A rare blush coloured my mother’s cheeks and shereturned to the sofa, still holding my book. ‘I said some very unkind things aboutButterflies. The fact my opinion changed had nothing to do with its supposed author and everything to do with my having read it.’
‘Nothing to do with the author at all?’ I prodded.
‘Well.’ She pursed her lips to temper her smile and ran her hand over the soft-touch cover. ‘You can’t deny you would be impressed too if you thought a straight man had written a woman-centric romance this good.’
It was the biggest compliment she had ever given me and it wasn’t even direct.
‘Your father hasn’t published a romance novel because, to the best of my knowledge, a romance novel has never crossed his desk. I disregarded it because, and let me be brutally honest, I am a terrible literary snob.’
A laugh erupted out of me and I tried to capture it in my hand but Mum looked perfectly at peace with the fact.
‘Very happy to admit it,’ she said. ‘Just because a bunch of old industry fogeys value my opinion doesn’t mean it’s the only valid one. And it’s still only that, an opinion. It breaks my heart to think you didn’t share this incredible achievement with me and your dad because I sit in my ivory castle handing out irrelevant pats on the head and he works on books by people who imagine themselves in the body of a llama.’
It was good to hear her say it and even better to see her holding my book without having to worry she was about to throw it into a bonfire, but the air between us wasn’t quite cleared. A very loud imaginary voice told me to cut my losses while I was ahead but if I’d learned nothing else today it was that secrets festered and always came out to bite you in the arse in the end.
‘The other night, when you were talking to Jericka and Aunt Carole in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘I was outside and I heard you saying how disappointed you were that I’d gone into teaching rather than publishing.’
‘Oh, Sophie, no.’
Mum’s face fell, the hard-earned smile I’d already saved to my memory box vanishing in an instant. She was up on her feet and beside me on my chair before I’d even had time to blink away the tears that threatened as soon as I spoke.
‘You must think I’m an absolute monster,’ she said, combing her fingers through my hair, something she hadn’t done since I was a child. ‘That’s not what I meant at all. I’m not disappointed because you’re a teacher but I have worried about you making that choice, only because I suspected that your heart lay elsewhere. Sometimes things come out wrong after a long day, especially when talking to your Aunt Carole. Obviously if I’d known you were listening—’
‘It’s all right,’ I told her, even though it wasn’t. ‘You get used it. Middle child stuff.’
‘But you’re not my middle child,’ Mum corrected. ‘You’re my eldest daughter. William got away with blue murder by being the first and Charlotte has been spoiled to death, and we’re all suffering for it now. But you had the weight of the world on you from the very beginning. Trying to live up to everybody’s expectations, suffering all the lessons we learned with William, trying to win your big brother’s approval, and just when you started to come into your own, along comes your little sister. But you always handled everything with such grace.’
‘Except for when I punched CJ in the face,’ I suggested.
‘I missed that so we’ll pretend it didn’t happen,’ she replied. ‘Although I did hear from your father that it was a decent swing. Good follow-through, were his precise words, I think.’
Squeezed onto the chair next to me, she placed my book on top of my cushion and smoothed one hand over the cover.
‘I should’ve had more confidence that you would find your way to it in your own time,’ she said, pulling my head down onto her shoulder. ‘You have excelled in everything you’ve ever done and I am so proud of you. So is your dad and your brother and so is your new little shadow.’
She nodded out the window to where Dad and Charlotte were still digging into a giant bag of Doritos and singing along to something on the stereo.
‘Not quite managing to excel in my love life,’ I said when she went back to the sofa and started rummaging around in her handbag. ‘I can’t believe I was so stupid.’
‘I can,’ she replied without looking up. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. Do you know your father proposed to me the same day we met?’
‘Yes but that was a million years ago,’ I said. ‘You’ve been together forever.’
‘We have now but we hadn’t then.’ She pulled a Sharpie out of her bag and came back to the chair. ‘We were fools for each other from the very first day we met. Sometimes it happens that quickly and you don’t get to control it,’ Mum said, tapping the cover of my book. ‘I’d have thought you knew that.’
‘Dad wasn’t married though,’ I reminded her. ‘And spoiler alert for book two, neither is Eric.’
‘He wasn’t married but your father wasn’t entirely single either. Scandalous, I know, but here we all are today, no regrets. The course of true love never did run smooth.’
‘Yes but also,one must not live one’s life through men but must be complete of oneself as a woman of substance,’ I quoted wisely.
‘Very good, I like that,’ Mum said, impressed. ‘Austen or Brontë?’
‘Fielding,’ I replied. ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary.’
There was no restraining her grin this time.
‘That expensive education was worth every penny,’ she commented with a loving nudge. ‘And regardless as to how you feel right now, there is no shame in falling fast and falling hard. Joseph is very charming and if I didn’t know what I know now, I would’ve readily believed he felt the same way you evidently feel about him.’
