stood proudly in a fuchsia-coloured pot on the draining board.
‘Happy birthday, love.’
‘Ah, thank you. I didn’t know if you’d remembered.’ She walked forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek, feeling the graze of whiskers beneath her lips.
‘Of course I remembered!’ He pointed again at the plant.
‘That’s . . . that’s lovely. Pretty.’
‘I got you a card, a really, really nice one, but I’ve lost it.’ He shook his head.
From anyone else, she might think of this as a poor excuse for not having bothered, but for Mario, who daily lost his car keys, a shoe, his glasses, the newspaper . . . she knew it was most likely to be genuine and that the card would be stashed somewhere safe and unpredictable, like in the fridge, on a shelf in the garage or in the space by the side of the telly where old magazines liked to gather.
‘It’s got a duck on the front.’
‘Oh! A duck?’
‘Yes, Bess. A duck.’
‘No doubt it’ll turn up.’ With a duck on the front. She didn’t confess to feeling a little indifferent as to whether it surfaced or not, picturing something garish, cartoon-like and very, very yellow.
Her phone buzzed with a text alert.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM! LOVE YOU! SEE YOU LATER X
‘Ah, it’s from Nat, bless her.’ She put the phone face down on the tiled countertop and opened the back door. Chutney popped his head out into the sunny morning and looked back at her as if to say, Do I have to? ‘Go on, Chuts, go and have your wee and then I’ll get your breakfast.’ He waddled out reluctantly.
‘I love the way you think he knows what you’re saying.’ Mario grabbed the ham sandwiches he’d made the night before from the fridge and put them in his red plastic lunch box, as he always did. It meant he didn’t have to leave the building site to grab lunch and could get more hours in each day. He worked hard, always with one eye on his monthly bonus.
‘Actually, he knows exactly what I’m saying! He talks to me properly when we’re on our own.’
‘Is that right? So what does he have to say?’ he asked, with the twitch of a smile about his mouth that she fixed on, knowing what he was thinking: This is more like it . . . the old Bess . . . the funny Bess . . . He clearly missed her; what he failed to grasp was that she missed her too.
Bess harnessed the moment and tried to recapture some of her old sass, tried to emulate the woman who remembered fun. The woman who was enough. ‘Well, just what you’d expect, really. What he likes and dislikes for his breakfast, how he doesn’t like the lady groomer who nipped his leg that time with the clippers, his views on Brexit – that kind of thing.’
‘Talking of breakfast, how about I make you something special before I go?’ Mario rubbed his hands together, keen and eager, as if he could take this upturn in the atmosphere and spin it into something bigger, something more – a net that might cover them and keep the sadness from their backs.
‘Like what?’ she smiled, touched at the thought.
He opened the cupboard over the fridge. ‘I know you always do pancakes for our birthdays, but I don’t know how to make batter. But I can do you a bowl of Crunchy Nut? Or sugar-free muesli? Or . . .’ He ran over to the bread bin and peered inside. ‘. . . half a toasted teacake?’
It wasn’t quite her definition of ‘special’. ‘Actually, Mario, think I’ll just stick to my toast and marmalade.’ Her day wasn’t right if not started with a slice of toast and a zingy dollop of bitter marmalade with bits of shredded peel dotted about the toast. ‘Just a coffee’d be lovely.’
She peeled the cellophane from her new plant and let her fingers tickle the delicate silken-headed, bell-shaped flowers that were so perfect and beautiful they looked like they might be fake. One dropped as she touched it. Catching it, Bess scrunched it into her palm and shoved it in her dressing-gown pocket.
‘How about we do a chippy run tonight for your birthday?’ Mario said, adding milk to the black coffee and passing her the mug.
‘Yes, it’ll be nice not to have to cook. Why don’t we do that?’ She sipped her drink, as Chutney scratched on the back door. Mario let him in.