Or if she does, it’s more subtle, disguised as concern. You know – she only wants what’s best for Penny, she only wants to help.’
Jen nods, surprised if she’s honest. Her girls were bridesmaids at Will and Penny’s wedding, so she saw a fair amount of her mum in the run-up. She was a bit distant, if anything. Friendly enough, but mad busy with all her volunteering commitments. But in fairness, she never hid her preference for Penny’s brother. ‘Boys are so much easier, Jen,’ she’d say. Which was a bit rich said to a mother with three girls.
‘So her mum thinks she’s done nothing wrong?’ Jen asks eventually.
Will pauses and rubs his head. ‘I don’t really know if she has. Penny’s an adult, not a child anymore. She can’t blame her mother forever. Can she? I really don’t know, Jen. We’re all in our thirties. Shouldn’t we be past all that parental angst by now?’
He falls silent again and Jen drifts for a while. Parental angst isn’t something she likes to contemplate; thoughts of her father are best hidden deep. But her mum Nola is a star; a constellation in fact.
‘I’m trying, Jen. I’m trying to be supportive.’ Will’s clotted voice jerks her back. ‘I’m going through the motions, but if I’m honest, I don’t get it. I mean, what the fuck did Penny think she was doing? At someone else’s wedding? Disappearing without saying a word, going into our hotel room, locking herself in. If Dan hadn’t kicked in the door, who knows?’ He stares at the ceiling and rocks his head. ‘But then again, even if she’d jumped … We were on the third floor, for fuck’s sake, not the thirteenth.’ Abruptly leaning forward, he puts his face in his hands. ‘I didn’t know it was coming, Jen. She never said a word. Just that blank polite face she’s had for months. She might do it again. How will I know? I have to work; I can’t be with her all the time, watching her, hiding the window keys, counting the kitchen knives. It’s a bloody nightmare.’ Then, with a shuddery sigh: ‘I know she’s the one who’s ill and needs help. I know I’m being selfish, but it’s doing my head in.’
Jen puts her hand on Will’s back and rubs gently. ‘Maybe the counselling will help you as well as Penny,’ she says after a time. ‘Perhaps you have to say how you feel, you just have to be honest.’
Will turns his head and smiles wryly. ‘Not completely honest, though, eh?’
Before leaving the house, Jen opens the bedroom window and changes the bedding. Smoothing the duvet cover, she contemplates how she feels about Will’s unexpected visit. Wistful, she supposes. There are other words to describe the act itself. Almost immediately gratifying would be apt today. Not that sex with Will wasn’t always satisfying in the end, but it was more routine, the slow burner of regular sex. But it has been a while since they were last together. There was a period after Anna’s fourth birthday when he’d drop by almost weekly. He was auditing then and they’d go to bed for his lunch hour and chat before making love, rather than the other way around. Then he met Penny at a medics’ ball; she’d gone at the last minute to make up the numbers on the table. The lovemaking seemed to intensify then. Perhaps they both knew the end was imminent. Handsome, gregarious and charming, Will had plenty of girlfriends over the years, but Penny seemed to stick.
Fighting a sudden urge to sob, she strips the pillow, puts the soft case to her face and breathes in his smell. When pregnant with Holly, Will sent her an email out of the blue. It was a period when she was consumed with the highs and lows of motherhood and she’d seen little of him for many months.
‘Went to Edinburgh for a conference yesterday,’ his message read. ‘On the way back I napped on the train and dreamed of us at eighteen.
Woke up very confused. You were there; you were real, in sharp focus. Amazing how a dream can bring back the past with such clarity. As soon as I got home I dug out the old Canon. Too emotional to try it, but there in its case was my favourite photo of the most beautiful woman ever, taken with said camera. I thought I’d lost it forever.
Even now I’m welling up. Just SO in love with you and captured on film.’
Nick
Nick pulls his car into the flagged driveway of his childhood home feeling a mixture of relief and guilt. Relief that he’s left it; guilt for feeling relieved.
Being the much younger child hasn’t been easy. Although Patrick visits their parents regularly, he moved to his Cheadle flat years ago, leaving young Nicky Quinn with their doting parents. Of course, Nick didn’t mind then; he was cushioned and loved. But he returned after university and found himself glued, a strange sticky mixture of love and dependency.
‘You need to break free from your parents, obviously,’ Lisa said, not long after they met. ‘But they need it too. I’ve seen it with other people’s parents. Their kids finally leave home and they have to learn to live with each other again. You know, without the crutch of a child. Your mum and dad are getting older, so they need to adjust before it’s too late.’
He moved into Lisa’s small semi two months before the wedding, but spent some time each evening at home with his parents.
‘I get it; a weaning period,’ she said. ‘But after the wedding you’re all mine.’
It was how he saw it too. He knew the umbilical cord had to be cut, but felt the severance wouldn’t be complete until he was married to Lisa, until he’d said the vows out loud to everyone listening in the church. But now he’s done it, he suspects life isn’t quite so black and white. He’s glad he’s left, and of course he’ll always love his parents, but he craves their approval as much as ever.
He rings the bell and stands at the frosted-glass door, rubbing his hands against the cold evening as he waits. Eventually he sees the smudged outline of his father leaning down to insert the key in the lock. There’s a latch on the door but his parents have taken to locking it with a key even during the daytime. It finally opens, revealing the addition of a safety chain since he was last here.
It feels like reproof.
A blast of warm air fragranced with emulsion and cooking hits his face. ‘You should at least leave the key in the lock, Dad. If there was a fire or an emergency you’d have to find the key. The delay could make all the difference.’
‘That’s what I’ve been telling him,’ his mother calls from the kitchen. ‘He won’t take a blind bit of notice. And he can never remember where he’s put them. Now you’ve mentioned it, no doubt he’ll listen.’
Breathing in the oily smell of roast potatoes, Nick thinks about crutches. The bickering between his parents had got pretty bad before he left; he can’t imagine it has got any better.
His father turns away and hobbles back towards the small sitting room at the front of the house. ‘You finally decided to visit, then? I believe you’ve been back for a week,’ he says over his brushed cotton shoulder. Then after a moment, ‘Arsenal and Spurs. Two nil. Are you coming to watch?’
‘Hello, love,’ his mother says, pulling him into a hug. ‘Careful of the walls. They should be dry by now, but you never know. Oh, it’s lovely to see you. How was the honeymoon?’
He looks around the hallway. Sees the usual Artexed white walls behind the Lowry prints. He opens his mouth to say something nice, but his father’s voice interrupts.
‘Where are you, Nicky? Watch this replay.’
‘It’s fine, love,’ his mum says. She throws a crisp tea towel over her trim shoulder. ‘Dinner is ready in ten minutes. Then the television is going off, football or no football. We can talk then.’
After a few minutes of sport, Nick takes his usual place at the dining table, his back to the manicured square of grass through the open curtains of the large window. ‘How’s