“You don’t think you can make something that is cool and successful?” asked Mum, her natural sympathy on the brink of war with her natural overconfidence in my abilities.
“I’ve got a wedding band, a male voice choir with complicated internal politics, and, now I think about it, inappropriately high-end catering.”
Judy grinned. “Sounds like a recipe for a hell of an evening, if you ask me.”
“Does it sound like a recipe for giving lots and lots of money to an insect-themed charity?” I asked. “Because that’s what it reallyneedsto be a recipe for.”
It took more consideration than I thought should have been necessary before Judy conceded, “No, more a recipe for waking up next morning in a haystack wearing someone else’s underthings.”
“Well then.” Mum had shifted into fullhere for youmode. Which I felt ambivalent about because I was past thirty now, and it seemed wrong to still need my mum to be there for me. Except I really needed my mum to be there for me. “What do you think you will need to make this festival work?”
My whole body made a gesture of surrender, because I had no idea and no idea where an idea would come from. “I don’t know? A miracle? Actual rock stars? Something like that episode ofThe Vicar of Dibleywhere Kylie Minogue shows up and opens their village fête for them?”
“I’m sorry, Luc,” said Mum, giving way more time to the suggestion than I’d expected or it had deserved. “Kylie has not liked me since I called her a ‘soap opera reject with no staying power’ in 1988. Retrospectively, that has not aged well. But in my defence, I was very high.”
Much as I loved Kylie, I hadn’t actually been banking ontheVicar of Dibleygambit. “Okay. We’ll put Kylie on the back burner.”
Mum, however, was still not ready to give up, either on me or my objectively doomed rock festival. “Is there really nothing I can do?”
I gave her a smile that aimed for wry and landed on pathetic. “Not unless you want to stage a surprise comeback tour using CRAPPstonbury as your first UK date and debuting a bunch of never-before-heard songs or something.”
Mum gave me that Gallic shrug I knew so well. “Okay.”
It took a while for my brain to catch up with my ears. “What do you meanokay?”
“I meanokay. I’ll stage a surprise comeback tour using CRAPPstonbury as my first UK date and debuting a bunch of never-before-heard songs or something.”
I wasn’t, at this stage, at all sure what my face was doing. It didn’t really know what expression was appropriate, so it was just kind of trying them on at random to see what fit. “Do youhavea bunch of never-before-heard songs or something?”
“I suppose it depends,” Mum mused, “how many you think is a bunch.”
I hesitated. This was feeling simultaneously too much like a dream and way too real. “Um, more than three?”
“Oh.” Mum looked entirely chill. As if this wasn’t slowly inverting several distinct chunks of my world. “Then yes, I probably do have a bunch.”
“But…you gave up music?”
There was that shrug again. I was beginning to feel, Oliver aside, that I lived in a world of shruggers. “I gave up the life. Because I had a bad breakup and a baby and I’d said everything I wanted to say at the time. I never gave upmusic. You can’t give up music, not really.”
“So, what?” My voice had gone slightly hoarse. “You’ve been wanting to make a comeback all these years, but you haven’tbecause…because…” I hated having to think this, much less say it. “Because of me?”
Her expression shifted fromwhatever you needtoget over yourself. “Luc, you’re my son. It embarrasses me when you’re an idiot.”
“I’m sorry. I just—”
“Stop it. I’ve been happy this whole time. I have a son I love and a friend I love who has dogs I put up with—”
“Steady on, old girl,” Judy protested. “Friendship only goes so far, you know. Love me, love my menagerie.”
“Shut up, Judy. I’m trying to have an emotional moment here.” Mum turned back to me. “When you have lived the way I have lived,” she went on, “it stops being about wanting and not wanting. I had a career, and that was good. I had a family, and that was good as well. And for a time my family needed me not to be doing the tours, and so I was happy to not, and now my family may need me to do the tours again, and so I am happy to.”
I was having a lot of trouble following this. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe I’d been trying too hard and hanging on too tight just kind of in general. Kind of forever.
“Life is very nice,” Mum said, “when you let it be.”
“But, but—” I wasn’t really sure what I was protesting anymore. It may well have just been the principle of the thing. “What about—what if—”
“Did you just break yourentirebrain?” asked Jaz, coming back through from the kitchen with bowls of soup that smelled and tasted far better than anything any of the rest of us, with the possible exception of Judy, could have made.
