‘Can’t believe Phoenix is growing up so fast. High school! Ripton High won’t know what’s hit them.’
‘Yes...well, we’re still hoping he might get a scholarship. You know, for Kingsgate.’
‘But that wouldn’t cover all the fees, would it?’
‘No...actually there was something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Go on.’
Lorna had seen the hesitant look in her mother’s eye, but she’d started now so she had to finish, and anyway didn’ther mum say at the barbecue that she wanted to help more?
‘It’s so important to give the children the best start in life and well, I was wondering if there was any chance...’
Carol’s face was sinking in disappointment and Lorna felt herself flare up. She knew what was coming and what the response was going to be.
‘James has so muchmoney,’ she said.
‘That’s James’s money, not mine.’
‘But you’re married. Surely, I don’t know, a loan or something? Would he even miss it?’
‘Lorna, I think he might miss several thousand pounds.’
Lorna doubted it. And what about her mum? When she’d met James and moved in with him, she’d been able to rent out her own house – a place just outside Derby that had been left to her when Lorna’s father had died twelve years ago. Her mother had hit the jackpot really. The house brought in a nice income every month – Lorna had looked it up. It always aggrieved Lorna that someone else was living in the place where she grew up, but it was more than that. Her mother’s generation – the baby boomers – had had the best of everything. Final salary pensions, jobs for life, affordable property. Whereas her own generation had meagre contributions from their employers, hardly any job security and house prices that were through the roof.
‘You said you would help more.’
‘When?’
‘At the barbecue.’
‘Did I?’ Carol seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Oh!’
Finally, thought Lorna. She felt a flare of hope.
‘I meant with childcare,’ said Carol. ‘Picking the children up from school, looking after them until you got back from work.’
What?Was that it? Why had her mother allowed her to think it was something else? ‘But...Mum, I know there’s the rental money. That could make a huge difference.’
Carol took a careful breath. ‘I know you feel a particular affiliation with the place, having grown up there—’
‘It was my childhood home!’
‘—but that rental money is going into a pot for the future. None of us know where we’re going to end up.’ She put her cake fork down. ‘Lorna, why are you so set on this school anyway?’
‘Because...’ Lorna tried to formulate her answer. Because it was the best one around? Because she wanted her children to be considered a certain type? Able to keep up with the more privileged and well-to-do? Because she didn’t want to miss out? Because she wanted to feel as if she’d made it, had done something for her children, if not for herself?
‘The local academy is perfectly fine,’ Carol said gently. ‘Lots of children at state schools come out with good grades, go on to get good jobs.’
Now she was getting palmed off. Lorna could feel herself getting angry.
‘Except me,’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Well, I went to one and it’s not exactly like I’ve hit the dizzying heights.’
‘It’s not the—’ Her mother stopped abruptly.
