Mothers and Daughters (3 page)

The truth was that they’d drifted. It was inevitable, wasn’t it? Bronte at a different school, Tess off in the back of beyond, Callum and Finn preoccupied with their skateboards and the latest surf report . . . with the children all moving in different directions, what hope did the mothers have? Still, it bothered Caro. Just a few years ago they’d been thrown together almost every day: at drop-off, on tuckshop duty or classroom reading, at the innumerable sports days and recorder recitals and choir concerts, at the gate every afternoon where they gossiped and bitched while they waited for the bell to ring. Fiona hadn’t made every event and neither had Caro, but back then there was always another one coming up behind. The school, it
turned out, had organised their social lives for them, had knitted them together. Caro sighed. It was a relief to attend one less class assembly, it was only right that their children were growing up and able to make their own way home from school, but she missed those daily meetings with her friends: hearing about Morag’s latest saga with Macy, all the more entertaining for Morag’s droll, dry delivery; Fiona sniping at another mother’s outfit and making them all laugh; Amira asking them back to her place for a drink, because it was Friday afternoon and that was what they always did.

‘I’d forgotten Australia was so big.’ Morag remarked. She closed her guidebook, tucking the highlighter into its spine. ‘I can’t believe we still aren’t even halfway there.’

Caro turned to her, relieved. She needed to talk to someone. She was getting maudlin.

‘You’ve never been up north before, have you?’ she asked.

Morag shook her head.

‘No further than the Gold Coast. We took the boys there a few years ago to do the Worlds, remember? Only Torran was still too small to go on half the rides, and Callum and Finn spent the whole time teasing him about it. Fun for all the family.’

Caro laughed.

‘I’m really glad to be going, though,’ Morag continued. ‘I can’t quite believe I’ve been here so long and have never seen the top end.’

‘I haven’t either,’ Caro said. ‘The closest I’ve got is a school trip to Ayers Rock thirty years ago now, and I don’t think that counts. They don’t even call it that anymore.’ Her legs were
getting cramped and she stretched them out in front of her, kicking off her shoes. ‘You take it all for granted, I think. You just assume you’ll get there someday, but I bet most don’t. I wouldn’t be doing this if Amira hadn’t moved.’

‘It’ll be good to see her, won’t it? It must be such a different life . . .’

There was a pause, and Caro looked around again. Where the hell was the drinks trolley?

‘So how’d you go getting away?’ she asked. ‘Andrew’s taking the boys to Tasmania, isn’t he? Did you have to pack their bags for them?’

‘Hell, no,’ Morag said. ‘If they’ve forgotten anything, that’s their lookout. They won’t forget it again.’

‘Even Torran?’ Caro asked.

‘Even Torran. He’s nine now. That’s quite old enough to throw together some socks and jocks and t-shirts. I did have to talk him out of taking his Nintendo, though. He’d probably leave it by the river.’

‘I wouldn’t have even attempted to separate Janey from her phone,’ said Caro. ‘She would have found a way to smuggle it in anyway. I assume there’ll be somewhere we can charge them?’

Morag shot her a look. ‘I don’t think it’s
that
primitive.’ She picked at the price sticker on the cover of her book, pushing back a corner. ‘It was amazing, actually. I didn’t have to do anything—Andrew organised it all. It helps that it’s Macy’s week with Janice, of course, but he’s really been looking forward to the trip. You know, four men against the elements—hiking, fishing, cooking over an open fire . . .’

‘Ugh. Sounds disgusting. I bet none of them change their jocks all week.’

Morag laughed. ‘I thought it sounded great. I would’ve liked to have gone too. Maybe another time.’ She bent over the guidebook, working at the sticker, her fair hair hiding her face. The sticker came away, taking a segment of the cover with it.

‘What about you?’ she asked, looking up. ‘Is Alex taking care of April?’

Caro shook her head. ‘Not a chance. He’s in Italy again, left yesterday.’ Alex was away even more now than he had been when Janey started school. Caro understood that he needed to travel for his job, but she’d never truly got used to it. It was always a shock and a nuisance to have him gone once more, disappearing from their lives just when she’d adjusted to him being at home.

‘So April’s with Maria?’

Caro nodded. ‘She could have gone to stay with a friend, but Maria insisted. I didn’t have a chance. She rang Alex at work and told him she wouldn’t hear of anything else, that April should be with family. Anyone would think I was leaving her for a month, not eight days.’ She sighed. ‘Then when I dropped her off Maria said something to April in Italian about how lucky I was to be having a holiday. She doesn’t think I understand her, but I do. All those bloody family dinners I’ve had to sit through—you’d think she’d realise that I must have picked up some of the language by now.’

Morag laughed. ‘You
are
lucky,’ she said simply.

‘I know, but I’ve earned this, and I’m taking Janey—it’s not
as if I’m flitting off and abandoning everybody. Alex is away half of every month, but she never says anything to him.’

‘Ah, but that’s different.’

‘Why?’ asked Caro. ‘Because he’s working?’

The drinks trolley finally lumbered, clanking, to their seats. Morag waited as Caro gratefully ordered a gin and tonic.

‘Because he’s her son,’ she said.

The flat was a mess. Older people’s homes often were, crammed with old jam jars and catalogues, plastic bags and odd bits of string, the collections seemingly first hoarded, then curated. Morag knew that it gave her clients a sense of security, offered some sort of buffer against destitution, but it made her job that much harder. She had to bite her lip as she came into the tiny kitchen and nearly tripped over a stack of newspapers just inside the door.

‘Mrs Griggs,’ she said, when she’d recovered her balance, ‘these are dangerous. How do you get your walker around them?’

‘Och, I just lift it up and then put it on the other side,’ said her client, unperturbed.

‘But what about if it’s dark or you’re in a hurry?’ asked Morag. The lino was uneven too, she noticed; she reached into her bag for Mrs Griggs’ file, so she could write it all down. ‘You shouldn’t be lifting your frame anyway, should you?’ she scolded. The older woman had already fractured one neck of femur. If she did it again she wouldn’t be coming back here other than to collect her things for the nursing home.

‘Ahh, you all fret so,’ said Mrs Griggs, shuffling—without her walker—towards the sink. ‘Would you like some tea? You look a bit peaky.’

If she looked a bit peaky it was because of cases like this, Morag thought. How she hated basement flats: damp stone, not enough natural light and far too many steps. Mrs Griggs’ were outside, leading down from the street, which made things even worse in a climate like Scotland’s. How on earth did she get her walker up and down them, or her shopping, come to that? Morag winced at the image of her teetering on the slippery stone with heavy bags. Rails, she thought, lots of them—on the stairs, above the step between the front door and the hallway, next to the toilet. Then non-slip mats, and the lino nailed down, a new light in the bedroom . . .

Mrs Griggs placed the kettle on the stove, her sleeve brushing a hot plate as she did so.
Cordless kettle
, wrote Morag, though would the old woman be able to learn how to use it?

‘Sugar, love?’ asked Mrs Griggs. In the distance there was a muffled thump. Out of habit, Morag glanced at her watch. The one o’clock gun. Amazing how you could hear it even all the way out here in Portobello. She needed to be getting back to the Royal Infirmary—she had a family meeting at two, and Mrs Griggs to write up before that. The details would be lost if she didn’t, the dangerous stairs, the cramped kitchen merging into all the other stairs and kitchens and dank, dark flats she’d visited and despaired over.

‘There you go,’ said Mrs Griggs, placing a chipped floral teacup before her. ‘Please raise your seat and put your tray in the upright position.’

Morag woke with a start. She wasn’t in Edinburgh, she didn’t have a meeting to get back to—she must have drifted off during the movie. Covertly she wiped some drool from her chin and quickly checked to see if anyone had noticed, but Fiona was still asleep and Caro’s seat was empty.

How strange to dream of her old job like that, she thought. She supposed it must have been because she’d mentioned Edinburgh earlier, to Caro, but it had seemed so real. She closed her eyes again, clutching at the fading remnants . . . she could almost see herself hurrying across the Meadows, awash with students and tourists; feel the Castle, ever-present, hovering over her above the trees; see the grey stone of the Royal Infirmary looming ahead, the man who sold coffee in the old police booth out the front nodding to her as she came past. Only, the Royal Infirmary was gone, she remembered, fully awake now, torn down to make way for boutique apartments, the doctors and nurses and other allied health workers like herself moved to a soulless new building out in Little France. She’d almost been pleased when she’d heard that, a few years after she’d moved to Australia. She missed Edinburgh, missed it keenly, and the Royal Infirmary was one less thing to mourn. Still, it was almost impossible to imagine it gone, it had been such an important part of her life—with her work, of course, as deputy head of the occupational therapy department, but even more so when she was pregnant with the twins. She’d first seen Finn and Callum at her twelve-week scan on a tiny black and white screen in the obstetrics department in the basement of the hospital; she’d given birth to them on an August evening three floors up in the Simpson Pavilion.
Pavilion
, she thought,
smiling. Such an odd name for a maternity ward, as if the occupants were playing cricket, not moaning through labour. And moaned she had, though hardly anyone had heard her. It was the last night of the Festival, with the fireworks from the Princes Street Gardens going off so loudly outside the window that at the first barrage the midwife had sworn and dropped her stethoscope.

Caro reappeared in the aisle. Morag pulled in her knees so that her friend could get back to her seat in the centre of the row. White pants, she thought as Caro squeezed past, her bottom inches from Morag’s face. Linen, just to top it off. Only Caro could get away with that—almost five hours of travel, drinks, a meal, and they were still spotless. Morag glanced down at her own navy-blue tracksuit, feeling vaguely embarrassed. Some women had the knack of wearing the right thing at the right time. She didn’t.

‘We’ve started our descent,’ Caro said. ‘Did you hear the pilot? You were asleep. I thought I’d fix my make-up before we arrive.’

‘Won’t it just melt as soon as we’re out of the plane?’ Morag asked, then added, ‘That’s a pretty lipstick,’ so she didn’t sound like a bitch, and because the soft coral colour really did look good against Caro’s creamy skin.

‘Thanks,’ said Caro. ‘Janey picked it out actually, a few weeks ago, when we were shopping. I think she only wanted me to get it so she could borrow it, but at least we’ve got the same colouring.’ Fiona stirred slightly in her seat against the window. ‘Do you ever do that with Macy? Go shopping, I mean.’

Morag snorted. ‘Not a chance. As far as Macy’s concerned, I’m just there to provide meals and drive her to rehearsals. Besides, the only lipstick she ever wears is black.’ Her stepdaughter was going through a goth phase. That was how she’d reassured Andrew when Macy had started dyeing her hair and had her nose pierced, though in reality it was well over a year now. Was that still a phase, or had she turned professional?

‘God, how depressing,’ said Caro. ‘I don’t know how Janice puts up with it. And you too,’ she amended, ‘but that’s different, isn’t it? At least you can always tell people she isn’t yours.’

The sentiment was a bit harsh, but Caro was right, Morag thought. It
was
different. She liked Macy, and would never disown her. Loved her, in fact, on those occasions when she let Finn play her guitar, or helped Torran organise his rock collection—but no, she wasn’t hers. Years ago, Morag had longed for a daughter. Pregnant with the twins, she was sure one of them must be a girl. When she discovered she was wrong she’d talked Andrew into trying again. He didn’t care—he already had a daughter, of course—but he’d gone along with it because he could see what it meant to her. When Torran was born fat and pink and with an undeniable scrotum, the disappointment had lodged in her throat like something she hadn’t ordered and couldn’t quite choke down. Yet within a week he had captivated her, just like his brothers before him, and she put away her longing. Callum, Finn and Torran were healthy and gorgeous and their blue eyes shone when they saw her. This was her lot, and it was a damn fine one.

Anyway, she no longer felt as though she was missing out. She wouldn’t have been any good at those shopping trips, with
her track pants and her hair always pulled back, not blow-dried artfully around her face like Caro’s. Besides, from what she could see, girls were much harder: Janey with her mind games and her obsession with her phone; Macy with her black boots, her ridiculous dreams of being a rock star, and the packet of the pill Morag had once found in her schoolbag but hadn’t told Andrew about. She was better off with her boys. At the airport, Caro had said something to the woman behind the check-in desk about them travelling with their daughters, but even that hadn’t stung. Not too much, anyway. Fiona had Bronte, Caro had Janey, and Amira had Tess, but she, Morag, had a whole week off, free from any parental responsibilities whatsoever. If nothing else, it was worth it for that.