The Bad Mother (26 page)

Mitch was suddenly tired of it all. He couldn’t be bothered to watch Lauren wheedle and cadge and think she’d scored some great victory just because she got her own way. ‘Why don’t you just say no to her?’ he asked Tessa. He regretted it instantly when he saw a gleam of greedy excitement light up his sister’s face that she’d managed after all to get what she wanted – attention.

‘She’s only had cereal, haven’t you, sweetheart?’ said Tessa.

Carol put the last of the poached eggs onto plates and escaped with them out of the door.

‘If you can have bacon, why can’t I?’ demanded Lauren.

Mitch looked at her, looked at the craven plea on Tessa’s
face, and just no longer had the heart to play the game. Just for once he wanted to tell the truth about something to someone. ‘Because you’re getting fat. Because you eat too much.’

Lauren’s face went red.

‘Mitch!’ cried Tessa. ‘Say you’re sorry.’

‘Why? I’m not saying it just to be mean,’ he appealed to Lauren. ‘You don’t like being overweight. I’m trying to help. It’s no good pretending it’s Ok for you to stuff your face.’

‘That’s horrible!’

‘It’s simple. If you want to be skinny, don’t eat.’

‘It’s not my fault, is it, Mum?’ Lauren’s eyes welled up. ‘It’s puppy fat.’

Mitch could see she was hurt, and was sorry, but he willed Tessa not to back down, to take the opportunity to be straight with Lauren and deal with this.

‘Sweetheart.’ Tessa opened her arms to offer Lauren a hug. As Lauren clung to her, Tessa spoke to Mitch over the teenager’s shoulder. ‘That wasn’t very nice. Look how upset she is. You should apologise.’

Mitch considered capitulating; what was the point in upsetting people? Lauren turned her head and gave him a calculating sneer. ‘Mitch never went to school yesterday,’ she said in a vicious singsong. ‘He won’t say where he went.’

‘Fuck you!’ Mitch told her. He stood up, pushing back his chair with more force than he intended, so it fell backwards onto the floor. Ignoring it, he headed for the door.

‘You come right back here!’ ordered his mother.

‘Tell her for once! Why can’t you tell her?’

‘Keep your voice down.’

Mitch shut the door quietly, the injunction never to disturb the guests too deeply ingrained, and turned back to face her.

‘Lauren was fine this morning,’ Tessa went on. ‘I was really happy for once, then you come down like a bear with a sore head and spoil it for everyone.’

Mitch stared at her in frustration and despair. Behind Tessa, Lauren grinned in triumph.

‘You’ve been moody for weeks, and I’ve had enough of it,’ said Tessa. ‘All I did was offer you some nice bacon, and you bite our heads off.’

Mitch thought of his girlfriend’s tear-stained face the previous day and couldn’t imagine how he was going to get though the day. He wanted to crawl back under his duvet and stay there.

‘I don’t understand why you’re like this,’ Tessa persisted.

For one moment, Mitch did seriously consider just telling her, describing his sight of her on the stairs in the dark last night, carrying her shoes and underwear and creeping out of some man’s room. It was only because of Lauren that he stopped himself. Lauren was useless, and if he got her involved it would all just blow up in his face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Can I go now?’

Twenty minutes later, he came downstairs and attempted to glide unseen out of the front door. Declan Mills was paying his bill, and Tessa was laughing, the row in the kitchen apparently forgotten. She ignored Mitch, but
Declan nodded pleasantly as he came past. As Declan took back his credit card from Tessa, Mitch caught the gleam of his wedding band. ‘Tosser,’ he thought, and then looked at his mother’s gleaming eyes. ‘Stupid cow.’

By the time Mitch reached his classroom at school he had regretted both his words to Lauren and his bitter thoughts about Tessa. When he got home that afternoon he sought her out, finding her on a stepladder changing a light bulb in one of the guest bedrooms.

‘Sorry, Mum.’

She looked down at him and though he saw her try to remain severe, she softened and smiled, shaking her head at him: ‘I’m busy enough without you two kicking off.’

‘Let me do that,’ he offered, as she struggled to reach the shade suspended from the high ceiling.

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘I’m taller than you.’

She looked at him in surprise, and laughed. ‘So you are.’

She climbed back down and handed him the bulb, which he adroitly replaced.

Folding up the stepladder, he kept his eyes away from hers. ‘Can we talk about your father?’ he asked. ‘Roy Weaver – that’s his name, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Kind, thoughtful, supportive. Sorry for what he’s done.’

Mitch did not want to oppose her, but found it hard to blind himself to the unreality of such a claim.

‘So does he have a family?’ he asked. ‘Do you have brothers or sisters? I guess they’d all be younger than you.’

‘No. He doesn’t have kids. Just an older sister, Shirley.’

‘Have you met her?’

‘No, they don’t get on.’

‘But you might. You might like her.’

‘One thing at a time, Mitch.’ She smiled a little wearily. ‘I’m still getting to know him. Can you pop that back downstairs for me?’

‘Sure.’ He waited for Tessa to hold the door for him to carry out the lightweight metal ladder. He waited in the hallway as she turned to check that everything in the room was orderly and then closed the door. ‘I thought you wanted to know your family, didn’t you?’ he asked.

Tessa reached out to stroke his arm. ‘Thanks for caring. That’s really nice. But it’s complicated.’

‘How?’

‘Well, it was really difficult for Roy and Shirley growing up because their mother was an alcoholic. Died of liver disease years ago, and then Shirley simply turned her back on him when he was convicted.’

‘You’re still related,’ he insisted. ‘She’s your aunt.’ Mitch found he rather liked the idea of involving this wider family: it made the facts of Roy Weaver’s crime and incarceration less intense, more manageable. He couldn’t understand why his mum wouldn’t want that normality too.

‘Grannie Pamela says Erin’s coming back. For a proper visit this time.’

Mitch refused to be sidetracked. ‘Will she go and visit him?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘So what about his sister? You could speak to her at least. Meet her and see what she’s like. You don’t have to see her again if you don’t want to.’

But Tessa shook her head. ‘It would be disloyal to befriend a woman who could reject Roy when he was at rock bottom like that.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Look, sweetheart, I really must get on. That couple from Nuneaton will be here any second.’

Mitch stowed away the ladder then went up to his attic room, an obstinate rebellion forming itself like a physical sensation in his chest. Why should Tessa just expect him to fall into line like that? This was his family too.

THIRTY-FIVE

The luxury of being able to smooth the sheets on the spare bed, knowing that Erin would sleep in them tonight, of taking a fresh batch of shortbread out of the oven, already looking forward to offering Erin some with her coffee, gave Pamela immense pleasure – the kind of domestic pleasure that brought to mind Averil’s doll’s house. It was as though all the grief and regret that had been sealed up for so long inside that toy mausoleum could finally be dispelled, the little padlocks undone, the whole front of the house opened wide, and life breathed back into the fixed attitudes of the inhabitants. Except, remembered Pamela, there were no inhabitants in this intricate and unchanging world. Averil had removed the dolls when Erin went away. Pamela had found them when she’d been packing up Averil’s things after her death, three miniature dolls wrapped up in yellowing tissue paper in an old biscuit tin. She had put them aside, totems of her childhood, and had them still, tucked safely away.

She found the tin at the back of a bureau drawer. The paper had softened with age and she took care not to tear it. Shrouded by the wrapping were three tiny but differently sized dolls, each light as a feather and all wearing faded dresses. Funny how she had forgotten that the doll made to represent her father had disappeared when he died. The remaining three, in descending order, were Averil, herself and Erin. Pamela thought about how she was always in the middle, stuck between stronger opposing forces, never sure enough of what she wanted to stand her ground and fight for it.

She shook herself: Erin was coming! She had rung and invited herself, said she
wanted
to come, and Hugo was already on his way back from meeting her at Heathrow. Things would be different now, they really would. Pamela started to rewrap the dolls and place them back inside the tin. She would give them to Erin. Erin could put them back where they belonged. It would break the spell, lift the curse, start to make things right again.

For too long Pamela had not only believed that she didn’t deserve children of her own but also concluded that it was a punishment for taking Tessa away from Erin. That was why she had never defied or even confronted Averil. She knew how much Hugo blamed himself for their infertility – all the medical tests had said the problem lay with him – and that was why he believed that what he wanted didn’t count either. But she had made a terrible mistake in allowing him to defer to her, and so let Averil have her way. Hugo was right to
condemn her for that. He’d never say it, he was too kind, but she knew he did.

For too long she had drowned her guilt and cowardice in gin. But first thing in the morning after Erin had called to say she was coming, Pamela had rung her doctor and booked an appointment. That had been last week, and although the GP had told her she’d have to wait a few weeks before she could start talking to an addiction counsellor, she’d congratulated Pamela on taking the first step, and Pamela had already succeeded in cutting down a little bit. It wasn’t much, but it was a step in the right direction. Maybe with Erin here she’d do even better.

She’d told Erin on the phone that Tessa was seeing Roy Weaver, but that it was fine – he was respectful, caring, had even sent that message about how fondly he remembered her. It was when she’d assured Erin that she really thought everything was going to turn out Ok that Erin had asked if she could come and stay for a couple of weeks. Pamela had been overjoyed: it was as if all the clouds that had hung over her family for so long had blown away, leaving nothing but blue sky.

THIRTY-SIX

Mitch stopped beside a busy roundabout to consult the
A to Z
he had bought at Liverpool Street Station. It was lunchtime, and the streets were a maelstrom of movement and traffic noise. He could not imagine how there were enough pockets of calm for anyone to live or work in such a place. Even the air felt dirty, and if you dared stop to gather your bearings, you were likely to be mown down by a bus, bicycle or rushing pedestrian. Catching flashes of brightly coloured socks or stockings amongst the crowd, a passing swipe of scarlet lipstick and sharp, unusual angles of haircuts, shoes and sunglasses, he felt lost amid a foreign tribe.

Thanks to Sam giving his distracted permission for Mitch to filch his credit card, Mitch had been able to check out premium online records, and was pretty certain he’d located the right Shirley Weaver. Tessa had said she was older than Roy, and this Shirley Weaver was younger, but she was definitely related. She was a designer and filmmaker with her own small company in Shoreditch, and
Mitch had found plenty of links to her work: awards she’d won, her photo and her work address. He’d done a pretty intensive search on Roy too, but it had thrown up no new background information, probably because he was already banged up by the time the web really got going. But that didn’t matter now that he could ask Roy’s sister about him.

Mitch had also fibbed to Sam to borrow enough money for the train fare, and had threatened Lauren not to blab about him taking a bus to the station instead of going to school. This was the second time he’d bunked off, and he hoped his parents wouldn’t get to hear of it. Charlie Crawford had been informed of Mitch’s unauthorised visit to Tamsin’s school, and Tamsin had been gated for the weekend in punishment, though she promised Mitch she didn’t care – seeing him had been worth it. But apparently Charlie had ordered Tamsin not to see Mitch again. Despite her insistence that her dad never stuck to threats he made, and her certainty that by the beginning of the holidays he wouldn’t even remember the incident, Mitch remained miserable and apprehensive about the future.

At least Tessa had broken it to Lauren a couple of days ago that she was visiting Roy Weaver in prison. Lauren had listened with a kind of wide-eyed excitement, as if some scary horror movie were about to begin, and kept asking whether Tessa was making all it up. Although Mitch was glad it was no longer a secret, Lauren’s attitude had upset him more than he let on: if she was going to view their biological grandfather as some kind of Voldemort character, then what did that make him?

Mitch turned left down a narrow street lined with a mixture of solid red-brick Victorian offices and warehouses, dissenting chapels and modern plate-glass bars and shops, and stopped outside a big wooden door. He now regretted his decision not to email Shirley first to request a meeting, but then told himself that if she’d refused it would have made it even more impossible just to turn up on her doorstep.

He pressed the buzzer and the door clicked open. He entered straight into a high open space with whitewashed brick walls, filled with desks and state-of-the-art technology. A very thin young man wearing a headset looked up from behind a white desk by the entrance.

‘Who are you here to see?’ he asked.

‘Shirley Weaver.’ Mitch was acutely aware of how obvious it was that he did not belong here.

But the thin young man smiled patiently. ‘Work experience?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Mitch. ‘She’s my aunt. My great-aunt.’

‘Oh, right.’ The thin young man pressed a button on his keyboard and spoke into his headset. ‘Shirley, your nephew’s here.’