Gabriel had been taking Steven to see his mother at regular intervals, and even popped in to the hospital once or twice on his own. One of the many wonderful things about Gabriel was his kindness and consideration. Marianne knew that he still cared about his ex wife and worried about her when she was ill, but his kindness and consideration could also be bloody frustrating at times. Eve had left him, and it wasn’t Gabe’s fault that she was ill now. Marianne tried not to let it get to her, but sometimes, it grated that her husband was still so involved in his ex wife’s life.
‘Yes, she is,’ said Joan. ‘And they’re thinking of letting her come home.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ said Marianne, still curious as to what it had to do with them. Despite her frustrations about the way Eve’s problems impacted on them, Marianne was pleased Eve was better (as Joan must be too, the last few weeks must have been a nightmare), but it wasn’t really her problem. ‘So she’ll be coming back to stay with you, I presume?’
‘Ah, she would …’ the unspoken ‘but’ hovered between them.
Here it came, the real reason Joan was ringing.
‘Unfortunately, I’ve booked a cruise,’ said Joan, ‘and it’s not possible to cancel at this late stage …’
You selfish cow, thought Marianne, her sympathy for Joan dissipating instantly. Eve was Joan’s only child. No wonder she had rejection issues.
‘… so I was wondering … the thing is, Eve has nowhere to go. So could she …’
‘… come to us?’ said Marianne. The cheek of the woman! Not prepared to take responsibility for her sick daughter (whose illness she was probably to blame for – she’d given Eve a rackety dysfunctional childhood) and yet expecting her ex son-in-law to pick up the pieces.
‘It will only be temporary till she sorts herself out,’ said Joan persuasively. ‘She’ll hardly be in your way.’
Wanting to throttle the woman, Marianne gritted her teeth. ‘I can’t promise anything, Joan,’ she said, ‘I need to talk it through with Gabriel first.’
‘If you could let me know as soon as possible?’ Joan clearly didn’t have a clue that her call was unwelcome.
‘I’ll let you know when Gabe and I have had a discussion,’ said Marianne firmly, putting the phone down with a satisfying bang. Bloody woman. How dare she? But then, Eve couldn’t be left on her own. It wasn’t her fault she had a lousy mum.
And in her heart, she knew there wasn’t really any talking to Gabriel about it. Eve would be coming to stay and that was that.
Gabriel walked in at that moment, complaining about the cold. He stopped dead when he saw the look on Marianne’s face.
‘What?’ Gabriel asked.
‘That was Joan,’ said Marianne. ‘Eve’s coming out of hospital and she has nowhere to stay.’
Gabriel sat down with a thud.
‘Bugger,’ said Gabriel. ‘Can’t she stay with her mum?’
‘Joan’s going on a cruise apparently,’ said Marianne. ‘No doubt it would cramp her style.’
‘No doubt,’ said Gabriel drily. ‘Well we can’t have her. We’ve got enough on our plate. I’ll ring Joan back and say no.’
Marianne let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. She’d been so sure Gabe would say yes straight away. She felt unkind, but Gabe was right, they did have enough to deal with.
But when Gabe spoke to Joan his resolve lasted all of five minutes. Marianne could hear from Gabe’s responses how insistent she was being.
‘And there really is no one else?’ he said eventually, pulling a face at Marianne.
‘… No of course I don’t want her to relapse,’ he added, which made Marianne’s blood boil, as if Gabe were responsible for Eve’s illness.
In the end, she saw him give a helpless little shrug and say, ‘Of course she can stay here.’
He put the phone down and turned to Marianne, who was looking at him in horror. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but what else could I do?’
Cat was online researching recipes. She wondered what she was going to do now that A Shropshire Christmas wasn’t going to be filling the screens of the nation. After her latest long chat with Anna about it, they’d concluded she’d go ahead with the book any way as her publishers were still happy to be on board. In the meantime, Cat would pursue other avenues.
‘You could always try a reality TV show,’ suggested Anna.
It had been a joke when Marianne mentioned it, but to Cat’s horror, Anna was serious.
‘I’m sure Paige would love me to, but I don’t think so,’ said Cat with a snort. ‘Besides, I couldn’t leave the kids that long.’
It seemed to Cat sometimes, her kids needed her more the older they got. As well as Mel’s AS levels, which of course were a huge priority, James had GCSEs to contend with. Not that you’d know, he was so laid back about them Cat felt she had to be on top of him all the time, making sure he was getting some work done.
‘You worry too much, Mum,’ he said. ‘It will be fine.’
And it probably would be, James had such a happy-go-lucky nature, things probably would turn out well for him whatever happened. And though he had given up on his own career as a teenage TV chef, which had sprung up on the back of Cat’s TV work, he always had that to fall back on if all else failed.
Paige was another matter entirely. Her life was one long drama – even making GCSE choices was turning into a daily argument, with Noel’s mild suggestions that Textiles and Tourism weren’t perhaps the most academic subjects she could take, causing an explosion of ‘You don’t understand anything!’. True Mel had been quite explosive at that age, but Paige was taking it to a whole new level. Most of her tantrums related to her phone, to which she was addicted. She was always on snapchat and ask.fm, neither of which Cat remotely understood. Every time she got to grips with a new technology it seemed to change, and she and Noel waged a constant and wearying war of attrition against it.
Ruby, who at ten, was still reasonably straightforward, was even more techie than Paige. It exhausted Cat to be constantly telling both of them to get off their phones, only to find Ruby ten minutes later hooked up with the iPad. Honestly, technology, it was the bane of a modern parent’s life.
Who was it who’d told her when she’d moaned about dealing with the difficulties of toddlers and babies, ‘It will get worse’? They’d been right. Despite the turmoil Lou Lou had wrought upon their lives, Cat found looking after her relatively uncomplicated. She went to bed when she was put there, was asleep by seven, and didn’t answer back.
Cat found a file for a Christmas cake that she’d come across a while ago, and printed it off, before starting to type, ‘Thinking about making a Christmas cake takes a lot of forward planning. In an ideal world, you should make it in October, but those of us with lives to live have been known to squeeze it in in November …’ without much enthusiasm. She felt so much less interested in the book now it wasn’t going to be a TV series. How very shallow of her. But she enjoyed the buzz of being in front of the cameras and was going to miss it.
Don’t be daft, Cat, she scolded herself. It’s only one show.
But what if it wasn’t? What if all her TV work dried up? After all, she was in her mid forties and a woman. Time and TV