Audrey’s mum didn’t seem to think that was an acceptable response. “Whose side are you on? This is our daughter and if we can’t believe in her, who else is going to?”
“Ithink”—Audrey gently picked up a teacup and transferred it to her lap—“that believing in me when I’ve already been knocked out is probably going from supportive to delusional.”
“We’re your parents,” insisted Audrey’s mother, “it’s our job to be delusional.”
Although Audrey wasn’t quite sure that actually was their job, it was true that her parents had always been in her corner to an almost comical degree. When she’d been with Natalie it had been a frequent source of tension. “It’s a form of gaslighting, really”—ten-years-ago-Natalie would say—“theyperformbeing on your side but they really aren’t.”
Some days, Audrey had let herself believe that. Like she’d let herself believe that wanting to stay in Shropshire instead of moving to London was wrong and selling herself short. Like she’d let herself believe that a life where you weren’t burning all your candlesat all their ends at once and making yourself sick with the stress of it was a life half lived. Like she’d let herself be another person’s shadow.
“It’s okay,” she said aloud. “It really is. I don’t have to be the best amateur baker in the country. And even going out in week three, I’m still the seventh best amateur baker in the country, which I think is pretty good going.”
Audrey’s dad took a triumphant sip of tea. There was a special technique to sipping tea triumphantly, and her dad had mastered it. “You see. She’s completely fine.”
But Audrey’s mum wasn’t buying it. “If she was completely fine she wouldn’t be here.”
“Wouldn’t I?” It probably hadn’t been meant as a dig, but part of Audrey took it as one. “That makes it sound like I only come to see you when I’m upset about something.”
And now Audrey’s mum and Audrey’s dad were both giving her the same affectionate but reproving look.
“I visited last month,” Audrey protested. “I visited last month just to see how you were because I’m a good daughter.”
There was a short silence.
“What?” Audrey demanded.
“Andto borrow a flathead screwdriver,” her dad reminded her.
Setting her tea down, Audrey adopted a posture of defiance that she hoped didn’t come across as teenagery but probably did. “It wasn’t really about the flathead screwdriver.”
“You were quite insistent at the time, love,” observed Audrey’s mum.
Since nothing about this day had been planned, Audrey couldn’t quite say it hadn’t gone according to one, but when she’d woken up that morning she hadn’t expected screwdrivers to be amajor factor in her evening. “I just said,Oh by the way, while I’m here, you wouldn’t have a flathead screwdriver I can borrow. If you hadn’t, I’d have bought one. There’s a B&Q in Telford.”
This prompted diametrically opposite parental reactions, with Audrey’s mum going at once to “Oh there’s no need to do that, we’re happy to help” while her dad opted instead for “You probably should anyway, it’s a useful thing to have.”
“The point is,” Audrey’s mum continued, “thatgenerallyif you’re here it’s because you need your old mum and dad for something. And that’s nice, isn’t it?” She nodded at her husband, who echoed back that it was. “So why don’t you just tell us?”
Normally, Audrey wasn’t proud about this kind of thing. But normally she had a better sense of what this kind of thing was. When Natalie had dumped her (When we’d agreed that our relationship had run its course,Natalie reminded her) she’d sat on her parents’ sofa crying into a cup of cold tea for four straight hours.
When she’d decided, shortly afterwards, to jack in her fancy London job and move back to Shropshire, she’d sat on their sofa not crying but feeling like she wanted to, and also a little bit like she wanted to vomit, for three hours. But this was different. All she’d really lost was a never-really-there chance at ten thousand pounds and a nebulous sense of…of something like belonging.
“I just…” she began, then stopped because thejustwas going to sound incredibly pathetic. But these were her parents and they’d seen her in tears over straight girls, B grades on homework, and the opening sequence ofWatership Down. “I just think I’ll really miss everybody.”
Audrey’s mum nodded sagely. “Well that’s natural. You’ve probably made friends. You were always good at making friends.”
In point of fact, Audreywasn’talways good at making friends.At least, she hadn’t been in a long time. “Am I? I mean it’s Saturday night and even though I’m moderately young, relatively free, and extremely single, I’m sitting on my mum and dad’s sofa getting upset about some people I met three times on a TV show.”
“Sometimes,” said Audrey’s dad with an air that Audrey knew from experience suggested what he was about to say wouldn’t necessarily sound as wise as he was expecting it to, “it’s the people we know the least that affect us the strongest.”
“Really?” Audrey asked. “Because I think the opposite might be true actually.”
“What about Tom and Carol?” said Audrey’s mum, sounding very much like she’d just laid the trump card.
There was that. But it seemed very much like an isolated incident. “Hang on, you can’t cite your weird obsession with Tom and Carol—”
Audrey’s dad seemed genuinely offended. “It isnota weird obsession. They were very interesting people. Your mum and I talk about them all the time.”
“You met themoncein Torbay while you were waiting for a bus,” Audrey reminded him.
