The One Before the One (25 page)

It turns out he had some thanking to do too. Something I hadn’t expected.

We meet in a café in Battersea Square and I tell him about Toby, about Rachel and everything that’s happened. I tell him how sorry I am about calling off the wedding – and it’s only as the words come out of my mouth, that I realize I’ve never actually said them before. I’ve never told Martin I’m sorry – not about calling off the wedding, anyway. We’ve never really talked about that.

He sits and he listens. He looks relaxed and calm today, sitting in the sunny window, stirring his coffee. Then he says:

‘I loved you for so long, do you realize that?’

I am aware of the past tense. I
loved
you.

‘Do you remember the day we met? That soggy field in bloody Hebden Bridge? You despairing of Pippa coz she’d got drunk the night before and whined all the way round the orienteering course?’ I laugh at the memory. God, I was square. ‘I thought you were exquisite,’ he says. ‘There with your cagoule pulled tight and your little serious chin and the way you went all red in the face when people weren’t being as sensible as you liked.’

‘Bloody hell. I hope I’ve moved on.’

Martin smiles.

‘You were different, Caro. You didn’t follow the crowd or feel you had to rebel. I fell in love with you that day, and I stayed in love. I thought you were the girl for me and you broke my heart.’

‘Martin, I know I did.’

It’s taken me until now to be able to hear those words and not start to cry.

‘I never stopped hoping after you called off the wedding, you know. For the past year, I’ve kept thinking, maybe, just maybe … I longed for you. I clung onto every last hope that at some point, you’d change your mind. I thought perhaps if I did this, if I did that, if I helped you out with DIY and helped you with the Clark thing, you’d fall in love with me again, but now I know nothing I did would change your mind, you just didn’t love me any more and that’s no more your fault than mine.’

I smile, sadly.

‘I put you on a pedestal, Caro, you could do no wrong, but, you know what? I see now, that you’re just a human being – a lovely one – but just a human being and that you’re not perfect at all. In a way, you telling me about Toby, you having an affair with someone else’s husband – I was so shocked – but also, well, it made me fall out of love with you and I guess for that I’m grateful.’

‘Great,’ I say. ‘So you basically realized I am a deeply flawed human being with a very dubious morality.’

Martin laughs.

‘That about sums it up, yes.’

And then I laugh too, lean forward and kiss him on the cheek.

‘I’m sorry for breaking your heart. I’m sorry if I ruined your life …’

He rolls his eyes.

‘God, you really are an egomaniac, aren’t you?’ he says. ‘You haven’t ruined my life. My life’s only just starting.’

I’m coming back to myself. Bit by bit, I’m coming back. I’m still getting used to it. At first, it felt like something was missing until I realized that the something that was missing was Toby and Martin. It’s not like I’ve forgotten them – maybe you never forget the people you hurt and who hurt you, maybe they scar you for ever. Your battle scars. But I’ve let go, and things I haven’t thought about for so long, since before this summer and the affair, have started to creep back into my consciousness, like colour into a photograph: old friends – I’ve got back in touch with Pippa. My health, the news, who’s winning
The X Factor.
Normality has returned. My mind is mine again. But I’ve one last thing to tick off Lexi’s list. My mum – I need to see her.

So I’m driving north up the M1 – just me, my little Nissan and my shoddy car stereo that cuts out every other song and the rest of the time rattles and buzzes like a blue bottle. Normally, this would annoy the pants off me, have me shouting obscenities at the dashboard. Normally, I would have had to sort it out before I could contemplate a run to Sainsbury’s never mind a six hour drive to Harrogate.

But something strange has happened to me of late, a sense of calm has descended, a sudden ability to drive with a rattling
car stereo and sleep knowing there’s an inch of dust under the bed. I say ‘of late’ like it was gradual, but it was very definitely sudden. I woke up one morning, and there – it was like someone had turned off the noise, the earth had stopped quaking. For the first time in a long time I feel at peace in my own skin.

I take a swig of the Diet Coke resting precariously by the gear stick, turn the radio up and wind my window down, so that the breeze, warm as a hairdryer, whips my hair about my face. It feels good. It’s 5 September today – next week, it’s Lexi’s eighteenth birthday and then she goes back to Doncaster. The earth has had a whole summer to heat up and the landscape has that parched, hazy look of a painting by an old master – perhaps something by Vermeer – a sleepy scene depicting rural simplicity. Pale fields dotted with cows and the odd, verdant bush stretch out at either side of me. The poplars, like quills, lean in the breeze.

Then I pass Ferrybridge Power Station, smoke billowing from its four great cooling towers – a reminder, along with the telegraph wires criss-crossing overhead, that it’s 2009 and we have had the Industrial Revolution. Still, I know I’m on the home stretch once I get to Ferrybridge. Normally, it’s here that I start to get anxious at the prospect of a whole weekend at Mum’s, us two rattling around in that depressingly empty bungalow, lifting my feet so she can vacuum endlessly whilst making snippy comments about Dad.

This time, however, I don’t know, I’ve got a good feeling about it, like this visit might be different. There was something about her tone on the phone last night.

‘Get here early so we can have the whole day together, yes?’

This wasn’t like her at all. Normally, she doesn’t stipulate any conditions. It’s as if she’s just desperate for me to come at all and doesn’t want to risk it not happening by being
demanding, which I must admit has niggled me in the past. Why can’t she just say, ‘I’d
love
to see you’ rather than me having to read her mind? Detect her neediness. I might have been more ready to come if she’d been less scared of asking, but then, all my life, Mum’s been scared of most things.

And I’ve been a terrible daughter – not seeing your own mother for the best part of a year? I have a sudden urge to get there – to see my mum – and I cross into the fast lane and put my foot down.

I roll into Coppice Avenue – the quiet road of uniform dormer bungalows on the outskirts of Harrogate where I grew up, just after eleven thirty. Mum is standing barefoot in the driveway, waving.

I get out of the car and the quiet hits me. As does my mother’s outfit.

‘Well, that was pretty speedy, darling,’ she says, putting an arm around me and pulling me tight.

Darling?

She never uses terms of endearment; that was always Dad’s job. A job he took very seriously indeed with his honeybuns and his sweetpeas and his flowerpots and chicken pies. Secondly, she looks
great.
I swear to God, my mother looks hot. She’s had a warm brown colour put on her salt-and-pepper hair, which has been styled out of her usual ‘middle-aged mum short do’ into something that wouldn’t look out of place on Fiona Bruce. The elasticated blue trousers that always reminded me of operating theatre scrubs have gone and in their place is a stylish linen tunic in taupe – the sort you might buy in East or Monsoon – clinched in with a bronze belt, over a pair of leggings. My 57-year-old mother in a pair of leggings!

I look her up and down, amazed.

‘Mother, you look
fab!’

She beams, coyly.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Er,
yes.’
I shield my eyes from the sun so I can get a good look at her. ‘The whole thing, the hair and this top and these
leggings.
Hello. Legs. Mother!’

‘Well, I thought it was about time I made an effort.’ She sticks her leg out in front. ‘Roger in the newsagent’s said I had very shapely calves.’

‘And Roger’s not wrong,’ I say, marvelling at her, following her inside the house. ‘I wish I looked that great in a pair of leggings.’

The entrance hallway of my youth hasn’t changed since 1986 when we moved in: the thick beige carpet with the loud, red leaf patterns, the telephone table with the shell-shaped directory that you press and it pops open, something I’d do over and over again whilst on one of my marathon phone calls to Pippa (‘Get off that bloody phone! You only saw her last night!’ I can still hear Mum shouting from the kitchen now). The mahogany sideboard with Mum’s collection of ceramic frogs and the pictures of me and my brother, Chris, on our graduation days hanging above it. Chris looks quite presentable – if ponytails on blokes are your thing. I on the other hand look tragic. I’m wearing my glasses and my right eye looks like I’ve been punched repeatedly (the prospect of my parents coming to stay had meant I’d got uncharacteristically obliterated the night before and slept with my contact lens still in). I am bloated in the face, sheepish, hung over. If it weren’t for the mortar board, it could be a police mug shot.

I look at it, despairingly.

‘Yes, it always was a shame about that contact lens,’ says Mum before taking me by the hands. ‘Oh but it’s
so
nice to see you.’

There was definitely something going on!

We go through to the square kitchen with its old-fashioned tiles with the cockerels on and the big Formica table with the spindly chairs, where I remember learning news of my sister’s arrival almost eighteen years to the day.

Everything is as it has always been, and yet the house feels different, like someone has opened all the windows and let the summer in. Light blasts through the hallway, the radio blares. There are breakfast things left out – marmalade and a margarine-covered fork. In thirty-two years of knowing my mother, she hasn’t once left the breakfast things out past 9 a.m. Nor does she eat marmalade.

She hovers around, watching me as I fill the kettle, tugging at her new hair, as if she hasn’t quite got used to it yet, as if layers feel like the equivalent of plastic surgery.

‘Tea?’ I say, holding up a tea bag.

Mum looks at me with a quivering smile, her hands go self-consciously to her neck.

‘Um, actually I thought we could go to Betty’s.’

To my knowledge, in all her twenty years of living in Harrogate, Mum hasn’t been to the town’s famous tearooms once – certainly not with me. Mum is suspicious of anything that is an ‘experience’, and ‘experience’ to her equals overpriced, and that included McDonalds (I would have literally
slain
for a McDonalds party when I was a kid but to no avail), Alton Towers (never been) and Betty’s tearooms.

‘Why would I want to spend the best part of £10 on a cup of tea and a scone, when I can have one at home for a fraction of the price?’ she said more than once. But then she also once watched a documentary about the Nile and the Pyramids and said, ‘Why would I want to go and see the Pyramids now I’ve seen them on the telly?’, which, in retrospect, I think kick-started Dad’s affair with Cassandra and her enormous watercolour smocks.

They went on a cruise down the Nile the following summer.

‘Fine by me, I love Betty’s,’ I say, filling up the kettle. ‘There’s no rush, though, is there?’

A pause, just the sound of the tap running.

‘Well, actually, I thought it would be nice to avoid the lunchtime rush.’

‘Well, this is nice, isn’t it?’ sighs Mum. After ten minutes queuing, (and not a squeak of complaint from Mum), we get a seat in the Montpellier Café area of Betty’s tearoom on a cappuccino-coloured leather banquette, looking out onto the busy street.

I’ve been to Betty’s many times with my friends (in the same vein as us having dinner parties where we dined on tuna pasta bake, it was part of us pretending to be grown-ups) and it always reminds me of a very elegant Italian ice-cream parlour: spacious, high-ceilinged, colour palate of vanilla and gold, and marble floors where staff in waistcoats and smart red cravats scurry about industriously.

I order the open crab sandwich, followed by a raspberry macaroon (basically an orgasm in sugar form). Mum just orders tea.

‘I’m not doing wheat,’ she says, when I give her a funny look. ‘Makes me puff up these days and I need to get rid of this, Caroline Marie.’ She pats her stomach. ‘It cuts right into the belts, for one thing.’

Belts. When did Mum start wearing belts? Or fashion accessories of any kind?

She sits up and rearranges the belt, rearranges her fringe again. She seems agitated, excitable. Mum is rarely excitable,

There’s a group of ladies next to us; one, a woman with a leathery face and black hair who looks like she might be a palm reader, leans over.

‘I’m guessing you are mother and daughter?’ She smiles
and we smile back. ‘We’re all old school friends,’ she says, gesturing to the other ladies sitting with her. ‘This is my last supper before my chemotherapy starts. Breast cancer,’ she whispers. ‘Not looking good. They’ve found cancerous nodules in my lungs, one rib looks black. I’ve been under every damn machine there is and I haven’t even started treatment yet.’

I watch Mum. Usually, this would be her worse nightmare – a mad stranger oversharing? But she puts down her teacup.

‘My friend had cancer …’ she’s saying. ‘Cancer of the bladder. She thought she had three weeks to live and she’s still here, six years later. So, it just shows you. You’ve just got to stay positive, that’s all you can do.’

Was this actually my
mother?

The food comes; Mum rearranges the plates on the table and looks around the room as if she’s being surveyed.

‘So come on, you haven’t told me,’ she says. ‘Where’s Lexi this weekend?’

‘She’s working on a market stall,’ I say, cutting into my sandwich.

‘What sort of stall?’ says Mum.

‘Vintage stuff, furniture, clothes. The guy who runs it is lovely,’ I add, rather unnecessarily.

‘Well, how lovely. How nice, to have found a little summer job, isn’t it?’ I wait for some sort of snipe about Lexi, about Dad, but there’s none. ‘And how is it going? With Lexi, I mean? How’s it been all summer? I’ve hardly spoken to you.’

I still wonder where this is going. We’re on Lexi ground now, which means Cassandra ground, which means Dad ground, which means dangerous ground. And I want to tell her about Martin, I owe it to her to tell her the truth. I need to keep this sweet.

‘You know what, Mum? Actually, it’s been great. Well, most of the time. Always interesting, anyway.’

‘I bet you’ve been able to teach her a thing or two, haven’t you?’ she says, pouring tea. ‘Kept her on the straight and narrow? She always was a loose little cannon, that one, just like her mother but in miniature form.’

‘Actually, she’s taught me a thing or two.’ I shrug, trying to sound casual.

‘Really?’ says Mum. ‘And what do you mean by that?’

What did I mean by that? I tried to order my thoughts in my head, how I was going to put this. Suddenly it seemed a far bigger deal.

‘Well, you know …’ Talking to Mum about feelings was hard, I remembered now. ‘Having her to stay, it’s sorted my head out. Life’s been a bit, well, all over the place of late.’

‘I know how you feel,’ she says, looking around.

Silence. Say it, Caroline, I think. Just tell her the truth – it’s not like she’s going to start shouting here.

‘Mum, I’ve got something to tell you. Something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while … You know Martin?’

She claps her hands together.

‘Oh my God, you’re not back together?’

‘No. Sadly. Sadly, I’m not. But, there’s something I didn’t really tell you … about Martin.’

‘What? He’s not gay, is he? I knew there must have been some reason for him to just go off the boil like that.’

‘No, he’s not gay, Mum. And
he
didn’t go off the boil. I did.’

Mum stops mid-drink and blinks.

‘What do you mean, darling?’

‘I was the one who called the wedding off. Even though I didn’t tell you that. I told you it was the other way round …’

It’s ridiculous, I feel like a criminal who’s just come out to their mum. (Hey Mum. You know that serial robber that’s been all over the papers recently? Well, it’s me!) Like in those
few words, I just smashed every notion she had of me as the perfect daughter. The sensible, reasonable, academic daughter. But I’m not perfect – Martin’s already cleared that one up.

Stunned silence for a second.

‘So, why?’ asks Mum.

Did she mean, why couldn’t I marry him? Or, why did I lie?

‘Why did you call the wedding off?’

Just tell her the truth.

‘I wasn’t in love with him. I just couldn’t do it. As the wedding got nearer, I tried to imagine us being together for ever and I couldn’t – I knew I wanted different things, that he couldn’t give me what I needed.’

‘Which is?’