‘Maybe. I’m seeing Nats later; she said she’d pop in on the way to work. I’m not sure if Jake’ll be let out – it is a school night, after all, and they’ll be tired after travelling back from Scotland.’ She pulled a face to make her husband laugh.
‘I hope they’ve had a nice time.’ Mario sipped his tea. ‘I thought they might go further afield for their honeymoon. I’m sure Dan gets money off flights, as he’s with the airline.’
‘Mmm.’ It was apparently just one of the many, many perks of her son-in-law’s job as an air steward. ‘Well, I shall look forward to my fish and chips. I have a day of cleaning and laundry ahead, and a quick lunch with Mum and Dad.’
‘Not much of a day off, is it?’ he said, making his way to the bottom of the stairs.
‘Day off? What does that mean?’ she smiled.
‘When that lottery win comes in, eh?’
‘Yep.’ She sat at the table and drank her coffee, reading her birthday text from Natalie one more time. If she ever did win the lottery, Bess wouldn’t be fussed about the acquisition of gold and diamonds, nor would she visit one of the flashy garages on the outskirts of town and lay down bundles of cash for a shiny sports car or a massive four-by-four. No, all she wished for was the ability to wake naturally every day and for someone else to clean her house and do the laundry. Her fantasy lottery wishes, however, were varied and ever-changing. Some days, she pictured opening an orphanage in a hot country and feeding hundreds of kids who might be more grateful for her efforts as a dinner lady than the children of the Evergreen Academy. Not that her job wasn’t without reward: she liked what she did, helping to prepare and dole out food, and she loved to cater for the pale, allergy-riddled kids who broke her heart, unable to imagine what it must be like to have to check and double-check against the real possibility of every single morsel they forked into their young mouths sending them into anaphylactic shock.
Once again, she thought about Leonard Bethelbrook, the boy in the year above her at school, who, with an undiagnosed peanut allergy, accepted a bite of his mate’s sandwich and dropped to the ground. He died right there on the edge of the football pitch, where his peers were using jumpers as goalposts. She had only been eleven when it happened but remembered the day – the sound of the ambulance arriving at speed through the school gates, the blue light of the emergency vehicles bouncing around the walls of the classroom, casting everything and everyone in a lilac glow.
‘Funny the things that stick in your mind, even after all these years,’ she said to Chutney, who ignored her.
Bending down, Bess picked up a small blue piece of confetti in the shape of a heart, which had been hiding around the leg of the kitchen table despite her best efforts with the vacuum cleaner and feather duster. That darned wedding confetti hid in the folds of cushions, nestled on top of the laundry basket and even clung to the lounge curtains. It taunted her as it fell from the creases of clothes and dropped from light fittings. It wasn’t only the irritating littering of her home that bothered her, but also what it represented. Not that she would tell a soul – how could she? Jake, twenty-eight, was now married to the love of his life – what was not to like? But the truth was, there was much she didn’t like: the feeling that she had been supplanted in her son’s affections, the way it aged her, having a son old enough to marry, despite this being the case for many a year, and the finality of it. Are you jealous, Bess? She silently asked herself the unpalatable question.
It wasn’t that she disliked Daniel, exactly, but there were certain things about him that . . . he just . . . It was as if . . . he was a bit . . . It seemed like Mario wasn’t the only one having trouble finding the right word this morning. Her son’s hastily planned wedding and absolute joy at setting off on his new life adventure had made her realise that her adventure had ceased to be joyous some time ago now, and the lurking confetti, the untouched tier of