The Big Five O. Jane Wenham-Jones
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which one. ‘Charlotte is doing most of the organising and she’s bringing us all up to date with the menu choices and stuff. They already think I’m being a prima donna because I said it was all a bit pastry heavy, and they arranged it tonight especially so I’d be back – the others really wanted last night so if I cancel now–’
She swirled the ice in the bottom of her glass. ‘Fay gets fed up with me at the best of times, and even Roz who likes me the most – we went to school together – she won’t be impressed …’
She stopped at the look on Nate’s face, his expression of incomprehension mixed with pity, making her wish she’d said nothing. ‘Sorry I’m making them sound–’
‘Not all that kind,’ he finished for her. ‘Why do you hang out with them if they make you feel bad?’
‘They don’t really, I’m just tired and–’ She stopped. ‘I’m seeing things bleakly.’ She drained the last of her gin. ‘We have some fun times. They’re my best friends in actual fact. I like them and I need them.’ Sherie spoke firmly and then gave him a rueful smile. ‘And they’re all I’ve got.’
In the beginning she’d only had Roz. When she’d finally bowed to parental pressure and moved back here, her old school friend was the only one left she knew. Roz had met Charlotte a couple of years before when Becky and Amy had joined the same dance school and she had asked if she could bring Sherie to one of Charlotte’s parties.
Sherie remembered Charlotte’s big, noisy, crowded kitchen, the way Charlotte had thrown an arm around her – pressed a glass of champagne into her hand, introduced her loudly all around the room. ‘The more the merrier, here, Love,’ she’d said, adding ‘literally’ and going off into peals of laughter, and Sherie had been so touched and grateful she’d nearly cried.
‘So you’re glad now, aren’t you?’ Her mother, settled on Sherie’s sofa the following day in an annoying flowered frock and a droopy cardigan and clearly limbering up for the usual address, never passed up an opportunity to say ‘I told you so’. ‘If you hadn’t come back here, you wouldn’t have these new friends of yours and you wouldn’t have him–’ she pointed a finger at Marquis who was sprawled across Sherie’s lap. ‘You couldn’t have kept a cat in that poky flat.’
Sherie sighed. The poky flat had been a million-pound studio overlooking the Thames but there was no point debating it. Here, yes, she had big rooms, and high ceilings, and access to a beautiful garden and her beloved Marquis. He made it all worthwhile.
‘Mind you, I suppose you might have met someone up there.’ Her mother didn’t waste a chance to have a dig either. ‘But it’s not too late,’ she went on brightly. ‘Just because you’re too old to have children doesn’t mean you can’t find someone who’s on his second time around.’
‘Yes, thank you!’ Sherie remembered to try to slow her breath, to draw in oxygen in a way that inflated her belly not her anxious chest, to let it out unhurriedly through her nostrils, to repeat the mantra she’d been repeating since her mother arrived. She’ll be gone tomorrow. Tomorrow she will be gone …
‘And it’s so important you’re here to support Alison, especially with this move going on – she says you’re a very good auntie …’ Her mother’s tone had an air of faint surprise. ‘Strange how life goes, isn’t it? You were always the pretty one but Alison had the boys after her. And Luke couldn’t wait to marry her and start a family, could he? She was pregnant before they’d even got back from honeymoon.’
She was pregnant before they went, you silly cow. For a horrible moment Sherie thought she’d said it out loud. Her mother was still talking.
‘I know these young girls don’t bother getting married any more, but I still say it’s better for the children …’
Sherie recognised her father’s wisdom being repeated. ‘How IS Dad?’ she asked with a deliberate edge to her voice. ‘Still ruling the roost?’
‘He’s been very busy in the garden.’
‘If you moved here too, he could see more of his grandchildren.’
‘He doesn’t want the upheaval.’
No, it was OK for Sherie to be pushed, nagged and bludgeoned to move back to the town of her childhood – to be nearer to her sister when the youngest of her three nephews was diagnosed with slightly-impaired hearing, dyslexia and ADHD, but her father had managed to avoid following suit.
They were still in the cottage in Wye to which her father had wanted to retire for the walking opportunities, and from which he seldom travelled except to drive her mother to Thanet every third week and pick her up twenty-four hours later. One month she’d stay the night with Sherie, the following time the pleasure would fall to Alison. Her father would come in for a brief cup of tea when he collected her mother the following afternoon. If it had been Alison’s turn to participate in this joy he would have invited himself for Sunday lunch first.
‘What about what you want?’ Sherie enquired. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be back here where you could pop round to see Alison and the kids whenever you wanted? Do some babysitting? She could do with that. Why don’t you tell him?’
‘Your father doesn’t like–’
‘Everything is about what he doesn’t like.’
Her mother looked irritated. ‘Don’t start that again.’
Sherie couldn’t help it. ‘You eat what he wants to eat, watch what he wants to watch, you don’t drive because he wouldn’t let you, he decides how you spend the money–’
‘It’s called being married – you wouldn’t know about that.’
Sherie looked back at her mother and held her gaze. ‘It’s called coercive control – there was a very interesting programme on it the other day. You should listen to Woman’s Hour, Mum. You’d like it.’
‘You always have to try to outdo me, don’t you?’ Her mother had gone pink. ‘Show me how clever and educated you are with your history of art degree and your long words.’
Sherie was immediately, as always, washed over by rage and shame. This was also her father speaking – he had long regarded his eldest daughter as ‘above herself’ and a subversive influence. Her plainer, dumpier younger sister with her children and dutiful attentiveness to husband and offspring was a safer bet and he made no secret of who he preferred.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sherie said more softly. ‘But you really would like Woman’s Hour. They had Sheila Hancock on the other day.’
‘Your father doesn’t like the radio.’
Sherie kept her voice even. ‘Well have it on when he’s in another room. You said he spends all morning reading the paper and doing the crossword. Why don’t you listen in the kitchen? You’ve got that Roberts radio I bought you.’
Her mother’s mouth made that little twist it always did if anyone confronted her. ‘Why are you always trying to change me?’
‘I’m trying to help you have a happier life.’
‘Well try helping yourself – you’re the one who’s on her own.’
Her mother didn’t mean it unkindly, Sherie told herself as she stirred the ragù sauce she’d made specifically because her father did not approve of pasta. Evelyn genuinely thought she was the one better off because she was married and ‘secure’ – even if she was constricted in almost everything she did.
Sherie thought of the scorn with which Fay would view her mother. Sherie sometimes wished she could be like Fay – so sorted in her singleness; revelling in her one-night stands. Fay implied that all one needed to be content was sex from time to time and she didn’t seem to have any problem in getting it.
It wasn’t sex for Sherie – although that would no doubt