And oh, the bliss of slumping into comfortable, guilt-free slovenliness! The effort of constantly maintaining the level of household standards Mal increasingly favours would be beyond me even if I tried, which I don’t, apart from token gestures, but I’d had a pre-Christmas blitz and everything still looked pretty clean. But then, my idea of a hygienic and tidy home is merely one where the health inspectors don’t slap skull-and-crossbones Hazard stickers on the bathroom and kitchen doors on a weekly basis, while his is the domestic equivalent of an operating theatre.
‘Do you want to go out for a walk before it gets dark?’ I asked hopefully. ‘We always used to go for a long hike on Boxing Day.’
‘No, I think I’ll watch that tall ships DVD you got me for Christmas again,’ he said, and, while I was glad that my present had found favour, it occurred to me that we were leading increasingly separate lives. I expect it makes a marriage healthy not being on top of each other all the time, but I do miss the long country walks we used to take together before he got boatitis. And while nothing would induce me to get on something that can go up and down, or side to side – or even both at once – without any warning, at least it gives him a bit of fresh air and exercise when he is at home between contracts, playing doll’s houses on his petit bateau, Cayman Blue, down at the marina.
Oh, well, not only have I got Mal and my beloved Rosie home and still speaking to each other, but Ma’s coming down to Fairy Glen (her cottage in the village) for a few days, so we can all be together for my birthday on the third: what more could I want?
I curled up next to him on the sofa, and after a couple of minutes he noticed I was there and put his arm around me. He smelled like a million dollars, which is about what I paid for that aftershave: worth every penny.
‘Fran, you’re singing “I Got You Babe”,’ he pointed out accusingly, as though I was doing something antisocial – which perhaps, considering my voice, I was. I never know I’m doing it unless I’m out somewhere and a space clears all around me as if by magic.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m just feeling happy.’
And let’s not forget mega relieved too: I’d managed to get through the tricky question-and-answer session with Rosie that I’d known had to come one day, and I thought it had gone quite well, considering.
Must remember to disillusion Ma too.
Although relations between them were a little strained by my birthday, Mal and Rosie still hadn’t seriously fallen out with each other, which must have been a record – though I think I might if she carries on shooting questions at me about her father at unexpected moments, as if trying to catch me out.
The mud at the bottom of the once limpid pool of my memory has been stirred with a big stick, so that when she suddenly shoots at me, ‘How tall was Adam?’ up to the surface bobs the reply, ‘Oh, well over six foot,’ without a second’s pause.
‘What colour was Adam’s hair?’
‘Like dark clover honey.’
‘What was Adam’s last name?’
‘No idea.’
‘What colour was the camper van?’
‘Blue and white.’
‘What on earth were you drinking?’
‘Rough scrumpy cider.’
However, I have now run out of answers so she has given up, thank goodness, and even Rosie can see that I can hardly put an ad in the press saying, ‘Did you have a one-night stand nearly twenty years ago with a slender woman of medium height, with grey eyes and long, wavy, strawberry-blonde hair? If so, please answer this ad for news that may interest you.’
Of course, had I known what the outcome would be, I would have noted Adam the gardener’s full name and address at the very least. Mind you, had I known the outcome I wouldn’t have done it in the first place – but then I wouldn’t have had my beloved and infuriating daughter, would I?
She was now packing for her return to university the next day, and I kept missing items of clothing, like my Gap T-shirt and good leather belt. Also several pots of home-made jam and two bottles of elderflower champagne.
Ma, fresh back from her seasonal visit to Aunt Beth up in Scotland, had arrived at her cottage with the dogs and was coming round later for birthday tea, bringing the cake, Tartan Shortbread and a litre of Glenmorangie.
I crooned ‘This Could Be Heaven’ along with my inner Walkwoman.
‘You sound amazingly cheerful for someone on her fortieth birthday,’ Mal observed, tidying up the wrapping paper from the present opening and disposing of it, neatly folded, in the wastepaper basket.
At any minute he would be pointedly positioning the vacuum cleaner somewhere I’d fall over it, I could see it coming, but I’m not cleaning anything today … or tomorrow, or the day after, come to that. Cleaning’s rightful place is as a displacement activity while you are psyching yourself up for something more interesting.
I smiled happily from under the brim of the unseasonal straw gardening hat, adorned with miniature hoes and rakes and even a tiny scarecrow, sent by my Uncle Joe in Florida. ‘Of course I am! I’ve got everything I could possibly need right here in St Ceridwen’s Well, haven’t I? A handsome husband, a lovely daughter, modest success with my work – especially now I’m selling more cartoons as well as my illustrations – and we live in North Wales, the most beautiful place in the world. What else could I want?’
He suggested mildly, ‘To lose a little weight?’
That deflated my happiness bubble a trifle, as you can imagine … though thinking of trifle fortunately reminded me that I must pop out and decorate mine with whipped cream, slivered almonds and hundreds and thousands.
Rosie came in, carefully carrying a tray with coffee and some of the yummy Continental biscuits covered in thick dark chocolate that had come in the hen-shaped ceramic biscuit barrel that was her present to me. This, together with microwave noodles, is about the extent of her catering skills, but still one up on Mal, who doesn’t even seem able to find the kettle unaided.
She cast him an unloving look, evidently having caught his comment. ‘You aren’t hounding poor Mum about her weight on her birthday, are you? And there’s nothing wrong with her – she’s perfect, just like Granny. Cosy.’
‘Thank you, darling,’ I said to her doubtfully, ‘but cosy isn’t quite the image I want to project.’ It sounded a bit mumsy, and though Ma isn’t fat, she’s pretty well rounded. Good legs, though, both of us.
‘Well, I certainly don’t want an anorexic mother, all bones and embarrassing miniskirts! You’re just right – plump and curvy. No one would think you were forty, honestly,’ she added anxiously.
Clearly forty was something to be dreaded, only it didn’t feel like that to me. Or it hadn’t until then. And of course I had noticed that I was a bit plumper, because I’d had to buy bigger jeans, though T-shirts stretch to infinity and all the tops I make myself for special occasions are quite loose caftan-style ones, so they’re still fine. (The one I had on today was made from the good fragments of two tattered old silk kimonos pieced together using strips of the crochet lace that Ma endlessly produces, dyed deep smoky blue.)
‘When I first met your mother at the standing stones up in the woods above the glen, she was so slender she could have been