The Other Woman(9)

He considered it for a moment, and rubbed at the bristle on his chin. ‘She’s like any mother, I suppose. A homemaker, peacemaker, fiercely loyal and protective of her children. I hope I offer the same loyalty in return. I won’t hear a bad word said about her. She’s a good woman.’

If I wasn’t already feeling the pressure of needing her to like me, his comment compounded it even further. And God forbid, if I didn’t like her, I already knew I was on my own. I had to make this work for both our sakes.

I was thankful when Will Smith’s ‘Summertime’ came on the radio, and we both sang it, word for word, until the line, ‘the smell from a grill could spark off nostalgia’.

‘It’s not “grill”.’ He let out a laugh. ‘It’s “girl”!’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’ I retorted. ‘Girl? The smell from a girl sparks off nostalgia? They’re at a barbecue, they’re not going to have sausages sizzling on the rack and comment on a passing girl’s aroma, are they?’

He looked over at me as if I was mad. ‘What kind of grill smell would spark off nostalgia?’

‘I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation. Everyone knows it’s grill.’

‘We’ll google it when we get to Mum’s.’

I liked the way he said ‘Mum’s’, rather than ‘my mum’s’. It made me feel more included. ‘This Smooth Radio is a revelation,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have your mother down as a fan of Big Willie Style. Who knew?’

His face changed and a chill filled the car. ‘That’s my mother you’re talking about,’ he said, an edge to his voice. ‘I don’t think that’s very appropriate, do you?’

I laughed, assuming he was playing me along. Though as I watched his features change from soft to pinched, I should have sensed that it wasn’t a joke.

‘Ooh, don’t go getting on your high horse.’ I chuckled, waiting for his face to crack, but it remained taut.

‘You’re being disrespectful.’

I suppressed a giggle. ‘Christ, I was just—’

‘You were just what?’ he snapped. He indicated over to the slow lane and my chest tightened as I played out the next few minutes in my head. I could see him turning around at the next exit. Me being left on the pavement outside the flat, whilst he sped off. How had we gone from joking around, to him rearing up like this? How had it all gone so horribly wrong in such a short space of time?

His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. I reached across and gently placed my hand on top of his. ‘I’m sorry,’ I offered, though I didn’t really know what I was apologizing for.

‘Do you want to do this or not?’ he said, his voice softening. ‘’Cause we can just cancel if you’re not ready . . .’

He made it sound like I was the subject of some kind of test. Perhaps I was.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly. I didn’t want my voice to sound so conciliatory, but I was so shocked I couldn’t help it.

He flicked the radio over to Kiss FM and we drove the rest of the journey in silence.





4

‘I always vowed I wouldn’t be the kind of mum that would do this, but just let me show you this one.’

Adam groaned as his mother flicked through the large, maroon leather-bound photo album resting on her knee.

‘Oh, stop moaning,’ she chastised. ‘You were the cutest baby.’

She patted the floral fabric of the seat beside her on the sofa, and I sat down.

‘Look here.’ She pointed. ‘That’s Adam and James in our garden, back in Reading. There’s thirteen months between them, but you can’t tell them apart, can you? They were such good babies. All the neighbours would say what bonny faces they had, and you’d never hear them cry. They were perfect.’

I looked up at Adam, who had tutted and wandered over, hands in his pockets, to the bookcase in the corner of the room. His head tilted to one side as he read the spines of the twenty or so albums gracing the shelves, each carefully documented by year.

‘It’s lovely to have so many photos,’ I commented. ‘Ones that you can really look at.’

‘Oh, you’re so right, dear. Nobody even prints them anymore, do they? They just take them on their phone things and probably never look at them again. Such a shame. This is the way photos should be displayed.’ She stroked the plastic film that separated her from the photo of a beaming four-year-old Adam, proudly holding a fish, albeit a tiddler, aloft. A man grinned into the camera lens from behind.

‘Is that Adam’s father?’ I asked, tentatively.

Adam had apologized for snapping at me earlier, but I still felt on edge. I’d never seen that side of him before. I wondered if I’d been ‘inappropriate’ by asking about his father, but he didn’t turn around to face me. He stayed stock-still, shoulders set.

There was a momentary pause before his mother answered. ‘Yes,’ she choked. ‘That’s my Jim. He was such a good man, a real pillar of the community. “Here come Pammie and Jim”, everyone would say, wherever we went. We were the perfect couple.’

Her chest began to heave and she quickly pulled out a hanky from her cardigan sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ she said, as she blew her nose. ‘It still gets to me now, all these years later. So silly of me, but I can’t help it.’