Not Quite Perfect. Annie Lyons
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in those bulbs? It’s a glorious day. Much too nice to be sitting indoors.’
‘All right, my darling. Have a wonderful time. Send them all my love.’
The phone rings and Diana answers with impatience. ‘Hello?’
‘Diana, darling. It’s Rosie. Are you well? Good, good,’ she continues without waiting for Diana to answer.
‘Rosie, I’m just off out to meet Rachel.’
‘Of course, you run along, darling. I wanted to speak to Teddy anyway.’
Diana balks at Rosie’s use of this name. It’s a vestige of the past, of Edward’s university days, before he knew Diana. She hands the phone to Edward. He looks nonplussed and holds the phone to his ear.
‘Oh Rosie, it’s you. How the devil are you?’
Diana feels suddenly invisible as Edward is lost in conversation with one of his oldest friends. She knows it’s ridiculous to feel jealous after nearly forty years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, but somehow Rosie can provoke this feeling. She has tried to bond with her, but all the time she has this nagging sense that Edward should have married her instead. Rosie has it all; the brains, the career in Fleet Street, the contacts. She’s the mother the girls might have preferred; the one who can get them the jobs, the restaurant bookings and, even now, she’s wooing the grandchildren with trips to the Cbeebies studio and tickets to film premieres. Diana should be grateful and magnanimous, but she feels churlish and undermined.
She rallies herself now, pecking her husband on the cheek, mouthing ‘Be good,’ and sweeping out of the door without a backward glance.
She loves driving into town, finding a parking space and having a potter around the shops before she meets Rachel, who is always late.
‘I’ve got three children to manage, Mother. You’re just one person,’ Rachel observed when her mother brought it up.
‘Rachel, darling, you were never on time before you had the children.’ This is true and Diana was quite pleased by her quick-witted observation, which had made Rachel laugh.
She pulls into the car park situated behind a budget supermarket branch, which Diana can’t bring herself to use. Rachel laughs at her mother’s superciliousness, but Diana knows she is right. She doesn’t expect everywhere to be as nice as Waitrose, but she knows that they keep the lighting dim so people can’t see what they’re buying. Also, the entrance hall smells of urine, which to her mind can never be conducive to a happy shopping experience.
Diana finds a space by the exit. She is just placing a ticket on her windscreen when she hears two squeaky voices: ‘Granny, Granny, Granny!’ Diana turns at the cacophony of excited greetings to see Lily and Alfie waving frantically from their pushchair as a weary-looking Rachel plods across the car park towards her.
‘Rachel, you’re on time,’ she says with a wry smile.
Rachel rolls her eyes. ‘And good morning to you too, Mother.’
‘Just my little joke,’ trills Diana dismissively. She has never found smalltalk easy, particularly with Rachel, who often seems so quick to take offence. ‘Now who wants some cake?’
‘Meeeeee!’ chorus Alfie and Lily with glee.
They reach the coffee shop and Diana leads the children to a table, while Rachel places their order. Alfie and Lily scramble onto the furniture and Diana sinks into an armchair blinking at the sunshine, which is filtering in through the window. She looks over at her daughter and notices how tired she is looking. Her shoulders are hunched, as if she’s doing battle with life, not like the cocky teenager who used to give her so much trouble.
‘Here we are.’ Rachel puts down the tray with care just as Alfie kicks the table spilling milk from the too-full cups.
‘Alfie!’ shouts Rachel with more force than she intends. Two middle-aged women look over unimpressed.
‘It’s all right. There’s no use crying over spilt milk, as my mother would say,’ declares Diana, smiling at the women, trying to make up for Rachel’s outburst.
Irritated, Rachel hacks at a chocolate muffin with her teaspoon, setting the portions in front of the children, who fall on it like hungry lion cubs.
Diana sips her coffee and wrinkles her nose. ‘Too hot,’ she complains.
Rachel remains silent, but can feel her annoyance increasing by the second. Most people could make comments like this, but with her mother the negativity is suffocating. Rachel can’t remember the last time Diana paid a compliment. She takes a sip of her own coffee, burning the roof of her mouth, but refusing to acknowledge it.
‘I tell you what you should do,’ says her mother without any small talk, ‘you should bring the children over one day and treat yourself to a trip to the hairdresser’s’
‘Why? What’s wrong with my hair?’ says Rachel immediately offended.
‘Nothing, darling, nothing. It just looks as if it could do with a cut. You could make a day of it. Go to Bluewater, have some lunch and get yourself some new clothes.’ This body blow is dealt with a quizzical look at Rachel’s baggy grey jumper.
‘Look, Mum, I know you’re trying to be nice, but you sound like you’re criticising me.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to.’
‘No, I’d love to, really. Thank you.’ Rachel doesn’t have the energy for this conversation today.
‘So,’ says Diana, changing the subject, ‘how is my favourite son-in-law?’
Rachel’s reply is curt: ‘Your favourite son-in-law wants to move us to Edinburgh as it happens.’
‘What?’
‘That’s right. He wants your grandchildren to grow up on a diet of fried Mars Bars and in a climate more akin to the North Pole.’
‘Oh darling, but you can’t go, surely?’
‘I don’t know, Mum, we need to talk about it. Are you still OK to have the children this weekend?’
‘Of course. Oh Rachel, we’d never see you.’
‘I know, I know. Oh Mum, I just don’t know what to do any more.’ The tears spring easily into Rachel’s eyes and Diana is suddenly lost.
‘Oh look darling, there, there.’ She pats Rachel’s hand and smiles with embarrassment at the women on the next table, who are looking over nosily. ‘Come on, don’t cry. I’m sure you’ll sort it out.’
Lily and Alfie have noticed their mother’s tears and Alfie starts to cry as well, his face a mess of chocolate muffin and snot. Lily offers her arms to her mother and scolds him. ‘Stop it, Alfie, and give Mummy a cuddle.’
Rachel can’t believe that her children are the ones comforting her instead of her mother. She wonders at how they must appear; her mother looking awkward and embarrassed and her, a crumpled mess with two small children covering her in sticky kisses and fierce little hugs.
Miranda’s PA, Andrea, has dressed one end of the boardroom with fresh flowers and bottles of Moët. At the opposite end, a table is lined with chairs, as if Allen Chandler is about to announce a major football signing or host the ratification of an international treaty. Miranda has e-mailed the company to make sure that Richard is welcomed properly into the fold and the designers, always first at the mention of free booze and Twiglets, are already gathering, making the place look cool and a little untidy.
When Joanna and Richard enter the room, the atmosphere prickles with excitement as if a couple of celebrities have just walked in. The assembled company part to make way for them and Emma notices a lot of the females nudging each other as they clock Richard who, with his floppy schoolboy hair and grinning demeanour, is looking undeniably handsome.
Ella sidles up to her friend and