Mum’s the Word

Amongst the raw, bleeding stumps of rejection and hurt, humiliation twinkled and crackled like lightning; and there she was thinking Robert was about to go down on one knee, that he was her happy ever after. Susie felt her face redden. How the hell could she have got it so wrong? How come she hadn’t seen it coming?

Why hadn’t Robert mentioned the baby thing before? She had listened to his opinions on everything else; on foreigners, the government, education, immigration, the economy, Botox, cheap wine and middle-aged women wearing leather trousers. When she had mentioned going on holiday together in the autumn, he’d picked up a whole pile of brochures from town. If he’d gone broody why hadn’t he said, ‘Actually I was thinking more Mothercare than Montenegro.’ Bastard.

Susie reran memories of the last three years, trying to come up with anything, any conversation or comment that had brought them anywhere close to fatherhood, but came up dry. Although there was the time he’d said that if he had his time over again there were things he would have done differently. Susie remembered topping up their glasses and saying she was certain everyone felt the same; there was always stuff that you would like to change if you had the chance.

And he’d nodded and gone on to moan about the state of bread in this country, before moving on to include food generally, gastropubs and vegetarians, and especially the man who ran the corner shop in the village who had had an out-of-date vegetarian lasagne in the freezer. Susie sighed; in three years she’d never caught Robert peering longingly into prams, or cooing over commercials for Pampers. Three bloody years wasted.

She really needed a cup of tea. The cure for everything. Susie glanced at her reflection in the toaster – surely this was the time she should be having a life, having missed out on one first time around because she was bringing up Jack and Alice. She wanted to travel now and do things, stay up late, see the world, buy a sports car, wear wonderful, sophisticated clothes and swan around looking impossibly elegant with nicely cut hair, not be negotiating buggies up kerbs and in and out of shops, with a bottle, baby wipes and spare nappies in her handbag.

She’d already been there, done that. Susie squared her shoulders. She’d had Jack when she was barely twenty and Alice when she was twenty-one, stayed home, tended a garden and a dog, a cat, goldfish, various hamsters and a rabbit and regretted none of it. But that didn’t mean she wanted to do it all over again, especially not now.

How would she have felt if, when they first met, Robert had said, ‘Susie, I think you’re lovely. I want to have a family with you.’ Truth be told, if Robert had said that she would have said ‘thanks but no thanks’, and run away as fast as she could, safe in the knowledge that he had picked the wrong woman. She certainly wouldn’t have wasted the last three years of her life listening to him whine on about the state of Britain today, global warming, young people, refugees, dole scroungers and education. The more Susie thought about it the angrier she got. Robert had totally misled her. She’d spent all this time thinking they had some kind of future together, while all along he’d been busy thinking about raising a family with someone else.

When they had first met, Robert had told her that he liked gardening, foreign travel, long nights in and good nights out … There was nothing at all about wanting to burp small incontinent people and scrape puddles of puréed carrot off the front of his nicely pressed Boden rugby shirt – not a hint, not a bloody clue.

At which point the phone rang. Susie hesitated, wondering if she could really face talking to the big wide world without having had a mug of tea, if it was Robert, and why she hadn’t signed up for caller display to take the guesswork out of whether to answer the damned thing or not. While still debating, she found herself picking up the handset.

‘Mum?’

‘Alice –’

‘Oh, you are there. I spoke to Jack earlier, what’s he doing home?’ Alice snapped. ‘And why weren’t you up when I rang? Are you ill? I told him to tell you to call me back.’

‘Alice, I –’

‘Did he tell you that I’d rung?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘Did he tell you to ring back as soon as you got the message?’

‘Yes – but –’

‘Did he tell you that it was important?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘The thing is, Mum –’ and all at once the voice of the modern-day Spanish Inquisition softened and Alice giggled. ‘The thing is, Mum … I’m pregnant.’ Her voice rose to a full-throated chuckle at the end of the sentence. ‘You’re going to be a granny.’

Chapter 3 (#ulink_69552f38-1982-55a1-8391-acc2b4e817ea)

Susie stared at the phone, not quite able to catch her breath. Granny? Granny? Caller display really was the only option; from now on she’d just pick up crank calls, heavy breathers and people who wanted to sell her double-glazing. She’d ring and organise it as soon as she’d had a cup of tea.

‘Well, what do you think? Aren’t you going to say anything?’ said Alice, who still had an odd, whoopy, slightly hysterical tone to her voice.

What was there to say? ‘Well yes, of course – I’m – I’m –’ said Susie. What the hell was she? ‘I’m shocked.’

There was a little snarl at the far end of the line. Shocked was apparently not the right response.

‘I mean, I’m shocked and delighted, and very pleased too – obviously. Thrilled but surprised, I mean. I didn’t know that you and Adam were – well, I mean …’ What exactly did she mean? Granny, what sort of word was that to spring on anyone? ‘I knew you were, you know, but not …’ The pit Susie was digging for herself was steadily getting deeper and deeper. ‘You know,’ she said weakly.

‘I thought you would be pleased for me, Mum,’ said Alice, now sounding weepy and grumpy and hurt; it seemed as if the hormones had already kicked in.

‘I am, darling, I am, really. It’s just a bit of a surprise, that’s all,’ Susie said, not quite sure whether she was lying. ‘I’m delighted, absolutely thrilled,’ she continued, wondering if she was laying it on too thick. What was it she was supposed to ask?

‘When is it due? I mean, are you still going to work? How is work going and how is Adam? Is he pleased? Have you thought of any names yet?’

Did that cover everything?

‘January, and of course he’s pleased, Mum, why wouldn’t he be pleased? To be honest, we’re both a bit surprised but we both wanted a family at some point so … Obviously it wasn’t exactly planned, but these things happen, and we were thinking maybe next year anyway, so this just brings things forward a little bit. And once we’ve had the scan and we know what it is we’ll choose the baby’s name. Hardly seems an efficient use of my time to pick two sets of names.’

Well, obviously. ‘Right. I mean, congratulations, well done – it’s wonderful, wonderful news. I’m delighted for you. Really.’

‘Things are going to be a bit tight, obviously, for a while, but then again you and Dad managed. I was saying to Adam this morning that you didn’t work at all while we were little. I know things were different back then and you weren’t qualified for anything in those days so it wasn’t like you were losing a proper salary or anything –’

Back in the dark ages, thought Susie grimly. Maybe she would just give up answering the phone altogether.

‘I said to Adam that if you and Dad could manage it then I know we can.’ Alice made it sound like a done deal, her unborn child sorted out and organised from being an embryo up to and including university. After all, if back in the dark ages people like her feckless parents could manage it, without degrees and with an inability to understand the mysteries of predictive text, just how hard could it be?

None of which helped Susie work out what to say to Alice. For a start she hadn’t just bought a flat the size of a garden shed for more money than Susie could imagine without tranquillisers, nor had she ever assumed foreign holidays were a right not a privilege, and never in all her born days had she thought £199.99 was a reasonable price to pay for a pair of raffia wedges.

‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ was all Susie could come up with.

‘You know, I knew you’d say that,’ snapped Alice.

‘Mum, can I move now please? I’m getting cramp. My leg is absolutely killing me.’

Susie looked past the easel to where Jack was sitting. He was at her workbench surrounded by the weekend papers, a mug of coffee and half a packet of biscuits. Late-morning sunshine caught his fringe and the beginnings of a beard, so that he appeared to be surrounded by a great corona of golden light, although her gaze was slightly abstracted so it wasn’t exactly Jack she saw but the painting he might become – if only he would just sit still.

‘No.’

He groaned.

Susie had had nothing planned for the weekend – if you discounted the bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge, the fresh strawberries and the Belgian chocolates that she had bought in anticipation of a long, lingering celebration breakfast in bed with Robert – which was why she needed to keep her mind firmly occupied with work.

She closed her eyes, trying very hard to clear her head. Her throat was locked solid and a heavy pain hovered above her heart. Bloody man.

Susie let her eyes move slowly across the canvas. It was blank and creamy white, the surface very slightly raised and rough to the touch so that as she drew a stick of charcoal across it, it bit, giving a satisfying, almost mouth-watering, sensation.

‘Please, Mum? I’ll wash up the breakfast things,’ whined Jack.

‘I’ve got a dishwasher.’

The studio – once the washhouse adjoining Susie’s cottage – smelt of linseed oil, turps and oil paints, mixed today with the smell of hot wood, baked tin and stone where the sun burned in through the open French windows and drank up the spilt water from the profusion of herbs and geraniums in pots and window boxes. The cottage and the little studio formed an L shape, with a flagstone terrace set with tubs and planters, and cane furniture framed in the crook of the right angle.

Outside, Milo, the hairy hound, had found his spot in the sunshine and was snoring softly.

Susie taught art three days a week at the local college in Fenborough, and worked on her own projects in the time left over. Not that there had been that much time since she’d been going out with Robert; he found the whole art thing completely unfathomable.