Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [68]
“Mummy and Steve got married. On the Turkeys and Cocoas. So he’s my new daddy. When you get married with Lisa, she’ll be my new mummy, and my old mummy says that’s when I’ll get to wear a bridesmaid’s dress and I want a pink one.”
Lisa, pretending to get something from the fridge, so she wouldn’t have to meet Andy’s gaze, rolled her eyes at the cranberry juice. There was a bloody conspiracy.
Jennifer
Jennifer took a chance on Kathleen being home alone. She was out of the office—she’d told her colleagues she was doing reconnaissance at a new boutique hotel in the country, but she hadn’t been anywhere near the place. She’d needed space. Once she got into the car, and out of the city, she just drove. Driving up here hadn’t been a conscious decision; she’d just realized that she was heading toward her parents-in-law. Her need to talk was threatening to consume her.
Brian played bowls and drank beer afterward at the bowls club. It was where most of his mates were these days. He’d worked at a warehouse, a few miles away, for many years, starting on the floor and working his way up to manager—with forty or fifty lads reporting to him. He’d retired a few years back, the recipient of a decent pension and the ubiquitous gold watch.
She parked her car on the street and walked up the path to the front door. Kathleen opened it before she had the chance to knock.
“Hello, dear. I saw you through the window. This is a nice surprise.” Kathleen hugged her and pulled her into the house.
“I was almost passing!” She felt foolish. What would Kathleen think—her showing up in the middle of the day when she should have been at work? “I thought I might scrounge a cuppa, if you weren’t doing anything. I can go…if you’re busy….”
“How lovely. What would I be doing, love, that meant I couldn’t see you?” She said it as though she never did anything and accepted her daughter-in-law’s arrival as though she might have been expecting it. “Come on in. I was just going to take a break myself. I’ve been ironing. Never stops, does it?”
The board was set up in the living room, and Murder She Wrote was on the television. There was a pile of bed linen in the basket, and several of Brian’s shirts neatly finished, on hangers hung on the French doors. The house was immaculate. Christmas, with its itinerant chaos, must be a struggle for Kathleen, by nature as neat as a pin. That much, at least, Stephen had inherited from her. She remembered, very early on in their courtship, watching him fold boxers into four when they came out of the tumble dryer. The sad thing was, she almost laughed, that had only added to his attraction, as far as she was concerned. Photographs crowded nearly every surface in here—grandchildren in school uniform, their hairstyles and teeth marking the passing of the years.
“I’ll just put the kettle on, and I’ll get rid of this mess.” She reached for the remote control and turned Angela Lansbury off.
“Don’t worry. No need. You’ll only have to get it out again. Leave it, please. Let’s sit in the kitchen.” Kathleen held her arms up in surrender, and they walked through to the back of the house. “Brian not about?”
She winked. “You’re safe. You know Brian. He’s down at the bowls club—he won’t be back until he wants his tea. About six usually. God knows they can’t be playing—it’s freezing cold out there today.”
In the kitchen, she busied herself making tea. Jennifer noticed a solitary plate and knife waiting to be washed up by the sink. Her mother-in-law had lunched alone as well.
“Is he gone all day?”
“Sometimes. I’m glad to have him out from under my feet, to be honest. Truth is, I never really got used to him being retired and being around all day.”
“It must be different.”
“I hadn’t realized what a misery guts he was, dear.”
Jennifer laughed.
“I mean, when he was working, he’d come home and be like that, but you told yourself he was tired, work might have been stressful. I mean, it wasn’t all that high-powered a job, not like you