Slightly Foxed (22 page)
Authors: Jane Lovering
Wednesday to meet you both."
"Girlfriend? What, Dominique? I thought he'd stopped
seeing her."
"Girl called Sarah." I took positive pleasure in knowing
something Alasdair didn't. "From Manchester, apparently.
183
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
Very pretty girl." This was pure assumption, but it was a fair
bet.
"Oh. Tamar hasn't mentioned—neither has he, come to
that. Well, I'll look forward to meeting her then. Now, if
there's nothing else?"
How come he made me feel as though
I'd
been the one
making the call? I hung up, mildly pleased that I'd managed
to score back a few I-know-something-you-don't-know points
in the Divorced Parents' Sunday League tables.
184
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
When I met Florrie from the London train she seemed to
have grown a couple of inches and she smelled different.
Exotic. My familiar-as-my-own-face daughter was suddenly
angular and foreign. "Good trip?" I eyed her outfit, not one
item of which I'd ever seen before.
"Pretty good, yeah." This was new too, the cool
offhandedness. "London is a wild place, there's so much to
do. So, what did I miss? Piers got a new flat yet?"
"No, but he's got a new girlfriend, apparently."
Florence stopped walking. I thought for a moment she'd
snapped the heel off her Red or Dead sandals. "
Piers?
" She
couldn't have sounded more surprised if I'd said the Pope.
"He told
me
he was sick to death of those brain-dead bimbos
always hanging round him, he was giving himself six months
celibacy to decide what he wanted. She must be really
something?"
I didn't know Florence knew words like celibacy. London
must have done her vocabulary good, if nothing else. "I don't
know. No one's met her yet."
Florence wheeled on her spike heel, her gypsy dress
flowing against her minimal curves with maximum effect. A
platform sweeper nearly drove his cart into the newspaper
stand. "Then I guess
I'll
have to find out all about it, won't I?
Are we taxiing home, only I'm really shattered and these
shoes are bloody killing me."
185
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
Given their pointed toes, pointed heels and very little
superstructure in between, I wasn't at all surprised but
refrained manfully from pointing this out. They certainly
looked spectacular with the frilled layers of her dress which
made her waist impossibly tiny and her B-cup bosom
incredibly bountiful. The taxi drivers were falling over
themselves to take us home. Luckily Florence didn't ask what
I'd been up to whilst she'd been away, but began a
commentary about how much better life was in London
compared to York. How much there was to do, how fantastic
the shops were. It even appeared that she'd visited a
museum or two.
Back at the flat, Florrie reverted to her normal at-home
persona, grabbing the phone and talking to her entire
collection of friends. I slumped down on the sofa. Although I'd
missed her, the flat seemed to shrink as soon as she came in,
the sound of another voice in another room pulling the walls
and ceiling towards me until the place became uncomfortably
oppressive.
I cupped my hands over my eyes and pressed, trying to
relieve the tiredness. My eyes felt like a couple of ripe boils
wrapped in sandpaper. Jace hadn't been in the shop so I'd
suffered a day of Simon's vigorous attention to detail without
the usual relief of being able to snigger about him behind his
back. Oddly though, when I'd asked Simon if I should phone
Jace to find out how she was and whether she'd be in
tomorrow, he'd come over all awkward.
"I should leave her for today," he'd said, eventually. "She'll
be in tomorrow, I'm sure." Which made me wonder. Did he
186
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
know what was up with Jace? Or did he not know, but care
even less, in which case, was her job safe? She'd certainly
been taking quite a lot of time off lately, usually with some
fairly feeble excuses. If she wasn't in tomorrow, I was ringing
her for sure and warning her.
A high-pitched shriek from Florrie made me jerk to my feet
and hurtle through her door. "What is it?"
She'd seen the letter from the vet, stuck to the side of the
fridge. It detailed treatment so far, and the cost. I was
keeping it so I could track how much I owed Piers. All the
sophisticated trappings of Florrie's London fortnight fell away,
and she was just a scared child crying in my arms, as I
explained my predicament over the world's scabbiest cat.
"Don't have Grainger put to sleep, Mum. Don't."
"We can't let him suffer, Florrie." I stroked her back. Under
the filmy dress I could feel the bones of her spine, vulnerable.
My daughter fragile for all her worldliness. She looked up at
me, her highlighted hair stuck to her cheeks, her eyes
washed free of the make-up and cosmopolitanism. She was
seven years old again, wanting me to make everything all
right.
"But he's always been a healthy cat, he can get over it.
The vet must think there's a chance or they'd have put him to
sleep. Straight off, no messing."
I didn't tell her that this had been the vet's first
suggestion. "I'll ring the vet's tomorrow, early. See when
they'll let us bring him home." I thought this was unlikely to
be any time soon, but my need to appear confident and in
charge stopped me from breaking down alongside her. It's
187
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
lesson one in the Mother's Handbook. Never let them see how
panicked you really are.
Florence sat up and wiped her eyes with her hand. "I
couldn't imagine life without Grainger, could you? Remember
that time he brought that rabbit in alive and left it in the
living room, and you had to catch it under the rubbish bin?"
I smiled back at her, but the thought of a catless house
made me remember the tabby body curled in Piers's arms,
which had triggered the guilt again. Now, with Florrie here,
that house in York seemed an interplanetary distance away.
That night in the summerhouse with Piers. A space seen
through alcohol, filtered through a dream.
We sat companionably for a while longer, chatting about
nothing very much. It was wonderful, amazing, my daughter
seemed to have matured into the kind of person I'd actually
want
to spend time with. I was congratulating myself on the
terrific job of motherhood which I'd clearly done, when her
mobile rang, and she turned instantly back into the sulky
child she'd been before.
"Yeah?" she demanded, snatching up the handset. "What?"
I rolled my eyes and got off the bed. "Yeah." Florence looked
at me over the phone, her tone a little softer now. "It was
great. Hey, what's this new girlfriend like? Mum told me
you'd—"
There was a moment's pause, and Florrie lifted the phone
away from her ear, stared at it, then pressed a button.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Dunno. Bad signal maybe?"
"Piers?"
188
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
"Yeah. I'll call him later." She shook her head briefly.
"Now, Mother dear." I paused in my attempts to leave the
room. "What about this
man
you've been hinting about the
last couple of weeks?"
"Man?"
"Tell you what, I'll make us some tea and you can tell me
all
about him." That was it. Proof positive that my real
daughter had been stolen away by the pixies and replaced by
a Stepford teenager. She went out of the bedroom, but
popped her head back around the door a second later. "Only
not the sex stuff. Cos that would just be
gross
."
Probably still the real Florence then.
I updated her on the Leo situation as best I could over tea.
I wanted to give her as true a picture of the man as possible
whilst all the time aware this could be a person she might be
forced into proximity with in the near future. Didn't mention
the poetry. I had the feeling that it would make him sound
too nerdy. I needn't really have worried. As soon as I
mentioned the ponies, she was all for moving down to Devon
on the next train south.
"Look, Florrie, Leo and I haven't even
discussed
moving in.
I think he likes his own space. After all, we hardly know each
other yet."
"But you would if he asked you, wouldn't you?"
"I don't know. I don't even really know how I feel about
him. He's a bit shy. Quiet."
"Yeah, but, Mum, you have to realise, your chances are
going to get less as you get older. I mean, you've still mostly
189
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
got your looks, and your body's
okay
, I guess. Maybe you
should go for it while you still can."
A little blunter than I'd been with myself, but echoing quite
a lot of my own feelings.
"And if he's got cash, you can always have plastic
surgery," Florence continued, practical to the end. "Right. I'm
going to call Piers," and she skipped off, leaving me with the
washing up and no doubt that this was
definitely
my real
daughter back.
I was settling down on the sofa with Iain Banks and half a
bar of fruit-and-nut, when Florence came wandering back
through, phone pressed tight against her ear. She began to
make herself a sandwich. "Yeah, I guess," she was saying,
"but he was so cool I couldn't turn him down."
I tried really hard not to listen and she was clearly trying
to change the subject.
"Why won't you tell me about
her
? What've you got to
hide? She's not a big ug, is she?"
My head whipped round. "You're not still talking to Piers,
are you?"
Florence flicked a dismissive finger at me and carried on
buttering bread. "Yeah, just the Old One giving me grief, you
know how they get. Look, you want to come over? You can
bring whatever-her-name-is if you like, we can go get
pizza..."
"Florrie! It'll be costing a fortune."
Wearily Florence lowered the phone from her ear. "That's
why I asked him over," she said, as though I was an idiot
190
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
child, then back into the phone, "Yeah, I'm going over to
Dad's tomorrow, probably see you then. Okay. Cheers."
"He didn't want to come?" I felt a bit downcast about that.
I'd been wanting to apologise to Piers for our falling out.
"Nah." Florence looked slightly puzzled. "Dunno why. He
got a bit weird when I asked him—you haven't said
something to him, have you?"
"Like what?" My eyes wouldn't focus. Oh God, was Piers
avoiding me? Was it something to do with Sunday night? No,
surely I'd offended him in the taxi, that was all. But what if it
wasn't
all? What if he'd let something slip, and now he
couldn't face me because he knew—shit. Paranoia.
"It's just that usually he's dead keen to come over here,
always on about how cool you are, how much he likes
hanging out with us."
"Maybe he's out with his new girlfriend and they want to
be—you know. Alone together."
"Well she'll be pretty pissed already. He's spent three-
quarters of an hour talking to me."
I felt itchy, edgy.
Was
Piers avoiding me? Seemed a rather
extreme reaction, considering. I had to know. "Have you
finished with the phone, Florrie? I've got a couple of calls to
make."
"I wanted to phone Jude."
"Use your mobile." Behind the safety of my bedroom door,
I flopped onto the bed and dialled Piers's mobile.
"Hey, Flo." Piers sounded bright, not conscience-stricken at
all. Neither did he seem reluctant to talk, or as though he'd
191
Slightly Foxed
by Jane Lovering
been dragged from the arms of his beloved to answer.
"What's up?"
"It's me," I said, in low tones. "Alys."
"Hey, Alys, then." A little of the brightness died, a guarded
edge creeping in. "Did you want something?"
"Just wondered why you didn't want to come over tonight."
I tried to keep the worry out of my voice, but even I could tell
there was a tremble in it. "You can bring Sarah. Obviously we
quite understand if you'd rather have a quiet night with her,
but Florrie would
so
like to see you—"
"I'll see her tomorrow at Ma's."
"Is everything all right?" A telling pause. "Piers? Have I
done something to—"
"No." I heard him sigh. "Look, it's okay. I'm not going to
say anything to anyone about the other night, you can trust
me on that one."
"Then?"
He sighed again. "I just thought—a bit of space, you
know? I mean, I've got things. You know, like,
things
."