rolled her eyes as she leant over to hug her father. ‘Are you all right, Dad?’
He held his daughter at arm’s length, giving her his customary frown of concern. ‘I’m fine, Fran, but how are you?’
‘Right, let’s open a bottle, shall we? It is Mother’s Day after all,’ interrupted Angela.
Fran smiled. Praise the Lord for bossy mothers.
Angela put an arm around Charlie’s shoulder and followed Fran to the kitchen with Bill shuffling behind. ‘Either I’m getting shorter or you’re getting taller,’ she told her granddaughter.
‘And look what I can do,’ said Charlie, stretching her leg straight up and pulling it to her head with one arm.
‘Good heavens above, where did you learn to do that?’
‘Gymnastics,’ smiled Charlie proudly.
‘Amazing,’ said Bill.
‘Such talent! You don’t get that from your mum.’ Angela shot a glance in Fran’s direction before grinning gleefully at her granddaughter. ‘She gave herself a black eye whilst attempting a headstand when she was doing her BAGA Three Award – kicked her own knee into her eye!’
‘Mum!’ guffawed Charlie. ‘You never told me that!’
‘And I never would have either if it weren’t for your motor-mouth granny,’ said Fran, handing her parents their wine. ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Mum. Cheers, Dad.’
‘Cheers, darling,’ replied Angela. ‘Now where is that delightful grandson of mine?’
‘Probably upstairs plugged into his laptop. He’ll come down once he smells the roast.’
‘Why don’t you challenge Grandpa to a game of something,’ suggested Angela to Charlie.
Fran’s heart sank. She could tell that her mother wanted to ‘chat’, which usually involved her talking and Fran listening to a list of everything she was doing wrong.
‘Okay, Grandpa, how about Connect Four? Although, you should know that I’ve been practising with Jude and I’m getting pre-tty good,’ said Charlie.
‘You’re on!’ cried Bill, following her in the direction of the living room.
‘Come on then. Out with it,’ said Fran, once they were out of earshot.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Angela with feigned innocence. Fran raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, very well,’ said her mother. She stood up straighter and fixed Fran with a look. ‘It’s time you acknowledged your grief.’
Fran scowled. ‘I acknowledge it every day of my sodding life.’
‘No you don’t, Fran, and I’m partly to blame.’
‘Wow. Can I have that in writing?’
Angela cocked her head to one side and pursed her lips. ‘You kept going because you had to and I encouraged that but in doing so you’ve never properly faced the grief.’
‘Funny, because I felt as if the grief was punching me in the face on a daily basis but obviously I was skipping through meadows of wild flowers without even realizing it.’
Angela raised her eyebrows. ‘This is exactly what I’m talking about.’
‘What?’ snapped Fran.
Angela gestured with her hands. ‘This. This attitude. This sarcasm. This dark humour. You’re not facing your grief. You’re railing against it. And in doing so you avoid the pain instead of facing it head on.’
Fran was incredulous. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, my darling, you replace it with all manner of things – anger, cynicism and so on – when you need to open up because that’s the only way you can move on.’
‘I don’t want to move on,’ said Fran, folding her arms
Angela’s face softened. ‘I don’t mean forget Andy, I just mean get to a place where you can accept the world without him.’
‘Thank you, Professor Freud – you should have been my counsellor. It would have saved me a lot of bother.’
‘I just want you to be happy.’
Fran stared at her. She wanted to say, ‘I am happy,’ but there was no way she’d get a lie that big past Angela Cooper. She turned back to the carrot she was chopping and an uneasy silence descended. Her body stiffened as her mum placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘Just think about it, Fran. That’s all I ask. It’s been two years. Now shall I lay the table?’
‘Thanks.’
As her mother bustled round the kitchen, the same dead-end thought drifted through Fran’s head like a song on repeat.
Accept a world without Andy? Why on earth would I want to do that?
Pamela
It was fine. Really. Absolutely fine. Two out of three Mother’s Day cards were fine. A declaration that the majority of her children were thinking of her. There were plenty worse off.
‘He’s a lazy, selfish bugger,’ Barry declared as they sat down to Sunday lunch. ‘Doesn’t think about anyone but himself. He lives the nearest and does the least.’
‘Oh shush, Barry. It doesn’t matter,’ said Pamela. But it did matter. Of course it mattered. Another moment in her life that she shrugged off, pretending she didn’t mind when in actual fact it exhausted her brain every waking second. Matthew. Her middle son. A constant worry and a big mystery to her.
Her other children were getting on with their lives. Her eldest, Laura was a chef, working for a trendy chain of Mexican restaurants in the West End, living in north London with her girlfriend, Jax. Her youngest, Simon was an app designer. He had set up his own business and become quite successful with a game called Run, Bob, Run, in which a gigantic polar bear called Bob had to run across various different landscapes, avoiding sharks, vultures and other similar nasties. Pamela had tried to play it once and felt rather sorry for Bob but apparently it was a big hit with pre-schoolers and meant that Simon could afford a lovely Georgian semi-detached in Bristol, which he shared with his software engineer girlfriend, Skye.
Pamela’s middle son Matthew, on the other hand, was a relatively unsuccessful journalist and writer, living in a flat-share in Clapham in the same place he had moved to after leaving university. He was thirty-three now and whilst the other residents had changed numerous times over the past twelve years or so, Matthew remained in situ. He made just enough money to get by, along with occasional handouts from Pamela.
‘Don’t mention it to Dad,’ she would cluck indulgently, posting
