The Love Shack (7 page)

‘Where’s Flossie?’ asks Gemma, diplomatically changing the subject.

‘Good question.’ Mum strides to the side window and thrusts out her head in the direction of the converted stable block where my grandmother lives.

‘MUMMM!’ Mum shrieks.

‘Why don’t I go and get her?’ I offer.

‘She’ll have her hearing aid off again,’ Mum tuts. ‘We’ll all go. It’ll be a nice surprise.’

We trail after her through the hall and I reach for Gemma’s hand. ‘We’ll say hello to Grandma then start unloading, is that okay?’

‘Course – we’re in no rush. The landlord said as long as everything’s out by tomorrow morning, it’ll be fine.’

We head around the side of the house to the granny flat which, when Gemma first saw it, she said was enough to make her want to become a granny herself. It’s small and self-contained, with a chalky blue front door flanked by pots of Ferrari-red geraniums. At the front is a bright patio, where Grandma spends summer days reading on the sweetheart bench my grandad made for her fortieth birthday.

Mum starts banging on the door. ‘MUMMM!’

‘Don’t you have a spare key?’ I ask.

‘I wanted one
,
but she seems to think it’d be compromising her independence,’ Mum says, rolling her eyes. ‘I don’t know what she thinks I want to do – break in and do her washing up for her?’

She bangs again, with no response. ‘I can’t imagine what she could be doing.’ Her hand shoots to her mouth. ‘Oh God, what if something’s happened?’

This tends to be my mum’s default position. If the cleaning lady’s late, she won’t assume it’s because there are roadworks in the village, but that she’s been kidnapped, held at knifepoint and sold to a human trafficking gang.

‘Something won’t have happened,’ I say reasonably. ‘She’ll be playing online Boggle, or have her hearing aid switched off, like you said.’

‘She’d have still heard that knocking,’ Mum says. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit.’

‘Dan,’ Gemma turns to me, ‘I think you should climb through a window.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll give you a leg up,’ Mum offers.

‘I don’t
need
a leg up. She won’t want someone climbing through the window. Look, let me go and see if she’s gone for a walk first. I’ll be five minutes.’

‘Five minutes might be too late,’ Mum protests.

‘What if poor Flossie has fallen and can’t get to the door?’ Gemma says, her eyes heavy with disappointment in me.

‘She won’t have,’ I assure her.

‘I can’t believe you’d be so heartless,’ Mum responds.

‘I’m not being—’

Gemma tuts. She’s only been here twenty-three minutes and she actually tuts.

‘Okay.’ I hold up my hands. ‘You win.’

We march round to the kitchen window, which is the biggest, and find that it is open, but with no sign of Grandma. I examine the available space and estimate that a fifteen-year-old ballet dancer couldn’t squeeze her hips through without surgical intervention. ‘I’ll never get through there.’

‘Just breathe in,’ Gemma declares, as if this is an issue that could be solved with a pair of Spanx. ‘Here, stand on my hands.’

‘Gemma, I’m too heavy.’ I give her my most authoritative glare, to ensure my point is made.

‘We’ll both do it,’ Mum says, shuffling into place with her usual bulldozer subtlety.

This is very obviously a bad idea.

Yet there’s some perverse sense of macho pride digging at me, refusing to let me walk away. So, with the
Mission Impossible
soundtrack running through my ears, I shove one size 11.5 shoe on Mum’s hands and another on Gemma’s, pulling myself up as they make these monstrous sounds, like a pair of labouring hippos.

I get halfway through, my legs out of the window, when I become aware of something.

There is nothing like knowing that your mother and girlfriend are standing by supportively, watching your heroics in concern and awe, as you face any number of dangers (splinters mainly) without a thought for your own wellbeing.

And this is nothing like that.

Both are near incontinent with laughter at the sight of my arse in the air.

Ignoring their cackles, and the fact that they’ve apparently overcome their concern that this is a life-or-death situation, I shunt through the top window and press my hands on the edge of the sink. Then I straighten my legs and end up recreating a human version of that
Mousetrap
game – as if someone only need drop a silver ball on my shins to catapult my head into the ceiling.

Gemma and my mother are now hysterical. I edge through, sweating and panting as I realise there is literally no way down without rupturing a kidney.

‘Are you okay, darling?’ asks Gemma, failing to stifle her laughter entirely.

‘Thank you for your concern, Munchkin,’ I reply sarcastically, shifting my hands across onto the top of the dishwasher, and landing on a cheese grater, which makes parmesan of my hand. I eventually pull up my knees and by some miracle end up in the kitchen sink, rather than with a cracked skull.

I climb out and examine my shredded hands as I hear voices outside. I open the window fully, only to discover Grandma outside, chatting to Gemma and Mum.

‘Grandma had just been for a walk,’ Mum announces cheerfully. ‘She’d locked up. That was why we couldn’t get in.’

Grandma narrows her eyes and looks at me. ‘You don’t want to go in that way, Danny. You might end up hurting yourself.’

I defy anyone in the world to tell me they have a better grandparent than Flossie Blackwood. My grandma rocks for reasons that go beyond the usual qualities of unconditional love, patience and wisdom. She is as fearless as she is energetic, as cynical as she is a boundless optimist. And she’s always had the ability to make me laugh – something that was the case when I was ten and which still applies now I’m nearly thirty.

She met my grandad, Tom, in the village shop where she worked in Buxton shortly after the war. He’d gone in to buy some potatoes, a story to which she adds every time: ‘Our eyes met over the King Edwards.’ She adored him until the day he died, sixteen years ago. In fact, I don’t think she’s ever stopped adoring him.

‘Can you not stop for a cup of tea?’ she asks, now we’re all assembled in her kitchen.

‘We’ll have to be quick,’ I reply. ‘We’ve got a mountain of stuff to drive over.’

Her creased hands reach out for the kettle and she walks with it to the sink. Her movements seem slower than even six weeks ago, when I was last here. She is eighty this year, I suppose, although that still seems impossible to believe.

It was Grandma who introduced me to one of my passions – open water swimming – and, although she mainly sticks to swimming pools these days, she still loves the water as much as when she was a young woman.

Unlike Mum, who’s on the skinny side, Grandma is a solid-looking woman, whose life revolves around simple pleasures: the great outdoors, church, good food (and Rioja) and her iPad, on which she plays Boggle obsessively.

‘Where’s all your stuff going?’ she asks.

‘There’s plenty of room in the garage,’ Mum says, ‘and they can always unpack some of it.
If
they choose. You never know, they might like it here so much they want to stay for good.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Grandma says, winking at me. ‘Anyway, I’m not convinced there is a lot of room. I was in there this morning looking for some varnish and it was a complete tip.’

‘What did you want varnish for?’ Mum asks.

‘Your father’s sweetheart bench is starting to look weather-beaten. I was going to give it a touch up.’

‘I’ll do that for you, Grandma,’ I offer. ‘You just need to ask, you know. It’s no problem.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of putting a bit of varnish on a bench, Danny. But on this occasion,’ she continues, ‘I’ll think about letting you do it.’

‘Thank you,’ I laugh.

‘That’s what they call reverse psychology,’ she grins. ‘Though I am giving in for a reason.’

‘Which is?’

‘I’m getting rid of the bench. Giving it away.’

I find it hard to hide my disbelief. ‘But why? Grandad made that for you. I thought it was one of the most precious things you own.’

‘It is. Which is why I’m giving it to you and Gemma. It’s going to be my housewarming present when you move into your new love shack.’

I am momentarily lost for words. ‘Grandma, we couldn’t accept it.’

‘But you must,’ she insists. ‘Your grandad would’ve wanted it.
I
want it. It was meant for lovebirds, not old ladies.’

‘Flossie, this is so kind of you,’ Gemma pipes up. ‘I don’t know what to say. The bench is beautiful.’

‘Thank you, Grandma.’ The words catch in my throat as I think about sitting with Gemma looking out at the view from Pebble Cottage.

‘Oh, don’t get all soppy on me, Danny,’ she chides as the kettle boils and Mum steps in to pour water into the tea pot. Grandma looks up at her. ‘Has your mother told you about her new venture?’ she asks me.

Mum bites the inside of her mouth. ‘Not yet.’

‘She’s writing another book,’ Grandma announces.

I look at Mum. ‘Seriously?’

Mum straightens her back. ‘There’s a lot of demand for it these days. Feminism’s back in fashion, thanks to that woman Caitlin Moran.’

‘Your books weren’t about feminism,’ I argue. ‘Just what a tosser every man is, whoever walked the earth. It’s a wonder I never ended up on a psychiatric ward from the emotional strain.’

‘You do exaggerate sometimes, Daniel.’

‘What’s your new book about, Belinda?’ Gemma asks, appearing – worryingly – to be interested.

Mum clasps her hands together. ‘It’s called
Beyond Bastards
. It’s kind of a twenty-first-century take on my previous work. Revisited in the light of the last twenty-five years.’

‘Are we all still tossers?’

‘I never said
all
men were incapable of long-term commitment,’ she reproaches. ‘Perhaps you’d realise that if you actually read it.’

Gemma looks at me in the same way she did during the conversation about the number of times the average single man washes his bedsheets per year. ‘You’ve
never
read it?’

‘I’ve told you this,’ I lie.

‘You have not!’

‘I was only four when it came out,’ I defend myself. ‘And anyway, why would any man read a book that advocates the theory that all men are – to use the title phrase –
bastards
.’

‘I never said
all
men—’

‘Because your mum wrote it,’ Gemma replies, killing dead the discussion. Mum glances at me with an expression so smug she’s nearly cross-eyed.

Today is feeling very long already.

Mum has a get-together with her Pilates mates to go to, leaving us free to spend the day chugging up and down the M53 with belongings stuffed in our cars. Each time we arrive at Buddington, we work in a tag team: I carry stuff from the car to the house and garage while Gemma does the run upstairs to our room.

When we’ve finally made the last trip, locked up the old flat, delivered the key to the landlord and driven to Mum’s, it’s past dinnertime and all we’re capable of is demolishing a takeaway pizza, washing it down with an uninspiring bottle of 7-11 red and preparing to collapse into bed.

I’d failed to check which room Mum was putting us in, having assumed – and hoped – it would be the small spare room, which she decorated last summer and, more importantly, is on the opposite side of the house from her bedroom.

But, apparently overcome by a wave of nostalgia, she decided we’d sleep in my old room, which to be fair is the second largest in the house. I throw the pizza box in the recycling bin, before Gemma and I head to the stairs.

I can see the front door opening as I have my foot on the first step – but we’re just not quick enough. I hold my breath as Mum and her five friends – all of whom classify themselves as Aunty Someone – stumble in. A cacophony of coo-ing ensues as I’m cuddled and kissed and Gemma is paraded before the crowd like a Roman virgin.

We finally extricate ourselves from their grip and announce that we’re heading to bed, prompting a flurry of knowing looks and seaside-postcard innuendo.

‘They were nice,’ Gemma says, apparently seriously. ‘It’s great that your mum has such an active social life.’

It strikes me that she’s probably right as I push open the bedroom door . . . and am lost for words. Gemma glances at me, gauging my reaction with an impish smile. ‘I think your mum wanted to make you feel at home again.’

I have not lived in this house for thirteen full years. A week after I moved out, the walls were stripped and whitewashed, the bed fumigated and the place transformed into something sufficiently pastel and pleasant to be used as a guest room.

Yet, for a reason I cannot explain, my mother has taken it upon herself to restore this room to the original and produce a weird, quasi-historical recreation of it, circa 1999.

I haven’t seen the posters she’s plastered up since the days when I’d while away hours dousing my forehead in Clearasil and experimenting with activities that risked hairy hands and blindness.

I gaze at the walls, noting how schizophrenic my tastes were when I was fifteen: there’s a massive image of Che Guevara and another of Bob Marley next to a marijuana leaf. Underneath are movie posters –
X-Men
,
The Matrix
and, to prove my intellectual credentials,
Betty Blue
(which I’d never actually seen).

Directly in front of us is a shrine to the leading ladies of late 1990s showbusiness: Marisa Tomei, Cameron Diaz, Cerys Matthews, Jennifer Lopez and – in the centre, in glorious, bootylicious Technicolor – Kylie. Although to say Kylie is misleading: this is simply Kylie’s rear end, a close up of her hot-panted bum, as featured in the
Spinning Around
video. I’m trying to work out whether these went up before or after I took out a subscription to
New Socialist
magazine and developed a passionate disapproval of the objectification of women – a firmly-held principle that I struggled with daily, I recall.

‘My mother is insane,’ I decide, sitting on the edge of the bed.