‘But I can see this is troubling you,’ said Jennifer with a weary smile. Perhaps Lucy was embarrassed to ask for help. ‘We can have this sorted out in no time.’
Lucy’s face reddened. ‘No really. It’s okay. I got you a present.’ She got up abruptly, the legs of the chair squeaking on the lino. ‘I’ll go and get it,’ she added and dashed out of the room.
When Lucy came back into the room a few minutes later, she sheepishly handed Jennifer a small present and a card. ‘Happy Birthday, Mum. I’m sorry it’s a bit late.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter one little bit, Lucy,’ smiled Jennifer. ‘I’m just so pleased that you remembered. Thank you.’
Lucy went and stood by the cooker, gnawing on the nail of her right thumb. Jennifer set the present on her lap – and tried not to let her disappointment show. It was sloppily wrapped in her own paper, a distinctive roll of metallic wrap with coloured butterflies on it that she kept under her bed. And it had been hastily done – perhaps just this very moment. For as she looked down at the parcel, a piece of sellotape came away and the end of the parcel popped open.
‘It’s not much,’ said Lucy, hastily. ‘Just a token really.’
Jennifer looked up. ‘I don’t expect you to buy me expensive things. What have I always told you? It’s the thought that counts.’
Jennifer opened the card, an odd, humorous one that she didn’t at first understand. When she got the joke, at last, she smiled and said, ‘That’s nice,’ and set the card on the table. Then she ripped the paper off the present to reveal a small box of budget dark chocolates. The sort of thing Jennifer might put into a raffle at the senior citizens club her father attended. She set them on the table and scrunched the paper into a tight ball in her fist. ‘Thank you,’ she said, hoping to God that Lucy couldn’t read what she was really thinking.
Lucy smiled back weakly and cleared her throat. ‘I know it’s not much, Mum. But as I said, I haven’t got a lot of spare cash at the moment.’
‘That’s okay, darling. You’re a student, for heaven’s sake,’ said Jennifer in a cheerful voice, blinking. ‘The real treat for me is spending time with you. I’m looking forward to our shopping trip on Sunday.’
‘I guess Matt’s in the same boat,’ said Lucy. ‘I mean he hasn’t got a lot of money either.’
‘No, you’re right. He hasn’t,’ said Jennifer, grasping at the opportunity to move the conversation on from this hurtful, thoughtless gift. It was a standing joke within the family that Jennifer hated dark chocolate with a passion. How could Lucy have forgotten?
‘Matt didn’t buy me anything. Not even a card,’ she laughed, trying to sound light-hearted. ‘He made one.’ She got up and threw the ball of paper in the bin, lifted Matt’s card off the top of the microwave and handed it to Lucy. It was made from a sheet of stiff white card folded in half with a funny caricature of her in black ink on the front. He’d drawn her at her office, in boots and one of the wrap dresses she sometimes wore for work, surrounded by rolls of wallpaper and carpet samples. Matt was a good cartoonist. Inside it read, ‘To the best Mum in the world. Love from Matt.’
‘Isn’t it fabulous?’ said Jennifer, pressing home the fact that a gift could cost nothing – and yet mean the world to the recipient.
When Lucy had examined the card, Jennifer placed it carefully on the shelf again and said, ‘Well, it’s time I went to bed.’
‘Mum?’ said Lucy in a small voice. ‘What about the hundred pounds, then?’
Jennifer’s heart sank and she looked away. Didn’t Lucy listen to a word she’d said? Did she have to make this any harder than it already was?
She felt the emotion well up in her chest and her throat narrowed. And her voice, when she spoke, came out hard and uncompromising and not conflicted like the way she felt inside. ‘No, Lucy. I bailed you out all summer, even when you had a job at the Day Centre. You never saved a penny. I just don’t understand what you do with your money. I don’t think you know how to do without. When I was at –’
‘Yes, yes, I know all about when you were at university,’ interrupted Lucy, rage bubbling up in the face of her mother’s intransigence. ‘You cleaned toilets in a pub and walked there in the rain with plastic bags wrapped round your legs because you didn’t have a proper coat. And your student house had no heating.’
‘Well, it’s true! You wouldn’t put up with the deprivations I did. Your generation doesn’t know how to do without.’ Jennifer ran a hand down the side of her face and sighed. ‘You have to learn how to budget and budgeting requires self-discipline, forward planning, and sometimes a bit of discomfort and self-denial. How are you ever going to manage in a home of your own without those skills? And me giving you constant handouts isn’t going to teach you them.’
Lucy scowled. ‘Is that the lecture over then?’
‘Oh, Lucy,’ cried Jennifer in exasperation. ‘I’m not trying to lecture you, I’m trying to help you.’
‘If you want to help me, give me a hundred pounds.’
Jennifer looked her daughter straight in the eye, her heart pounding. ‘I’m sorry, Lucy. I simply can’t do that.’
‘You can but you won’t. There’s a difference, Mum,’ said Lucy coldly. ‘I can’t believe you’re so heartless.’ And then she let out a little sob and ran out of the room, leaving Jennifer feeling like the worst mother in the world.
Lucy was still in bed when Jennifer left the house the next morning for the supermarket and, when she came home, she found David sitting on the chocolate brown leather sofa in her small lounge with his long, athletic legs crossed. He wore dark blue jeans and a casual, ocean blue shirt under a tailored jacket and looked quite at home drinking a cup of coffee. She remembered that he’d come to drive Lucy over to his house for lunch with her two step-sisters – Rachel, six, and four-year-old Imogen – and Maggie, his wife of eight years.
Jennifer had been friends with Maggie for fifteen years. They’d met at an evening pottery class in the community centre, when Jennifer was trying to find an outlet for her creativity and keep her marriage together. Their friendship had blossomed through shared interests – Maggie was a talented amateur jewellery designer. Jennifer had been surprised when David and Maggie quietly started dating nearly two years after the divorce – she could not reproach her old friend on that score – but the marriage had effectively meant the end of a beautiful friendship. Jennifer wished her old friend well, but she couldn’t help but be a tiny little bit envious of David. He’d gone on to start a new life and a new family and she was exactly where she’d started twelve years ago.
He set the cup on the coffee table, uncrossed his legs and said, a little embarrassed, ‘I hope you don’t mind me helping myself.’
‘Not at all,’ she said graciously, wondering how he would feel if she came into his home uninvited and made free and easy with the facilities. But she pushed this rather mean thought away. She did not want them to be enemies.
‘Lucy wasn’t ready when I arrived,’ he explained, his pale limpid blue eyes magnified by the stylish, silver-rimmed glasses he now wore constantly. ‘She said she’d slept in.’
Jennifer raised her eyes guiltily to the ceiling. She’d hardly slept herself last night, torn between the desire to give in to Lucy on the one hand, and withstand her demands on the other. But she’d woken in the morning with a new resolve.
Upstairs someone walked across the room and then the shower came on. Jennifer dropped her bag on the floor and, without bothering to take off her suede jacket, sat down on the other leather sofa.
‘Matt told me all about the new job,’ said David.
‘It’s wonderful news, isn’t it?’
‘I