I Owe You One: A Novel(16)

I stand on the landing to dry my hair, wrapped in a towel, because there’s more space and a big mirror. And I’m pausing between blasts when a sound catches my attention from downstairs. It’s Jake, talking.

Our house isn’t huge, and the walls and floors are pretty thin. So although I can’t hear exactly what Jake is saying in the kitchen, I can pick up on how he’s saying it. He’s talking on and on, and nobody’s interrupting him, and I suddenly feel suspicious. I hurry downstairs, still in my towel, and now I can hear Jake properly, saying in his smoothest drawl, “As I say, it’s an amazing opportunity, and the oil tastes out of this world. But I don’t want to bother you with the details, Mum; you’re busy enough. So shall I just put in an order? Ten bottles?”

What?

I’m breathing furiously as I reach the bottom of the stairs. He deliberately got me out of the way; he deliberately chose a moment when Mum was distracted …

Shit. I’ve dropped my towel.

I hastily wrap it around myself again and approach the kitchen.

“Mum!” As I burst in, my chest is rising and falling. “About this olive oil …” The ravens are flapping around me, but I’m trying desperately to ignore them. “I’ve already talked to Jake, and I … I really don’t think …”

Oh God, my voice has gone wobbly again. My courage has disintegrated. I loathe myself.

“It’s nothing to do with you, Fixie,” says Jake, glowering at me.

“Yes, it is.” I glare back at him.

“Jake. Fixie.” Mum’s calm voice cuts through the atmosphere. “You know I’d never order a new product without seeing the details. Show me, Jake.”

“It’s your party!” Jake is obviously trying to sound jovial. “You don’t want to see all that right now—”

“I do, love,” she says pleasantly. “Hand it over.”

“Right. OK,” says Jake at last. He hands Mum a sheaf of papers and we both stand waiting while she flicks through them. I see her reach the price list and I see her eyes snap in shock.

“Too expensive, love,” she says, and hands the papers back to Jake. “Way too expensive. Not for us.”

“They’re aspirational,” begins Jake. “They’re a different kind of product.” But Mum shakes her head.

“Our aspirational is a bottle of edible glitter. Not this.”

“Mum, don’t set your sights so low,” says Jake cajolingly. “People buy this kind of stuff! They really do. At Harrods—”

“Maybe they sell all sorts at Harrods,” Mum cuts him off calmly. “But put olive oil on our shelves for a hundred pounds and it won’t just not sell, it’ll upset people. It’ll offend them.”

Now she says it, I realize she’s right. I can see Vanessa striding through the shop, brandishing a bottle, saying, “You’re charging a hundred pounds for this? That’s daylight robbery!”

“But—”

“No, Jake.” Mum interrupts him as crisply as she did when he was ten and using grown-up bad words. “Enough. My answer’s no. Your dad would have said the same.”

When Mum invokes Dad, that really is the end of the discussion. Jake shoots me a look, as though this is all my fault, but I don’t care. I just feel relieved. And foolish. How did I ever think that Jake would hoodwink Mum? She’s Mum. She runs the ship.

“I’ll go and finish my hair,” I say, and Mum looks up. She runs her eyes up and down me and I don’t know what she sees, but she suddenly gives me one of her special, warm, encouraging smiles.

Whenever Mum smiles, lines appear all over her face. They stretch like sunrays from her eyes; they score her cheeks and mark out her forehead in deep creases. Grief brought extra lines to her face. I saw it happen. And maybe some people think the lines are ugly, but I see love and life in every one of them.

“Why don’t you ask Nicole to do it with her special curler?” she says, and shoots Nicole a look.

“Oh,” says Nicole indifferently, looking up from her phone. “OK, fine, I’ll do it. Come upstairs.”

I know Mum wishes that Nicole and I were closer. She’d love us to be “there for each other,” like sisters in movies: hugging and confiding in each other and all that.

I mean, I try to be close to Nicole. I do. But it’s a bit like oil trying to be close to water. We just don’t take.

“And, Jake,” says Mum, as he reaches into the fridge for a beer, “before you have that, could you help me arrange these cupcakes? Mind you don’t mess up the icing, though.”

“Right,” says Jake, looking unenthusiastic as he puts down the beer, and I hide a smile. No one else could get Jake to put off drinking beer in order to arrange cupcakes. But then, no one else is Mum.





Five




Nicole’s room is like an Instagram page come to life. Everywhere you look there’s a photo of her, or a poster with a saying on it, or some styled accessory. I linger by the black-and-white montage of her wedding pictures and yet again sigh inwardly at how effortlessly lovely she is. What is it like to wake up every morning and be Nicole?

In all the photos, Drew is gazing at Nicole as though he can’t believe his luck. He’s tall and nice-looking, with thick brown hair and a frank, open face—but he’s not in Nicole’s league, looks-wise. Even his mum would admit that. I turn to the shot that they sent out with their thank-you cards. They’re under a tree and Drew looks besotted, while Nicole looks …