total dish.’
It was Lydia’s retort that caused Mark’s eyebrows to rise the highest. He said nothing.
For the second time that evening Kathryn turned her lips inward and bit down. She hated them being so mean and openly mocking of her friend, and Natasha had also been very kind to each of them in different ways. It felt nasty and she hated nasty.
‘How was your day, darling?’
It took a split second for Kathryn to realise that she was being spoken to.
‘Oh! Sorry, I was miles away. Fine. Good, thanks. Fine.’
‘Fine. Good, thanks. Fine! There we have it, kids, the engaging description of how your mother spent eight hours while the rest of us toiled over dog-eared pages.’
Mark’s comment was clever. Not only did Kathryn recognise it as a cruel and pointed reference to her love of reading and the fact that while every other individual in the school had access to hundreds of books, her passion was denied her, but it also told her children that her life was pointless, wasted. Instead of retorting, she busied herself with clearing the table. The scraping of plates was always a good diversion.
Dominic and Mark had taken a cricket ball to the nets. Lydia, however, remained slumped in her chair, observing her mum with a furrowed brow.
‘Why do you do that, Mum?’
‘Do what, Lydia?’
‘I can’t really describe it, but it’s like you don’t listen to what’s going on around you. You should try to join in more; it would make everything so much easier.’
‘Easier for who, Lyds?’
‘Well, all of us actually. You never find Dad’s jokes funny and he really tries. I know he can be a bit of a chauvinist, but he doesn’t mean it. He’s just being Dad.’
Kathryn sat down opposite her daughter; the plates could wait. She swallowed her automatic response, ‘Oh, he means it, darling. He means it more than you could ever know.’
Her daughter wasn’t done.
‘And like when we are on holiday, it would be so much better if you did what we did, if you joined in more. I hate it when we are all in the sea just mucking about and I look up and you’re sitting on the beach on your own looking fed up. You have never, ever come swimming or even for a dip! You shouldn’t be so self-conscious, Mum. No one cares if you’ve got cellulite or whatever, lots of old people have it. We would rather see your cellulite than have you sitting on the beach in your linen skirt every day. It’s like you’re Victorian and can’t show off your body! You make yourself more obvious by never getting undressed.’
Lydia let out a long sigh.
Kathryn looked at her daughter in earnest.
‘What do you think of me, Lydia?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean, when you look at me, what do you think?’
‘What do I think?’
Lydia poked her tongue out of the side of her mouth; it was her thinking face. Kathryn watched her strike a similar pose whenever there was a paintbrush in her hand.
‘Well, I don’t think much…’
‘Charming!’ Kathryn swatted at her girl with the end of a dish cloth.
‘No, I don’t mean it in that way. I mean, it’s never a shock or surprise to see you because you are always there and you have always been there, obviously.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not, Lyds!’
‘When I look at you, I see my mum and so I don’t think much beyond that. You are just Mum, always there and always doing… something. You are like background noise or my favourite pillow. I don’t have to look for you or think about you much because you are always there, but in a good way.’
‘Background noise, but in a good way?’ Kathryn was struggling to find the positive.
‘Yeah. It’s like, you could be really bad background noise – like, say, one of those naff boy bands, or classical music, which I really hate. But you’re not; you are background noise like something soothing or a lovely smell, baked cookies or jam. Which is really cool.’
‘So I am cool?’
Lydia snorted her laughter through her nose and rolled her eyes.
‘God! No! Mum, you are so not cool. Even hearing you say that is funny!’
‘Right.’
Kathryn rubbed at her eyes and tucked her hair behind her ears. She didn’t like the verbal cul de sac into which they had talked themselves; it was three-point-turn time.
‘Okay, Lydia, let’s move away from jammy-scented background noise and let me put it another way. When I say what do you