‘Pleased to meet you,’ Diane offered, into the silence.
‘You’re easy pleased, then. Gareth says you’ve got your own car?’
Diane flushed at Wendy’s offhandedness. ‘A mini.’
‘You must have a good job. Well, sit down.’
Diane, unused to having her life picked over so rudely, sat slowly. ‘I work in a boutique. My parents bought me the car.’
Melvyn and Ivan exchanged grins.
Wendy stared harder. ‘Must be nice to have things like that fall in your lap.’ She set her mending aside. ‘I suppose I’d better put the kettle on, you’ll expect a cup of tea.’
Stiff with embarrassment at such ungraciousness, Diane refused. ‘No, thank you.’
Gareth said, ‘She takes one sugar, white.’
Wendy returned with a tin tray of mugs and continued her blunt interrogation. ‘So what kind of a house do your parents live in? I suppose your friends are lawyers and bank managers and they all have cars, nice new cars. It’s all right, isn’t it, when you’ve got a bit of brass in the family?’
Gareth took a green mug bearing a picture of an improbably yellow, doleful sausage dog. ‘We’re getting married,’ he said, quietly and without particular emphasis. He laced his fingers through Diane’s.
Melvyn and Ivan gave vent to hoots of derision and old jokes about balls and chains but Wendy’s hostile probing ceased.
Gareth took Diane home often in the few months before the wedding. Despite Wendy’s resentment it was easier there than at Diane’s house. They could go to his room and play records while Wendy sat downstairs in her armchair mending clothes and knitting jumpers in front of the TV.
It was on his own turf that Diane began to discover the complex person that was Gareth Jenner.
It seemed there hadn’t been much money in the boys’ childhoods. Equal pay for women had been still a few years away, which had meant punishing hours for Wendy. Now that all three Jenner boys were earning and Wendy semi-retired Gareth wanted the family to move, but Wendy wasn’t interested. ‘I’m too old to bother. And the boys need the money for their own lives. You’ll always be OK, Gareth, you a miser all your life; you’ll move on when you’ve hoarded enough. But Melvyn and Ivan have the arse out of their pants by Wednesday every week. They’d never cope with a higher rent.’
So they remained on the Brightside Estate.
Most of the petty criminals in the area had been housed in the ugly new beige-brick terraces and, although loosely law abiding themselves, the Jenners mixed comfortably with the dealers, thieves and hookers that lived beside them, treating the police like vampires – if you never invited them in you were fairly safe.
Diane won acceptance in the Jenner household, after a fashion. She might not be their sort but if she belonged to Gareth then she belonged to them and they made sure she never had a moment’s trouble from the neighbourhood.
It was Diane’s parents who fought bitterly and futilely to keep her from taking the name of Jenner.
So many rows. So many brutal words. So often that Gareth, pale with rage, had to stick out insulting disregard for his honesty and prospects.
Low life.
Wrong ’un.
Regret it all your life.
Underclass.
Don’t come crying to us.
You’ve made your bed.
We expected better.
Diane shook her head clear of the echoes of her father’s voice, and climbed from the car into spitting rain.
Harold answered the door looking as if he might just have awakened from an afternoon nap. But his bleariness soon vanished. ‘Diane! Come in. You’re a nice surprise.’ Diane smiled at his pleasure, genuine she had no doubt, reflecting how little of this kindness she saw in his son.
How different would Gareth have been if he’d known Harold from the beginning?
