Joanne and Sam exchanged a glance.
‘Mother,’they mouthed at each other.
Jean swooped into the room. Her greying hair, cut short, was curled the way she did it with heated rollers, her limited make-up was perfect and she wore a silky cream knitted suit with a single loop of discreet beads round her neck.
Sam looked at her mother and wondered if she had ever seen her dressed down. Sam loved dressing down: taking off her work clothes when she used to work in the bank and slipping into comfortable stretchy leggings and fluffy socks with one of Ted’s sweatshirts on. Then, she’d curl up on the couch with the dogs, relax and watch delicious junk on the TV.
She had never seen her mother in such a state of undress – even her mother’s nightwear was a collection of quasi-Victorian nightgowns. No comfy pyjamas in that house.
Joanne recovered first. ‘Mother, delighted you could come. I thought you were busy.’
‘I’m never too busy to see you all,’ said their mother and, yet again, Sam and Joanne exchanged a glance.
Their mother had always been too busy to see them. Their father had raised them. But that ship had sailed a long time ago.
Sam managed a brittle smile and knelt with difficulty down on the floor, where her youngest niece was playing with trains.
There was something about her mother these days that was bothering her and she just couldn’t put her finger on what it was; just something there in the background that was niggling away.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ she had said to Ted a few weeks before, after her mother had sent her a terse email hoping she was feeling well with her pregnancy. ‘Whose motheremailsabout their pregnancy? That’s fine if you live in a different country or you’re on the space station, but if you live in the same country,not that many miles away, you’d phone, and then you’d come over, like a normal mother would.’
She was aware that her voice was rising with each breath.
‘Honey, don’t get your blood pressure up. It’s bad for the baby,’ Ted said.
Sam had groaned. ‘That’s the best excuse ever,’ she said. ‘You can stop me getting irritated with my mother by reminding me it’s bad for the baby.’
‘You haven’t got annoyed over your mother for years,’ he said, ‘so it’s a little weird, but hey, hormones! Just remember to take the annoyance down a notch or, I promise you, I will buy one of those little blood pressure machines.’
Sam hadn’t answered the email. If her mother wanted to behave like a robo-mum, she was not going to go along with it. Step away from the crazy!
Posy wanted all the toy train-track joined together. Ted and Sam had bought it for her when it was clear that Posy liked what were officially termed ‘boys’ games’. Joanne was entirely laid-back about it all: ‘If she wants to play with boys’ stuff, fine. Why are there girls’ toys and boys’ toys? Why not just toys? I was never into Barbie myself.’
‘No guns, though,’ Patrick said.
‘Definitely,’ agreed Joanne. ‘But a crossbow when she’s old enough, so she can be cool, like Katniss ...? And I think karate or tae kwon do lessons when they’re older. Girls need to feel empowered.’
‘So nice to see you aren’t using gender-stereotypical toys for the children,’ said a cool voice.
Sam felt that tightening in her guts again. Her mother felt that non-gender-stereotypical toys were useful in that they might convince a girl to do higher level science and maths and go off to prove themselves in male-dominated worlds.
She didn’t seem to realise that a three-year-old wanting to play with trains was just a three-year-old wanting to play with trains. No, everything had to have a superior purpose down the line.
‘Isn’t this great, Posy,’ said Sam, trying not to grit her teeth in case the ensuing rictus grin frightened her niece.
There was something therapeutic about making a curved track, she’d found from previous visits. Finally, after what seemed like an interminable amount of time, with Jean exchanging idle chit-chat with Joanne while Sam studiously ignored it all and played with Posy, it was time to eat.
The calm of track-making vanished over dinner.
‘I sent you an email enquiring about the pregnancy,’ said her mother, looking at Sam over the top of her bifocals, precisely the way an irritated headmistress would look at a misbehaving student. For a moment, Sam felt just like a misbehaving student, preferably one from St Trinian’s.
‘I get so many emails, I just never got round to answering it, Mother, but I had been talking to Dad. I was telling him things were doing really well. Phone calls are easier – you can only imagine the number of emails I get from work.’
‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘Talking of work, your father told me about this scandal of the missing money and some volunteer person who has been helping themselves with a credit card over the years. Goodness, what a mess that appears to have been. It’s ... how shall we say ...’ Jean seemed to be considering the correct Oxford dictionary definition of a mess, ‘... tricky to extract oneself from that sort of scandal. You don’t want your career blighted.’
Sam glared at her father, who mouthedsorry. What on earth had made him divulge this bit of information?
‘Have you sorted it out yet?’ her mother went on, excellent in the role of High Inquisitor.
