Page 6 of The Mother-in-Law

Diana pauses for far too long. ‘I’m saying it doesn’tmatterwhat I think.’

I pull back, out of sight, tucking myself around the corner. I feel as though I’ve been sucker-punched. Of all the reactions I’ve had so far—that she isn’t the mother-in-law I wanted, that she hasn’t measured up to my expectations—I haven’t, narcissistically as it turns out, even considered that she wouldn’t like me.

‘Seriously, Mum? You’re not going to tell me what you think of Lucy?’

‘Oh, Ollie!’ I picture her shaking her hand like she’s swatting a fly. ‘I think she’sfine.’

Fine. I take a moment to digest that. I’mfine.

I search for an upside tofine, but I can’t seem to find one. Being calledfineis like being told your outfit doesn’t make you look fat. Being calledfineis like being the day-old sandwich that doesn’t give you food poisoning. Being calledfineis like being the daughter-in-law that you didn’t want but who could have, on balance, been worse.

‘There you are, Lucy!’

I whirl around. Tom is at the mouth of the hallway, beaming. ‘Come and help me choose some dessert wine. I never know which one to go for.’

‘Oh, I don’t really know much about w—’

But Tom is already dragging me down to a cellar with an astonishing array of wines. I fake my way through a dessert wine tasting session, grateful for the dark to hide the tears that I blink back.

To me,fineis as good as dead.

3

LUCY

The present . . .

The police are in my kitchen. The male cop, Simon, has found mugs and tea bags and milk without having to ask where they are, and now he’s making me a cup of tea. The female cop, Stella, is beside him, loading up the dishwasher and tipping the remnants of burger buns and tomato sauce into the rubbish.

Ollie is in the hallway, on the phone with Nettie. I can hear him explaining that he’s not sure . . . that he’s told her everything he knows . . . thathe said he doesn’t know!. . . that she should just come over and talk to the police herself.

He is talking about Diana, I remind myself. Diana isdead. The fact that we never got along seems to vanish in the face of this, or at least soften a little, and I find myself gripped by a profound sadness. It’s as though Diana’s death makes our past issues seem trivial, even petty. After all, no one gets along with their mother-in-law do they? My friend Emily’s mother-in-law refuses to believe that Poppy is lactose intolerant (‘What a load of nonsense, they didn’t have all these “intolerances” in our day.’). Jane’s mother-in-law can’t fathom how she can use disposal nappies, especially after she’d gone to the trouble of purchasing Henry a box of cloth ones. Sasha’s mother-in-law talks incessantly about the inheritance she is apparently going to receive, making sure to remind her how lucky she should feel. Danielle’s mother-in-law is a gratuitous advice giver, Kena’s is an interferer. Sara is the only one who adores her mother-in-law, and that’s because Marg looks after Sara’s children two days a week, while also doing the family’s laundry, ironing and preparing home-made meals for the freezer. (Marg is what we call a ‘mother-in-law unicorn’.)

The kids are finally in bed. Unfortunately, the moment after the police told us about Diana, they decided to show up and demand our attention, so Simon and Stella kindly offered to hang around until the children had been fed and put to bed (Simon even went as far as toserveup the burgers and chat to the kids while they ate). It had been hell, having to wait for the details, but we couldn’t see any way around it. When it came to bedtime, Ollie took Edie without consultation (the easiest of the three to put to bed, requiring nothing more than a chorus of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, her lambie, and a dummy) and I let him because, after all, his mother has just died. I took the older two, who, it seemed, had finally twigged that the police must have come to our house for a reason. At a loss, I told them they had come to ask us about a stolen bike.

‘Whose bike?’ Archie demanded as I piled the covers on him, trying to push him down with them. ‘Not mine?’

‘No, not yours.’ He popped up again.

‘Harriet’s?’ I pushed him back down. ‘She probably dumped it somewhere and is pretending it was stolen. She’s been wanting a new one. If she gets a new one, I want a new one.’

‘No one is getting a new bike.’

He regarded me sceptically but remained in a lying position. I was about to kiss his forehead when,bounce, he was upright again.

‘Do they thinkIstole the bike?’

‘No, Archie.’

He settled after I managed to convince him that Harriet was not, under any circumstances, getting a new bike.

Harriet’s concerns were a little different. As I tucked her under the covers, she shifted and squirmed. ‘Why would the police come toourhouse about a bike that isn’t even ours?’

‘Well . . . they thought we might know where it is.’

‘Why would they think that?’ There was something all-knowing in her unblinking, blue eyes. Harriet often caught me off guard with this look. ‘Maybe,’ she said before I could answer, ‘they are justsayingthey are here about a bike, but really they are gathering information about something else.’

Harriet had watchedSpy Kidsat a sleepover last weekend and I suspectedthatwas responsible for all this ‘gathering information’ talk. But who knew? Harriet has always been a perceptive little thing. Too wise for her four years.