Ken owned a small engineering company, with a sub-division specialising in domestic central heating. ‘My house is as much an advert for my business as my offices, I always say,’ Ken was fond of remarking.
‘You do always say,’ Harriet would agree, earning a sharp look from Kath and a titter from Lisa. But Ken would only ever nod with satisfaction, as if she had simply agreed with him. He was a kind man and fond of his stepdaughter.
Before Harriet even reached the glass door of the porch, Kath appeared amongst her begonias that sheltered there from any storms that might sweep across south London.
‘Harriet! You never said that you’d be coming.’
‘I took a chance that you’d be in.’ Equally, she had taken a chance that her half-sister would be out and that Ken would be working.
‘Well, if only you’d rung. Lisa’s at Karen’s, and Ken’s on a job.’
‘Never mind.’ Harriet kissed her mother, then took her arm. ‘We can have an hour to ourselves.’ Thinking of what she would have to say in the hour she added, too brightly, ‘The garden’s looking lovely.’
Kath peered over her shoulder. ‘But where’s your car, love?’
‘I left it at … home. Came on the tube.’
Kath looked horrified. ‘It’s not broken down already, is it?’ Harriet knew that her mother was proud of her in her smart hatchback, proud of the shop and of Leo whose name appeared alongside photographs in glossy magazines.
‘I just wanted to come the old way.’
‘Well, what a nuisance for you,’ Kath commiserated, as if conceiving such an odd notion could only be an inconvenience.
They went into the house together, passed through to the kitchen at the back. It was a big room looking through sliding doors on to a terrace and the garden beyond. There were quarry tiles and expanses of pine units with white laminate work-tops, rows of flowered cereal and biscuit jars, a radio playing morning music. Kath spooned coffee powder into floral mugs, flicked the switch of the kettle, and embarked on a piece of news about Lisa’s latest boyfriend. Harriet stood by the patio doors, half-turned to the garden, looking up the slope of the lawn to the spreading tree of heaven at the end. She listened carefully to the story, putting in the right responses, but Kath broke off midway.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘There’s something, isn’t there?’
Sometimes she surprised Harriet with her shrewdness. Harriet supposed that she didn’t give her mother’s insight sufficient reckoning.
‘Jenny lost her baby. He lived for two days, he died last night.’
She was ashamed of her means of prevarication, putting Jenny’s tragedy to Kath at one remove, instead of admitting to her own.
Kath’s face reflected her feelings. She knew Jenny only slightly, but her concern was genuine.
‘The poor thing. Poor little thing.’
Harriet told her what had happened. They drank their coffee, leaning soberly against the pine cupboards.
‘Perhaps it was for the best,’ Kath said at length. ‘Better than him being handicapped for ever. They can start again, when they’ve put this behind them.’
‘Maybe,’ Harriet said sadly.
Kath faced her. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
Harriet thought briefly that it would be much easier to talk to someone else, anyone at all, rather than her mother in her dream kitchen.
‘Harriet?’ Kath was anxious now.
There was no point in choosing mollifying words. Turning her back on the tree of heaven Harriet said, ‘Leo and I are going to separate.’
As soon as it was said she wished that she had wrapped it up a little. Kath went red, banged down her coffee mug, didn’t even notice the little pool of spilled liquid that collected on the white worktop.
‘No you don’t, my girl. You’re a married woman. You don’t come back here and say you’re giving up after your first quarrel. You have to work at marriages, don’t you know that? You’ll work it out between you, whatever it is. You’ll be all the stronger together after it’s all blown over.’
Harriet saw that Kath was already smoothing over the damage, making it orderly again in her mind, as if her daughter’s life was her own kitchen.
‘Don’t talk like an agony aunt,’ Harriet said. ‘We’ve been married for four years and had a thousand quarrels. I’m not leaving him because of the quarrels. The truth is that we don’t make each other happy. It’s time we admitted to the truth. It’s quite clear-cut, really.’
She hadn’t expected that Kath would be so upset. Her mother cried easily, but she looked too shocked even for tears to come.
‘How can you say that? You make a perfect couple. You always did, at the wedding, ever since.’
The wedding, Harriet thought. I should never have let myself be put through all that. It had been a big white one, of course, mostly paid for by kind-hearted Ken. Harriet herself in a tight-waisted long dress with a sweeping train and a veil; her half-sister, then fifteen, trying to hide her puppy fat inside folds of corn-gold satin, two other small bridesmaids in cream silk. A hired grey Rolls with white ribbons, and a lavish reception following the carefully ecumenical service. Leo’s parents had decided to make the best of the inevitable. Harriet could have spoken their reasoning for them; Leo’s girlfriend was presentable and was no fool. She had her own little business and was making a go of it. His family had turned out to the wedding in force and had sent absurdly generous presents.
Now Harriet imagined Averil Gold shaking her well-groomed silvery head and murmuring, ‘These mixed marriages often come to grief.’ Before adding, adoringly, ‘But Leo always was a naughty, headstrong boy.’
She looked across the expanse of pine and tile at her mother. ‘We’re not even a couple. We never were, probably. It’s a difficult notion, for people as selfish as we are.’
‘You’re not selfish,’ Kath insisted. ‘And Leo’s a good husband. He looks after you.’
Harriet’s forbearance deserted her. ‘He’s a filthy bloody husband,’ she snapped. ‘Do you know what I found him doing? Can you guess? No, don’t try to guess. I found him in his studio, screwing a model.’
‘Are you sure?’
Jane had asked the same question. The realisation made Harriet laugh, a gasp of real laughter that made her eyes water.
‘Sure? What else might they have been up to?’
‘How can you laugh about it?’
Yet Kath seemed more shocked by her daughter’s flippancy than by the news itself. It occurred to Harriet that even her mother might have guessed at what she had taken so long to discover for herself. Anger strengthened her determination.
‘I’m not going back to the flat. It can be sold, we’ll each take fifty per cent. I’ll use my share to buy a smaller place.’
‘You’re very cool about it.’
‘Am I? I want to know my own mind, that’s all.’
Kath was recovering herself. She mopped up the spilt coffee, took her mug over to the sink and dried the bottom of it.
‘You always did. Always, from a tiny thing.’
Kath remembered how Harriet had been, long ago, when there were only the two of them. Single-minded and possessed of her own unshakeable certainties. She shook her head now, sighing. Kath wanted to see her daughter happy and believed