looks disconcerted by the question, as if it’s a trap he might fall into. Taking a fleeting look at his father, he proceeds to give a mumbled list of his homework assignments, social arrangements with his school friends, and how he plans to stay at his boyfriend’s house in the gap between Boxing Day and New Year.
‘How is William?’ James asks. ‘We haven’t seen him for weeks. Busy revising, is he? He’s determined to get into Oxford, Diane. Such a hard worker.’
‘Just like Stephen is,’ I say, coming to his defence before his father’s digs become too blatant.
‘Well, I imagine Stephen’s a dead cert for Oxford, too. First my daughter, then my grandson, both off to the best university in the world. I’m so proud just at the thought of it.’
That niggle in my head is back again. The sense of resentment that only now, decades later, can my mother suggest she is ‘proud’ I got in to Oxford. On the day I found out I’d won a place, she’d acted like it was merely another big task she could tick off her to-do list. Daughter into Oxford: check.
‘I think,’ I say, choosing my words carefully, ‘that Stephen is keen to go to the college that suits his skills the best and offers the course he most likes. He won’t be going anywhere just because Will is.’
My mother looks so horrified it’s almost comical. ‘Julianne, are you telling me you’re actively trying to dissuade the boy from attending the greatest—’
‘Oh, spare me the greatest university in the world talk, Mom. There are plenty of other great universities.’
I can see James moving food around his plate with sharp stabs of his fork. I’ve pissed him off now.
Stephen looks around at us. ‘You’re all doing it again. I’m still here you know.’
Nobody laughs this time. My mom is looking around her as if trying to suss out where in the argument she could fit in. ‘I’m sensing some tension,’ she says eventually.
‘How observant of you,’ I reply, not looking at her.
‘I’m sorry, Diane,’ James says. ‘We can’t be much fun tonight. Julianne is clearly stressed with Christmas and everything …’
‘Am I?’ I say, looking at him. ‘You’ve decided that, have you?’
‘… and Stephen,’ he says, ignoring me. ‘I think he must be getting worried about his mountains of coursework.’
Stephen shakes his head. ‘I’m not that worried.’
‘Then why, may I ask, have you been sitting at this table like a grumpy teenager all evening?’
James is doing his strict-parent voice now. I’ve never understood why Stephen takes it so seriously and rarely answers back when his father gets angry. To me, it sounds like someone in a play, just pretending, speaking the lines they think they should say without being totally sure how they should be saying them. He’s never been the loud, forthright one – that’s partly the reason I fell for him, back when I was just nineteen. He was more the quiet, brooding type, exerting a quiet confidence rather than a forceful one. The more show-offy bursts of emotion he’d left to his friends, Ally and Ernest.
Stephen doesn’t immediately respond to his father, but carries on staring at his food. I’m growing steadily more worried about him. While I’m desperate to talk to James about what I’ve just seen on his computer, I would very much prefer Stephen not to be present and, if possible, minimise his part in the whole thing. The thought of my mother being within hearing distance is mortifying.
‘I’ve … I’ve just got a lot to think about,’ Stephen says, and then carries on eating his food.
Silence resumes for the rest of the meal.
After dinner, my mother is keen to gravitate towards the lounge pretty quickly, and it becomes clear, as she locates the Christmas bumper issue of the Radio Times, that there’s a showing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel she’s keen to see. She often stays to watch something with us on TV after dinner, but it’s rarely longer than an hour and a full-length feature film is certainly not the norm. ‘It’s rather long,’ I say, looking at the listing in the magazine, noticing that, with commercials, it will run for two and a half hours.
‘Oh, it’s a glorious film,’ James says, settling down in his usual spot on the one-seater. Back when we first bought the house, he and I used to snuggle together on the sofa, sometimes with toddler Stephen between us. As the years had gone by, however, it’d become just Stephen and I sitting together at each end of the long sofa, and James on his own at the other side of the room. Thinking about it now, I wonder when that happened. When did he first make the move to sit alone? I can’t place the moment in my head. The change just seems to have slipped into my life without my noticing it.
‘I’ve been wanting to see it for ages, ever since Susana at the swimming club told me how much she and her husband love it. It’s become one of their favourites, apparently. I was worried I was going to miss it when you invited me round to dinner; then I thought it might be nice for us to watch it together.’
A flash of panic courses through me. I’m not sure I have the energy to watch something right now. I need to clear my head. Get things sorted. Talk to my husband. As I turn towards the television screen, my mind flicks back once again to that clinically cold list of details about those young women, their haunting faces, their lack of family or friends or proper employment. I know people live like that. I know not everyone is as lucky as I am. But who would want to collect all that information and pool it into one horrible document?
‘You don’t mind, do you, Julianne? I’d hate to miss it.’
My mother’s voice snaps me back to the present. She’s brandishing the TV remote at me. I’m tempted to remind her of the state-of-the-art Sky Q facilities she has at home and how, if she was so desperate to see this particular film, she could have easily recorded it. Instead, I resign myself to another few hours of her company and try to get myself in the frame of mind to watch Judi Dench and Bill Nighy smile and joke their way across India, knowing it’s the last thing I want to do.
Holly
Oxford, 1990
My dad once told me that friends come and go and you never really know which ones mean the most until they abandon you. Strong words for a father to tell his seven-year-old child, but that was my father for you: inappropriate and unaware. My mother overheard him and came to tell me that Daddy had actually had a bit of a mix-up and forgotten to mention that most people grow up to have a great group of friends they can have a fun time with. Dad stood back as Mum set about correcting his statement, looking slightly puzzled. When my mum walked back into the kitchen – we had been standing in the corridor, me swinging precariously from one of the lower banisters – he had sighed deeply and then just said, ‘Maybe I was wrong. I’m sure you’ll work all this out for yourself, little Holly.’
Although I probably wouldn’t say this conversation caused me to be a loner throughout the rest of my childhood and most of my teenage years, it was probably a contributing factor. I always found I could never quite trust someone enough, whether it was Stephanie and George in art class, who liked to chat endlessly about popstars and trashy movies, or Greg, the first boy I thought that, in another world, I could have dated. None of them managed to install a framework of trust within me. There was no pattern of reliability; not because they continually let me down – more because I never gave them much of a chance not to.
When Ally suggested she thought I should spend more time with her, Ernest, James and Peter, I saw this as proof my mother had been right, but also, at the same time, a challenge to the gods of fate to see if my father would be right as well. I did test them privately on this, when I used the communal telephone in the hallway. Mum got one version of the story: