Don’t You Forget About Me(77)

‘Nothing wrong with enjoying a bit of slap and tickle,’ Nana Hogg says. ‘If I still had her physique I’d be putting myself about a bit too.’

‘Right, that’s enough,’ Geoffrey stands up, makes a fuss of collecting his jacket from the coat stand in the hall. We listen to this, Mum motionless. Her instinct is to side with Geoffrey, yet even she’s got qualms.

He lets himself out and sits in his car, fully visible through the bay window, engine running, passenger side door thrown open ready for Mum to obediently scuttle out after him.

‘Should I go out and speak to him?’ Esther says to Mark, and even Mark shrugs.

Nana Hogg knits serenely through it.

‘Mum,’ I say, turning to her. ‘Don’t do as he says. He’s been a bad shit. Let him sweat on it for a night and go back tomorrow.’

‘She’s right,’ Esther says.

Mum looks at us, looks out of the window at Geoffrey, chews her lip. He slams the door shut, the tail-lights blaze, and with a squirt of gravel, he goes. Mum says the very last thing I’d expect.

‘Georgina, have you got any cigarettes?’





31


We stand quivering with cold in Esther’s garden, smoking menthols that Esther managed to unearth from the back of a cupboard. Being unable to provide Mum with Marlboro Lights is not a way I thought I’d fail her.

‘I’m so sorry you had to find out about Dad like that, Gog,’ Esther says, gripping her elbow.

‘Oh, Esther, I knew,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know you two knew. How did you know each other knew?’

‘I saw Dad with her when he was supposed to be at Graham’s. I was with my friends and he was coming out of Atkinson’s, they were holding hands. I came home and told Mum. I was about ten.’

That long.

‘I knew anyway,’ Mum says. ‘From almost the start. He thought he could come home smelling of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and I wouldn’t notice. Silly sod.’

‘How did you find out?’ Esther says to me.

‘I caught Dad …’ Hmm. Best still be careful, ‘making plans to see a woman on the phone, the first weekend I was home from university. We had a huge fight about it, right before he died. I thought I should keep it to myself. Given Dad was gone anyway.’

‘Here’s us, thinking we had to keep it from you, at any cost. You were always so close, you had Dad on a pedestal. We didn’t want to knock him off,’ Esther says.

‘Thank you,’ I say, frowning. This is an adjustment, the idea they protected me.

Mum blows smoke out in a long plume. It’s so bizarre seeing her with a fag. I knew she dallied in her twenties, but she gave up when she got pregnant with Esther and never started again.

‘Grace, her name was. They were on and off for ten years. Met her at work. Wouldn’t give her up,’ Mum says. ‘She never married so was there at his beck and call.’

‘Well. What utter bastardy,’ I say. ‘To you and her. I don’t like what she did but I bet she thought they were in love and Dad might leave.’

‘I didn’t think you’d think that way,’ Mum says. ‘I thought you might blame me, for making him unhappy.’

I love my mum, but sometimes it does seem incredible we share DNA.

‘Why on earth would I blame you? It’s not your fault if he cheated on you.’

Mum nods. ‘I’m still glad you didn’t know. Caused a lot of tension for you, didn’t it?’ She nudges Esther.

Esther nods, scuffs her shoe on the ground. ‘It was hard to see him in the same way.’

I readjust my perception of Esther’s teenage hauteur, her exasperation with me and my closeness with Dad, and some of the slammed doors.

‘Why is Geoffrey spraying the information around all of a sudden?’ Esther says. ‘What gives him the right? All we said was we were going to the grave, not erecting a statue.’

‘He gets jealous, I think,’ Mum says.

‘Of a dead person,’ I scoff, and then consider I might be something of a hypocrite, given the sensations I felt looking at the late Niamh.

‘I know he can be difficult, but I have to be careful, girls. He’s the one with the finances.’

‘Mum, loads of equity in that house is yours,’ Esther says. ‘You’re not powerless. Tell him to sort himself out.’

‘It’s not that easy.’

‘I’m not saying it’s easy but you can’t let him walk all over you.’

‘We’ll back you up, Mum,’ I add.

‘That’s very kind but you’ve both got lives to lead of your own, I can’t be a burden.’

‘You’d hardly be a burden!’ I say, suddenly feeling tearful, like I can’t quite swallow around the lump in my throat. I can’t remember a time when it’s felt so sisterly between the three of us.

‘Always a spare room here,’ Esther says, clasping Mum’s shoulders.

For the first time, I feel the true uselessness of my skintness. I am not the same sort of help myself, whether I like it or not.

‘We should go in, the food’s ready,’ Esther says, with a look at Mark who’s waving through the kitchen window.

Mum catches my sleeve, as I stub my fag out under my boot.