dad is a bit rude to Olly. I don’t know why, but then my dad pretends not to dislike anyone, whilst holding deep personal convictions about people as varied as Jim Davidson and Tony Blair.
‘Ah yes, hello, Oliver. Didn’t see you there. Are you losing weight?’
This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t Olly’s fault he was getting perhaps a little more than a bit of a tum. We all worked long hours, and if you eat practically nothing and then have to fill up on sausage – well, things can get a bit out of hand. He looked fine in his three-piece suit, though.
‘Um, no. How are you doing?’
‘I’m fine, fine! Just keep me out of Flora’s mother’s way now.’
I grimaced. I realise it’s important to Dad to feel that the fact that they’ve split up is a bit of a jolly ‘Ooh, Vicar, where’s my knickers?’ farce, but I don’t have to like it. I was the one ringing home from my first term at university and listening to forty-five minutes of uninterrupted sobbing from my mother. I’m the one that has to be contactable every single night now, or she calls the police. Being an only child to a neurotic mum can be even less fun than it sounds. And it was his fault.
Why do so many people split up like that? ‘We’re just waiting for the kids to leave home.’ What does that even mean? ‘We’re waiting until our children take their first fluttering steps out into the world, forging their own personalities and identities and living alone for the first time, then we’re going to crack their worlds apart.’
I’ve forgiven my dad. You don’t, of course, have much of a choice, unless you want it to turn into a blood feud that cascades hatred down the generations. All I can say is, she was twenty-nine and it lasted six months and, of course, he wanted to come home afterwards. He told me it was his last chance; his last way to do something different and that I’d understand when I was older, and you know, sometimes, looking at my life, if I’m being honest, I probably can.
I was twisted when my mum wouldn’t take him back. Part of me just wanted everything to suddenly evaporate so that they would go back to the way things had been or, better, the way I’d have liked them to have been, more The Good Life than Butterflies. But I was glad she wasn’t doing it. I was glad she was standing up to him. Because, although I didn’t exactly have twenty years of marriage behind me, and I didn’t know much about life (though then I thought I knew pretty much everything), I would have liked to have been as firm as she was with the love of my life.
I could see her now, coming in, but decided to duck from her until I’d got rid of Dad. Watching her in silhouette I was struck by how old she looked; my dad just looked like a jolly, chubby, balding, middle-aged man, of which there are approximately ten million in Britain; good yeoman stock. My mother was painfully thin for her age – I was always trying to get her into milkshakes because of that brittle bone thing – and walked as if she was in pain. If you looked closely she was beginning to get a hunchback. Once your world is cracked open, you can’t go back, I think. She never could. I can barely remember the carefree, normal way me and my mother used to relate when I was a teenager – normally, with sulks and huffs and slamming doors. I didn’t behave very well either. But now, she was more like a housebound grandmother, and she trusted nothing.
God, Tashy was brilliant back then. I couldn’t decide which was worse: losing my dad or losing Clell. In fact, I was so wrapped up in my own misery, I was hardly there for my mum at all, something I will never forgive myself for. Tash and I had a grand tearing-up of Clelland’s letters (which I still read anyway; he was having a great time. I only ever got three, ’cos I couldn’t reply to any of them. What with? ‘Dear Clelland. My life is shit. Love Flora?). I got my head down and got out as quickly as I could, and I’d been trying my best to have fun ever since. Looking at Ol, I wasn’t sure it was working.
It was a bad age for me. I thought it was because nobody could ever love me that I would always be alone. After all, if you love only two men, and they both leave at the same time, it doesn’t bode well.
There’s a reason we never forget our first loves, as Tashy has patiently pointed out to me many, many times. Our young little hormone-seething bodies have never felt anything like this before. Your brain doesn’t know what’s happening to it. After the first one, at least you’ve got some forewarning of the triple whammy that’s going to happen to your head, your heart and your groin. You understand what is going on, even if that doesn’t give you much more power over it than you have at sixteen.
And, as has also been noted, if your first love kisses you hard on the lips then disappears (or goes to Aberdeen – technically the same thing), and travels all over the place in the holidays, and then you go to Bristol, it’s hard to get a proper handle on the whole deal. You haven’t watched them grow fat or old, or watched them mess things up or, heaven forbid, stayed with them and watched the infatuation curdle. And as you grow up and learn the inevitable compromises of real love, it’s hard not to remember the unlined face and innocent excitement, especially if you think the other person might feel the same.
Or, of course, even remember you that well.
We were standing to watch the speeches. Oh God, Max, no, please.
‘Why is a woman like a computer?’ he began ponderously, and there was a palpable shift in the audience as everyone prepared themselves to laugh at something that wouldn’t be in the slightest bit funny.
‘You can turn it on whenever you like …’
Clelland kept sneaking glances at me standing beside him, and – I couldn’t help it – I was curious too.
‘Three-and-a-half-inch floppies …’ droned Max.
‘I thought it was you!’ said my mother, loud and too bright. She appeared from nowhere, with too much powder on, looking nervous.
‘I’m your daughter,’ I said rather sharply. ‘Who could you mistake me for?’
‘Goodness, I don’t mean that. I just meant … where were you? I was worried.’
She looked around anxiously. I did too, instinctively checking where Dad was. She started to quiver if he got too close.
‘Just chatting to people,’ I said. I didn’t want to reintroduce Clelland to her. I’d spent enough emotional time with my mother; I didn’t like her getting upset over me.
‘All right. Well, don’t go too far, will you, darling? I hardly know anybody here. I can’t think why Tashy invited me. All these young people!’
‘Don’t be silly, Mum. You know Tashy’s mum and dad!’ In fact, Jean chose that moment to put her hand up and wave. ‘There you go!’
‘But they’re the parents,’ my mother said as if talking to an idiot. ‘They’re very busy at weddings. Well, so I hear. Who knows, eh?’
I’d been waiting for the first one of these. I was amazed it had taken so long. I realised Clelland was close enough to hear every word of this.
‘Erm, yeah, Mum.’
‘You and that lovely chap. So good together. And you’ve been together so long! You must be next. Oh yes, there’ll be a wedding soon for us, I think. Darling, think about it! It’ll be such fun! We can do it all together.’ And she tapped my arm in what she clearly thought was a reassuring manner. I saw Clelland raise his eyebrows.
‘Ah! There you are, Olly! Hello, darling! It’s Mummy!’
Unlike my father, my mother adores Olly and, it has to be said, he’s very good to her. I think he does know that because I don’t have any brothers he’s the only man in my mother’s life at all apart from the postman, and so he treats her well. She is a bit – well, very – clingy.
This ‘call me Mummy’ stuff has to stop, though. It really has to stop.
‘Hello, Mummy,’ said Ol, bending down and giving her a hug. I think perhaps what annoys me most is that sometimes I think Olly gets on with my