The chocolate bar demolished, he shoved the screwed-up wrapper into his back pocket, currently somewhere halfway down his left thigh. ‘What happened to “never go back”?’
‘When I say that, I mean boyfriends and love affairs, not jobs.’ Sarah sighed heavily, that kind of world-weary sigh mums are so practised at. Picking up a pair of slippers, she pulled a face then flung them to the bottom of the wardrobe: no one in London wore slippers. ‘How about a “congratulations, Mum”? It might be nice to hear one.’
‘Congratulations, Mum,’ the twins offered in unison, like Kevin and Perry.
‘Thank you.’ Sarah rejected a peach floaty scarf. She would have to examine Google on the train up, see what fashionable people were supposed to be wearing these days. She didn’t want the first London siren she heard to be the sound of the fashion police coming for her …
‘How long are you going to be away for again?’ asked Connor.
‘Two months.’
‘Two months! That’s ages!’ Oh, finally! ‘Who’s going to cook our dinners?’
‘I have no idea. I don’t even know if Auntie Meg can cook.’
‘And who’s going to clean the house? Hoover our bedrooms?’
‘You are – you two. If you can find a square foot of carpet to do so.’
‘Can’t’ – Connor did the inverted commas thing with his fingers –‘“Auntie Meg” do it?’
‘I’m not expecting her to,’ replied Sarah, sitting back down on the bed. ‘I’m expecting you two to step up. Perhaps you could use my going as an opportunity.’ She waited for the eye-rolling. ‘Connor, I know you fell into the sandwich job – which was only supposed to be for last summer, by the way – but sticking labels onto packs of sandwiches is hardly a career, and you’ve been sitting on that electrician’s apprenticeship form so long it’s grown stuffing and a side zip.’ Connor rolled his eyes and gave another fringe flick, with the toss of his head, making his cargo shorts drop another two inches lower down his hips. ‘And, Olivia, your gap year has never been more aptly named as there’s simply nothing in it! I know you’re going to Durham in October, but all you’ve done since A levels last year is drift around. You could spend the rest of the summer more usefully than listening to depressing music with your mates or getting yourself a pointless new boyfriend.’
‘She likes The Smiths,’ said Connor, from the doorway. ‘And I promise I’ll take a look at that form thing again.’ He yawned.
‘I’ll think about doing something this summer,’ said Olivia unconvincingly. She was leaving it awfully late, thought Sarah. There’d been an opportunity to go to Kenya, to help teach English at a school, many months ago, but Olivia hadn’t taken it. Sarah really hoped her sudden flight to London would shake them up. Or at least make either of the lazy so-and-sos pick up the Hoover.
‘Can you give me a lift to the station tomorrow please, Connor?’ The station was walking distance, but Sarah didn’t want to walk to it with the family suitcase. It wasn’t one of those nice ones on wheels; it was a hefty, rock-hard red thing, a throwback from when she and her ex-husband Harry used to take the kids to Cornwall, before he decided to have multiple affairs and left them to move down there permanently. It looked at her accusingly from the bed.
‘Yeah, what time?’
‘Three o’clock?’
Sarah had already checked the current shambles of a train service: there was no miracle currently settling over Tipperton Mallet; the train staff were on strike again and she would be travelling on a bus replacement service from Tipperton Mallet to Ipswich, taking a whole hour and a half and going round all the houses, no doubt, then an actual train, from Ipswich to London. Then the Tube to Meg’s flat, which Meg had given her the address for at the end of yesterday’s phone call. The whole journey would take ages, almost four hours.
‘All right.’ He shuffled away from the doorframe, in the direction of his bedroom, and Olivia got up and left too. Hardly devastated, were they? They weren’t exactly weeping in the aisles. But she still worried how they would get on without her.
Sarah carried on with her packing and it didn’t take long; not many things made the London cut, just underwear and nightwear, her trusty black skirt, one or two old blouses she hadn’t worn for ages and one pair of boring, safe, black court shoes. Minimal make-up was packed; she didn’t have a lot. Meg was the one who had make-up and hair down to a fine art, thought Sarah, as she stared at a never-used Pound Shop eyeshadow palette. Meg used to have an eyeshadow called Black Jade, which she wore down to the tin doing big dramatic panda eyes for her various adventures.
‘Are you going out like that?’ Sarah had always asked, as the panda had slunk to the front door in a hitched-up mini and a scowl.
‘Can’t stop me,’ Meg had always retorted.
Meg had always looked gorgeous, Sarah reflected again as she zipped up her meagre make-up bag and put it in the top of the case. Ten-year-old Sarah had been in awe of the loud little sister with the big blue eyes when she was born, and loved running round helping with the new baby. She helped change her nappies and wind her. She helped with her bath and rubbing baby oil on her cradle cap.
‘You’ll be so good when you have your own,’ Mum had remarked more than once, after Sarah had brought the Gripe Water for her. ‘You’re a natural,’ Dad had added. And she had been, hadn’t she? thought Sarah, as she rolled another pair of sensible knickers and wedged them in the corner of her case. A natural for years and years and years. She had given her all to her sister, and then to her children. Now she was going to give something back to herself.
*
It was two forty-five, on Sunday afternoon, and Sarah was sobbing at the top of the landing.
‘I’m going to miss you so much,’ she wailed. ‘I just love you both so much.’ She had one arm round Connor’s shoulders, despite his attempts to lean himself out from under it, the other circled tightly round her daughter’s neck whilst she wriggled like a beleaguered worm and muttered, ‘Get off, Mum!’
‘Pull yourself together, Mother!’ chided Connor sternly, finally managing to prise Sarah off him. ‘It’s only two months.’
‘It’s really not a big deal, Mum,’ said Olivia, rolling her eyes and pulling a sheaf of golden hair out of Sarah’s grasp. ‘We’ll be fine.’
‘If you don’t stop this, you’re going to miss your bus,’ added Connor. ‘You’ve been hanging off us for twenty minutes. Please don’t do this when we get to the station.’
‘No. I won’t, I promise,’ said Sarah, attempting to pull herself together. ‘I’m OK now.’ She sniffed and snuffled her nose into a screwed-up tissue. ‘Let’s go. Be good for Auntie Meg,’ she said, giving Olivia a final hug and briefly wondering if Meg would be remotely good for them. ‘And come up and visit me. We can go to Madame Tussauds.’
‘Maybe.’ Olivia shrugged. ‘Bye, Mum,’ and the two of them practically herded their mother down the stairs and out of the door.
Connor threw her suitcase in the boot and Sarah climbed into her battered old blue Fiesta. It had certainly seen better days. It had scratches, a dented back bumper
