People LIke Her(32)

I decide not to mention any of this to my mother. From the very start, when I told Mum about the Instagram thing, her immediate response was to start listing all the things that could possibly go wrong. Was I sure it was safe? Was I sure it was not something we would later regret? What would happen if Coco wanted to go into politics one day? What if she resented our posting all these pictures of us when she got older? I pointed out that lots of people posted pictures of their families on Facebook. When I was a kid, I remember her always getting out books of photos of me when people came around. What if . . . ? “Enough, Mum,” I had to tell her eventually.

We always used to joke about our mums, Emmy and I—that you could not get two more different people if you tried.

My mum, Sue, is thoughtful and infuriating, kind and somewhat bumbling, careful not to impose on us but always keen to offer a hand if we need one. I can see why she gets on Emmy’s nerves sometimes. She gets on my nerves sometimes. She always seems to call at inconvenient times, and even after you’ve told her you’re right in the middle of something, she keeps on telling you whatever she’s telling you, right to the end. Sometimes I put the phone down and wander off into the next room and come back and pick it up and she hasn’t even noticed. She’s very bad at hiding when she disapproves of something or when the way we’re doing something with Coco isn’t the way she’d have necessarily done it.

Emmy’s Mum is a complete fucking nightmare.

Emmy

It’s always the mother’s fault, isn’t it?

But if you’re going to point the finger at anyone, really it should be my dad. He was the one who made pretending and twisting the truth an integral part of who we were as a family. He turned lying into an art form, hiding his sexual misdemeanors with such panache that it was impossible not to be impressed. He was smart, though, funny and magnetic. I wanted to be like him, so I kept his secrets, told his lies too.

Was he crossing his fingers behind his back when he promised to be with my mother for richer and poorer, till death do us part? I doubt he’d see it like that. He was just doing what I’d watched him do time and time again: saying what he knew the person he was with wanted to hear. Better to lie and be liked than be hated for telling the truth—that’s his general approach to life. He’s a shape-shifter, my father. A people pleaser. Until he gets caught out. Able to be anything anyone needs him to be. Apart from a decent dad or husband.

When my mother suspected he was shagging his secretary, he managed to persuade her that she was paranoid. I knew different, as I’d been dragged on secret Saturday-morning shopping trips to buy sexy underwear and perfume, my silence bought with Barbies and Haribo. When she suspected him of having an affair with a recently bereaved family friend, he spun her a story that he was just a shoulder to cry on. I, on the other hand, overheard the breathy late-night phone calls that strongly suggested other body parts were involved too.

So the drinking isn’t really Ginny’s fault. Perhaps she would have been a better mum if she’d married a doctor or a teacher. Or if she’d used her law degree, and her impressive but woefully underused intellect, for anything other than checking over the divorce settlement. But when you’re as beautiful as she was and marry a banker as rich and arrogant as he is, I guess you understand that contract too. Maybe you make a conscious choice to swap an actual life, one where your husband wants you to be happy, one where you have a right to complain when things aren’t okay, for a lifestyle—the cars, the clothes, the holidays. Maybe she went into it knowing that it was her job to stage-manage us all into playing the perfect family—and that she could never let the act slip, even with me.

I used to study the way my friends’ mothers acted with them, would consciously commit to memory all the hugs and kisses and family conversations over dinner at Polly’s house about the adventures they’d had that day. I don’t think I was jealous exactly, more an interested observer. I used to mentally file the best bits and construct a sort of Frankenstein’s mama in my head—one who booked ballet classes and drove me to piano lessons, who didn’t mind when I reached for her with grubby hands. Who was home every night to tuck me up in bed and kiss me on the forehead.

Even when Dad finally left Mum for a younger model, she couldn’t bear to tell anyone—even me—that life as we knew it was over. We just moved house and started again somewhere else. I suppose the cash helped ease the pain for her. I think she was probably happier without him. Was he happier without her? Who knows? I never saw him again.

I realize I have barely paused for breath.

“And how does that make you feel?” asks Dr. Fairs.

“I’m not sure it makes me feel anything,” I say breezily. “That was twenty-five years ago. I’m sure my dad’s fine. My mother seems to be having a perfectly nice time, what she remembers of it.”

“Would you say it was a happy home? Would you say yours is a happy one now?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, without hesitation. “Absolutely. Obviously it is never nice, being burgled, and knowing that someone has been through all your stuff and touched your things, but we’re insured, and it happens to everyone, doesn’t it, sooner or later? It just makes you a bit jumpier for a few days, a bit more aware of what a fragile little bubble it is you live in. I’m just thankful none of us were at home when it happened.”