The Mother-in-Law(7)

I walk through double doors into the great room that feeds into a wide kitchen, centered on a huge granite island. Ollie and Diana are at the island with their backs to me, and appear to be arranging items onto a cheese board.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Diana is saying.

“It matters to me,” Ollie says.

“Well it shouldn’t.” Diana enunciates her words like a librarian or piano teacher, crisply and properly, not in the least uncertain. I pause in the doorway.

“Are you saying you don’t like her?”

Diana pauses for far too long. “I’m saying it doesn’t matter what I think.”

I pull back, out of sight, tucking myself around the corner. I feel as though I’ve been sucker punched. Of all the worries I’d had—that she wasn’t the mother-in-law I’d wanted, that she didn’t live up to my expectations—I hadn’t, narcissistically as it turns out, considered that she wouldn’t like me.

“Seriously, Mum? You’re not going to tell me what you think of Lucy?”

“Oh, Ollie!” I picture her shaking her hand like she’s swatting a fly. “I think she fine.”

Fine. I take a moment to digest that. I’m fine.

I search for an upside to fine, but I can’t seem to find one. Being called fine is like being told your outfit doesn’t make you look fat. Being called fine is like being the day-old sandwich that doesn’t give you food poisoning. Being called fine is like being the daughter-in-law that you didn’t want, but who could have, on balance, been worse.

“There you are, Lucy!”

I whirl around. Tom is at the mouth of the hallway, beaming. “Come and help me choose some dessert wine. I never know which one to go for.”

“Oh, I don’t really know much about w—”

But Tom is already dragging me down to a cellar with an astonishing array of wines. I fake my way through a dessert wine tasting session, grateful for the dark to hide the tears that I blink back.

To me, fine is as good as dead.





3: LUCY


THE PRESENT . . .

The police are in my kitchen. The guy cop, Simon, has found mugs and tea bags and milk without having to ask where they are, and now he’s making me a cup of tea. The female cop, Stella, is beside him, loading up the dishwasher with plastic plates and tipping the remnants of burger buns and ketchup into the rubbish.

Ollie is in the hallway, on the phone with Nettie. I can hear him explaining that he’s not sure . . . that he’s told her everything he knows . . . that he said he doesn’t know! . . . that she should just come over and talk to the police herself.

He is talking about Diana, I remind myself. Diana is dead. The fact that we never got along seems to vanish in the face of this, or at least soften a little, and I find myself gripped by a profound sadness. It’s as though Diana’s death has elevated her to a higher, almost noble status—making our past issues seem trivial, even petty. After all, no one gets along with their mother-in-law, do they? No one! My friend Emily’s mother-in-law, refuses to believe that Poppy is lactose intolerant (what a load of nonsense, they didn’t have all these “intolerances” in our day, she says.) Jane’s mother-in-law can’t fathom how she can use disposal nappies, especially after she’d gone to the trouble of purchasing Henry a box of cloth ones. Sasha’s mother-in-law talks incessantly about the inheritance she is apparently going to receive, making sure to remind her how lucky she should feel. Danielle’s mother-in-law is a gratuitous advice giver, Kena’s is an interferer. Sara is the only one who adores her mother-in-law, and that’s because Marg looks after Sara’s children two days a week, while also doing the family’s laundry, ironing and preparing homemade meals for the freezer. (Marg is what we call a mother-in-law unicorn.)

The kids are finally in bed. Unfortunately, the moment after the police told us about Diana, they decided to show up and demand our attention, so Simon and Stella kindly offered to hang around until they’d been fed and put to bed. (Simon had even gone as far as to serve up the burgers and chat to the kids while they ate!) It had been hell, having to wait for the details, but we couldn’t see any way around it. When it came to bedtime, Ollie took Edie (the easiest of the three to put to bed, requiring nothing more than a chorus of “Twinkle Twinkle,” her lambie and a pacifier) and I let him because, after all, his mother has just died. I took the older two, who, it seemed, had finally twigged that the police must have come to our house for a reason. At a loss, I told them they have come to ask us about a stolen bike.

“Whose bike?” Archie demanded as I piled the covers on him, trying to push him down with them. “Not mine?”

“No, not yours.” He popped up again.

“Harriet’s?” I pushed him back down. “She probably dumped it somewhere and is pretending it was stolen. She’s been wanting a new one. If she gets a new one, I want a new one.”

“No one is getting a new bike.”

He regarded me skeptically but remained in a supine position. I’m about to kiss his forehead when, bounce, he’s upright again.

“Do they think I stole the bike?”

“No, Archie.”

He settled after I managed to convince him that Harriet was not, under any circumstances, getting a new bike.