River Deep (30 page)

Maggie stared at the chain-link fence behind Pete’s head, hoping she could stall the confusion of tears she could feel gathering there.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re right. A bit of summer madness …’ She paused, determined not to be the victim again. ‘But maybe it was what we needed – you know, because it helped us realise how we really feel about Christian and Stella. You’re a nice kisser, Pete, but, well … I love Christian.’ Maggie hadn’t expected him to look so crestfallen at her words. After all, they’d hardly sounded real or heartfelt even to her.

Pete struggled to adjust to the new slant on their rollercoaster friendship. Even if Maggie had just more or less mirrored his own thoughts, he found it was difficult to think of just ‘knowing’ her, without the kind of intimacy they had touched on with that kiss.

‘We’re still mates though, aren’t we?’ Pete said, ‘And I don’t mean that in a false way, the way people do when they don’t want to see each other again. I’d miss you,’ he finished simply.

‘Of course!’ Maggie said awkwardly. ‘Of course we are. You must let me know how you get on. At your interview, and, I mean, over the next few weeks I’ll be very busy with The Fleur, but I’ll see you around, I’m sure!’ She sounded harder than she meant to, angry almost. She just didn’t want him to see her cry again, not when she didn’t know why she wanted to cry any more. For so long she’d wanted to cry over Christian, but now she realised that even if he walked round the corner and into her arms right now, she would still want to cry.

‘OK,’ Pete said, and kissed her awkwardly on the cheek. ‘So I’ll see you around then?’

Maggie nodded. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘See you.’

They turned away from each other and began walking home.

Pete bent his head and shoved his hands as far as he could into his pockets as he walked. Today had made him realise the very last thing he had expected. As soon as he got home he logged on to the Internet and began an email to Stella. He had to bring this whole mess to a head once and for all. He had to get his own life in control again and find out where he stood. The trouble was he wasn’t sure where to begin.

Maggie opened her eyes and gazed at the sun-bleached face of Jason Orange. He had always been her favourite.

‘Will I still be waking up here in the
Blue Peter
time capsule in another five years, Jason?’ she asked him bleakly. ‘I mean, The Fleur might have made it into
The Good Pub Guide
and got an AA rating, and I could still be here in this ten-by-six hellhole looking into your eyes and wondering, after all these years – why did you get a Mohican? You were in a boy band, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Love?’ Maggie heard her mum’s anxious voice on the other side of the door. She looked at the clock. It was only just gone eight. What had she done to deserve this honour?

‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m up – come in.’ Maggie sat up and pushed her hair out of her eyes as her mum opened the door, a mug of tea in her hand.

‘I thought you might like this,’ Marion said, extending the cup out to her daughter and sitting on the edge of the bed.

There was a long pause as Maggie sipped the hot tea.

‘Well, we haven’t done this in years, have we?’ Marion said as Maggie eyed her over the rim of the steaming mug.

‘We haven’t done this ever, have we?’ Maggie said, perhaps a little abruptly.

Marion didn’t reply. She looked around the room and smiled to herself as if remembering something Maggie had long forgotten. She patted Maggie’s legs under the duvet.

‘I’m worried about you, love. I’m worried that all this is too much for you right now. To have the pressure of this place on your shoulders so soon after you and Christian have broken up … You always convince the world you’re so strong, but we’d all understand, you know, if you wanted a break. After all, the pressure’s off with the bank, and if you wanted to travel for a few weeks maybe––’

Maggie cut across her mum. ‘I think I’ve travelled enough, don’t you?’ she said, sounding petulant and accusing. Maggie regretted her words instantly. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. It’s just that travelling is the last thing I need to do. I need to be here, focusing on this place. It’s all that’s keeping me going!’ Maggie tried to make it sound like a joke, but she knew her mother must have heard the same desperate edge in her voice that she had.

‘Maggie …’ Marion paused, trying to collect her thoughts. ‘I know that I’ve made you angry a lot of the time. I know you think I haven’t been there for you, haven’t been the right kind of mum for you.’

Maggie shifted uncomfortably and looked longingly at the door.

‘You have!’ she said, hopeful that the conversation might end right there.

‘No, no, I haven’t,’ Marion persisted, and Maggie sighed inwardly. ‘My own mum, your nanna, was the old-fashioned kind of mum. She created this world of order and rules for me and I – well, I hated every minute of it. As soon as I was old enough I wanted to get out there, get out of endless rows of identical houses filled with identical families. I couldn’t wait to get out of school and explore the world.’

Marion smiled wistfully. ‘It seemed like it was a different place then, Maggie, it seemed new and full of optimism. We really believed, your father and I, that we could change things, make the world a better place. That we stood a fighting chance. I gave you and Jim the childhood I wanted for myself. I thought if you two had the freedom to find your own path you’d both be better people for it, I thought you’d be happier than I was as a child. I know how much you hated it when we travelled, and I know how disappointed you were with The Fleur when we first arrived. I should have tried to talk to you then, but I thought you’d find your own way to happiness.’

Maggie rolled her eyes and, seeing her, Marion flinched.

‘You felt,’ she continued, ‘that I should have been there for you more as a child and maybe I should have been, because … because then maybe you’d talk to me now when you’re so very unhappy. Maybe we’d be friends now instead of just … relations. I got it wrong, Maggie. I’m sorry.’ Marion picked up Maggie’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry that I let you down, but I’ve always loved you, every moment – please remember that.’

Maggie withdrew her fingers, set the mug of tea on the floor and got out of bed.

‘Mum!’ she said awkwardly, trying to contain the sudden fury her mother had inspired, ‘I’m fine, really fine! Honestly, what’s brought all this on?’ She opened the lid of her suitcase and looked for something to wear, secretly wishing she could climb into it and zip it shut behind her.

‘I heard you crying when you came in last night. We all did. You were crying for a long time, Maggie. Sobbing. You don’t seem fine …’ Marion’s face was a picture of dismay. ‘I wish you’d talk to me, sweetheart. I wish you’d let me help you.’

Maggie shut her suitcase lid with a bang, and hastily pulled on her jeans and a vest top.

‘Look, I’m fine, OK, I’m fine. I’ve never needed you to help me before, and I don’t need it now. I’m very grateful that you had me back here and I’m really glad to be able to help with The Fleur. Really glad. But let’s not pretend we’re best friends, OK? Just because I’m here now, Mum, I don’t expect anything more from you than usual. You don’t owe me anything, least of all your pity.’

Maggie picked up her bag and keys and headed down the dusty corridor, down the dark stairs, and through the empty bar. Only when she was out on the street did she pause for breath and wonder where her anger had come from. And who, really, she was angry with. Pushing her disquiet to the back of her mind, she started walking.

If she had stayed a moment longer she would have seen Marion’s periwinkle-blue eyes fill with tears.

Sarah was not best pleased.

‘This is not a picnic,’ she said again, despondently.

‘Yes it is!’ Sam said excitedly. ‘It is!’

‘No, darling, a multipack of Hula-hoops and four cans of coke is not a picnic. You just think it is because Aunty M has given you a can of hyperactivity for breakfast. I know, why don’t you go and work some of it off on the climbing frame?’

Sam whooped with simple joy and raced at speed over to the children’s play area. Sarah looked at Maggie over the top of her sunglasses. ‘Please tell me again why we are having our picnic at nine-thirty in the morning? Without a blanket, or a basket, or any proper refreshment? Without so much as a pic or a nic?’

Becca giggled and rolled her eyes. ‘Because Aunty M is bonkers, Mum, and for some reason you always seem to go along with her.’ She fitted her set of headphones over her ears and went through the small selection of CDs she’d brought with her.

‘Out of the mouth of girls with “babe! written on their T-shirts …’ Sarah said pointedly. ‘One minute I’m in bed thanking the Lord God for my one day of rest and that Sam is still sleeping, and the next you’re banging my door down, shouting like a demented banshee and demanding we go out straightaway. Not in an hour, not in ten minutes, not after we’ve been to the shops, but now. It’s not really what I had in mind, mate.’

Maggie looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I had a huge argument with my mum. Well, I argued and she just sat there looking all pathetic. She just drives me crazy, trying to be all caring and sharing
now
, thirty years too late! And last night – well, last night I went out for a drink with Pete and he accidentally kissed me and it me made me go all strange and now I don’t know …’

‘What?’ Becca ripped the headphones off her ears and stared at Maggie. ‘You kissed Pete?
You
did?’ She looked appalled and Maggie winced. She’d forgotten that Becca was in love with Pete, and she’d rather hoped that Becca had forgotten too. She also didn’t like the look of utter disbelief on Becca’s face that it was possible that Pete should stoop so low as to kiss frumpy old her.

‘I thought you were listening to Christina Aguilera!’ Maggie looked at Sarah. ‘It’s a long story, but basically we were talking about what life might be like if we didn’t still love Stella and Christian, and he flipped a coin and it came up tails but then he kissed me anyway and it’s made me go all crazy.’

Sarah looked at her. ‘Well, you told me you were over Christian, so what’s the problem? The guy’s so-called fiancée doesn’t appreciate him or she’d be here, not thousands of miles away. Go for it. I would in a heartbeat!’

Becca howled.

‘Mum! That is
so
disgusting!’ she protested. ‘Pete doesn’t want to snog either of you two old bags. He wants a younger woman, someone like me.’

‘Not if he doesn’t want to get arrested, he doesn’t,’ Sarah said sternly. ‘Now shush. Go and help Sam on the climbing frame or something.’ All three of them looked over at Sam, who had hooked up with another boy from school and turned the slide into an Alton Towers ride. He was having a sugar-fuelled whale of a time, and the last thing he needed was Becca cramping his style. ‘Or listen to your music,
very loudly
. Maggie and I are talking.’

Becca huffed and pouted as she put her headphones back on and made a point of showing her mum she was turning up the volume.

‘Any other mother would take an interest in their daughter, not encourage her to rupture her eardrums,’ she grumbled as she picked up Sarah’s copy of
Company
and, distancing herself a few feet from the adults, lay on her back and began searching the problem pages, holding the magazine above her to shade her from the sun.

Sarah waited for a few moments and then said. ‘Oooh, look, there’s Justin Timberlake! Naked!’ Becca didn’t so much as flinch.

‘Right, now we can talk, she’s off in la-la land. So like I said, you are over Christian, he is over you, and you like this Pete bloke and he seems to like you. He’s fit, you’re not bad for your age. Why not go for it?’

Maggie drew her knees up under her chin and drew a figure of eight in the grass. It was only a little further up the park that she and Pete had sat on the ridge of the hill and gazed at the stars. The evening had seemed so innocent at the time; now the memory throbbed with resonance.

‘I lied, sort of,’ she said.

Sarah let her head drop to the ground with an audible thud.

‘I knew it! Lied about which part?’ she asked, looking up at the sky.

‘Well, when I saw you on Friday I hadn’t given up on Christian. I hoped that when he’d thought about it he’d realise he wanted me and not Louise, so I lied about that. And then Pete and I went for the walk and we seemed to understand each other. We seemed to know
perfectly
how each of us felt. We sort of decided to help each other out …’ Skipping the part about Louise, Maggie told Sarah, through gritted teeth and half-closed eyes, about their plan to go to The Drinking Den, ending with the kiss and its confusing aftermath. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ she finished.

Sarah remained stock-still and silent, her eyes hidden behind her shades.

‘Are you still awake?’ Maggie asked eventually.

‘Yes, but I’m just tying to think of something to say to you that won’t wreck our friendship for ever,’ Sarah said mildly. ‘Give me a moment, OK?’

Maggie rocked on her heels and watched Sam and his friend swoop in and out of the swings, their arms outstretched like wings. Becca had dropped her magazine over her face completely. Her chest rose and fell evenly: she was probably asleep.

Sarah sat up.

‘OK,’ she said in an even tone, removing her sunglasses. ‘Maggie, I love you. God knows why I do, but I do. I don’t want to see you hurt and I don’t want to hurt you, but Maggie, you’ve let things go too far, much too far. I don’t know, maybe it was all those years playing prim housewife and secretary to that arsehole you’re supposed to love but in any case now you’ve gone to the other extreme and it’s
because
I love you that I’m telling you this.

‘One: When are you going to get over yourself about your mum? Jesus Christ, don’t you know how lucky you are to have a mum that cared for you so much she turned her whole life upside down to try and make you happy? She stood by, smiling on as you did your own sweet thing, and she was always there for you. Wasn’t it your mum who found the cash when you got into debt at university? Wasn’t it your parents who stood there with tears of pride in their eyes when you graduated? Wasn’t it them that took you back in without a second’s thought when, after years of more of less ignoring them, you needed their help? Think about it – you knew they’d take you back in; you didn’t even have to ask them. I’m serious, Maggie. I’d do anything to have a mum that cared for me like yours does. You’ve got to stop being so selfish and start seeing everything you’ve got!’