Out on a Limb (30 page)

I put my tea down and pick up my slice of raspberry sponge. I have a fancy that she’s actually reading from a script. ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Celeste,’ I manage to muster through the cake. ‘And, really, I’m absolutely fine. About everything.’

She beams at me. ‘
Good
. I’m glad we’ve got that sorted.’ She pats me again. Should I wag my tail as well now, perhaps?

It takes me several bites of cake to digest the salient points of Celeste’s speech. And I find myself quite at a loss as to whether to feel relieved it’s all sorted, upset at Mum’s chutzpah, or just plain-old in a huff that the most salient point is that because of what Mum’s said to her, and she’s obviously been doing so, Celeste seems to think I need patting. Just what has she told her? And why? But then it occurs to me that there are many, many ways of getting through endless grey voids, and re-inventing yourself as a post-modern martyr is actually probably quite a sound one. My mother is an actress. Fiction is her business. So facts get blurred too. What of it?

So I’m glum and fed-up. That’s a fact, for sure. And does it really matter now whether I’m glum because of her?
Am
I even, in fact? When I think about it hard? Yes, I
was
. That’s a given. That’s always been a given. But things have moved on since that momentous day in June. Now I’m glum big-time; cinemascope glum. And that really has nothing to do with my mother, and everything to do with the weather.

I’m just thinking that, when my mother reappears in the living room with her glasses on her nose. And brandishing the post I gave her. Amongst which, it seems, on this occasion anyway, there is something more thrilling than personalised offers of unsecured loans at Extremely Competitive Rates. ‘Saints alive!’ she cries. ‘There is a God after all!’

We both blink up at her, startled. She’s flapping a letter in front of her. ‘What, Diana?’ says Celeste. ‘Tell us! What’s happened?’

‘Salvation!’ she declares. ‘Oh, pinch me, Cel. I can’t believe it!’

‘Believe what?’

She pauses to inspect herself in the nearest mirror. ‘That I’ve got a job!’

‘A job?’ says Celeste. ‘What sort of job exactly?’

‘Well, an
acting
job, of course. What do you think?’

I’m certainly not thinking she’s been invited to appear on Strictly Come Dancing, that’s for sure. I reach for the letter she’s handing to me. And scan it. And, coo, she’s right. She does have a job, too.

She claps her hands together. ‘And there was me thinking he was dead!’

Celeste shakes her head. ‘
Who
was dead? Diana, you are making no sense.’

‘Her agent,’ I tell her. ‘The letter’s from Mum’s agent. She’s been asked if she’d like to make a TV commercial.’

‘And how flattering!’ She whips off her reading glasses and primps her hair in the mirror. ‘Me! I mean I know June Whitfield’s knocking on a bit too, but haven’t I seen one of those with Linda Bellingham in it?’

Celeste spreads her hands. ‘Linda Bellingham in
what
?’

‘Oh, you know, Cel. They’re
always
on the television. Those ads for insurance policies you can buy to pay your funeral expenses.’

‘Charming!’ says Celeste.

Mum laughs. ‘Who cares? They’re damned lucrative too, believe me.’

‘Speaking of ads,’ I say, the mention of funerals having caused me to remember. ‘Hugo’s car. I was speaking to Dee earlier. And I wondered if perhaps she could borrow it. She doesn’t have the money to buy one at the moment, but it occurred to me that as it’s just sitting there rusting, and no one seems interested in buying it, she could use it until she gets back on her feet, and then maybe Jake could still have it after all.’

My mother claps her hands together again, all at once alight with good cheer and bonhomie, and I marvel. That a simple request to do a couple of days work could make such a huge difference to her life. But then I realise that has
always
been her life, more or less.

‘Oh, of course she can!’ she says expansively. ‘What an excellent idea. Yes, yes. Of course. Do whatever you will with it, darling.’ She pops her glasses back on and picks the letter up again. ‘Do not go gentle into that goodnight! Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!’

‘Beg pardon, dear?’ says Celeste, somewhat startled.

‘Dylan Thomas,’ I tell her.

‘In
deed
!’ cries my mother. ‘And now I must get on to Lance about this lovely, lovely, lovely,
lovely
news!’

And I have to get on with life as well. I still have to take all Seb’s ski gear to the post office and walk Spike and do Jake’s washing and…and…well, and.

I go out to the car and manhandle the mirror from the back, then carry it back up the front garden path.

Mum’s standing in the doorway, holding it open for me. Beaming. Her default expression for a while now, I guess. Which is, I decide, no bad thing.

Oh,’ she says, just as I’m carrying it inside. ‘What with all this excitement, I almost forgot!’

‘Forgot what?’

‘Forgot about the watch!’

‘What watch?’

‘Hugo’s, of course! Hang on there. I’ll have to go up and fetch it from my bedroom.’

She ascends the stairs once again, as if propelled on faerie feet, and returns moments later with a small cloth pouch, from which she tips a fob watch into my hand.

The metal is cold. ‘What’s this?’

‘It was Hugo’s. I found it earlier in the week, when I was sorting out some of the things Pru bought over. In the bottom of my old jewellery box. I had entirely forgotten it existed. Go on, open it. See what it says.’

It’s very old, obviously. And very gold. And somewhat heavy. I prise open the cover, and Mum points. ‘There. See?’

It’s inscribed. Inside the lid it says
Gabriel Ash. With gratitude
. And underneath,
1952
. I feel a lump form in my throat. How ridiculous
am
I? I swallow it. ‘Well, I never,’ I say.

‘It belonged to Hugo’s father. I imagine it was presented to him when he left some job or other. Anyway, there it is. I thought Gabriel would like it.’

‘I’m sure he would.’ I close it up, and Mum passes me the pouch. I slip it back inside and hand it back to her. But she shakes her head.

‘No, no,’ she says. ‘You take it.’

‘Me?’

‘That’s why I brought it down, silly. For you to give to him.’

‘Me?’ I say again.

‘Yes, of course you. I told the girl you’d give it to him when he came to the clinic.’

‘What girl?’

‘The girl I spoke to at the BBC. He wasn’t in when I called so she said she’d pass on the message.’

‘But he doesn’t come to the clinic any more.’

‘Doesn’t he? Oh, well, no matter. He can pop round for it or something. Anyway, I dare say he’ll be in touch. It’s rather splendid, isn’t it?’ She presses it into my palm once again. ‘And you know, dear, here’s the funny thing. As soon as I saw it, it all came back to me.’

‘What did?’

‘The business with the watch. Oh, it was years ago, now. Before I married him even. But I remember saying at the time what a shame it was that he didn’t have a son or a grandson to pass it on to. And you know what he said?’

‘No, I don’t know what he said.’

‘It was the strangest conversation. He said – and I remember it now, clear as yesterday. He said, ‘Oh, I dare say it’ll find it’s way home.’ Such an odd thing to say, when you think about it, wasn’t it? But what with the name and everything, it makes perfect sense now.’ She pats the hand with the watch in and opens the door for me. ‘Poor Hugo.’

‘Poor Hugo.’

‘God rest the old bugger.’ She mwah-mwahs my cheeks. Order is restored. ‘Do remember to send Gabriel my love.’

Chapter 28

L
OTS OF THINGS MAKE
sense. Umbrellas make sense. Non-stick frying pans make sense. Even fiendish Su Dokus make sense once you’ve licked them. What does not make sense, however, is the fact that now my mother has gone from my house, it suddenly seems so much smaller.

As if the walls are closing in on me. As if, without the constant white noise of her presence, I have nothing to buffer me from the thoughts in my head.

And I wish I could whistle up some better ones, frankly. This lot must have been a bunch of Friday afternoon ones. They’re all completely substandard and of no use at all. And worse, they’re all of a mind, too. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could lay hands on a nice one. That it’s the weekend, perhaps. That I have a nice job. That my boys are such a joy. That I’m healthy (if not wealthy), that I have all my teeth. That there’s nothing so bad that it can’t be made better. That life’s a bloody minestrone.
Anything
.

But I can’t seem to find one. They’ve all flown the nest.

And I am doubly bereft on this bright and frosty late October morning, because I am standing outside Jake’s high school and waving him off on a coach. He’s going on a geography field trip for four days, where he will, or so he tells me, be standing thigh deep in water for the most part, apparently measuring stones. All part of the business of quantifying the fact that in the fast-flowing environment that is your average river, the rocks that fall in, having sheared off whatever mountain they were originally a part of, are progressively tumbled and whittled and blasted, all the way on their long, long journey to the river mouth, thus when they reach the coast they are much reduced in size. Which is why you get sand at the seaside.

It’s called weathering. Which to my mind is a word that has no business invading my brain, being altogether too much the same as weather. And the weather round these parts is as bleak as can be. Oh, I wish I was going with him. I wish I was going to the seaside. I wish…

‘What
do
I wish, Spike, eh?’ I ask him once we’ve got home, parked the car and transferred instead to Hugo’s. Which is mildly unpleasant on account of having to sit on his revolting discoloured plastic seat covers. ‘That’s just the trouble with making wishes, isn’t it? That it’s a complete and utter waste of
anyone’s
time. And sometimes dangerous to boot. Mark my words.’ I turn the engine over and it hacks at me twice, before finally, reluctantly, convulsing into life. It coughs a bit more, obviously indignant about being pressed into service once again.

‘That was me, that was,’ I tell Spike as we pull out into the road. ‘Out of practice. Caught napping. All this time I’ve spent up on blocks, romantically speaking, and then – bam – I get a boot up the carburettor by Charlie, and as a consequence everything’s working again. Which is no good thing, let me tell you, my little munchkin. Not for nothing do people put plastic covers on their car seats.’ I squint into the mirror. He’s sitting on the parcel shelf. And doesn’t have a clue what I’m on about, clearly. ‘They do it,’ I explain, ‘to stop them getting dirty. Keep them pristine and protected and safe. Whereas…’ I brake, to let a squirrel cross the road. ‘Whereas once you expose them to the elements, to people, it takes no time at all for them to spoil. Tell you what, mate, you may not have liked it at the time but believe me you are
so
much better without your reproductive equipment. God, let me tell you, affairs of the heart are appallingly painful. You know? I really don’t know which is worse. The thought that Gabriel Ash might want to come and get his watch back or the thought that he might decide not to.’

When I get to Tim’s place, which, now I see it in daylight, is a modern two-bed terrace on the edge of a pretty and well tended estate, Dee is out in the immaculate little front garden wearing gardening gloves and a sleeveless puffa jacket and attacking a flowerbed with gusto. Her cheeks are pink. Her stomach is swelling. She looks like Demeter, the goddess of the harvest.

And now she has a Nissan Sunny too.

‘Oh, this is brilliant!’ she says, having made her inspection. She is clearly more grown-up than I am about cars, and altogether less fond of looking gift horses in the gasket. ‘And it is just
so
sweet of your mum. You must give me her address so I can send her some money. Something, at least. I’m so grateful.’

I follow her back into the house, where something rich and autumnal and parsnippy is cooking, filling the hallway with sweetness and warmth.

‘I told you,’ I say. ‘She won’t hear of it. She reckons that with the repeat fees she’ll get from this advert she’s making, she’ll be rich enough to take taxis everywhere anyway. And she’s probably right. They run to thousands. And Jake’s completely beside himself, of course. He’s already ticking off the days till his seventeenth. So everybody’s happy.’

‘Except you,’ she says, now giving
me
the once over. ‘You look glum.’

‘It’s just the botox.’

‘Yeah, right. As if. Look. Tell you what. Why don’t you come over to us for dinner tonight? Be nice for you to have a chance to get to know Tim properly. And Hattie, too. That’s his daughter. She’s staying over tonight. We’re going to have a bit of a Halloween thing going on. Nothing major. Just a pumpkin and a couple of skeletons and so on.’

I don’t know about pumpkins but I rather think I’m up to here with skeletons, really. Particularly the one that was holed up in Hugo’s closet. Everything would have been so much better if he’d stayed there. I shake my head.

‘That’s really sweet of you,’ I say. I look out into the back garden, which is a jungle of truly Amazonian proportions, and am tickled that, away from the eyes of the world, there’s a different side to life round these parts. ‘But, oh, I don’t know, Dee. Now Jake’s gone off I’d kind of earmarked this evening for a spot of self-indulgent moping about in front of the telly, to be honest. You know, get in a bit of practice for when I really do have an empty nest on my hands.’

She looks appalled. ‘Gracious, Abs! this is
so
not like you! No. I won’t hear of it. I absolutely insist. I will
not
have you sitting in the doldrums.’

I know about the doldrums. The doldrums are not a state of mind, but a place. A region somewhere in some part of the South Atlantic Ocean, where the weather conspires to be petulant and wicked and causes sailing ships to have, well, no means of transportation, because there isn’t any wind to blow them on their way. So they sit (or so they sat; I imagine these days, they’d fire the motor) completely without the tools, and thus the impetus, to leave. I don’t know where I learned that and I could be wrong about the ocean, but I remember it now, because that’s just how I feel.

Tim drives Spike and me back in his prehistoric jeep, which is every bit as jolly and dishevelled as he is, and a part of what he does when he’s not inventing software. He works for a charity in his spare time, planting trees. I think I’m going to like Tim. He’s sweet and quite shy and he’s nothing like Malcolm, and I think he’ll make Dee very happy. He tells me a joke on the way home that makes me laugh. I know I’ll forget the punchline in twenty-seven seconds, but I’m grateful to have done so, for all that.

He also talks to me a little about his brother, the alcoholic, and how meeting Dee – the silver lining in that black cloud, he tells me – has so comprehensively transformed his life. And also just a little – he seems not at all the sort for whining – about how difficult his own has been since his divorce.

‘But isn’t that just the great thing about life?’ he says as he drops us. ‘You slog along miserably, thinking things will never get better. But you never know what’s around the corner.’

And even though I come away with the distinct impression that I’ve just been given a bit of a pep talk –
God
, now Dee’s at it as well – it seems Tim might be right, even so. Because when I let Spike and me in, still thinking dark thoughts about all the corners I’ve been round in the last six months and how most of them have involved me in crashing headlong into something I’d rather have avoided, the first thing I see is a small piece of card on the doormat. I pick it up. It’s a Cardiff County Council parking voucher, which, or so the scratched off panels tell me, was used at 10.45 on the 8
^th
September. Which has absolutely no relevance to anything that I can think of. I turn it over, nonplussed. And then am altogether
too
plussed. Because there’s something of unequivocal relevance scribbled in ballpen on the back.

Sorry I missed you. Tried to call but no luck. On way to Exeter for a few days to escape the paparazzi…Was hoping to catch you. Call me sometime? G xx

I take it into the kitchen and put it on the worktop while I wonder at the mysteries of the endocrine system and whether I should ask for a refund. Mine’s now a shambles. A complete and utter shambles. I pick up my mobile. Which is also in cahoots. Two missed calls. I check them. Both from
G xx
too. I put it down. I consider. I feel sick.

Proper sick. Sick, as they say, to the stomach. And as I don’t much like feeling sick at the best of times, I decide on an immediate salt water gargle. It’s just a simple transaction. Just the giving of a watch. Make the call. Get it over with. That’s the best thing.

I pick my phone up again. I press reply. And then I wait.

‘Abbie!’

The sound of his voice leaves me, somewhat frustratingly, utterly unable to speak. Which takes me completely unawares as well as firmly by the larynx. So by the time I do manage to get any words out, they all come at once, like the bubbles from a bottle of shaken-up Coke. ‘Gabriel? I’m sorry I missed you. I’d popped out and my mobile was at home on the charger and, well, I got your note through the door and saw you’d called and everything and, well, sorry. Um. Anyway, yes. Fine. Pop round when you get back from wherever it is you’re going…er…’

I imagine their flight from the rabid photographers. How curious and alien a life they must lead. ‘Look,’ he says, his voice straining above the roar of the traffic. ‘I can’t talk right now. I’m driving down the M5 and we’re going through some road works. I don’t want to get arrested. Can I call you right back?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Of course. Absolutely. No problem. I’ll…um…well. No need to call, really. I’ll see you whenever I see you.’

‘No, no. I’ll get back to you. Soon as I can.’

When Seb was small – two or three – he had a thing about balloons. A real full-on phobia, in fact. He loved them – what tiny child doesn’t? – but he was petrified about anyone popping them. So balloons didn’t get popped in the McFadden household. Just became retired. Put out to grass. Parked away in corners, under beds, into cupboards, or left to waft, abandoned, round the garden.

That’s just how I feel right now, I decide. Like an aged balloon that never got popped. Just quietly deflating back into itself, till it’s nothing but a sad wrinkled shadow of its former self. Yup. That’s exactly how I feel. Damn, but I wish I hadn’t phoned him.

I hang about near the phone for some time, even so. Stupid, really. Because Gabriel doesn’t ring back, of course. Not that I really expected him to. He’s on his way to…where was it he said he was going? I can’t remember. Well, whatever. No matter. I shouldn’t have rung him. Speaking to him is bad for my health.

Cheesecakes, on the other hand, if taken in moderation, are unquestionably good for you. The making of them even more so, as it involves nothing more emotionally draining than the prospect of a less than tight seal on your tin. Which, in the scheme of things, just ain’t that tragic.

So Spike and I compile our short list of ingredients and then we head off to the Spar. I could have hopped in the car and driven to the supermarket, of course, but the idea is distinctly unappealing. It will be too full of families, piloting huge trolleys. Filling them with giant-sized packs of comestibles, gallons of pop, packets of washing powder the size of small tractors and three-for-two flagons of liquid soap and shampoo. Reminding me that many of the things that must pass in this life have, for me, already done so. That I’m a lone woman (okay, only for four days, but I’m in a self-indulgent mood), with no one to shop for, no one to cook for, no one to look after except a middle-aged dog.

Perhaps, I decide, I should get a cat too. Go the whole hog and start buying products that come in individually wrapped packets –’for freshness!’ – and those peculiar full-height-but-half loaves of bread.

In short, I feel lonely, so the Spar suits us best. We can go there together. And shop with all the others who have no pressing need to buy twenty-seven loo rolls at once.

And it does make me feel better. Better, that is, until I assemble my cache of ingredients in the kitchen and realise I’ve forgotten to buy biscuits.

Thus it is that I’m in the hall, clipping on Spike’s lead for our second Spar sortie, when I become aware of a shadow in the glass in the door. And then movement, and shortly after, the bing-bong of the doorbell.

So I open it. Expecting Mr Davidson, maybe. Or little Sam from the house on other side, who’s six, and often kicks his Bob the Builder ball into our garden. Or the man who sells onions. Or double-glazing. Or dusters. Or, well,
someone
. Not him. Not
him
.

Yet that’s who it is. It can’t be, but it is. And he’s still got his finger on the button.

‘Good God – Gabriel! What are
you
doing here?’

‘Oh, dear,’ he says, lowering his finger and frowning. ‘Have I come at a bad time again?’

My mouth is hanging open. I close it with a snap. ‘No, no. Not at all. It’s just that I thought you were on your way somewhere.’

He nods now. ‘I was.’

‘But now you’re here instead.’

He has his serious face on. ‘I said I’d get back to you, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘So, here I am.’ He takes in my coat, my woolly mittens, Spike’s lead. ‘Except you’re off out somewhere, are you?’

I peer out, past him, to scan the road for his car. Where’s Lucy? I can’t see her. They were escaping the paparazzi. That’s what the note said. She should be here. But she isn’t. Unless he’s bundled her up under a blanket in the boot, she’s absolutely not in his car.