Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [120]
“And also, it shook the way I see Mum. And I hated that. She’d been it, for me. My ‘real’ dad was pretty much crap. My great dad wasn’t actually my dad. There was just Mum. I was really, really pissed off with her when she turned out not to be perfect. I was much happier blaming Dad for what happened between them, and for what happened to us as a family. And it wasn’t his fault. Not all his fault, anyway.”
“She fell off her pedestal.”
“Exactly.”
“So where is she now?”
“Just on the ground, like the rest of us.”
“Actually, she’s under it….”
“God—you’re sick.”
“Not as sick as she was.”
“Lisa! Stop it!”
“Come on you lot. Lighten up. For God’s sake. Think about it. So bloody what? Mum was a real person, not a saint. I’m more interested in what’s going on with the living. In what’s wrong with all of us, not what was wrong with her. I’m too bloody independent to let someone love me. Jennifer’s too flipping proud to admit she and Stephen have a problem. Or problems. Who the hell would know? Amanda runs away from problems. We’re all screwups, aren’t we, in our own ways? If we ever wanted to see what was wrong with Mum, we just had to look at the flaws and weaknesses we inherited. There you go. Haven’t had a chance to figure out what Hannah’s Achilles heel is yet, but she’ll have one. Mum’s inability to walk past a fresh cream cake, probably. Or her insistence that you can’t carry a brown handbag with a black outfit.”
Amanda burst out laughing. “You silly mare.”
“Takes one to know one.”
“She’d bang our heads together.”
“I’d like to bang her head.”
“Fine. I’ll drive you down to that wretched field. You can swear your head off and kick the sod. The earth sod, I meant, obviously. Will that help, do you think?”
“No!”
“Do you want to kick Jennifer?”
“Lisa!” Jennifer interjected, shocked.
“No!”
“Me?”
“Probably not.”
“Fine. Well then. Enough. What is it that Hannah says? Build a bridge, and get over it. I can live with the person she was and the things she did. I love her just the same. I always will.”
WHEN AMANDA CALLED ED THAT NIGHT, SHE COULDN’T MAKE him understand how a council of war that had started so tensely had ended with three sisters (half or not) crying with laughter and sadness and relief and anger, bemoaning and celebrating their mother, and eating fresh cream cakes.
Mark
Mark made his way back through the crowded pub with two pints of Old Peculiar in his hands. Andy had chosen to sit near the back, far from the after-work Jack the Lads and the trivia machine. It was quieter here, although you could still hear the Motown sound track playing through the loudspeakers. He put the drinks down, one spilling a little onto the cardboard coaster on the table, and pulled a couple of packets of Ready Salted crisps out of his jacket pocket.
“Thought you might be hungry.”
Andy picked up his glass and drank deeply, totally without salutation, and almost without eye contact.
Mark hadn’t told Lisa he’d called Andy. She thought he was meeting Vince tonight. She’d gone out with Amanda, anyway. He hoped they’d sort things out. The atmosphere at home had been tense, to say the least. He couldn’t remember a time when Amanda had been so angry. She and Lisa were determined to keep Hannah out of it, so they switched on and off depending on where their sister was. It was exhausting.
He’d been a little surprised when Andy accepted his invitation to meet. It all sounded a bit hopeless. Still, he had, and now they were here, and Mark took a deep breath and dove straight into the shark-infested waters he had come to swim in.
“Listen, Andy, you can tell me to mind my own business if you want to….”
“If I wanted you to do that, I’d never have agreed to meet you, would I?” Andy smiled weakly.
“I suppose not.” He’d thought they were friends, the two of them, but the truth was, if Andy and Lisa didn’t get back together, Mark knew they probably wouldn’t see each other again. They were strange relationships, the ones you had with your children’s partners. More intimate than the ones you had with most of