You heard from Sunny recently? Because I haven’t,’ said Courtney, as her mother brought two mugs of coffee over to the kitchen table.
That surprised Shay because her children had always been close, despite infuriating each other with their many differences.
‘I hadn’t heard from him in ages, then he rang on Friday and he’s coming over to your gran’s tomorrow morning, so I’ll see him there.’
‘He’s blown us all out forher,’ Courtney crinkled up her nose as if a bad smell had just drifted past. ‘What’s that thing they say about a son only being a son until he takes a wife’ – she grinned – ‘but the good news, Mum, is that a daughter is a daughter all of her life.’
Shay raised her eyes heavenward and Courtney hooted.
‘He’s okay, Mum, don’t worry. He’d say if he wasn’t. He’s just getting on with a new phase of his life.’
‘So everyone keeps saying to me,’ replied Shay.
‘Bit annoying though when you ring and he doesn’t answer and then he sends you a text as if he doesn’t want to actually talk to you.’ Courtney slurped her drink while she mused on that.
Shay, however, was presently more concerned about her daughter than her son.
‘What happened to your car, Courtney?’
Courtney flapped her hand with a casualness that belied the words that followed the gesture. ‘Well, Dingo borrowed the car to go into town. Honestly, Mum, he was only gone ten minutes and he managed to damage it in that time. I was so angry. We had a proper fight. In fact, I ended up finishing with him, you’ll be relieved to hear.’
Shay would have been if she could have believed it. Dingo would have been better named Boomerang, on account of him always managing to thud repeatedly back into Courtney’s life.
‘What do you mean by “fight”?’ asked Shay.
‘Oh Mum, you don’t have to worry about me, I’m quite capable of defending myself.’ Courtney winked and clicked her tongue. ‘I’ve been having boxing lessons. I’ve developed an excellent jab.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘Mort? Yeah, he said he was coming to see you. What is Auntie Les on?’ Courtney threw her hands up in the air. ‘I mean, you did know she’s just buggered off and disappeared without so much as a kiss my arse?’
‘I didn’t know before last Tuesday,’ replied Shay. ‘It was quite the surprise to me too.’
Courtney got up from the table to pillage the biscuit barrel. ‘Mort didn’t tell me until last night. I think he was hoping it would all blow over and there would be nothing to tell. She’s being a bit of a cow in my opinion, but that’s nothing new.’ She brought a handful of Jaffa Cakes over to the table.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Shay.
