‘Couldn’t very well sleep in my car. Besides, I’ve never been in this part of the country before. No point rushing back immediately,’ Patti told her.
‘Don’t you have that fragrance launch on Tuesday?’ Pam asked, bringing it home to Joy that her mum knew Patti’s work plans for the coming days when she usually didn’t even know which hemisphere Joy and Radia were in from one week to the next.
‘I brought your shampoo from home,’ Pam told her. ‘Never use hotel shower gels, girls,’ she added wisely. ‘Don’t I always say that, Patti? Not unless you want to itch all night long.’ She was searching through a bag and pulling the bottle out. Patti took it and gave her mum a kiss on the cheek.
‘Night, Joy. See you at breakfast, yeah? Come down to the Siren’s Tail.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure we’ll have time,’ flustered Joy.
‘Wewon’t be there,’ threw in Pam, in a tone that said,So don’t let us stop you meeting up. ‘We’ve got a little bed and breakfast about a mile away, lovely looking place. We’ll be there in the morning, before we head home.’
‘You’re leaving tomorrow?’ Joy was getting emotional whiplash. One minute she was wishing they hadn’t come, then she was reeling, thinking how they’d be going again so soon.
‘Aren’t you flying off somewhere tomorrow?’ her mum asked.
‘Yeah,’ Joy conceded. ‘Lisbon, for a few days.’ She didn’t add the bit about coming back to London straight after, even though she’d just been hurting at the thought of missing her mum and dad. Nothing about the way she was feeling made sense.
Before Joy could orientate herself further, Patti had kissed her cheek and walked out the door, shouldering her backpack, and with three slices of caterpillar cake, wrapped in a napkin, in her hand. ‘Nighty night!’ she directed wickedly at Joy.
Her mum only smiled indulgently, watching her go.
Little sister syndrome, thought Joy. Patti could always do as she pleased and get away with it because she was the precious, cute one. Still was, evidently.
‘So…’ Joy said again, inhaling through her teeth, then clicking her fingers in a weird, awkward gesture she’d literally never made before in her life.
‘So…’ her mum echoed in a happy kind of chirrup that wasn’t fooling either of them.
Nothing about this was comfortable or happy. The whole thing made Joy’s chest ache and her cheeks burn. She stood for a long moment, digging the toe of her left shoe into the floor.
‘Dad seems well?’ Joy tried. ‘After the eye thing.’ The café clock ticked so loudly Joy wondered if it was faulty.
Pam wasn’t having any of this. ‘Shall we take a walk?’ she said, already on the move and not waiting for an answer.
Joy trailed after her through the shop, picking up her jacket on the way and complaining that it looked like rain out there.
‘What harm can a bit of rain do?’ Pam called over her shoulder as she stepped out into the evening, then realising what she’d said, grimaced and turned back to her daughter. ‘Oops, I don’t suppose the local people would like to hear me talking like that, what with the flood and all.’
Joy forced a laugh.
‘Which way?’ Pam asked, once they were on the slope, looking down in the direction Patti had just walked towards her hotel room.
Joy thought of her sister checking in, getting a drink sent up from the bar and climbing into a nice big bed somewhere in that cosy pub. Lucky cow.
‘Up-along,’ Joy insisted, not wanting to run the risk of seeing Monty, not now they’d said goodbye, anddefinitely notwhen she had her mum tagging along.
‘See, it’s dry,’ Pam said, holding up a hand to the cool evening sky, and they turned up the slope.
There followed another strained bout of small talk just like they’d had over coffee, only this time without the distraction of Radia pirouetting on tiptoe while reciting the alphabet. They managed to cover, yet again, what a pretty place this was, how bad for her mum’s ankles the steep slope and cobbles were, and how, if Joy wanted to keep her ankles strong, now was the time to do it.
‘Pilates, you see?’ Pam told her. ‘Your cousin Tess is doing it five times a week, which personally, I think is overdoing it, but…’
‘Mum,’ Joy couldn’t take it anymore, ‘you haven’t come to see us before. Why now?’
It was enough to stop Pam in her tracks. She held onto a gate for a moment, seemingly to catch her breath.
‘We never knew where you was, before.’
Joy held her nerve. ‘Fair enough.’
