nervous.
I look at my daughter’s face. I know Trudy was an influence on her. Not necessarily a bad one, but one who is older, more experienced, who I’m quite certain has seen far more of life than my sweet young daughter.
I want to say no. I want to tell her that there is a consequence imposed for stealing scooters and lying about what you are doing and where you are. I want to be absolutely sure this doesn’t happen again.
But this is her cousin, and Ellie has now said it is okay. How can I separate them? How can I get in the way of a family, when I know just how much my daughter craves a connection with this girl, her own age, and her blood relative?
How can I say no?
“Supervised.” I give her a stern look, although of course it will be supervised. Poor Trudy is still bandaged up. It is doubtful Ellie will let her go anywhere for a while.
“I love you, Mum!” My daughter flings her arms around me before pulling back. “Now. About that ice cream…”
* * *
Jason and I take Annie to town. She swears she is up to it, but her arm is in a sling, and we are careful to move slowly, not to tire her out. She wants to look in the stores, sees a pair of sandals she wants, which Jason buys for her.
In the window of another store, I pause, seeing a beautiful silvery grey scarf.
“That would look great on you, Mum,” says Annie, seeing what I’m looking at.
“It would,” Jason agrees. “Shall we go in?”
We do, and the sales assistant brings me the scarf, and it is quite the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.
“It’s pure cashmere,” she says as I wind it around my neck, “but so fine it’s almost like silk.”
In the mirror, I see Jason standing behind me, looking at me. I meet his eyes, and he grins. “It does look beautiful on you,” he says. “You should buy it.”
I search for the price tag, and see it is $395, and there is no way in hell I have $395 to spend on a scarf, cashmere or otherwise, and I do not let my face register my shock at the price, slowly unwinding the scarf, telling the sales assistant I will think about it.
“Sure!” she says. “We have a few of them. How long are you here for?”
“Another week,” I say.
“You’re an adorable family,” she says, looking from me to Annie to Jason, and I just smile and thank her, not wanting to catch Jason’s eye, not wanting him to see the need in my face, the longing, the wishing that we were still an intact family.
“Why didn’t you buy it?” he asks as we leave the store. “It really did look wonderful.”
“Because it was a fortune,” I say, not adding that I’m a single mother who has to watch pretty much every penny, who can’t afford to waste hundreds of dollars on frivolities, no matter how beautiful.
We walk down to get ice cream, both of us flanking our daughter, who chatters away, looking from one to the other, and I see how happy she is to have her family complete, to have her mother and father together.
I remember how good we always were when things were good. How good we always were when I wasn’t drinking. I remember how good we were on holiday, how well we got on, how much fun we had.
Jason always liked doing the same things I was doing. I had friends who were married to men who hated lying around on a beach doing nothing. When they go on holiday my girlfriends spend all day by themselves while their husbands furiously run from tennis lessons to fishing or sailing, or hike around deserted parts of a Greek island for hours on end.
I have other friends who love walking around cities, spontaneously going into wherever takes their fancy, be it a museum, a gallery, a café, or a shoe shop. Obviously the shoe shop is the most important, but they’re married to husbands who refuse to stop, who march from A to B, sullenly waiting outside should their wives give in to the urge to browse, which makes those wives feel guilty, even as they slip their feet into exquisite heels that they would never find at home, and the whole holiday turns into one big stress fest.
Jason and I always seemed to be on the