me, but I’m being honest. You can be amazing when you put your mind to it.’
‘Well, at least you’ve got two of us now, so if it all goes tits up for me, you’ve got another shot at getting it right. Dad is already practically falling over himself with pride that Victor’s the rugby captain. Shame it’s taken sixteen years for him to have a kid he can be proud of.’
Her words were like a slap. I’d thought a lot about what it might mean to try and integrate another child into our family, how that might put pressure on our time and maybe our privacy. I’d considered how Phoebe might be resentful – or possibly thankful – not to have our full attention. I’d worried about Victor feeling an outsider, playing catch-up to the sixteen years of family traditions, the whole unspoken modus operandi of a family where everyone knows where the cushioned soft spots are and the sharp angles, what triggers and what defuses an argument – although that was obviously still a work in progress. It had never really occurred to me that Phoebe would be the one who felt excluded.
‘Of course Dad’s proud of Victor for his rugby because that’s his big passion, but he’s proud of you for so much more. As am I. You’re still our priority.’ Well, my priority at least.
I vaguely registered the baritone rumble of male voices next door. I wondered if Patrick was managing to winkle more information out of Victor.
A wave of disgust passed over her face. ‘Shut up. I’ve heard you talking to Dad about me. About how lazy I am, how difficult, how rude.’
It was incredible how Phoebe claimed never to hear me shouting that dinner was ready at the top of my lungs but had bionic hearing when it came to me hissing my frustration to Patrick behind closed doors.
‘It’s just a temporary feeling, a knee-jerk reaction just like you have when you get angry. Just me letting off steam when I’ve been worried about you or feel that you have been a bit ungrateful.’
Shame there wasn’t a national prize for understatement. I could start polishing my podium now.
I blundered on. ‘I’m sure you talk about us to your friends and sometimes not in a complimentary way, but it’s all in the heat of the moment. Anyway, before you go, just so I don’t have to worry myself to a frazzle, could you tell me where the drugs came from?’
Phoebe laughed, a nasty sound that reminded me of my boss when I got my first job in London. I’d asked her if The Ivy was a theatre. She’d made me feel parochial and stupid. And now, sitting there in front of Phoebe, I felt both of those things and old, too old, to have the energy to deal with someone who should love me but apparently hated me.
She marched out of the room, shouting over her shoulder, ‘Why would I tell you that? So you can drive round and have a word? Give them a piece of your mind? Wooo… bet they’re shaking in their shoes.’
I rested my forehead on the table. Why was this all so hard? I’d tried to do it all right. The sticker charts when she was in primary school. The pasta jar working towards – what was it? – some pack of cards they all used to collect, extortionate at a pound for five. The praising the positive and ignoring the negative. I’d stayed at home when she was little in the belief that sitting with her pushing those circles and squares through the slots in a plastic cube, being on hand to make jam tarts with pastry that ended up so grey no one wanted to eat them, would somehow make all the difference. I suddenly wished I’d never left the job that took me out of the house for long, long hours and had delegated bringing up Phoebe to a nanny. They’d have done so much better than me.
Chapter Fourteen
Just when I thought my life couldn’t possibly plummet any further down the scale of middle-aged satisfaction, the doorbell went.
‘Oh hi, Mum.’
‘Are you all right? You look exhausted.’
I was pretty sure I didn’t look anywhere near as knackered and done in as I felt. ‘I’m fine, just the time of year. Need a bit of sunshine, I think.’
I didn’t want to let her in, but short of keeping my own mother shivering in the wind on the doorstep, there was