Mothers & Daughters (52 page)

Here came two horses now, both tall and glossy-brown, sleeker than their predecessors but making those same chomping, clodding, huffing noises, their breath coming in cloudy snorts. ‘Look,' I said to Matty. ‘They want to say hello.'

From my bag I extracted an apple and showed Matty how to offer it, palm flat. ‘So they don't accidentally bite your fingers,' I told him. I held the apple over the gate and the lead horse dipped his head, nostrils flaring. The next moment, the apple was snatched off my hand and crunched to slobbery pulp behind black rubber lips. The horse behind shuffled its hooves and tried to push nearer.

‘Shall we give his friend one?' I asked. Matty jigged up and down excitedly.

I loved the rippling sheen of their coats as they shifted on the hard, rutted ground, and the expressive way they swivelled their ears. I presented the second apple.

‘Horsey's hungry,' said Matty.

‘He is, isn't he? Goodness. What a big wet mouth. I think Nanna might need to wipe her hand with a tissue, don't you?'

‘Bleauh,' said Matty.

When Jaz was little, I used to pretend the horses were answering back. I'd a high voice for the grey one and a low voice for the black. It always made her laugh.

Matty pulled dead beech leaves off a twig, and I extemporised about the stable the horses slept in at night, and the people who came to feed them, and the wild animals who sometimes visited the field. I don't know whether he was listening or not. Snack time over, the horses drifted away to the side of the field and I was able to hoist him onto the top bar of the gate for a better view. I put my arm round his shoulders to steady him. ‘I won't let you fall,' I said.

Footsteps crunching behind us made me look round: it was Jaz, walking towards us in her long black winter coat with her
hands in her pockets. Her head was lowered, but I could see she'd scrubbed the make-up off her face and her eyes were pink and bare. She looked clean and young and penitent. I knew then it was going to be all right.

She came up against the gate, on Matty's other side. For a while all three of us stood there, watching the sky change from bright to dull to bright again. There was, when I looked across at her, something in her profile, in the earnest set of her jaw, that put me in mind of an old wartime propaganda poster.
Women of Britain Fight On!

Matty began to tell her in his garbled way about the horses and I stayed where I was, my hand against his back. I'm sorry, Mum, she would say, I will never take your grandson away from you again. I understand how you must have felt. I know you were only trying to help.

And I might explain how horrible it was to have to say goodbye to David, to have such a decent man think of me as a coward and an ingrate, and how I didn't blame her for it but that she needed to know what it had cost me to turn him away.

Not quite yet, though.

With infinite gentleness, she slid her arms round her son, drew him off the gate, set him back down on the ground, steadied him, and took his hand. I came up and took his other one.

Then, still without speaking, we began to make our way home, swinging Matty between us every few paces. Anyone watching would have thought we were the most normal family in the world.

CHAPTER 41

Photograph 839, Album Six

Location: Carol's spare bedroom

Taken by: Carol

Subject: Matty asleep in his cot with Dawg and the gourdrattle

I'm not naïve, whatever Jaz thinks. I know my albums are more than just memory prompts. I'm well aware I've been manipulating history to make it more upbeat. In that estimation, she was right, and I make no apologies for it.

But even edited narratives don't remain stable for long. Event overlays event, it's impossible to view any incident in isolation. Some hurt or failure here, a triumph there, the cutting of ties, a resolution or a reunion, every experience creates another version of the past. Sometimes I remembered Jaz's boast, how one day she would make an album which told the Real Truth. Good luck with that, I thought.

I took albums two and three and went through them, systematically removing all the photos that included my ex-husband. I scanned each one, cropped him out, and replaced it on the page with a Phil-free version. Although the idea of
a bonfire or tearing-up session was tempting, I found myself keeping the originals for the same reason I'd never excised him before: my marriage was too big a part of my history. But neither was I prepared any longer to give him an official place in my book of memories. You can't undo the past, but you can choose how you move on from it.

On the last page of album five I added, defiantly, a portrait of David, taken from one of the wedding shots. Twice I'd written to him since he'd left, once to say thank you again for all his support, and then to tell him some of the things I'd said to Jaz. He hadn't replied to either letter. Which was an answer in itself, of course.
You've made your bed
, went my mother.

Meanwhile.

Matty learned how to run, kick a ball, climb the stairs one at a time if I was behind him. He could speak in almost-sentences, and if you gave him a felt-tip and paper, he'd do you a circular scribble, holding the pen in his fist like a dagger. I bought a cardboard wallet to keep his pictures in, and Jaz laughed because I'd spent so many hours clearing the house and here I was, filling it up again.

Jaz and Ian met at a solicitor's office and agreed terms of contact and maintenance. Jaz filled in the first set of forms and submitted them. Ian returned the form that acknowledged receipt. Jaz completed an affidavit confirming his signature, and sent it back to court.

Dad caught another chest infection and needed antibiotics.

Moira changed the opening hours of the shop so we started at ten. Our rent went up. The main window had to be replaced after it got smashed by drunks.

Gwen at the gym handed in her notice to train as a firefighter.

Josh was in the local paper for saving a woman customer from choking.
Service with a Thump
said the headline, which
Laverne felt trivialised the incident. The woman wanted him entering for a Local Heroes competition, but Josh refused.

Connor went back into hospital, and came out again.

Dr Page and his wife had a baby girl called Amelia Catherine.

Dove at Beavers announced she was getting engaged.

I had an awful, awful dream about Andy Spicer.

Jaz had her hair cut short, like a boy's.

I went to strim the ugly dead reeds from round the pond, and there were already new green shoots coming up underneath. I cried for a little bit, but then I was fine.

Spring had been a long time coming. The crocus bulbs Matty and I planted in December had come up, flowered, and died away to a purple slime. I'd cleared out the winter bedding and installed lobelia plugs and primulas, snapdragons and petunias. All the shrubs I'd hacked back hard a few months before were flushing into leaf again. We watched a blackbird build a nest in Laverne's hedge, and we took in half a handful of frog spawn so we could see it developing. ‘I wish we'd had a pond when I was little,' said Jaz, watching a tadpole suck on a fragment of beef. She's never been good at identifying irony, for all she's clever.

Mostly she was up – more buoyant than she'd been for a year – but there were days she was as snappy and downbeat as ever. I had those too. When I knew she was going round to Phil's, for instance. I bore it, but I no longer bothered pretending it didn't get to me. This was the new understanding I'd reached with my daughter.

One warm May morning we were walking across the centre of Nantwich to deliver Matty to his dad.

‘You know Penny's back on the scene, do you?' said Jaz over her shoulder, as we cut through the lawn of St Mary's Church, me pushing the empty buggy behind them.

I think I might have stumbled; in any case, Jaz turned round and halted. Matty tugged at her hand but she ignored him.

‘Oh, Mum.'

‘It's all right.'

‘I shouldn't have said anything.'

‘No, really, it's all right. I should have guessed he'd go that way.'

She squatted to adjust Matty's coat. ‘I've told him he's a fool. Pen's moving her stuff back in, the place is a tip. You know, the daft thing is, they don't even like each other.'

‘So, why?'

‘Scared of being on his own, isn't he? It's pathetic. I'm not scared of living alone. You're not. The trouble with Dad is, he's never grown up.'

Pigeons stalked near us, curious and hopeful. I said, ‘Do you mind if we don't talk about him?'

‘Nope,' said Jaz, and stood up.

The market was on, so we took a stroll through that.

‘Need any more sheets?' I asked, pointing to the linen stall. ‘Or tea towels, dish cloths? Have you a pair of oven gloves? I'll treat you.'

She laughed. ‘I'm fine. In fact, I'd say I've got the flat pretty much as I want it. Well, aside from the décor, but I'm not shelling out for new wallpaper when I'm only renting. That would be mad.'

‘When you've your own place again, we can make it like a palace.'

‘I'm not rushing, Mum.'

As we walked past a stall selling carpets and runners, Matty spotted a sheepskin oval and broke free from his mother's grasp to bury his face extravagantly against the wool. We had to haul him away, with apologies. ‘Thank God he doesn't have a cold,' I said. ‘Then we'd have had to buy a snotty rug.'

Next door was a stand of baby clothes and equipment.

‘Did I tell you, I sent a parcel of Matty's old sleepsuits to Nick and Steph,' said Jaz, pausing to finger the little vests. ‘They'd hardly been worn, it seemed a shame to have them sitting in the drawer.'

‘You don't think you might be needing them again sometime?'

Immediately she dropped the giraffe bib she'd been examining. ‘Let's not even go there, Mum. Hey, I know what I meant to ask. How's Alice doing?'

‘She brought the baby round, little Connor. He's gorgeous. Except he's got this tracheostomy, this tube taped to his throat.'

‘Oh, God.'

‘He smiles, though. He's got a beautiful smile. Libby tickles him and he just beams.'

‘What does she think of her brother?'

‘Libby? She's very good. I was nervous about holding him, but Libby went, “He won't break, you know”. It's something she must have heard her mum say.'

‘And Alice?'

‘Tired to death, strung out. But getting on with it. Mind, I don't know if she has any other choice. He's scheduled for an operation when he's a bit bigger, and that should improve his breathing.'

‘Must be awful,' said Jaz, drawing Matty nearer and stroking his hair.

‘It's a tough road ahead, that's for sure.'

I thought of Alice sitting in my armchair, her face grown older than her years, older than mine somehow, yet how the dark shadows under her eyes melted away when she smiled down at her baby and he smiled back. A very different sort of family, with very different problems and tensions and struggles and fears, but as full of love and the possibility of ordinary joy
as the next. ‘Well, he's gorgeous,' I'd said to her, not because I felt I ought to say it, but because he was. ‘He is, isn't he?' she said, shining with pride. ‘And so is Libs.' And with her free arm she'd reached out and hugged her daughter, and I'd felt the brittle tension of all their gathered hopes, like a bright glass ball surrounding them.

‘What time is it?' asked Jaz. ‘Only I said I'd be in the park by eleven.'

‘We've still got twenty minutes,' I said. ‘Do you want to stick Matty in his pushchair?'

‘No. He naps better in the afternoons if he's had an active morning. See, I'm that considerate of my ex.'

The precinct was busy, but we weren't in a hurry.

She said, ‘You know, Ian's thinking of having counselling. He reckons his personality was subsumed by his dad, and that's why he has no confidence. He's decided the input of a professional might help.'

‘Oh, we're all failed parents now, aren't we?' I flashed. ‘For God's sake! Everyone's a victim. Alternatively, Ian could try taking full responsibility for his actions as an adult.'

Jaz eyed me, then let Matty pull her away to the centre of the square where a man was selling balloons. I was left on my own to stew. It took some deep breathing, and a run-through of my eight-to-twelve times tables before I was calm enough to catch them up.

‘All right, are we?' asked Jaz.

I ignored the tone. ‘What are Ian's plans for the weekend? Has he said?'

She nodded. ‘He always gives me a run-down of where he's going. I do the same for him, as much as I can. Making the point. So it's back to the house this afternoon, and then tomorrow he's taking Matty to one of these farm shops where they let you stroke the lambs and feed the chickens.'

‘He'll be in his element. I hope Ian takes some photos.'

‘Yeah.' Her hand went up to fiddle with her hair, but her new style was so short there was nothing to play with. Perhaps she was hoping to break a lifetime's habit. ‘What'll you be up to this weekend?'

‘The usual. Visiting Grandad, getting the food shop in. I want to price up fence panels because that section behind the shed's on its last legs, and I said I'd pop round and see Moira's new house, have lunch there.'

‘A packed programme?'

‘I shan't sit around and pine for Matty, if that's what you're worried about. I appreciate he needs time with his dad.'

She flashed me a grateful look. ‘It's hard, sharing him out.'

You're telling me, I thought.

We were making our way down Mill Street when she said, ‘Tell me to mind my own business, but did you ever hear again from David?'

‘Mind your own business,' I said pleasantly.