‘You’re so strange.’
‘What’s strange about liking pubs?’
‘Nothing.’ Cate smiles. ‘Nothing.’ Then she says, ‘Get any cards today?’
‘Mum, it is very old-fashioned of you to ask such a question. You should be asking me if I gave anyone a card. I’m not some passive blob, sitting round waiting for boys to do things to impress me.’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Glad to hear it. So, did you give anyone a card?’
‘No way!’ she says. ‘Have you seen the boys at my school?’ She puts the Valentine’s card down again. ‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Gone running.’
‘Freak.’
Georgia and Cate share an anti-running sensibility. Neither of them is designed for running. They get stitches too easily and feel the ground hard and heavy beneath their feet. They also both think that Roan looks faintly ridiculous in his Lycra outfits.
Josh enters the kitchen in his shambling, slightly lost way, as though half-heartedly looking for something. He comes to Cate and hugs her. She smells school on him, and the deodorant he always wears. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a battered envelope.
‘Happy Valentine’s,’ he says.
She opens the envelope and finds a card he’s made himself out of black card with a red paper heart stuck on the front attached by a paper hinge. Inside it says, ‘To the best mum in the world. I love you so much.’
He’s made her a Valentine’s card every year since he was tiny. He’s one of those boys: loves his mum more than anything in the world, puts her on a pedestal. In a way it’s glorious. In another,she feels worried that she’s only ever one bad decision or harsh word away from completely destroying him.
‘Thank you, my lovely boy,’ she says, kissing him on the cheek.
‘You’re welcome,’ he says. Then, ‘What’s for dinner?’
She switches off the oven and takes out his chicken goujons and places the card next to the two already standing on the kitchen table. And as she does so, her heart jolts.
Georgia has opened the white envelope addressed to Roan; she has slid the card out and is about to open it.
‘Oh my God, Georgia! What are you doing?’ She snatches the card from Georgia’s hand.
‘God! Why are you overreacting? It’s just a card.’
‘Yes, but it’s addressed to Dad. You can’t go around opening other people’s mail.’
‘You open mine!’
‘Yes, but you’re a child! And I would never open something like that, that looks so personal.’ She picks up the envelope, hoping to slide the card back in, but in classic Georgia fashion, she’s virtually torn the envelope clean in half to get the card out. ‘Oh, fuck. Georgia. I can’t believe you did that. What were you thinking?’
Georgia shrugs. ‘I just wanted to see who was sending Dad Valentine’s cards.’
Cate forces the card roughly into the bottom half of the torn envelope and shoves it in a drawer. She can’t deal with this right now.
‘Aren’t you going to look? See who it’s from?’
‘No, I am not. It’s none of my business.’
‘But how can you say that? He’s your husband. Valentine’s cards from strangers is literally, one hundred per cent your business.’
‘It’s probably just one of his patients,’ Cate says. ‘i.e. none of my business whatsoever.’
‘But if it’s one of his patients, how the hell did they get this address?’
‘No idea,’ Cate says. ‘Maybe it was written on something in his office. I don’t know.’
