Page 10 of If We Were Young

She lied, badly.

“So come on, tell me how it was. Were the men all bald like Angela promised?”

I shivered, not easy to hide. “No.”

“Veronica?”

She wouldn’t let it go, I knew that. I slumped a little and shoved my hands into the deep pockets of my cardigan. “I didn’t go okay, Ma. I didn’t go.”

I shoved a piece of bread into the toaster with the same brutality one would try to bury a dead body. I shoved it in that hole so hard it would have been a miracle for it to pop back up again.

“Oh. Angela let you down, did she?”

“Ma, stop it. Please. For God’s sake, just leave it.”

I’d seen him. It had only been for a split-second, the swish of lift doors opening and closing, but I’d seen him.

I leant over the sink and ran the tap while I gagged. The newspaper rustled and for a cold-sweat-filled moment I thought Ma had headed over to rub my back. No, she’d just adjusted the crossword so she could see it better.

I glanced up at the kitchen clock. Eight thirty. Hannah wouldn’t be up for hours yet. Thirteen-year-old girls didn’t wake up before eleven.

“I need to work. I’ve got that pitch tomorrow.” From the corner of my eye I saw Ma’s shoulders drop. “It’s a bridge, Ma.”

“Pardon?”

“Six letters from one place to another. Bridge.”

I flashed her a smirk which she studiously ignored as she fitted my letters into the relevant boxes.

“Oh yes.”

“I can’t help that I have a superior intellect.” I smirked, just because I loved watching her try to frown and smooth her wrinkles out at the same time.

“Inherited from your dad.” Her eyes glazed over with that wistful thing she did whenever she mentioned my dad just like they had for the last five years.

I sighed. It wasn’t breakfast in Ma’s house without a side serving of guilt or grief. I leant over and squeezed her shoulder through the thin silk of her cream blouse. “I miss him too, Ma.”

Ma rubbed at the end of her nose and straightened her shoulders, her slender back ramrod straight. She waved away my words with her hand. “You’ve had your own mourning to do, Veronica.” Her wave of the hand transformed into a stern wag of her index finger.

“Now listen.” She patted the table, and I sat on the chair next to hers. “I’ve been speaking to Phyllis Elridge, and her son Adrian has just got divorced. Nasty business I believe. Taken to the cleaners he was, lost all his pension fund and everything.”

“Not his pension fund!” I clasped my hands to my mouth.

“Veronica.” I sat up straighter. “Anyway, he is passing through, and I thought it would be lovely for you to go out for dinner.”

I blanched and gripped the table tight. “Ma, you can’t matchmake for me. It’s wrong.”

“Don’t be silly, darling. I introduced you to Paul, didn’t I? You can thank me for the wonderful years of marriage you had.”

My mouth flapped like those big carp that leap out the water and look like they want to swallow the universe. “You can’t matchmake for me twice in a row. You aren’t the Husband Whisperer.”

She perked up at that, her face brightening as she contemplated her new title.

“And anyway, I’m not ready yet.”

She lifted one of her eyebrows and shook her finger at me. It was her secondary, and sometimes more fluent form of communication—the finger wag. “Five years is a long time.”

I cringed away from her. How could she watch me throw up into the sink and then talk about me finding a new husband? The woman wasn’t on any planet inhabited by human life. I was damn sure of that.