tell her, ‘No, of course not.’ That way we could all sweep the whole silly business under the carpet. Unfortunately, my father was unaware of the script. He’d replied that, yes, regrettably, that was the case. My mother reeled from the shock. It was at that moment that she began to construct the elaborate safety net that would protect her from any such horrors and indignities again. The most notable components of the net are that she doesn’t readily show affection (I can count on one hand the number of times she’s deliberately touched me). She never talks about love. And she never asks questions to which she doesn’t know the answers. It bothers me that in a single afternoon, sitting in the Selfridges restaurant, my mother has broken all three of her own rules.
I figure it’s a bit late in the day for my mum to take up the role of adviser. Just because I’ve let her choose the flowers and menu doesn’t mean I want her opinion on every part of my life. She’s my mother and therefore understands nothing and knows less. She’s always let me pretty much make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. Why start interfering now? Anyway, I am suddenly piqued with myself. Marrying Josh isn’t a mistake. It is the right thing to do. He’s kind and decent and easy-going and everyone likes him and he’s got great career prospects and he’s a good cook.
And he’s not Darren.
I glare at Mum but she won’t be intimidated into shutting up. Instead she says, ‘I’d hate to think that all I’d taught you was sacrifice.’
I put Mum in a taxi, which very nearly spoils the day because she thinks a taxi is frivolous and sees it as yet another example of my decadence and ‘odd ways’. I simply think it will save her hat box from being crushed on the tube. We all but have a stand-up fight, but we are reunited when the cab driver is rude to us and tells us to get ‘bloody in, or bloody out, the bleedin’, bloody cab’. I take another cab and rush back to the studio in time to sit in on the interviews of a couple of possible candidates for next week’s show. The interviews finish at 7.45 p.m. and when I return to my desk I find the department empty, except for Fi.
‘You’re here late,’ I comment.
She doesn’t reply directly but grunts and glowers. I remember my mild, but public, rebuke earlier this morning and calculate that she’s probably still sulking with me. I try to restore departmental harmony by telling her about the interviews.
‘There was this archetypal Essex girl…’
It may be that she wasn’t from Essex at all, but from Edinburgh or Exeter or anywhere in-between. But it’s shorthand that Fi will appreciate. The girl had been describing her ex-lover. His CV read like the admission book to the Priory. A compulsive womanizer and gambler, whose idea of a day’s work was a sticky-fingered sweep round the local shopping centre; a louse in every way but redeemed in her eyes because he was ‘a real salt’.
I stared at the girl, non-comprehending. ‘An Essex term, I presume?’
‘Salt. Salt of the earth. The real thing. A fucker,’ she elaborated.
‘Quite,’ I smiled. Knowing she’d make great TV and the warm-up act would be able to wallow in innumerable Essex jokes.
‘Hey, Fi, what does an Essex girl say after her eleventh orgasm?’ Fi shrugs. ‘Just how many are there in a football team?’
It’s an old gag, but Fi appreciates my effort and finally allows herself to smirk. I know I’ve won her round when she says, ‘I’m just packing up. Fancy a drink? We could go to the Brave Lion.’
I’m about to decline, as is my habit, and explain that I have thirty plus e-mails to clear, when I suddenly think of my mother’s fretful face in Selfridges.
If only I could leave it there.
I know that if I stay in the office on my own she’ll haunt me, so I shut down my PC and grab my bag.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
I’m not. But what can I say? How am I going to explain it to Fi, of all people? We clink glasses and sip our G&Ts.
I wonder what she meant? Sacrifice?
Fi is using her fag to orchestrate the tune playing on the jukebox. It’s playing ‘Always Something There to Remind Me’, which seems poignant. Fuck, I’ll be reading horoscopes next. I wish pubs would stick