Chapter Two
Fern
‘You’re the most efficient member of my team,’ her boss, Nick, remarked with a double tap on Fern’s desk. ‘We need to clone you.’ She’d just handed him her report chock full of recommendations she’d drawn after analysing departments in the company that were under-performing, those that were doing better than expected and pulling those results together with external informationincluding industry research, consumer trends and competitor analysis.
‘Thanks, Nick.’ It was always nice to hear that she was valued.
Fern pushed her chair beneath her desk at the end of another working day, and despite the tiredness creeping up on her she kept her expression bright, her voice lively. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. And I’ve put all the information you need for your morning meetingon your desk already.’
Fern was eager to get home now with an evening of organising ahead of her. Christmas was fast approaching and every year in mid December she held the neighbourhood Christmas party. Tonight she needed to finalise the invites – she’d chosen a high quality, elegant style with gold swirly writing and a lit-up tree design, each one headed with the words ‘Hosted By Mr & Mrs Tayman’– and once they arrived, she’d hand deliver each of them to people on both sides of their street. She felt a flip of excitement at once again putting on the party of the year.
‘Go home and relax,’ her boss encouraged as though he could see her mind whirring with plans. ‘You’ve earned it.’ He waved the report once in the air to signify his commendation and headed towards the glass walls of hisoffice. Fern worked long days, but he’d still be here for hours yet following an afternoon of back-to-back meetings.
When Fern’s mobile rang she took the call as she stowed a collection of papers into her bag to take home and work on after the party planning. It was Everett, probably letting her know he’d be late, his usual reason behind a phone call these days. She was proud of his dedicationand ambition, but for a married couple they had very little time for just the two of them, and Fern wondered whether she was the only one who’d noticed the cracks beginning to show.
The moment Everett mentioned their youngest son Jacob’s parents’ evening that would take place in January she ran a hand around the inside of her collar and closed her eyes as she realised what she’d done. ‘I totallyforgot the booking system opened late last night.’ And unfortunately getting an appointment wasn’t easy – they disappeared, fast, to the lucky parents who were quick enough. Usually Fern was ready and waiting and had her choice of timeslots. But not this time.
She sighed, sure that when she was at school parents evening had been a lot more straightforward. She didn’t remember her mum and dadhaving to battle to see a teacher as if it was a grand prize rather than an important update on your child’s progress.
‘I would’ve done it, Fern, but you told me you had it under control.’
‘I’ll email the teachers individually,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll line up appointments for the new year.’ Parents’ evening was a while away yet so she could still save the day.
‘I’ll do it now. I’m still atthe office so I might as well. I just wanted to check with you in case the confirmation email had gone to my spam folder. Honestly, it’s fine. See you at home later.’
It didn’t sound fine. She ended the call, said goodbye to Maxwell, the only other colleague remaining, head buried in papers, gold strip desk lamp lighting up the words just enough for him, and made her way out of the departmentand towards the lifts.
As the lift whooshed from the seventh floor down to the basement car park, she tugged the bottom of her suit jacket to ensure it was in place and turned her head from one side to the other to make sure no errant wisps of hair had escaped the high ponytail she wore when she was at work. It was sleek, courtesy of her hair straighteners, and in tip-top condition, thanks toregular salon appointments every six weeks like clockwork to keep the very dark brown and not yet grey tresses the way she liked them.
The lift opened out into the underground car park. Newcomers to the company looked on in awe at anyone who got to park at the offices and drove in and out of the barrier closed off to outsiders. But Fern had earned her space there after eight years of waiting.Ever since she graduated she’d been working in London as a financial analyst at the major publishing company who produced a plethora of magazine titles annually. She hadn’t paused in her career apart from when she took maternity leave for each of her sons and her job was something she treasured. She was proud of what she’d achieved. She felt valued, she excelled, and she felt like she was doing somethingwell.
What she wasn’t doing quite so brilliantly with was marriage and parenthood. It seemed the harder she tried, the more she failed. Fern felt as though she was making mistakes and letting people down more and more lately. And it wasn’t just with parents’ evening. Last week she’d missed Cooper’s hockey game, she’d forgotten to pay for Jacob’s school trip to the Science Museum, which meanthe very nearly didn’t get to go, and on Cooper’s birthday having booked and paid for the wrong movie at the cinema for him and six of his mates, she and Everett between them had had to ferry them all somewhere else more than forty miles away after having cleared it with each parent that that arrangement was fine. Last week she forgot to pick up Everett’s dry cleaning even though she’d insisted shedo it when he had so much on at work, and yesterday she’d knocked Everett’s late mother’s Mandarin hand-painted lidded jar off the shelf in the study and it had smashed to pieces. Everett lost his mum a little over a year ago and coped by throwing himself into his work more and more. For a while Fern had just let him get on with it, he was in pain, but somewhere along the line without realising he’dkept up the habit and she felt as though she’d taken a backseat in his life.
When had they moved from being Everett and Fern to being Jacob and Cooper’s parents and nothing else? Or was this what happened to all parents, they lost a bit of themselves in order to become a family?
Fern put the windscreen wipers on as she emerged from the depths of the car park into the open air. The fog from thismorning had lifted but in its place was drizzle. Not the rain that hammered down and pelted the windscreen and made you feel alive, the sort of pathetic equivalent of trying its best but not quite making it as precipitation. The darkness of winter had already lowered her mood. Gone were the long sunny evenings of summer where she’d drive home, windows open, music playing and relaxing her withevery mile between there and the new-build house she and her family had called home for almost six years. This evening even thoughts of organising anything for the Christmas party weren’t enough of a distraction to lift her spirits.
When she arrived home, she could hear Cooper’s music pounding from his room. At fifteen years old Cooper seemed to have ventured into the tunes that for some reasonhad to be played at full volume and on top of that, they were more often than not accompanied by lyrics Fern deemed a little unacceptable. Fern was only glad they lived in a detached property so at least she wasn’t upsetting the neighbours, and even more glad she’d invested in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones that allowed her to get some work done at weekends if he was around. She was neversure what reception she’d get from Cooper either. Sometimes a request to lessen the volume was met with a murmur of agreement and the music dulled to a bearable level, but other times he’d snap at her to stop moaning at him, she’d end up telling him off for being rude and the whole house would be filled with unpleasantness. It certainly didn’t fit in with the dreamy parenting idyll she’d imagined.Of course that was a view she’d had before she became a parent. When you didn’t have kids it was all too easy to judge a naughty child or a parenting technique, but put yourself in that family’s shoes and it was quite often a different story.
Fern and Everett had desperately wanted a family and both of them had made adjustments. It all seemed to work like clockwork in the early years – jugglingday care, different start and finish times with their jobs, meetings scheduled out of the blue, jumping in to help each other out when they could. But it had become harder as the boys got older. They weren’t as much work physically, there were no exhausting visits to the park to run around and play tag or kick a football with them, but it became more tiring emotionally as they got older. Fern knewshe had to keep reminding herself that they were great boys and that attitude and backchat were things to take in her stride. But some days, like today, when she was tired and weary of it all, it was difficult to make herself see sense. Between Cooper and his music thumping away and Jacob playing on his PlayStation as though his life depended on it – like he was doing now in the room at the endof the hallway as she shut the front door behind her – she didn’t get much of a look in with either of her sons unless they needed something or were sick. She wasn’t sure what she’d envisaged as they grew up and she supposed even the tightest of circles were bound to squash into a different shape as personalities developed and time marched on. It was what had happened to her and her sisters, Ginnyand Daisy, their once close bonds stretched further and further apart as they simply got on with their own lives.
Fern got changed and focused on pulling the dinner together quickly and efficiently. The chicken breasts had been marinating since she put them in the fridge this morning with freshly chopped chillies, lemon juice and garlic, it didn’t take long to peel potatoes and cut up a selectionof vegetables. The next hour was a mix ofHello, Mum. How long till dinner? Where is my school tie?Followed byMum, tell him not to go in my room without asking!AndThere’s no toilet roll up here … I need it, now!
By the time Everett came through the door Fern had everything in hand, glad she’d had some time to calm down. The last thing she wanted was for Everett to see her angry, unable tocope. In her workplace she swore there was another divorce announced every few months and she didn’t want to become another statistic. Fern knew some of the women at work moaned that they had to do everything at home but the set-up in this house wasn’t like that. Everett pulled his weight. He had high demands at work, they both did, and Fern just wanted to hold on to the carefree Everett, the gentle-heartedman she’d fallen in love with from the start. Which meant they really did need to spend some alone time together and talk. Perhaps she’d suggest it tonight.
She smiled at her husband and hoped the weary look on his brow wouldn’t last long. ‘How was work?’
‘Good.’ With a sigh he ran a hand around the back of his neck.
‘Did you get in touch with Jacob’s teachers?’ Better to start with casualconversation than admit she thought they had problems. She multi-tasked by washing up the sharp knife lying on the chopping board so it didn’t mistakenly get put in the dishwasher.
‘I haven’t heard back from all of them, but we’ve already got three appointments lined up in the new year a couple of days after the official parents’ evening.’
‘Thanks for sorting it,’ she said, still not able togauge his mood.
‘We’re both parents, remember.’
She finished drying the knife and pushed it into the block on the kitchen worktop. ‘I know.’
