Page 38 of If We Were Young

* * *

“What’s wrong with you?” Ma narrowed her gaze at me, focusing on my face.

“What’s wrong with me?” I stared at the ceiling. “Let me think. Well, there’s collecting my daughter from school again, this time for being late to school and having her nose pierced.”

“It’s that friend. Arrabella or whatever they call her.”

I shook my head. “No, Ma. It’s Hannah.”

Ma’s finger lifted, ready to talk, but I hadn’t finished yet. “Then there’s the fact my entire business hinges on the big job we’ve just taken on, which isn’t the job I thought it would be.”

“I told you, I don’t even know why you are running this business. You should be at home with Hannah, being her mum.”

“I am her mum. I also work. And I have to work.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous. Your father’s and Paul’s life insurances paid off this house and left us comfortably off. In fact, we’d be more so if you didn’t sink so much of it into that frivolous company.”

“Ma! It’s not frivolous, it’s part of who I am.” I didn’t add that if I didn’t have the company, my only reason to leave the house every day, then I would all too quickly sink into becoming her, with only crosswords and sudoku to keep me entertained.

“Would Paul have wanted you to work?”

“Who knows? He’s not here to ask.” My chest tightened. “He lost the right to ask me questions when he died.”

“Ronnie! Hannah might hear you.”

“For goodness sake, Ma. She knows he’s dead. Why does everyone keep acting like it’s a secret.”

“You are so strange; you always have been. Always so secretive and silent.”

“Question for you. If you knew I was secretive and silent why didn’t you get me help? There are so many treatments for things like social anxiety now. It could have saved me years of awkwardness.”

“Oh, Ronnie, don’t be so dramatic. Just like your father; he went on about this too. I can tell you now it’s shyness not social anxiety. The labels they have these days are laughable.”

“You think my problems with my inability to talk are laughable. Thank you.” I bowed. “That’s always good to know.”

I turned for the kitchen door, eager to get away from the wagging finger of reprimand. “Where are you going?” There was no apology in her eyes at the fact she undervalued every awkward moment of my childhood right through to adulthood.

“To my room, to ring Angie.”

Ange picked up on the second ring. “I’ve already heard. She got her nose pierced on the way to school.”

“She told you?”

“Yes. And that you’ve grounded her for three million years.”

“It would only have been two, but then she rolled her eyes at me.”

“I roll my eyes at you all the time.”

“I know, and I’d ground you too if I could.”

She dragged in smoke. “Anyway, so what happened with that pitch at work? I expected you to call, but you left me hanging here in miserable old Edinburgh with no news.”

I couldn’t ignore the fact this was the first time since she moved that I didn’t feel jealous of her being up there. It was stupid, I know.

“We won.”

“That’s great, babe. Champagne is on you.”