A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [65]
‘Brilliant idea.’ Frank laughed. ‘That should sort out the problem.’
‘Now, now,’ Rosa the aging barmaid piped up from behind the bar. ‘You can’t plot murder in here!’
‘We don’t mean it, Rosa,’ Stan said quickly, regretting his bad joke.
‘That’s a shame,’ she laughed. ‘I might’ve been tempted to help you.’
Fifi sat at the kitchen table eating the sandwich her mother had given her, but she was tense, knowing by the way Clara was rattling dishes in the sink that she was boiling up for something.
Everything had looked so hopeful at first. When Fifi telephoned that morning and asked if she could come on her own for the weekend, Clara hadn’t hesitated in agreeing, in fact she’d sounded delighted. Fifi purposefully didn’t mention what had happened to Dan, it was too hard to explain on the phone, but perhaps that was her first mistake, as maybe her mother got the idea she was walking out on him.
When Fifi arrived, she took it as a good omen that her mother was wearing the pale blue linen dress Fifi had always said she looked so pretty in. While she didn’t hug her daughter, Clara did say what a lovely surprise the phone call was, and that she’d made up the bed for her.
It was a bit disappointing to find that Patty had gone to a friend’s for the weekend. Her brothers were at cricket practice and her father had gone to see an old friend and wouldn’t be back till much later. But the house was as sun-filled and peaceful as she remembered, and Fifi felt that the time alone with her mother would be good for them both.
Over a cup of tea Fifi explained about Dan being in hospital and why. When there was no real reaction, good or bad, she moved on to tell her mother about her job and the girls she’d made friends with at work.
It was only when she said that she and Dan had been hoping to buy a little house before the baby arrived, but she supposed Dan might not be able to go back to work for a while, that her mother got up from the table to make the sandwich. She shot a few terse questions over her shoulder at Fifi – had she seen a doctor yet? Where would she go for antenatal care? – but it wasn’t until she gave her the sandwich and moved over to the sink, making far more noise than was normal, that Fifi realized trouble was brewing.
‘So why was he beaten up?’ Clara asked suddenly, her voice tight with disapproval.
‘I told you already, we don’t know,’ Fifi said evenly. ‘He’s well liked, he wasn’t robbed of anything, it’s a mystery.’
Clara sniffed and turned back to the sink.
Whenever Fifi thought about her mother, she always pictured her here in the kitchen as it held all her best childhood memories. Baking cakes with her mother, painting with Patty at the table, playing Scrabble with her brothers too. It had always been the heart of the house, a warm, inviting place, with her mother at the centre of it.
It hadn’t changed in any way since she left to marry Dan. Pretty china on the dresser, family snapshots covering the larder door, the three-tier cake tin with a small Perspex window in each tier was still stocked with scones, flapjacks and a Victoria sandwich, just as it always had been. The yellow walls needed repainting and the checked curtains were faded, but it had been that way for years, and as her mother always said, it was clean, even if a bit shabby.
But even though Fifi’s old photos were still on the larder door, she felt that was an oversight and they would have been removed if her mother had noticed them. Likewise, Fifi didn’t feel able to get up and help herself to something from the cake tin as she always had. She didn’t feel she was family any more, but just a visitor, and as such she must abide by the same rules that would apply to anyone visiting.
‘How do you and Dad feel about becoming grandparents?’ Fifi asked. She knew in her heart it was probably unwise to ask, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Feel about it?’ Clara said, wheeling round from the sink to look at her daughter.
‘Pleased, angry, indifferent?’ Fifi suggested weakly.
‘What is