Page 8 of The Mother-in-Law

‘Thank you.’

She keeps her eyes down so it catches her off guard when Ollie throws his arms around her. Perhaps because of the surprise, she allows it. Patrick waits a few paces behind, greeting me with a single nod.

I turn and head back into the house.

Inside, Simon and Stella are gathering up mugs and talking quietly. I slip into the bathroom instead. Bath toys are scattered all over the floor and the kids’ toothbrushes are lined up on the vanity, still loaded with toothpaste because we forgot to brush their teeth. I rinse them off and put them back into the plastic cup where they live. Then I open the cupboard under the sink and reach for an old yellow towel, one so threadbare I’ve only been keeping it for those occasions where one requires an old towel—mopping floors or shining shoes or cleaning up vomit. Ollie, of course, doesn’t understand the concept of old towels and somehow always manages to select this one to put on display when we have guests over. But all of this is insignificant, of course, because Diana is dead.

‘Lucy?’ I hear Ollie call out from the next room. ‘Lucy? Where are you?’

‘Just a minute,’ I say and I press the yellow towel to my face so no one will hear me cry.

4

DIANA

The past . . .

‘Oh that’s right,’ Jan says. ‘You met the newgirlfriendlast night, didn’t you? How did it go?’

Kathy, Liz, Jan and I are on the deck of the Baths, with the water a pane of blue-green glass behind us. We’ve ordered a seafood sharing platter, a bowl of shoestring fries and a bottle of Bollinger, and the whole affair is both extremely pleasant and frightfully pretentious. A seagull hovers over Jan’s right shoulder, watching the fries with interest.

I lift my hand to block the sun from my eyes and notice the girls all looking at me intently.

‘Yes, do tell, Diana,’ Kathy says.

The girls lean forward and I feel the self-conscious prickle of being the centre of attention. At the same time I feel indignant. One of the reasons I enjoy the company of this particular group of friends—the wives of Tom’s friends—is that they are usually far too interested in their own business to care about mine, and if there’s one thing Iloathe,it’s people knowing my business.

‘Yes, I met Lucy,’ I say vaguely. ‘It was fine.’

I sip my drink. It’s the first Wednesday of the month, our usual meet-up at the Brighton Baths. Once upon a time our meet-ups had, ostensibly, been a book club, and I was quite keen on that idea. The first book I suggested was a biography of Clementine Churchill, and I came to the Baths prepared with a list of discussion points, only to find no one had read the darn thing. At the end of the meeting no one suggested another book, and since then Jan has started calling it ‘drinks club’.

‘Fine?’ Jan whistles. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Why “oh dear”?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong with fine?’

‘Damning with faint praise,’ Liz mutters.

‘Nothing good ever started withfine,’ Jan agrees.

I don’t understand. As far as I am concerned,fineis an appropriate seal of approval for my son’s new girlfriend. What else am I to say?Loveis obviously too strong a word, and evenlikewould be overstating it after a mere evening together—heaven forbid I be one of those overbearing women who fawn over the new girlfriend, begging to be best friends and shop together and go to the spa. As far as I am concerned, if Lucy loves my son and he loves her, she is fine by me. Absolutelyfine.

‘Come on, we’re talking about Diana,’ Kathy says, lifting the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and finding it empty. She signals to the waiter to bring another. ‘Fine is actually very high praise.’

Everyone chuckles, which I find perplexing. What is so wrong withfine? This is the problem with new friends. New, admittedly, is a stretch, as I’ve been friends with Jan, Kathy and Liz for thirty years, but there is nothing like the friends you’ve known all your life, the ones you never have to explain things to. Cynthia would have understood what I meant byfine. To this day, I still miss Cynth a lot.

‘Did you give her a hard time?’ Kathy asks. ‘Ask her about her intentions toward your darling son?’

Why, pray tell, does everyone care so much what I think anyway? Surely it is Ollie’s opinion of her that matters? In the grand scheme of things, after all, what I think of her is largely unimportant. Some parents—including my own, Maureen and Walter—make their opinions count a little too much if you ask me. I grew up Catholic, with a mother who kept a close eye on what everyone in our neighbourhood was up to, especially her child. I promised myself long ago I wouldn’t be like that. And, indeed, I’m not.

‘Were you pleasantly surprised?’ Jan asks. ‘Horrified?’

‘Neither,’ I reply, because Lucy is exactly what I expected—pretty, neurotic, desperate to impress. Ollie’s type to a tee. Born clever and attractive and a little bit quirky, she’d have spent her life being adored—by her parents first, and later, by the boys. She’d have been the teacher’s pet, a school prefect, a sporting champion. Things come easily to girls like her. And while I’d have liked to be happy for her, I’ve seen too many girls for whom things didn’t come so easily, for this not to irritate me.

‘Not good enough for your son, is that it?’ Jan asks knowingly.

‘No one ever is,’ Liz agrees, bizarrely, as she doesn’t have a son.

‘I don’t know,’ Kathy says, ‘I’dpaysomeone to take Freddie off my hands. I’m terrified he’s going to want to move in with me one of these days so he can quit his job and sit on his backside and watch reality TV all day, calling himself a “carer”. I’d giveanythingfor a daughter-in-law. Someone to pluck the hairs from my chin and put on my lippy for me when I’m old and grey. Sons are useless at that sort of thing.’