Mum. Mother. Mother dear. Having a sparse relationship with your mother was as complex as having an overinvolved one. Would Annabel some day feel as distant from Frankie as Frankie felt from Margaret?
She left the kitchen and went to the children’s rooms. The beds were made and it was a stark sight. The children never made their beds until, bizarrely, they were just about to get into them each evening. She cast an eye over the bathroom. Sam had obviously had a wee and forgotten to flush. Margaret was obviously making a point by leaving it for all to see – though she’d picked up towels, wiped the basin and hung a damp flannel over the tap. Frankie thought of Peta’s boys and she wondered why her mother never passed comment on their bedroom walls festooned with semi-naked women, their floors obliterated with piles of dirty clothes. Neither Peta nor Frankie could work that one out at all.
She checked her phone. Nothing. She made a call.
‘I’m home and it’s very quiet.’
‘I’m in the studio,’ said Scott. ‘Listen.’
‘How was Grandma?’ Frankie asked Annabel who’d run across the playground into her arms chanting Mummy Mummy Mummy – something she’d never do usually, though admittedly Frankie was usually late and her daughter was cross. This afternoon, she was bang on time. ‘Was everything OK when I was gone?’
Annabel settled herself into the front seat, fastened her seat belt and leant forward to open the glove compartment. Mummy Mummy Mummy. Chocolates and crisps to choose from.
‘She was all right,’ Annabel said. ‘She wouldn’t let us watch The Simpsons. She wouldn’t even let Sam watch The Simpsons and he’d done all his homework and everything.’
‘You can watch double Simpsons this evening.’
‘Her cooking is disgusting.’
‘I don’t like the word disgusting. Did she let you have ketchup?’
‘Yes – but she blobbed it on because she said too much was bad for us. Stop checking your phone. You have to be hands-free to drive.’
That evening, during triple The Simpsons, Frankie’s phone beamed through a text from Scott. He’d attached a photograph of the control room at the studio – his left arm just visible; a bank of switches and knobs and empty paper cups.
THE Abbey Road.
It wasn’t how she’d imagined it.
Been thinking of you, Frankie. Scott x
She looked around the room. Could she really envisage him here? Was there room on the sofa? Yes, if they all squashed up a little. Did he like The Simpsons? Would he like everything she liked and would it matter if there were some things he didn’t? She alighted on her CDs and LPs. Would he approve of her taste? Was Duran Duran a deal breaker? She glanced at Annabel and Sam. What on earth would her children make of a man in their home, a man in their mother’s life?
If you ever get a boyfriend I will spill his dinner down him and make his life hell.
Annabel had come out with this, apropos of nothing, a few months ago. But the three of them had laughed because the sentiment was so random and the concept so far-fetched anyway.
‘Mum – no double-screening, that’s what you say to Sam.’ Annabel tried to take Frankie’s phone. ‘It’s “Grift of the Magi” – we love this episode!’
‘I missed you,’ Frankie said to her children, nudging them, trying to kiss them.
Sam grunted and Annabel said shh!
I miss you she texted to Scott.
Frankie looked up and away from the burning brightness of the empty paper in front of her, gazed out of the window to the sunlight dancing on dewy grass, the light from the unseen sea bathing the garden with clarity. But she wasn’t focused on the garden. She was back in the hotel foyer with Kate Moss on the magazine and Scott saying care to join me? Over and over again she replayed the sensation of turning and seeing him and hearing his voice and thinking me? me? really?
She started to write, displaced words and short justifications, a technique she used to shape character and build a backstory.
Polite/thoughtful (hates olives/didn’t say)
Strong/principled (raised daughter single-handed)
Talented/modest (shining career/doesn’t court limelight)
Secure (happy to say he’d been thinking about me)
Handsome (but not the point)
Foreigner.
‘A man who lives on a bloody mountain in sodding Canada.’
She took another page and quickly sketched Alice, enveloping her with chains. Alice in Chains she scrawled, leaving the table and going over to scan her CDs for the band of the same name. She played ‘Check My Brain’ very loudly, her forehead pressed against the wall.
What did her brain say? What was going on behind the scramble of thoughts? Was it ludicrous to feel that this could be life-changing and wholly good? Or was she just selfish and insane to pursue it? Her romanticizing tendencies had brought all sorts of trouble in the past.
‘Be rational.’
She shook her head.
‘Defy reason.’
She shook her head.
Returning to the table she pushed the page with the words onto the floor and stared at the furl of pencil sharpenings and tiny shards of lead.
She looked at the sketch of Alice and drew her again, quickly, with the chains now around her feet.
Thank you, said Alice.
It’s a pleasure, said Frankie.
Can you write me a story where the Ditch Monster comes to my rescue? Instead of the two of us always unravelling everything together? Think about what Scott said.
What did Scott say?
When he told you – to actually ask me.
Frankie was transported back to Maison Bertaux and there she stayed awhile, conjuring the taste of the cakes, the warmth from Scott’s knee next to hers, the lurch in her stomach, the soar of her heart, the buzz between her legs when his fingers had entwined with hers. All they had talked about. The timbre of his voice. The way he looked when he listened, the way his mouth moved when he talked, the way his eyes made her feel when they locked onto hers.
What’s your favourite song, Alice?
Not that noisy one you just played about your brain, thank you. My favourite song is ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.
I never knew that.
You do now.
It had been a jingle-jangle morning of sorts.
I’ll be back in a mo’ – don’t go anywhere, Alice, I just need to make a phone call. Then I’ll play you the Byrds’ version. Which I like better than Bob Dylan’s.
Frankie walked into the kitchen, to the window which looked out to the garden. It was her favourite place to muse. Her heartbeat competed with the silence. She phoned Scott.
‘It’s Frankie.’
‘I know.’
Just two words and she could hear him smiling. She laid her head gently against the wall.
‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘How’s Norfolk?’
‘Alice is back.’
‘Well that’s just great.’
‘Are you at work? Can you talk?’
‘I’m at work but I can talk.