‘MUM?’
A door crashed in the distance, and Jo met her mother’s eyes with a rueful grin. ‘So much for our peaceful teabreak.’
‘Mum?’ Footsteps retreated, then returned, attached to a bright smile in a pretty heart-shaped face the image of Jo’s. Long dark hair, again like her mother’s, was scooped up into a band, and now at the end of the day strands escaped, drifting round her soft hazel eyes and giving her a dreamy look.
‘Here you are. Hi, Grannie. Wow, a cake! Yum—can I have a bit?’ She cut a chunk, hitched herself up onto a stool by the breakfast bar and sank her teeth into the cake, without waiting for a reply—or a plate.
Her grandmother slid a plate under the hovering hand and smiled. ‘Good day, darling?’
‘OK, I s’pose. Bit pointless at homework club because the staff hadn’t got round to giving us any homework yet, but that was cool. We talked about Cara’s new boyfriend.’ Her eyes swivelled to her mother. ‘Talking of which, I hear your new doctor’s rather gorgeous.’
Jo nearly choked on her tea. ‘I wouldn’t have gone that far. He’s all right, I suppose.’
‘Cara’s mum said he was really yummy. So’s this cake—can I have another bit?’
‘Will you eat your supper?’
Laura rolled her eyes. ‘Mother, when do I ever not?’
It was true. She ate like a horse, thank God, in these days of eating disorders and unhappy children with appalling self-images and huge expectations hanging over them. ‘OK,’ she agreed, and cut a rather more moderate slice. No point in going to the other extreme. ‘So, let’s hear about Love’s Young Dream, then.’
‘Cara’s boyfriend?’ Laura giggled. ‘Oh, he’s in year nine—the third-year seniors, a year above me, Grannie,’ she explained patiently to her far-from-senile grandmother, ‘and he’s tall and his hair’s streaked blond and he’s got an earring and a tattoo on his bum.’
‘Bottom,’ Jo corrected automatically. ‘And how does Cara know that?’ she added, dreading the answer.
Laura laughed. ‘He had to do a moonie for a forfeit at a party she went to—she says it’s a dragon and it’s really cute.’
‘Let’s hope no one gets the urge to stick a sword in it,’ Jo’s mother said pragmatically, and cleared the breakfast bar while Jo tried not to choke.
‘Can’t I have any more?’ Laura said in her best feel-sorry-for-me voice, watching the cake vanish into a tin, but her grandmother was unmoved.
‘You’ll just be sick. Go and wash your hands and come down for supper in half an hour.’
She disappeared, leaving her coat dropped over a chair and her shoes scattered on the kitchen floor where she’d kicked them off.
‘A tattoo, eh?’ Rebecca Halliday said with a murmur as the pounding footsteps faded up the stairs.
Jo rolled her eyes and picked up the shoes and the coat, tidying them away. ‘Whatever next. I wish I could influence her choice of friends a bit more—she worries me.’
‘She’s fine. She’s a sensible girl. She won’t get into trouble.’
‘You thought I was sensible,’ Jo reminded her pointedly. ‘So did I, come to that, and we were both wrong.’
‘You were sensible. You were lied to. We all were.’
‘You’re very loyal, Mum.’
Her mother hugged her briefly. ‘You’ve come through.’ She dropped her arms and moved away, not given to overt displays of affection, and started scrubbing carrots like a woman possessed.
Jo helped her, and after a moment her mother looked up and met her eyes. ‘So, tell me about this doctor, then. Gorgeous, eh?’
Jo could feel the tell-tale colour creeping up her neck, and busied herself with the casserole. ‘Oh, he’s just a man, Mum. Nothing special.’
‘Married?’
Funny how one word could carry so very many little nuances. ‘No, he’s not married,’ Jo said patiently. ‘He’s thirty-two, single, he started working in hospital obstetrics and decided he wanted to be a GP so he retrained. He’s been doing locum for six months while he looked for a job.’
‘And now he’s ready to settle down.’
Jo put the lid back on the casserole with a little bang. ‘How should I know? He’s only been working since the first of January, we’ve had a weekend when he’s been off and it’s only the fifth now!’
Her mother slid the carrot pan onto the hob and flicked the switch. ‘Don’t get crabby, I was only asking. Anyway, you usually have them down pat in the first ten minutes.’
‘No, that’s Sue. I usually take fifteen.’
Rebecca laughed. ‘Sorry. I stand corrected.’ She deftly changed the subject. ‘I gather Julie Brown had her baby yesterday.’
‘Yes—another boy. Both well. I was so busy I didn’t have time to tell you. It was a lovely delivery—on the kitchen table.’
Her mother smiled. ‘So I gather. That’ll make mealtimes interesting for them. How about a glass of wine?’
‘What a good idea.’
Jo took the proffered glass and followed her mother into the sitting room, dropping into the comfy sofa and resting her head back against the high cushion. It was more comfortable than her own little annexe at the other end of the house where she usually spent her time after work, but tonight her mother had cooked for them and obviously felt a little lonely.
So did Jo so that was fine. Since her father had died they’d found companionship and support in each other, and without her, as she’d told Ed, she wouldn’t have been able to cope with bringing Laura up and keeping her career—
‘It would have been your father’s sixtieth birthday today,’ her mother said quietly into the silence.
Jo’s eyes flew open. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m sorry, I forgot,’ she said, filled with remorse.
‘He was going to retire—funny how you make all these plans and the decisions get taken away from you and changed. I can’t believe it’s nearly four years since he died.’
‘Or nearly thirteen since I had Laura. He really adored her.’
‘Yes. They were great friends.’
Jo swirled her wine round and peered through it at the lights. ‘You must miss him.’
‘I do—every day, but life goes on.’ She sat quietly for a moment, her teeth worrying the inside of her lip, then she met Jo’s eyes. ‘Maurice wants me to go to dinner at the weekend. I said I’d think about it.’
Jo thought of Maurice Parker, the senior partner who was due to retire soon and whose place Ed would fill, and wondered what her father would have thought. They’d been colleagues and friends for years—would he have minded? Would Maurice’s wife have minded, after all the suffering she’d gone through before she died? Would she even have known what was going on?
It was as if her mother read her mind. ‘He had such a difficult time with Betty—Alzheimer’s is such a cruel disease,’ she said. ‘She didn’t know him, you know, not for the last three years. Your father used to say she’d be the death of him.’
‘He aged, certainly. He looks much better now in the last couple of years without all the strain of her illness to weigh him down.’
‘Awful, what love and loyalty can do to you. Must check the carrots and put the broccoli on.’
Jo let her go, sipped her wine and thought about