a minute, the horrible little vandals …’
‘OK, Cass, calm down. They’re just children. And come on, they’ve only been living with you for one day!’
‘Yeah, and it’s one day too fucking many, I’ll tell you that … anyway, what would you know? Little Miss Footloose and Fancy-Free.’ She scowls at me. ‘Why are you so glammed up this evening?’
‘I’m going out.’
‘Huh! Must be nice.’
‘Well, you know, Cass,’ I say, ‘if you hadn’t got involved with a married man with kids …’
She sulks, but doesn’t say anything.
“Look, can’t you and Zoltan have a proper talk? See if there’s a dignified way out of this mess?’
Cass crumples up her pretty, unpowdered nose for a moment, as she thinks about this.
‘You mean, tell him we need a full-time nanny?’
‘No!’
‘Two full-time nannies?’
‘Cass …’
‘Or are you thinking boarding school?’
I stare at her. ‘For a six and a nine year old?’
‘Yeah. You can get boarding schools for kids that age, can’t you?’
‘I’m sure you can. But why not just send them to the workhouse and be done with it?’
‘Ooooh, I haven’t heard of the workhouse,’ Cass says, leaning forward, eagerly. ‘Is it far away? Do they let them out for half-term?’
My reply to this – which contains more swearing than I’m normally comfortable with – will have to wait, because the bathroom door is opening and Mum is on her way out.
She doesn’t look too bad for a woman in her early sixties who’s just had her gallstones out – sorry, sorry, minor cosmetic surgery. In fact, in her silk kimono and what look an awful lot like cashmere slippers, she’s actually terribly glamorous. For a moment, and it’s a rare moment, I feel rather proud of her. There’s a certain kind of chutzpah, a certain kind of bloody-minded grit, behind the ability to look fabulous only forty-eight hours after invasive surgery, and Mum has it in spades.
‘Oh,’ she says, puncturing the moment with the sheer amount of dissatisfaction she can pack into one single syllable. ‘Libby. You’re here.’
It’s not that my own mother dislikes me, or anything – though it does occasionally feel that way. It’s more that she and I have literally nothing in common. And that Mum isn’t very good at feigning interest in people she has nothing in common with. Mum isn’t very good at feigning interest in people she does have things in common with. There are two things that matter to Mum: herself, and Cass. All right, maybe I’m being unfair: three things. Herself, Cass, and Michael Ball’s performance as Marius in the original London production of Les Mis in 1985.
There are then approximately two hundred things that intermittently matter to her a very little bit – depending on what else is going on with the three really significant things in her life – before you scrape right down to the bottom-ish of the barrel and find her elder daughter. Me.
‘How are you feeling, Mum?’ I ask.
‘Oh, well, you know, I’m a fighter,’ she says, in her best Bravery In The Face Of Adversity voice. ‘It’ll take more than being cut open on the surgeon’s table to get the better of me!’
‘Well, that’s good, then. You look really well,’ I add, in my best You Can’t Have It Both Ways voice. ‘Really glamorous and zingy, for someone who’s just had an op.’
She glares at me. ‘I’m trying to keep on keeping on for your sister’s sake, actually. Do you have any idea what a terrible time she’s been having? Stalked by paparazzi. Hounded by a vicious ex-wife. And now terrorized by these little horrors!’
‘Actually, Libby’s come up with a really good suggestion,’ Cass says, reaching for the contraband cigarettes on the windowsill beside her. ‘Have you ever heard of somewhere called The Workhouse, Mum?’
‘That wasn’t what I was trying to suggest, actually, Cass,’ I say, as Mum’s eyebrows shoot upwards. ‘I’m really trying to suggest that maybe it would be best for you to call it quits with Zoltan. I mean, it’s all very complicated, and it hardly seems fair to—’
‘Oh, well, I’m not sure that would be very sensible,’ Mum says, in the sort of disapproving tone most mothers reserve for stuff like going outside in the winter with damp hair, or forgetting to take a good multivitamin in the middle of cough and cold season. ‘Are you aware, Libby, that he’s a footballer?’
‘I am aware, Mum, yes. Does that mean there’s some sort of law that says she can’t break up with him?’
‘Of course there isn’t. But it would be plain silly to give up on him this early!’
‘Oh, come on. So Cass is meant to stay with this guy, with all the obvious problems, purely because he’s a footballer?’
Cass shakes her head, her ratty ponytail wobbling as she does so. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the fact he’s a footballer!’
‘Exactly,’ Mum agrees. ‘Well said, Cassidy, darling!’
‘I mean,’ Cass goes on, ‘why on earth would I want to be with someone just because they’re good at kicking a ball around on a field? The main thing is that because of the fact he’s good at kicking a ball around a field, he’s really loaded.’
Even Mum has the grace to look a bit sheepish.
‘And,’ Cass goes on, ‘being with Zoltan makes me an actual WAG! Which is all I’ve ever wanted,’ she breathes, ‘since I was, like, thirteen years old. I mean, I’ve never forgotten the image of the original WAGS walking around Boden-Boden …’
‘I think you mean Baden-Baden,’ I say.
‘… their clothes, their shoes, their hair …’ Cass clasps a hand to her chest. ‘That’s the kind of thing that stays with you.’
‘The main thing,’ Mum says, hastily, ‘is that Zoltan seems like such a wonderful young man.’
‘You’ve never met him,’ I point out.
‘I can tell he seems like such a wonderful young man.’ Mum glares at me. ‘I’ve been reading a lot about him these past couple of days, in the magazines. He does all sorts of wonderful charity work – hospital visits for sick children, that kind of thing …’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘That’s great. Though, I mean, it might not be a bad idea for him to think about his own children, when he has a minute …’
‘… and he’s obviously a great family man, because he has the most wonderful house in Surrey,’ Mum goes on. ‘Doesn’t
