‘Betty? What are you talking about, Emma? You know I always go to Antibes in August.’ Her mother’s voice grows querulous, then muffled once more, ‘Mathias, I have no idea what she’s talking about.’
Emma is still laughing when she sits back down opposite Betty. Her overwhelming feeling is one of relief. She is going to Paris, and she doesn’t have to see her mother. The decision to face her has been taken out of her hands. She knows the concierge at her mother’s apartment building will let her in to collect the old photographs and papers, and before ending their call, her bemused mother agreed that she could borrow them. Besides, she has received an email from Philippe (whoisstill in Paris), saying that he would be delighted to meet her. She has no idea what she hopes to achieve by this visit, but he had encouraged her to reach out if she were ever in Paris, and he is certainly a man who knows a lot about scent and flowers.
With this in mind, she is still grinning to herself when Betty says, ‘I’ve ordered us two glasses of Champagne, as my treat.’ Then she adds, ‘So your mum won’t be there?’
‘Nope.’
‘And you don’t mind?’ Betty sounds confused.
‘Nope.’ Emma grins. ‘I know I should– it’s half of why we’re going– but I don’t.’
‘But I thought you had things you wanted to talk to her about?’
Instead of answering a question that is likely to tie them up in knots for hours, she asks, ‘What was your mum like, Betty?’
Betty settles back in her seat. ‘Oh, she was a wonder– so talented. She’d been a seamstress for the designer Norman Hartnell in London and worked her way up to be an embroiderer. My mum once showed me a photo of a white evening dress they had made for the late Queen– it was covered in the tiniest, hand-embroidered gardenias. My mum was working there when she met my dad. He was an accountant—’
‘So was mine!’ Emma smiles. ‘Well, that’s how he started– he ended up in the City. He had one of those brains that see patterns in figures.’
‘A bit like mine,’ says Betty. ‘Well, my dad ended up in Glossop and that didn’t suit my mum at all. But what could she do? In those days, a wife had to go with her husband.’ Betty sips her Champagne.
‘Did your mum keep working when they moved?’
‘Yes, first in a dress shop and then she took on some private customers making their clothes. But, well, it wouldn’t have been the same, would it?’
‘Was she very disappointed?’
‘You could say that.’ Betty sounds uncharacteristically sarcastic.
She waits, feeling Betty might want to say more.
‘I thinkDisappointed Womanjust about sums up my mum. I think her job, her neighbours, her house and her husband all disappointed her. Although she was pleased my sister married well– she perked up a bit then.’
Betty stares out of the window, and Emma can tell she is miles away.
‘And you and your mum?’
‘Well, what do you think, love? Look at me.’
Emma looks at the small, neat, rounded woman in front of her, with her curly hair, old-fashioned glasses and sequined, butterfly sweatshirt, and she thinks she is a beautiful sight to behold.
‘I would say that if she could raise a woman like you, she had done something right with her life and should be very proud.’
Betty blinks several times and Emma thinks her friend might cry. She thinks she might, too.
Betty smiles slowly. ‘Well, towards the end, she did soften a bit, and that was a blessing.’
‘Did you … make your peace with her before she died?’
Betty chuckles. ‘I don’t know if I’d go that far, love.’ She looks thoughtful. ‘But it was okay. Yes, it was better. What about you and your mum?’
Where should she start? It occurs to her that Betty and she have more in common than just a love of flowers and fathers who were accountants. She had once read about an experiment in which people from all sorts of backgrounds gathered in a room without speaking. They were asked to go up to people they instinctively felt comfortable with. It turned out that twins gravitated towards twins, only children to only children and so on. She wonders if she would have found Betty in that room.
She draws in a deep breath. ‘My mum was extraordinarily beautiful when she was young. I’ve seen photos of her, and she really was incredible. She’s not bad now at sixty-seven.’ Emma thinks of Mathias. ‘Men still notice her, and she’s used to people doing things for her because of her looks.’ She wonders how much her dad minded that. Had he gone to the garden because of her mother’s stream of ‘friends’, or had the ‘friends’ come because he was in the garden?
Emma sighs. ‘She’s very elegant, loves beautiful things…’
‘And?’
