Фиона Гибсон – Take Mum Out (страница 3)

‘I don’t mean for Easter,’ he calls after me as I leave the room. ‘I mean our summer holiday. Are we going anywhere this year?’

‘Haven’t decided yet.’

‘We never go abroad,’ he bleats. He’s right – but how far does he think we’ll get on the bit of fluff I have left in my purse at the end of each month?

By the time I’m back in the kitchen, Logan has returned to his bedroom and Erica is clutching her brown leather briefcase in readiness for leaving. Meanwhile, I’m wondering if it would really be so terrible if the translator suffered an unfortunate accident, such as tumbling from our second-floor window and being run over by a car.

‘Well, Alice,’ Erica says coolly, ‘I’m pleased to tell you that your premises have passed.’

It takes me a moment to process this. ‘You mean everything’s okay?’

She nods. ‘Yes, you’re ready to go.’

‘Oh, that’s great! Thank you.’

Her clear blue eyes skim the room, settling momentarily on the scrunched-up piece of kitchen roll which Logan deposited on the table. Then, just as she makes for the door, another small object catches her eye. She frowns, and I follow her gaze towards the cooker – or, more precisely, to the small, turd-like object that’s poking out from under it.

It’s a bit of old sausage. Time seems to freeze as we stare at it. It hasn’t been there long, I want to explain. Or I could joke about cutting it open to date it, the way you can count the rings in a tree. But instinct tells me that Erica wouldn’t find that amusing so, mustering a brazen smile, I saunter towards it and send it scooting under the cooker with a sharp kick. Our eyes meet and she smirks. ‘Well, good luck with your meringues,’ she says. ‘I think it’s a great idea for a business. And I do hope your son manages to get his translator fixed.’

Chapter Two

Four months later

It’s a cool, breezy afternoon as I leave Middlebank Primary where I work as the school secretary. Having texted the boys, who’ll head straight home from their nearby secondary school, I take a short detour via Betsy’s, a smart, airy cafe housed on the ground floor of a converted chapel. In recent years, there’s been an explosion of quaint tea shops here in Edinburgh. While there is no shortage of cupcake suppliers, meringues appear to have novelty appeal, which has proved good for business. Betsy’s is owned by an eager young couple who look like they’re barely out of college.

‘Just wondered how it’s been going this week,’ I tell Jenny, who offers me tea in a gilt-edged china cup.

‘Really well,’ she says, ‘especially the tiny ones – the meringue kisses.’

‘People seem to prefer them with coffee,’ I tell her.

‘We’ll take more next week,’ she adds. ‘What d’you think, Max?’

Her boyfriend turns from the coffee machine and grins. ‘Oh, sure. If Alice can handle it.’

Jenny laughs. ‘We were just saying we don’t know how you manage to fit it all in. With your job and family, I mean …’

‘Oh, it keeps me sane, actually,’ I reply truthfully.

‘Well, you’re obviously doing something right,’ Jenny says with a broad smile. ‘They’re the new cupcakes, right?’

Max nods. ‘Far superior in my opinion. All that thick, cloying icing …’ I leave the cafe filled with optimism and pride. While meringues have always been a personal favourite of mine, maybe I’ve hit on a gap in the market here.

My mobile rings; it’s Ingrid. ‘So what happened?’ she asks eagerly, referring to her party on Saturday night.

‘We’re meant to be going for dinner next Friday,’ I tell her.

‘I knew it! I saw you two, huddled together in the kitchen …’

I laugh. ‘We weren’t huddled, we were talking.’

‘Talking intently,’ she remarks.

‘Well … it was just chit-chat really, but he seemed interesting …’ It’s true: while I don’t think either of us was bowled over, I could see no reason not to see him again. After all, my dating activity is roughly on a par with a solar eclipse these days.

‘Well, he seemed hugely keen,’ Ingrid goes on as I march up the hill at a brisk pace. ‘Every time you wandered off to talk to someone else, he was prowling about looking for you. I hope you’re going to give him a chance.’

I inhale deeply. ‘I don’t know, Ing. It’s just been a hell of a long time, you know?’

‘All the more reason then.’

‘And there’s the boys,’ I add. ‘You know what it’s like.’ She doesn’t really; happily married to Sean for a decade now, and with a charming daughter who plays no less than three musical instruments, Ingrid is more sorted than anyone else I know. There’s the matter of being unable, inexplicably, to conceive another baby after Saskia, but following a failed IVF cycle they are trying again, and Ingrid is always keen to stress that another child would merely be the icing on the cake.

‘That doesn’t mean you can’t date,’ she says firmly. ‘It’s not as if they have to meet every person you have a drink with. You’re hardly going to haul him home after dinner, going, “Hey boys, meet your new Uncle Anthony …”’

‘Christ, no,’ I exclaim.

‘And it’s been, what – over a year since that finance guy? The one who wanted to inspect your bank statements?’

‘And told me off for not having an ISA,’ I add with a grin. ‘Yeah, more like eighteen months actually.’

‘Well, they’re not all like that. I’ve only met Anthony a couple of times but he seems lovely. Handsome, didn’t you think? In that groomed, takes-care-of-himself sort of way. Not gone to seed. Has a personal trainer, Sean reckons, and he’s brilliant at golf …’

Golf! Checked trousers, diamond-patterned sweaters … no, no, I mustn’t think that way. I replay last Saturday night, when I was leaving Ingrid’s party: It’s been lovely talking to you, Anthony had said, fixing me with intense grey eyes, like wet slate. I don’t suppose you’d like to come to dinner sometime? There’s a friendly little local place I know … how are you fixed on Friday night? A proper date-night, then. All we’d talked about was who we knew at the party, how long we’d been living in Edinburgh and a few sketchy background details about our lives. I hadn’t exactly experienced an urge to kiss him, or to glimpse that nicely honed body naked – but maybe ISA-man killed my ability to fancy anyone at all. And surely, any normally functioning woman would find a tall, smiley, smartly dressed man like Anthony attractive? Which is why I agreed to meet him for dinner – because I was bloody flattered to be asked.

‘I have a good feeling about this,’ Ingrid adds, ‘and I know you’re excited really.’

‘Am I?’ I say, laughing.

‘Yes, you’re panting.’

‘Ingrid, I’m marching up a hill …’

‘Well,’ she sniggers, ‘I can’t wait to hear about it. I mean, eighteen months. Christ. It’s time you were back out there.’

‘Back out there? Sounds like a sign in an NCP car park …’

‘Oh, stop it,’ she says, mock-scolding. ‘Promise you’ll go and not make up some crappy excuse about the boys being ill or whatever. I know what you’re like, Alice Sweet.’

She does, too, in the way that a friend of twenty years – since our second year at college – is aware of the difference between a mere reluctance to date, and full-blown terror at the very prospect. Which is, admittedly, the situation right now. Plus, with a track record like mine, I have to ask myself, is it worth it, really? Getting ‘out there’, I mean? It’s not just ISA-Man, and his perpetual nagging about share acquisition. It’s the whole, sorry dating debacle since I split with Tom, the boys’ father. A handful of encounters scattered over six years of single parenthood – each one making me question why I was in some gloomy, sticky tabled bar, or having sex with someone who might well have been simultaneously calculating the net profit on his investments. Frankly, I’d rather have been cosied up on the sofa with Logan and Fergus, munching crisps and sniggering over something daft on TV.

‘So you promise not to back out,’ Ingrid says firmly.

‘Promise,’ I say.

A small pause. ‘It’ll be great. I’m not sure what he does exactly but he seems like a really driven, thrusting guy.’ We both bark with laughter as I finish the call, trying to convince myself that Ingrid is absolutely right.

*

On Friday, as I pull on my new dress – sapphire-blue linen, grabbed from some sale rail one lunchtime – my thoughts fast-forward to tomorrow when the date will be over and I’ll be happily regaling Ingrid, plus our other college friends Kirsty and Viv, with the details. It’s a pleasant spring evening, the kind that coaxes dog-walkers and couples out to our gently sloping park, with its wide open sky and a glimmer of the Firth of Forth beyond. Hell, is it really eighteen months since I last slept with someone, let alone had a date? In contrast, Tom had found himself a wife less than a year after we split (he and I had never got around to tying the knot). He is married to the fragrant Patsy, founder of a children’s sleepwear company called Dandelion. They live in a vicarage in Cumbria surrounded by rolling fields and cattle, and have an adorable golden-haired daughter, Jessica, who regularly models for the Dandelion catalogue. We’re not talking Hello Kitty nighties or SpongeBob pyjamas; the only embellishment allowed on Patsy’s top-quality garments is a tiny embroidered dandelion clock.