There were hundreds of them and once the story began to move on social media, it grew and grew. I was sent stories of pain and suffering; stories that people hid because who wants to hear about the pain of real life in the ‘happyinsta-world’? And all of these people said that my story helped because it was a real story in the celebrity world where everything was supposed to be perfect.
I wanted to answer them all and could see a whole new job for me opening up: one where I allowed myself to be who I really was, because that seemed to help people.
I wrote to everyone, posted, Instagrammed and then one day, I told my growing number of fans about my new recipe book and my Fear of the Dark Chocolate Cake, and everything went crazy.
23
Do one thing every day to make yourself happy
My mother isn’t one of life’s texters – when she needs to talk, she phones, but today, when I’m doing the final checking of book lists for the children for going back to school in September, just two weeks away, she texts.
Freya, can you come round later today, this evening perhaps, when Dan’s home. I need to talk to you.
Of course, I reply instantly and follow it up withWhat’s wrong?
Nothing is wrong, my mother texts back quickly.
And that’s it, radio silence.
Dan is home late. Teddy is in bed or in other words, Teddy is getting up and out of bed every five minutes demanding stories, glasses of water, glasses of milk, that she needs to go to the toilet and would somebody please come and tell her another story. Liam is drawing and Lexi is reading. She does a lot more reading these days and it’s been helpful in the light of my ‘terrible trauma’, as she didn’t read all the rubbish, and we were able to tell her that I was fine and that making things sound much worse is a lot like making things sound fabulous when they’re not. Fake.
‘I might be late,’ I say, kissing him goodbye. ‘It’s the tone of her text. She’s the only person I know who manages to get tone in her text and she just sounded off.’
I drive quickly to Summer Street and let myself in. I call quietly to Mum because I don’t want to frighten her. There’s no sound of Eddie stomping around, thank goodness, so he might be watching one of his military TV programmes. Scarlett, who hasn’t gone home since she moved here, is at her dance class, so the person sitting in the kitchen must be my mother.
I listen and hear loud battle noises emanating from the tiny sitting room. Eddie’s watching something about the Second World War and the taking of a bridge or something that requires lots of blowing up things. Granny’s probably still reading. She loves novels, although she’s on to the big print novels these days and she has a special stand for the books so she doesn’t exhaust her poor hands holding them up.
‘She’s very gone on those romantic ones,’ Maura once said to me. ‘I don’t understand it, how can you be her age and still think the prince is going to whisk you away?’
Mum had smiled. ‘Aren’t we alltwenty-five somewhere in our hearts,’ she says.
‘Mum,’ I say now.
‘Here, darling,’ she says, appearing at the door of the kitchen. ‘Come in.’
I go into the kitchen and for once it feels cold and unloved. It’s a little untidy, which is quite unlike my mother who tidies up as she goes, and is a great fan of lighting the odd candle in the kitchen in the evening.
Mum looks, I realise, absolutely shattered. I can see the hollows of her eye sockets as if she is about to paint herself for a fancy dress Dia de Muertos.
Her hair, once a beautiful white blonde, just looks white now, and with her pale face, she’s beginning to look old. Old before her time.
I want to cry and that’s before I notice she’s not wearing any of her lovely jewellery. Mum loves jewellery – she’d go to hell and back for some old turquoise bit of a necklace with a feather attached to it and a few little bits of crystals dangling off it. Tonight, there is not so much as an earring on her person.
‘Do you want herbal tea?’ she says.
‘You sit down,’ I say. ‘I’ll make tea.’
She sinks into the big chair at the head of the table with a sigh so big it sounds as if she might never get up. I wait until I have made the tea and sit down beside her, taking one of her hands in mine.
‘What’s wrong?’ I say.
‘I hate laying this on you, Freya,’ she says, ‘it’s not fair because there is Scarlett, Maura and Con, but you are the person I go to first. It’s not really right, is it? But parents sometimes do that and you have always been the person I went to, I’m sorry. That was wrong of me.’
‘No, it wasn’t wrong of you,’ I say. ‘You’d be talking to Scarlett if she wasn’t just getting back on her feet and Maura is very focused on the solution, so if you have a problem, she’s determined to have it fixed about four seconds after you tell her about it. It’s a very masculine energy, I always think.’
Mum nods, her lips shaking a bit as if she might just cry.
‘And Con,’ I say. ‘Con’s too busy trying to find the perfect woman.’
