Don't You Forget About Me (Page 45)

‘There’s no need to go,’ Geoffrey says, turning back to Mum, ignoring me.

‘She can go if she wants,’ I say.

‘You are nothing but a troublemaker, and should pipe down,’ Geoffrey says. Back to Mum: ‘You shouldn’t go because he was an awful old philanderer and the whole thing’s a sham. Just tell them no, Patsy. Enough. They’re old enough to hear it.’

Wow. He’s doing what he did to me, with an audience. I already know Mum must’ve known. But did Esther know? I glance at her and she’s looking startled, in my direction. I can’t tell if she knows and she looks equal parts baffled and concerned.

Milo says: ‘What’s a Fillunder?’

‘YOU’RE AWFUL,’ Nana Hogg suddenly says, to Geoffrey, ‘An awful man.’

All heads turn. In the excitement, I’d forgotten she was here and I suspect everyone else had too.

‘Nan!’ Mark says.

‘Stop ordering her around,’ she prods a knitting needle towards me, ‘Like you order her around,’ a second knitting needle prod at Mum.

Bloody hell, Nana Hogg is phenomenal.

Geoffrey has gone purple.

‘I’m not going to stoop to insulting an elderly lady, however—’

‘I’ve seen your like before. My friend Margie’s husband Hamish used to make her and the kids eat bread soaked in beetroot juice while he had steak and spent his pay packet down the bookies. You remind me of him. A nasty sort.’

‘Nana, you really need to stop …’ Mark says, desperately.

I start quietly laughing. I’m not trying to be outrageous but I can’t help myself. It’s bloody brilliant.

‘On what possible basis are you calling me a bad husband?’ Geoffrey says to Nana Hogg.

‘You’re a bully. Let her go to her husband’s grave.’

‘I’m not stopping her.’

‘You literally just told her not to go,’ I say. ‘And slagged my dad off. And called him a philanderer.’

‘Yes and I wonder which of his children takes after him.’

My mouth falls open.

‘Don’t you dare speak to my sister like that,’ Esther says, surprising us all. This has turned into a bloodbath, a one-set stage play. Mum is like a statue, eyes wide. Mark’s aged a year in minutes.

‘Nothing wrong with enjoying a bit of slap and tickle,’ Nana Hogg says. ‘If I still had her physique I’d be putting myself about a bit too.’

‘Right, that’s enough,’ Geoffrey stands up, makes a fuss of collecting his jacket from the coat stand in the hall. We listen to this, Mum motionless. Her instinct is to side with Geoffrey, yet even she’s got qualms.

He lets himself out and sits in his car, fully visible through the bay window, engine running, passenger side door thrown open ready for Mum to obediently scuttle out after him.

‘Should I go out and speak to him?’ Esther says to Mark, and even Mark shrugs.

Nana Hogg knits serenely through it.

‘Mum,’ I say, turning to her. ‘Don’t do as he says. He’s been a bad shit. Let him sweat on it for a night and go back tomorrow.’

‘She’s right,’ Esther says.

Mum looks at us, looks out of the window at Geoffrey, chews her lip. He slams the door shut, the tail-lights blaze, and with a squirt of gravel, he goes. Mum says the very last thing I’d expect.

‘Georgina, have you got any cigarettes?’

31

We stand quivering with cold in Esther’s garden, smoking menthols that Esther managed to unearth from the back of a cupboard. Being unable to provide Mum with Marlboro Lights is not a way I thought I’d fail her.

‘I’m so sorry you had to find out about Dad like that, Gog,’ Esther says, gripping her elbow.

‘Oh, Esther, I knew,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know you two knew. How did you know each other knew?’

‘I saw Dad with her when he was supposed to be at Graham’s. I was with my friends and he was coming out of Atkinson’s, they were holding hands. I came home and told Mum. I was about ten.’

That long.

‘I knew anyway,’ Mum says. ‘From almost the start. He thought he could come home smelling of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and I wouldn’t notice. Silly sod.’

‘How did you find out?’ Esther says to me.

‘I caught Dad …’ Hmm. Best still be careful, ‘making plans to see a woman on the phone, the first weekend I was home from university. We had a huge fight about it, right before he died. I thought I should keep it to myself. Given Dad was gone anyway.’

‘Here’s us, thinking we had to keep it from you, at any cost. You were always so close, you had Dad on a pedestal. We didn’t want to knock him off,’ Esther says.

‘Thank you,’ I say, frowning. This is an adjustment, the idea they protected me.

Mum blows smoke out in a long plume. It’s so bizarre seeing her with a fag. I knew she dallied in her twenties, but she gave up when she got pregnant with Esther and never started again.

‘Grace, her name was. They were on and off for ten years. Met her at work. Wouldn’t give her up,’ Mum says. ‘She never married so was there at his beck and call.’

‘Well. What utter bastardy,’ I say. ‘To you and her. I don’t like what she did but I bet she thought they were in love and Dad might leave.’

‘I didn’t think you’d think that way,’ Mum says. ‘I thought you might blame me, for making him unhappy.’

I love my mum, but sometimes it does seem incredible we share DNA.

‘Why on earth would I blame you? It’s not your fault if he cheated on you.’

Mum nods. ‘I’m still glad you didn’t know. Caused a lot of tension for you, didn’t it?’ She nudges Esther.

Esther nods, scuffs her shoe on the ground. ‘It was hard to see him in the same way.’

I readjust my perception of Esther’s teenage hauteur, her exasperation with me and my closeness with Dad, and some of the slammed doors.

‘Why is Geoffrey spraying the information around all of a sudden?’ Esther says. ‘What gives him the right? All we said was we were going to the grave, not erecting a statue.’

‘He gets jealous, I think,’ Mum says.

‘Of a dead person,’ I scoff, and then consider I might be something of a hypocrite, given the sensations I felt looking at the late Niamh.

‘I know he can be difficult, but I have to be careful, girls. He’s the one with the finances.’

‘Mum, loads of equity in that house is yours,’ Esther says. ‘You’re not powerless. Tell him to sort himself out.’

‘It’s not that easy.’

‘I’m not saying it’s easy but you can’t let him walk all over you.’

‘We’ll back you up, Mum,’ I add.

‘That’s very kind but you’ve both got lives to lead of your own, I can’t be a burden.’

‘You’d hardly be a burden!’ I say, suddenly feeling tearful, like I can’t quite swallow around the lump in my throat. I can’t remember a time when it’s felt so sisterly between the three of us.

‘Always a spare room here,’ Esther says, clasping Mum’s shoulders.

For the first time, I feel the true uselessness of my skintness. I am not the same sort of help myself, whether I like it or not.

‘We should go in, the food’s ready,’ Esther says, with a look at Mark who’s waving through the kitchen window.

Mum catches my sleeve, as I stub my fag out under my boot.

‘Georgina, about your dad. He never gave up his Saturdays with you, for her. I took some comfort from that.’

This makes me feel gratified and confused and guilty and sad, all at once.

When we’ve finished the passion fruit mousse, Mum says no thanks to a coffee and I know, I already know what’s coming next. She sensibly waits until Nana Hogg is snoring in an armchair and unable to offer input.

‘Esther, thanks for the offer of staying but I think I’m going to go home.’

Esther’s brow furrows. ‘Are you sure?

I want so much to be some assistance, and not always have to defer to my capable sister, who spent so many more years of her childhood shouldering the fact of my father’s affair than I did. When I was tripping happily with him from cafés to curry houses.

‘Yes, absolutely sure. It’ll have blown over and I will tell Geoffrey his response was excessive.’

Good luck there.

‘If you’re sure,’ Esther says.

‘I am.’

‘How about we share a taxi, Mum?’ I say. Mark tactfully gets up to clear the plates and I say, more quietly: ‘Why don’t you go in, make sure everything’s alright and you’re not going to have a barney? And text me. If you want to come back out and go home with me, wait for it to cool down, you can.’

Mum nods, embarrassed, and I think that we’re doing what is called normalising. We’re talking in the language of managing an abuser. I’m not one to pine for a boyfriend to look after me, but right now it’d be so good to have someone to share this with. To have my back, and by extension, hers. To be a team, the way I know Esther and Mark are.