This is a great deal of fun, and also has the potential to shape up into a great deal more, but at that moment my darling son ruins the whole thing by flinging the door open and striding in. We both probably look surprised, and possibly a bit guilty, for no good reason.
He looks at Archie, looks at me, and shakes his head in mock-disgust.
“Kids these days…” he says, waving a finger at us both as we disentangle ourselves.
I feel momentarily embarrassed, and smooth down my jumper, not daring to meet Archie’s eyes in case we both start giggling like naughty schoolchildren.
“You okay, love?” I ask, noticing that Sam seems a bit out of breath.
“I’ve been running around looking for you. Your phone didn’t work. We need to get you one of those walkie-talkie things.”
“They’re just for the village elders,” I reply seriously, because something about the phrase “village elders” demands it. “For emergencies.”
“Well, this is a bit of an emergency, Mum. Gran’s here.”
I feel my eyes go wide in shock, and frown in confusion.
“What? What do you mean, here?”
“I mean she’s sitting in the café, waiting for you.”
I just stare at him for a few moments, trying to make sense of what he’s said. My mother – the woman who has dropped off the face of the planet for weeks now – is here, in Starshine Cove? A place she didn’t even want to tell me the name of?
I look at Archie, and he nods, then says: “It’s okay. Go on, I’ll see you later.”
I pull on my coat, and before I leave, he quickly clasps my hand, and whispers: “It’ll be all right, Cally. She’s your mum. She loves you.”
He is, of course, right, I think, as Sam and I stride around the snow-spattered green towards the café. She does love me, I know – she’s just had a very funny way of showing it recently.
I feel weirdly nervous as I push open the door, and walk into the now-familiar room. I smell the sea-salt and lavender and sugar, hear the gurgling of the coffee machine, the low-level hum of chatter from the few customers that are in there. I see Connie, wearing a pastel-pink tank top and big hoopy earrings, standing behind the counter. She flashes me a concerned smile and gestures me over towards her.
“She’s down at the back,” Connie says, pulling a couple of wet wipes out of the pack she keeps behind the counter and passing them to me. I stare at them dumbly, unsure as to why they are in my hands.
“You look like you’ve been mauled by a yeti,” she explains, pointing at my face. Ah. Right. Archie’s soil hands. I nod my thanks, and scrub at my cheeks until she says I’m clear, giving me a thumbs up and telling me she’ll bring a coffee over in a minute.
I hang my coat up, and walk slowly towards the rear of the café. Sam stays put, and I can’t say that I blame him. I’m still in shock, moving at minimum speed, my legs leaden and my mind a ball of cotton wool. This is so very strange – my mum was the centre of my world until recently, and now I feel like I don’t even know her any more.
I spot her, back towards me at a table for two, gazing through the big windows and down onto the bay. I wonder how this must feel for her, being here again – being in a place that must be full of painful memories. Ironic, really, that I’d always thought it was a place full of happy ones. Of snowmen and stars that spin.
I want to stay angry with her – I feel like I deserve to stay angry with her after all these weeks of silent rebuff. But as I see her narrow shoulders hunched in on herself, the slight shake of her hand as she lifts her tea cup, I find that I cannot. She’s my mum, after all.
“Hiya,” I say simply, leaning down to give her a little kiss on the cheek. She looks up, as though surprised to see me here, and I sit across from her. She’s had a trim, I can see, and feel a weird twinge of jealousy because she’s got a new hairdresser – which, of all the things I could be thinking right now, seems like one of the most ridiculous. She’s wearing a snazzy blouse that has little butterfly patterns on it, and a pair of pearl stud earrings that I know are new. Her scent is Chanel No 5 – my Christmas gift to her.
She looks well, as long as you don’t inspect her too closely. If you do that – if you know the signs – she looks stressed, and anxious, and sad. Her eyes are red, and seem sore from rubbing. Her nails are bitten, and the smile she gives me only makes it halfway to being real.
She, of course, is doing a similar inspection of me, and whatever it is she finds makes her raise her eyebrows.
“You look marvellous, my love,” she says, reaching out to pat my hand on the table top. “The sea air must be suiting you. I’d forgotten quite how pretty it is here…”
“Well, it was a long time ago, wasn’t it, Mum? Why are you here now? Out of the blue like this? Is everything okay with Kenneth?”
She bites her lip, and gazes at her cup for a moment. I can see she is gathering herself, and I am filled with a familiar sense of protectiveness at seeing her so vulnerable. I tell myself that I don’t need to do that any more. That my baby mum is all grown up now, and has flown the nest.
“Oh yes, dear, he’s wonderful…in fact it was him who made me come. He drove me here – we stopped off in Liverpool to break the journey, and stayed at yours. What were you thinking when you bought that Christmas tree, Cally?”
I am momentarily taken aback at the image of her being in my home without me knowing. I mean, she has a key, always has had, but it still feels slightly odd.
“I wasn’t thinking much, really, Mum. I was missing you, and then the salon closed, and I think I might have been over-compensating a bit. Or a lot. And anyway – you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you here?”
