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By Root 766 0

you all so much, but she’s found herself at the other side of it, and she knows that she could have been so much more. She’s frustrated, and resentful, and thwarted, and angry. And she feels guilty and stupid about it, and as if she’s taking it out on me and you girls, without you understanding why. Part of her thinks you three have no appreciation of the person she is, or even the person she might have been. She said she feels one-dimensional, and that she never realised it wouldn’t be enough. And I think that the cancer scare made her believe she was going to die, which made her think about the life she’d lived, and now she’s having a hard time coping with the feeling that she didn’t live it as she wanted to.’

It was a lot to take in, and Natalie didn’t understand it all. But she understood her father’s distraught face. ‘When did she tell you all this?’

‘On her birthday. She broke down and it all came pouring out.’

‘Poor you.’

‘Poor her. She knows she’s being bloody hard work. She thinks you’re all fed up with her.’

‘That’s not true. It’s just that it isn’t easy – you never know what mood you’re going to find her in. And I don’t like the way she treats you. Even now you’ve explained all this, it isn’t your fault, is it, Dad? And she’s horrid to you.’

‘You mustn’t worry about that.’

‘But I do. She jumps down your throat all the time. It’s like she can’t be bothered with you. Like you just irritate her all the time. I could feel myself wincing at Christmas, nearly every time she opened her mouth. You were starting to look like a rabbit caught in the headlights. God, Dad, three days of it was hard enough – but you have to put up with it all the time. It isn’t fair on you.’

‘I’ll be fine. And it isn’t all the time. She has bad days, that’s all. Some days we’re perfectly normal. Like we were before. You and your sisters only see her at her worst. Which is one of the hardest things about it. I love her, Natalie. I just want to help her.’

‘How are you going to do that?’

Nicholas put his face into his hands, and rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I don’t know.’

‘How can I help?’

‘Don’t abandon her. Don’t stop coming round, just because she’s difficult. She needs you, Natalie, all three of you.’

‘Okay, Dad. Okay.’ Natalie was holding his hand again, across the food they were unlikely to eat. ‘I promise.’

H for Hotel

‘I thought you were broke.’

‘I am. Freebie someone sent to the station. These guys sponsored some festival or something…’

‘And they gave it to you?’

‘Well, they sort of didn’t happen to notice that it came in the post…’

‘You’re a dark horse.’

‘Well, perhaps if the lazy shit ever opened his own mail, he might have found it.’

‘Fair enough. Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with stealing from the rich to give to the poor – very Robin of Sherwood. I just wondered what we’re going to do at this hotel. Where’s it near?’ Tom was holding the map and peering at it and the road signs were passing alarmingly fast. He’d forgotten quite how fast Natalie drove. Always as if she was late for the most important event in her life, hunched forward earnestly over the steering-wheel like an old lady.

‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’re going to be having sex. Frankly, I hope the scenery takes second place.’

Tom had just taken a gulp of Coke, and spluttered it across the dashboard. ‘What?’

‘Well, I know it’s been a while since you were in a serious relationship, but you surely can’t have forgotten that it’s a pretty important part of things. Sex, that is. I know they say it’s like riding a bicycle, but I have a lot more gears than a three-speed, frankly. And how am I going to know about you if you don’t show me you can cut the mustard in the bedroom department, if you know what I mean?’

‘You’re kidding. Cut the mustard? Where the hell did that come from?’

‘I’m deathly serious.’ She looked at him over the top of her glasses.

Although, of course, she didn’t think she was. Sex with someone who wasn’t Simon was a terrifying thought. She’d had lovers before, of course. Although describing them that way was probably overstating.