As Rebecca entered the kitchen, Penny had her back to her at the sink, her shoulders heaving. Rebecca had frozen on the spot not knowing whether to go to her mum and give her a hug, or back away and leave her to her tears in private. Then she heard the splash and the clang of the roasting tin as she manoeuvred it in the water to open a new line of attack on grafted-on vegetables and realised it was scrubbing rather than blubbing causing it.
‘Need a hand?’
‘Oh hi, darling, just getting these out of the way while everyone’s busy. Can I get you anything?’ asked Penny.
‘I’m fine.’
‘James need anything? A beer?’
‘He’ll be fine.’
Penny went back to her pan. As far as Rebecca could see it was clean enough, but her mum was attacking it again with a little green scrubber. She thought it might have been a sign of stress, but acknowledged that it was just as likely the reason all her mum’s kitchenware was spotless after years, and theirs looked like it had been bought fire-damaged.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ she asked.
‘Me, I’m absolutely fine. Lunch went quite well I thought. Never quite sure what to cook for Margaret and Ben. I thought about a curry, but it didn’t seem right on a Sunday afternoon.’
‘It was delicious,’ Rebecca said.
‘It must have been three years since we saw them last. Margaret’s looking very well. She was saying she’s going to be sixty this year. You’d never think it to look at her, and not a spot of make-up. And good for her for still wearing mini-skirts. I wouldn’t dare these days…’
‘You look great,’ Rebecca said.
‘Thanks darling, and you too. Still feeling tired?’
‘It’s getting better. And no real sickness to speak of either. You’d hardly think there was anything wrong with me…’
‘I remember with your brother, my morning sickness didn’t really start until the second trimester, so you might not be out of the woods yet. Awful it was, like an alarm clock. Every time I started getting sick it was time for your father to get up. Then I’d be fine again in the day and then I’d feel a bit queasy when it was time for Nationwide.’
Always about you, Rebecca thought to herself, her inner teenager bristling.
‘Any signs you need a new wardrobe yet?’ asked Penny ‘As soon as you do we’ll go out and get some new things. Nothing too pregnanty just yet. We could invite Margaret if you’d like.’
Rebecca scrunched up her face, her nose an accordion of wrinkles.
‘Perhaps just you and your old mum then,’ said Penny, ‘halfway through a pregnancy might not be the time to be trying the boob-tube look.’
They smiled at each other conspiratorially. ‘My young mum, you mean,’ said Rebecca, feeling a little guilty for her earlier unsaid tantrum. She slid up onto a stool on the breakfast bar and started poking through the contents of the fruit bowl. ‘Are you OK with Dad taking all his dirty laundry out in public?’ she asked without looking up.
There was a blast of water as Penny turned on the tap to fill the kettle.
‘Well, he hasn’t done anything wrong, so he has to get that message across in whatever way he can.’
‘But it must be so humiliating for you,’ Rebecca said, her glance switching back and forth between her mother and a satsuma she was kneading between her fingers. ‘He asked you about it first didn’t he?’
‘Now don’t be like that, Becky, we’re just doing the right thing. And yes. Of course I knew. He mentioned he was thinking of writing a letter to the paper.’
‘A letter to the editor he said? I’m guessing he glossed over his hopes for front-page headlines. Typical. Next thing you know he’ll be dragging you into it – standing next to him in press photos. The loyal wifey standing by her husband.’
Penny paused as she considered her collection of teapots.
‘There’s someone from the Focus coming around tomorrow lunchtime.’
‘Mu-um!’
‘Then that’ll be it, Becky, I promise. He’ll have had his say.’
‘And the police will just go away because he’s got his picture in the press?’
‘Maybe they’ll let him off with a warning.’
‘They tried to do that already.’
‘But that was on their terms, he’ll feel better if he’s in charge of the situation. You know him, he just needs to find a way to feel in control.’
The kettle boiled. Penny warmed the chosen teapot, and reached for the teabags from the porcelain jar proclaiming TEA. Rebecca lifted her hand to her face and was momentarily distracted by the waft of citrus from her fingers; the surface of the satsuma in her other hand was pocked all over by her having absently stabbed it with her thumbnail.
‘You don’t think he did it do you?’ she asked.
‘Becky!’
‘I’m just saying… Soon as it hits the papers, it’ll be “no smoke without fire”.’
‘This is just one of those unfortunate accidents. It’s a misunderstanding, and you know your father’s sense of injustice. He can be very compassionate. He’d be just as cross if it had happened to James, or anybody…’
‘But James wouldn’t be…’ Rebecca stopped the thought before it got any further. That James wouldn’t be loitering in public lavatories because he isn’t…
Penny plucked two clean, matching mugs from the cupboard and gave each one a splash of milk.
‘James has been very good actually,’ Penny continued. ‘He’s been very supportive. Your father was saying he’ll make a very good dad, was even wondering again if he might want to join the company at some point, now he’s going to be a family man.’
‘He’s been talking to James?’
‘Oh you know – not talking. Texting, emailing. Can’t keep your father away from the computer…’
‘He didn’t set this up, did he? With his dad?’
‘That was all your father’s idea. He’s just been bouncing ideas for the wider campaign off him, and you know, probably every other project he’s in the middle of at the moment.’
Rattled, Rebecca stood up. Her husband hadn’t said a word about this. But she didn’t know what to do next. Go and see James? Find out what on earth he’d been doing? What did she mean, there was ‘a wider campaign’? Angry thoughts flashed through her head like a faulty fluorescent light. No one was telling her anything. These ridiculous things were going on in her own family and no one was telling her. They were treating her like…they were treating her like they did her mother. She was about to let rip, and James was going to get the brunt of it, when Margaret came back into the house followed by the men, Howard barking away. Rebecca couldn’t do it in front of her.
‘Tea’s just made,’ said Penny brightly.
‘Would you have any filter coffee?’ asked Margaret.
‘I’ll get the caffetiere,’ said Penny.
James ambled into the kitchen from the living room, alerted to the bustle and voices coming back inside.
‘Finished your plans for world domination, guys?’ he asked.
‘Bloody freezing out there!’ said Howard. ‘Old Fidel had the right idea, he didn’t have to put up with blinking weather