black bulls, glasses of red white, a pair of flamenco dancers, the man all in black, with a tricorn hat, the girl in a bright red flared dress, her black high heels tapping out the rhythm of the dance.
It was so colourful and vivid, full of sunshine. Shivering in the cruel wind, Bianca pulled her warm coat closer and longed for the sun.
Maybe Judy was right. Perhaps it was time she did something about herself. Oh, she wasn’t looking for a man—but she must do something about the way she felt, shake herself out of this grey depression.
Was that what her dream had meant? She went red again and hurried into the travel agent’s.
That evening she didn’t get home until half-past six; she was tired and cold. As she parked her car she remembered that she had agreed to go out to dinner at the Chinese restaurant a couple of streets away, and was grateful that she wouldn’t have to cook dinner tonight as she did most other nights.
She stepped out of her wet boots and left them to drain in the porch. She was so sick of this endless winter. She had to get some sunshine soon or she would go crazy. She hung up her dark pink woollen coat before putting her head round the door of the lounge.
Her two children were watching a video and didn’t even look up. Bianca considered them wryly for a second. There was no family resemblance between them; a stranger would never guess they were brother and sister. Fifteen-year-old Tom, sprawled on a sofa, as relaxed as if he were boneless, his long, slim body limp, had changed out of his school uniform and was now wearing the inevitable jeans and a blue sweater, his hair the same colour as her own, his eyes the same widely spaced dark blue, and Vicky was sitting in an armchair carefully painting her nails a strange dark plum. She was far more like her father than her mother, with corn-coloured hair and hazel eyes, except that she had a petite, pocket Venus figure instead of Rob’s height.
‘Hello, Mum, have you had a good day? Isn’t it cold outside? You must be frozen; come and sit down by the fire and I’ll make you a lovely cup of coffee,’ Bianca said loudly.
Her son, Tom, did look round then, grinning as he tossed his untidy hair out of his eyes. ‘The little men in white coats will come for you if you keep talking to yourself.’
‘I have to. Nobody else around here will. Are you both ready to go out for this Chinese meal?’
‘Yes, Mum,’ Tom said, his attention riveted on the screen again. ‘Do you really want some coffee?’
‘Not if we’re going out at once. Are you ready, Vicky?’ Vicky stirred, blew on her fingers. ‘I’m ready, but I can’t go yet—it would ruin my nails and I only just painted them.’ She looked round, waving a plum-tipped hand at a small table on which lay a red-foil-wrapped box. ‘Oh, that’s your present there, Mum. Happy Birthday.’
Bianca unwrapped a box of Chanel make-up, her eyes widening. ‘Why, thank you, Vicky, that’s wonderful.’ She hoped Vicky hadn’t spent too much on the expensive cosmetics; it had been very generous of her.
‘I know you don’t usually wear those colours, but I think you should—you need an image change!’ Vicky said. ‘My friend Gaynor is on the Chanel counter; she picked out the colour scheme for you; she said they’d suit you.’
Bianca fingered them all in their matching packaging: a glossy dark red lipstick, eyeshadow boxes in a trio of shades, from light blue to brown, a cream foundation, and loose powder in a compact.
‘I can’t wait to try them.’ Somebody else trying to do an image change on her! she thought crossly. First Judy, now her own daughter…What was so wrong with the way she looked?
She opened her shopping bag and took out a holiday brochure, her blue eyes brightening. ‘How do you two feel about a winter holiday? Two weeks in Spain. sunshine, beach life, flamenco dancing?’
‘Great—when?’ asked Tom without looking round.
‘As soon as we can fix it!’
‘What…now?’ He looked round then, aghast. ‘You’re joking, Mum. I’ve got matches fixed every Saturday for weeks. I can’t go away. We’d lose if I wasn’t there.’
‘Big head,’ Vicky told him.
‘It’s true,’ he insisted indignantly. ‘I’m their best striker! Ask anyone. I get all the goals. I can’t go away during the season—they’d kill me.’
Vicky said casually, ‘I can’t go either, Mum. Actually, Drew and I were thinking of going to Majorca some time in the spring—’
‘Drew can come with us!’ Bianca interrupted.
Vicky’s look revealed first blank incredulity, then scornful amusement. ‘Drew and me.go away with you? Come off it, Mum! You don’t think I want my mother around, do you? Anyway, we were thinking of going on one of these under-thirty holidays. No old people can go on them.’
‘Old people?’ repeated Bianca, outraged.
Vicky gave her a quick, half-laughing look. ‘Well, you’re not old, of course; I didn’t mean you, I meant. Well, you know what I meant.’
Oh, yes, she knew what Vicky had meant. Her daughter did not want her around when she went on holiday; she was the wrong age group. Her son was too absorbed in his own life to want to go away at all. Her spirits sank. She had been looking forward to getting away to the sun, but she couldn’t go alone; she hadn’t had a holiday alone for. She stopped, frowning, realising with a shock of surprise that she had never had a holiday alone. Before she met Rob she had gone away with her parents, and then she had always gone with Rob and the children. She had never once gone anywhere alone.
Well, it’s time I did, she thought. Judy was rightshe had to start adjusting to the idea that Tom and Vicky were growing up, would one day leave home. She had to build a life which did not revolve around them.
‘I’ll go away alone, then,’ she said, and they both turned to stare at her, mouths wide open in disbelief.
‘Alone?’ Vicky repeated.
‘You mean you’re going to leave us on our own here?’ Tom’s eyes sparkled. ‘For two whole weeks?’
She could read his mind; he was looking forward to two weeks without supervision, without anyone nagging him to do his homework, do his daily chores. Tom hated doing housework, but Bianca insisted that he helped out, did as much as his sister. She had been determined not to bring up a useless boy who expected women to do everything for him. She had a brother like that. Jon had never had to lift a hand at home; their mother had waited on him hand and foot, and after Jon had married he’d expected his wife to do the same. Sara had resented it; the marriage had broken up after a few years, with Jon complaining that Sara was unreasonable, and Sara bitterly accusing him of being selfish. Jon had married again, but his second marriage was far from contented; it seemed to be drifting on to the rocks exactly the way the first one had.
Bianca didn’t want her son turning out like Jon. She had shared out work equally between her two children. In the kitchen was a computer-printed rota pinned up on the wall; Vicky and Tom each had jobs to do every day.
Bianca expected them to keep their own bedrooms tidy, and inspected them once a month to make sure they were actually doing the work, but they also had to help her keep the rest of the house tidy, do the shopping, help prepare meals for them all.
