It was hard to believe that four full weeks had passed since she and the GaLs – Girls at Law – had run – and completed – an entire marathon to raise funds for the charity Heads Together. So much had happened in that time – mostly work related – but she’d also had an irritating bug that kept coming and going, trying to lay her low, but never quite succeeding. However, she was feeling pretty good today, she soon realized. This was a huge relief, for she and the GaLs were planning some serious celebration of their fund-raising efforts. The day was exclusively theirs; partners, spouses, offspring, parents, bosses and colleagues had been given notice that they’d have to manage without the key women in their lives from midday until said women were ready to tip in the direction of home.
For Vivi there was less of a problem on the family front, since she had no children and her partner, Greg, was going to Lord’s for the day. Her mother fortunately didn’t live anywhere close by. On the work front, her immediate boss, Trudy Mack-Silver, was one of the GaLs, so no difficulties there. This wasn’t to say that Vivienne didn’t have a mountain of work to get through; being a senior member of the in-house legal team at FAberlin Investments meant her desk and inbox were always crammed with issues needing urgent attention. Over time she’d learned how to prioritize the ceaseless flow of demands, though many of them saw her labouring late into the evenings and often over entire weekends. She didn’t mind. She loved her job, and even liked many of the giant corporation’s upper-management team. They could be tough, bad-tempered, inconsiderate and in some cases offensively sexist, but in times of crisis she watched closely, spoke confidently, and managed to learn a lot from those whose jobs she had in her sights.
‘You give great kickback,’ Trudy often told her following an intense negotiation or fiery confrontation. ‘They respect you for it. It makes them listen and, provided you don’t go wrong, you could be heading up the entire legal team by the time you’re thirty.’ Trudy didn’t have a problem with this, because she had no such ambitions for herself. She was happy to stay at the level she’d already attained, since it allowed her time to be an at-home-most-evenings wife to Bruno, and available-for-school-runs mum to Nick and Dean.
The other important thing about today was the fact that it was Vivi’s twenty-seventh birthday, another reason the GaLs – all graduates of LSE law school – had decided that this should be the marathon reunion day. Combining occasions was something they often did; being so busy with their careers it was the only way to make sure nothing got overlooked.
Throwing back the pale blue striped duvet, Vivi stood as tall as her willowy five foot nine inches allowed, arched her long back and gave a lazy side-to-side twist to stretch out her waist. Since ending the intense pre-marathon training her body had softened slightly, making it, according to Greg, more feminine and curvy, and way sexier. He had a thing about large women, which made his attraction to her a bit of a mystery, given how slender she was. However, they’d been seeing one another for several months, non-exclusively, so their friends weren’t living in daily expectation of some significant news. A baby. A wedding. Or perhaps something as simple as moving in together.
Despite their casual relationship, Vivi had to admit that he was a bit of a dreamboat in his way, sporty, witty, fiercely intelligent and very well connected in the financial world, thanks to his gentrified family and their historic ties to the City. When he spoke it was immediately evident that he came from privileged pastures; however, Vivienne strongly doubted that he gave a single thought to the relative ordinariness of her own roots. He wasn’t a snob, or not that she’d ever noticed. Nonetheless, she’d never taken him home to meet her family, who still lived in the hopelessly unsophisticated coastal town that Vivi had called home for the first eighteen years of her life.
She’d moved on since uni, had redefined her focus, and was part of another world that could hardly be more different from the simplicity of her early years. Not that she had changed in character, for she was still the same upbeat and optimistic Vivi that her beloved grandpa used to call Vivi-vacious. This nickname came from her love of life and people, especially him and NanaBella, which was what she used to call her grandma on account of her name being Bella. Vivi also adored her younger brother, nineteen-year-old Mark, and there was no doubt that she loved her mother with all her heart, and knew that her mother felt the same about her. However, their relationship was the most complicated and frustrating part of Vivienne’s world, which was why she didn’t often go home. She’d spent too many years trying to unlock the closed doors in her mother’s heart and unravel the secrets Gina had never shared, and now all Vivienne wanted was to avoid the confusing and conflicting emotions she always came away with after spending time with her mother.
She wasn’t giving any of this a single thought on this glorious spring morning, although she expected her mobile to ring at any minute bringing a dutiful happy birthday call from home. The postman would almost certainly deliver a card from her mother later, and a text would no doubt pop up at some point during the day saying something like Hope you’re having a fabulous day, but please don’t have too much to drink. There wouldn’t be a present, because her mother had stopped buying them a few years ago, saying, ‘I always get it wrong, so there doesn’t seem any point in wasting my money. If you want something, just ask.’
That was Gina all over. In spite of being a glamorous and successful forty-six-year-old businesswoman with a good sense of humour and plenty of friends, she could be prosaically practical about things that called for frivolity or indulgence. (Although, Vivi reminded herself, their surprise trip to Venice a few years ago had proved her mother could be both imaginative and impulsive when she wanted to be.) However, it was true to say that Gina was usually awkward with celebrations, and as for showy declarations of feeling, well, that wasn’t her at all. Actually, she was nothing if not a maddening set of contradictions, because she could be a lot of fun when she wanted to be, and when it came to throwing a party she didn’t do things by half. Things had changed, however, since Gil, Vivi’s stepfather and Mark’s father, had left, just over nine years ago. Dear, wonderful Gil, who was still as much a part of their lives as if he’d never gone, except he didn’t live with her mother any more – and if anyone could work out the bizarreness of that relationship they’d certainly have a better insight into Gina’s mysterious psyche than Vivi had ever managed.
‘Don’t ask me,’ NanaBella had lamented at the time of the break-up. ‘I’ve never really understood your mother, you know that, and she could baffle the heck out of Grandpa when he was alive.’
‘But you always loved her and stood by her,’ Vivienne had pointed out, for it was true, her grandparents had always been there – for them all.
There was no NanaBella or Grandpa to stand by any of them now. Grandpa had succumbed to cancer when Vivi was six, and NanaBella had been the victim of a drunk driver four Easters ago while on her way into town.
That was another reason for Vivi to feel guilty about not going to see her mother more often. Gina had been devastated by the sudden loss of her beloved mother – they all had, including Gil. But trying to be supportive of Gina was like trying to hug a cactus. She couldn’t accept love without becoming prickly and awkward; although she clearly wanted affection, she just didn’t seem to know how to handle it.
What was that line about an enigma wrapped up in a mystery inside a riddle? Well, that was her mother, and even Gil, as besotted as he was with her, never tried to claim she was easy.
Reaching for her mobile as it rang, Vivi saw it was one of the GaLs and decided to let it go to messages. She simply had to go to the bathroom before speaking to anyone, and then she’d pop down to Max’s for an Americano and pastry to fuel herself up for the day. If her mother called and didn’t get an answer she’d assume Vivi was either out for a run, or at Greg’s, or still asleep with the phone turned off. She wouldn’t worry, because that was something Gina resolutely refused to do, in spite of the fact that the tight line between her beautiful eyes showed that she spent just about every moment of every day worrying about something.
Did she even realize that?
Vivi