Page 3 of In the Same Boat

I close my eyes briefly. Do you think, if I play dead for long enough, she’ll be gone when I open my eyes again? Or will she reappear like a jump scare in a horror movie?

Nope, she’s still here. So is Danny… for now. I watch his face, his thoughts clearly racing as he wonders what this is.

‘Don’t worry, I won’t join you,’ she says with a chuckle. ‘I’ll have what’s left after you’ve gone upstairs.’

‘We’re not going upstairs,’ I quickly insist. Because we’re not. Not with my mum downstairs. Is she mad?!

I daren’t even look to see how that reaction has gone down with Danny. I’m sure there’s a way for him to take that personally.

‘No? Was her cooking that bad?’ she asks Danny with a wink. ‘She never cooks for her dates. She never really cooks for anyone, she must really like you…’

Oh, it’s so hard, because I know that she means well, but I really want to smack her with what’s left of the ciabatta until she stops saying things.

‘Mum…’ I start, but my voice trails off. I’m hoping she’ll take the hint.

‘I need to head off soon anyway,’ Danny says, which is the first I’m hearing of it.

‘Oh, don’t rush on my account,’ she says immediately. ‘I can make myself scarce.’

She absolutely cannot make herself scarce. She lives here.

I dare to meet Danny’s gaze. Oh no, there it is, a mixture of sympathy and discomfort. I can see him pulling away. Quite literally. He’s standing up, reaching for his jacket from the back of the chair.

‘You don’t…’

‘It’s fine,’ he tells me. ‘Really. I’ve got an early start tomorrow anyway.’

‘Right, okay,’ I say – well, what else can I say?

Mum takes this as her cue to start gathering her bags, presumably to leave the room. Fab, yeah, a bit of privacy. It’s too late now though.

‘It was really nice,’ he says as he puts on his jacket. ‘Thank you for dinner.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I reply. ‘I?—’

‘Don’t worry, I can see myself out,’ he reassures me with a smile.

Yeah, and he can’t do it fast enough.

The door closes behind him with a soft (but undeniably purposeful) click.

‘Well,’ my mum says as she heads for the kitchen. She starts unpacking her shopping, laying it all out on the worktop. I notice her give my cooking mess a dirty look – no pun intended. ‘He seems nice.’

‘Yeah, he did,’ I reply.

‘You should have told me you were having a man over,’ she replies. ‘I wouldn’t have walked in.’

I wrinkle my nose, not that she can see me. I’m sure she thinks that’s true, that she believes she’s giving me my personal space, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.

She’s my mum and I love her, more than anyone else on the planet, but I’m a thirty-two-year-old woman who is living with her mum. Men don’t love that. It makes me look like a silly baby.

Then, as if to prove my point, she starts cleaning up after me.

‘You could invite him over again,’ she suggests. ‘I’ll make myself scarce.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I reply. ‘Anyway, how was your day?’

My mum does that very mumsy thing of telling me all about her day, in lots of detail, mentioning lots of people by name that I don’t know. It does make me smile when she says things like ‘You know Paula? Paula Clarke. Paula Paula. Mick’s wife. Mick from the butchers. He has a son to another woman and her other son went to school with you, but not your year, the one above, or the one above that – he had ginger hair. Dropped out of the army, has a kid he doesn’t see…’ only to end the tale with ‘anyway, she died’.