‘Enough.’ I held up a hand. ‘Enough, you baggage?—’
‘I beg your pardon! What did you just call me?’
‘A baggage, Patricia. A baggage who’s produced a spoiled, entitled son who has led me a merry dance all these years, sleeping around with every floozie going.’
‘Wash your mouth out,’ Pat spat. Two spots of red had appeared in her otherwise pale and pasty face, the too-red lipstick she’d started out with now bleeding into the downturned corners of her thin, discontented mouth.
‘Other women, Patricia. And lots of them. Sleeping around, even before we were married. Yes, I’ve never really acknowledged that to myself but, if I’m honest, I knew but refused to believe the scope of hisshagging around.’
‘There’s no need for such filthy language, Jessica Allen.’
‘My mum knew.Sheknew what he was like. She tried to stop me marrying him, encouraged me to go along with what Deanreally wanted…’
‘What Dean wanted?Whatdid our Dean want? He took you on when you got yourself pregnant. Made sure you’d got your hooks into him…’
‘Got myself pregnant? Hmm, not sure that’s biologically correct, Pat.’
‘Oh, you! You always were a clever little bitch. With your… your A levels…’ Pat spat the words as if A levels were the work of the devil himself. ‘So, go on then, what did our Deanwant?’
‘For me to have a termination.’
‘No, I don’t believe that. Dean didn’t want that!’
‘You’ve no idea, have you?’ I actually laughed at Pat Butterworth’s face. ‘There were two of us: two of us both pregnant to Dean at the same time. It was a bit like “Eeny, meeny, miney moe… Ooh, which one shall I marry? Who’s the best option? Well, Jess is always a pushover and a bloody good cook. I’ll have an easy life with her: tea on the table, shirts ironed, down to the pub and clubbing and able to carry on with my life as before…”’
‘No!’
‘Yes, Pat, yes! Luckily forour Dean, the other girl did the sensible thing. Listened tohermother who took her off for a?—’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Lola was at the kitchen door, her face white. ‘You’re just horrid, you are, Mum. You’re making it all up. You’re a horrible, horrible mother saying horrible things about my dad. I hate you…!’
19
I’d spent a restless night going over and over the dreadful words Lola had heard me shouting once I’d finally lost my temper with Pat Butterworth. What sort of mother did that make me in Lola’s eyes? I’d have given anything for my daughter not to have heard the truth.
As well, I’d spent sleepless hours arguing with myself as to whether I’d been bloody stupid allowing Joel to move in with Lola and me. Dean next door I could cope with. Well, I thought I could. Surely better to have someone in Mum’s cottage that I knew than someone who had a whole load of kids shouting their heads off in the garden or some single person determined to party every Saturday night? And if Lola was going to make a habit of flouncing off to be with her dad as she had yesterday after her coming in on the awful showdown with her granny, then better surely to flounce off next door than three miles down the road to Pat’s place.
I’d been up since six, bottoming the kitchen from the party detritus of the day before, sanitising work surfaces ready to start experimenting with more of The White House puddings. I glanced at Arthur, who was waiting patiently at the kitchen door. ‘Sorry, darling, I promise I’ll take you for a walk this afternoon.’ I moved to let him out into the garden.
Mum was moving the rest of her things out this morning.
Moving out.
Going.
Leaving us.
I felt as though my security blanket was being yanked away from me after thirty years of my mum always being there. Well, about time I grew up, for heaven’s sake. Telling myself this didn’t make the reality any better, and I felt a solid lump of something cold where my heart usually sat.
I moved to the window, switching on the kettle as I went. A Frozen van was parked on the drive. A couple of lackeys, more used to delivering frozen foodstuffs to local and national supermarkets, were carrying boxes and other paraphernalia from the cottage. I leaned my face against the glass, watching as Mum’s dressing table and that lovely little chair she loved so much were swallowed up through the open maw of the van. But apart from that – oh, there went the hatstand Mum had salvaged from a car boot sale, lovingly stripping and refurbishing the piece and giving it pride of place in her tiny hallway – she appeared to be taking little furniture of her own with her. Where was Kamran going to put that hatstand then? Plenty of space up at the manor house, I conceded as I continued to watch some of my past life leach from the next cottage.
But that seemed to be it. Once Mum’s gardening paraphernalia was safely in the van, the twoFrozen men leaned against it, reaching for phones and vapes. Mum appeared then, locking her own door and, giving it only a last cursory glance, headed to the van to talk to the men.
No coffee for them? Not like Mum. I was just about to head out to offer refreshments when Mum turned and made her way through the adjoining gate to my own cottage.
‘Right, darling, I’m off,’ she said as she came through the kitchen door.
‘Where’s Sorrel? Is she still in bed?’ I asked.
