And OK, it’s only a tiny kink in our happiness – but if we’re going to be married for another zillion years, we really should iron it out. We can’t have Dan wincing each time I say, ‘Let’s visit my mother this weekend.’ Soon the girls will start noticing, and saying, ‘Why doesn’t Daddy like Granny?’ and that’ll be really bad.
‘Dan,’ I begin.
‘Yes?’
He looks up, still frowning, and instantly my nerve fails. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not the best at confrontation. I don’t even know where I’m planning to start.
Anyway, maybe I shouldn’t tackle this openly, I suddenly decide. Maybe I need to operate by stealth. Build trust and affection between my mother and Dan in some subtle way that neither of them notices. Yes. Good plan.
‘We should get going,’ I say, and head out of the kitchen – still managing to avoid looking at the snake by fixing my eyes on a distant corner.
As Dan drives us to Chelsea, I stare ahead at the road, mulling on marriage and life, and how unfair everything is. If anyone was destined to have a long and perfect marriage, it was my parents. I mean, they were perfect. They could have been married for six hundred years, no problem. Daddy adored Mummy, and she adored him back, and they made an amazing couple on the dance floor, or on their boat in pastel polo shirts, or turning up at school parents’ evenings, twinkling and smiling and charming everyone.
Mummy still twinkles. But it’s the kind of bright, unnerving twinkle that might shatter at any moment. Everyone says she’s coped ‘marvellously’ since Daddy died. She certainly coped better than me, Go-to-pieces Sylvie.
(No. Not ‘better’. It’s not a competition. She coped differently from me, that’s all.)
She still talks about Daddy, in fact she loves talking about Daddy. We both do. But the conversation has to be along her lines. If you venture on to the ‘wrong’ topic, she draws breath and her eyes go shiny and she blinks very furiously and gazes at the window and you feel terrible. The trouble is, the ‘wrong’ topics are random and unpredictable. A reference to Daddy’s colourful handkerchiefs, his funny superstitions when he played golf, those holidays we used to spend in Spain: topics that seem utterly safe and harmless … but no. Each of them has brought on an attack of furious blinking and window-gazing and me desperately trying to change the subject.
Which is just grief, I guess. I’ve decided that grief is like a newborn baby. It knocks you for six. It takes over your brain with its incessant cry. It stops you sleeping or eating or functioning, and everyone says, ‘Hang in there, it’ll get easier.’ What they don’t say is, ‘Two years on, you’ll think it’s got easier, but then, out of the blue, you’ll hear a certain tune in the supermarket and start sobbing.’
Mummy doesn’t sob – it’s not her style, sobbing – but she does blink. I sometimes sob. On the other hand, sometimes I go hours, or even days, without thinking about Daddy. And then, of course, I feel terrible.
‘Why are we going for brunch?’ says Dan as we pull up at the lights.
‘To have brunch!’ I say, a little sharply. ‘To be a family!’
‘No other agenda?’ He raises his eyebrows, and I feel slight misgivings. I don’t think there’s another agenda. On the phone last night I said to Mummy, at least three times, ‘It is just brunch, isn’t it? Nothing … else?’ And she said, ‘Of course, darling!’ and sounded quite offended.
She has history, though. She knows it and I know it and Dan knows it. Even the girls know it.
‘She’s at it again,’ says Dan calmly, as he finds a parking space outside her block.
‘You don’t know that,’ I retort.
But as we enter her spacious mansion flat, my eyes dart around, searching for clues, hoping I won’t find any …
Then I see it, through the double doors. A white, kitchen-type gadget perched on her ormolu coffee table. It’s large and shiny and looks totally out of place sitting on her old, well-thumbed books about Impressionist painters.
Damn it. He’s right.
I deliberately don’t see the gadget. I don’t mention it. I kiss Mummy, and so does Dan, and we get the girls out of their coats and shoes, and head into the kitchen, where the table is laid. (I’ve finally got Mummy to give up trying to entertain us in the dining room when we have the girls with us.) And the minute I enter the room, I draw breath sharply. Oh, for God’s sake. What is she up to?
Mummy, of course, is playing completely innocent.
‘Have some crudités, Sylvie!’ she says in that bright sparkly voice that used to be real – she had everything to sparkle about – and now sounds just a little hollow. ‘Girls, you like carrots, don’t you? Look at these ones. Aren’t they fun?’
There are four huge platters on the kitchen counter, all covered in strangely shaped vegetables. There are courgette batons, etched with a criss-cross design. Discs of cucumber with scalloped edges. Carrot stars. Radish hearts. (They do look super-cute, I must admit). And as the pièce de résistance, a pineapple carved into a flower.
I meet eyes with Dan. We both know how this is going to go. And half of me is tempted to harden my heart, be brutal, not even mention the extraordinarily shaped vegetables. But I can’t. I have to play along.
‘Wow!’ I say, dutifully. ‘Those are incredible.’
‘I did them all myself,’ says Mummy in triumph. ‘It took me half an hour, if that.’
‘Half an hour?’ I echo, feeling like the second presenter on a QVC show. ‘Goodness. How on earth did you manage that?’
‘Well.’ Mummy’s face lights up. ‘I’ve bought this rather wonderful machine! Girls, do you want to see how Granny’s new machine works?’
‘Yes!’ cry Tessa and Anna, who are so easily persuaded into new ventures, it’s ridiculous. I know if I said to them, ‘Do you want to study QUANTUM PHYSICS?’ in the right tone of voice, they’d both yell, ‘Yes!’ Then they’d fight over who was going to be first to study quantum physics. Then I’d say, ‘Do you know what quantum physics is?’ and Anna would look blank, while Tessa would say defiantly, ‘It is like Paddington Bear,’ because she always has to have an answer.
As Mummy hurries out, Dan shoots me an ominous look. ‘Whatever it is, we’re not buying it,’ he says in a low voice.
‘OK, but don’t …’ I gesture with my hands.
‘What?’
‘Be negative.’
‘I’m not being negative!’ retorts Dan – totally lying, as he couldn’t look more negative. ‘But nor am I spending any more money on your mother’s—’
‘Ssh!’ I intervene.
‘—crap,’ he finishes. ‘That apple-sauce maker …’
‘I know, I know.’ I wince. ‘It was a mistake. I’ve admitted it.’
Don’t get me wrong: I’m as big a fan of the heavyweight retro American-style gadget as the next person. But that bloody ‘traditional apple-sauce maker’ is huge. And we hardly ever eat apple sauce. Nor do we use it for ‘all those handy purees’ that Mummy kept on about in her sales pitch. (As for the ‘liquid spice’ sachets … It’s best to cast a veil.)
Everyone works through grief in their own way. I get that. My way was to have a meltdown. Mummy’s way is to blink furiously. And her other way is to sell one weird product after another to her friends and family.
When she started holding jewellery parties, I was delighted. I thought it would be a fun hobby, and distract her from all the sadness. I went along, I sipped champagne with all her friends and I bought a choker and a bracelet. There was a second jewellery party which I couldn’t make, but apparently it went well.
Then she held an essential oils party and I bought Christmas presents for all Dan’s family, so that was fine. The Spanishware party was OK, too. I bought tapas bowls and I’ve used them maybe once.
Then there was the Trendieware party.
Oh God. Just the memory makes me shudder. Trendieware is a company that makes garments out of stretchy fabric in ‘modern, vibrant’ (vile) prints. You can wear each item about sixteen different ways, and you have to choose your personality (I was Spring Fresh Extrovert) and then the saleswoman (Mummy) tries to persuade you to throw out all your old clothes and only wear Trendieware.
It was horrendous. Mummy has a sylphlike figure for her age, so of course she can wear a stretchy tube as a skirt. But her friends? Hello? The place was full of ladies in their sixties, glumly trying to wrap a lurid pink stretchy top over their sensible bra or work out the Three-Way Jacket (you’d need a thesis in mechanics), or else flatly refusing to join in. I was the only person who bought anything – the Signature Dress – and I’ve never worn it even one way. Let alone sixteen.
Not surprisingly, after that a lot of Mummy’s friends dropped off. At the next jewellery party there were only half a dozen of us. At the scented candles party it was just me and Lorna, who is Mummy’s oldest and most loyal friend. Lorna and I had a hurried conversation while Mummy was out of the room, and we decided that this selling obsession was a harmless way for Mummy to process her grief, and it would come to a natural end. But it hasn’t. She keeps finding new things to sell. And the only person dumb enough to keep buying them is me. (Lorna has claimed ‘no more room’ in her flat, which is very clever of her. If I did that, Mummy would come round, clear out a cupboard, and make room.)
I know we need to stage an intervention. Dan’s suggested it, I’ve agreed, and we’ve sat in bed many times, saying firmly, ‘We’ll talk to her.’ In fact, I was all geared up for it, last time we visited. But it turned out Mummy was having a bad day. Lots of blinking. Lots of window-gazing. She looked so piteous and fragile, all I wanted to do was make her life better … so I found myself ordering an apple-sauce maker. (It could have been worse. It could have been the nine-hundred-pound special-edition retro ham-slicer: a unique and distinctive focus for any kitchen. I’ll say.)