Just The Way You Are(8)
‘Why on earth couldn’t you read?’ Mum asked. I gave her a sharp glance. I’d told her to ask, but she could have phrased things more tactfully.
‘I mean, you’re clearly an intelligent woman!’ Mum added, before taking a flustered bite of her bread that forced her to continue with her mouth full. ‘Creating a quality garment without a pattern takes a lot of skill.’
‘Thank you.’ Karina nodded. ‘Ollie helped me get diagnosed as severely dyslexic last year. Before that, I had always been diagnosed as stupid. I’m certain Mr Rivers married me on that basis, hoping for a compliant little wife who would be grateful to clean up his mess, cook his dinners and stroke his ego without asking questions. If people repeat often enough that you’re useless, eventually you accept that there’s no point even trying. It was only once he died, and I had no choice but to try that I found ReadUp.’
‘Well, at least you got there in the end,’ Mum offered, starting to clear the plates away.
‘That depends on what you mean by “there”,’ Karina said. ‘I still struggle with forms, and computers are like another foreign language. Living alone is not easy.’
‘You don’t have any children?’
Karina smiled wryly. ‘I’m not thoughtless enough to bring children into a loveless marriage.’
By the time we’d finished the pavlova, I’d lost count of how many times Mum had said, ‘Isn’t this lovely!’
As Karina shrugged into her coat, she turned to Mum and took her hands. ‘Thank you for welcoming me into your home, Tina. In these wonderful few hours I feel I may have found a friend. And, to be honest, I am in great need of one. I do hope we can see each other again.’
Mum flushed pink with pleasure as she nodded her agreement, too emotional to reply.
‘Next time, I will bring dinner.’ Karina gave me a wink, and left.
At breakfast the following day, I decided it was worth sowing another seed. I took a fortifying swig of coffee and cleared my throat.
‘I thought we might have Karina over more often, if that’s okay with you. Make it a weekly thing?’
‘Oh?’ Mum glanced up from buttering her toast.
‘As she mentioned, it’s been tough, living alone. She could really do with some support with admin and forms and things. Maybe we could help? I know you understand what it’s like, and at least you had Aunty Linda and Uncle Geoff. Her whole family are in Europe.’
There was a drawn-out silence, where I wondered for one nerve-wracking moment if I’d pushed too far.
Mum took a bite of toast, chewed and swallowed. ‘I was thinking that maybe she should come along to the Buttonhole. That pinafore was exquisite, but fancy not being able to follow a pattern! I might have to put on a couple of sessions for her.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘I’ll ask next Wednesday if she’d be interested.’
‘Good idea.’ I smiled casually, while inside relief danced the conga up and down my ribcage.
4
Six weeks later, the first week in May, I picked up the keys to my Dream House. With pounding heart I spent an afternoon stepping through the stillness of unlived-in rooms with Steph, as we planned and pictured where my current possessions and the items I still needed to buy would go. I’d learnt how to use a sewing machine before I could read, and had already picked out the material to run up curtains and cushions. The previous owners had left behind the furniture they’d purchased before the big win, so I had a red checked sofa and end tables in the living room, and a kitchen table repurposed from an old barn door, along with matching chairs. Upstairs, there were plenty of fitted storage units, but the sagging double bed in the main room would have to be replaced.
Steph had brought a bottle of fizz and two plastic wine glasses, and she insisted we sat in the kitchen and raised a toast to hopes and dreams for the future.
‘Don’t worry about driving home, it’s non-alcoholic,’ she said, pouring me a second glass.
‘Of course.’ Given her parents’ car-crash relationship with alcohol, Steph had never drunk.
As soon as we’d taken the first sip, Steph got out her laptop. ‘Right, now that this is officially happening, it’s time to get some ground rules in place.’
‘What?’ The steely look in her eye made me wish that the bubbles contained some alcohol after all.
‘I know you, Ollie Tennyson, and I also know how tough it is to break habits formed at an impressionable age.’ Steph was a social worker in children’s services, acting as protector and advocate for children whose parents were either unwilling or unable to do so. She was amazing at her job, but it was somewhat irritating when she started applying the significant psychological expertise amassed over the years to me. ‘You’ve spent twenty-nine years trying to please your mum at the expense of your own wants, needs or opinions. We need to make sure that you don’t prise yourself off her only to reattach to the next available person looking for someone to dominate.’
‘You make me sound like a limpet or something.’
‘You said it, not me. Anyway, my point is this. Until the Dream List is complete, you need a No-Man Mandate.’
‘A what?’
‘You need this time to focus on you, for once. Like I said, to give yourself time and space to practise becoming your own woman, so that by the time the list is complete you can start dating knowing what kind of life you want, and what kind of woman you are, so that you don’t readapt yourself to what someone else happens to want.’