Chapter Five

      ‘Now, Alice, I’ve been thinking about your weight,’ my mother announces as the boys and I arrive on her doorstep next morning. It’s a thing with Mum – my appearance, I mean. Considering her fierce intelligence – until her recent retirement she was a university professor of Medieval Studies – she places an awful lot of emphasis on how people look. It’s probably why I’m wearing my favourite skirt and top, plus a cardi I absolutely love; cashmere, in a beautiful deep-raspberry shade, bought for my last birthday by Ingrid.

      ‘Have you, Mum? I’m kind of fine with the way I am,’ I say as the three of us follow her into her ancient, low-slung cottage. It stands alone, as if sulking, in the treeless landscape of the North Lanarkshire moorlands and seems to sag in the middle, as if someone has sat on it.

      ‘Well,’ she goes on, smoothing back her pewter-flecked hair which she wears in a long, low ponytail, ‘I just thought you might be interested in this diet I cut out for you. You know, if you wanted to lose a few pounds.’

      Logan suppresses a snigger as we blink in the gloom of her kitchen.

      ‘What sort of diet is it?’ I ask pleasantly. The one where you exist on some terrible, fart-making soup? Or staple your mouth shut and eat nothing at all?

      ‘Oh, I’ve got it here somewhere …’ She frowns and starts flicking through mountains of ratty old paperwork on the gnarled oak table. We’ve been here for less than five minutes and already I can sense a vein throbbing violently in my forehead. It’s my fault; I should have spent the forty-minute drive mentally revving myself up into the sparkling game-show hostess persona that’s required on these occasions, instead of berating the boys for moaning about visiting Grandma. ‘It’s my Sunday,’ Logan kept lamenting, as if he’d been slaving away at the coalface all week. ‘I was gonna do stuff.’

      ‘I don’t mind going,’ Fergus conceded, ‘but we’re not staying long, are we? Like, we’re not gonna be there all day?’

      And now it’s too late. I’m gritting my teeth in defensiveness, while trying to reassure myself that being a size twelve is actually fine, at my age – at any age, in fact. We’re hardly talking morbidly obese. But then, I have never matched up to Mum’s expectations of what a daughter should be. She couldn’t understand why I never gleaned the clutch of A grades that had come so easily to her; the fact that I enjoyed drawing, baking and simply playing as a child left her utterly baffled. I don’t blame her especially – she’s just made that way – and, thankfully, she’s a little warmer to her grandsons.

      As Logan and Fergus install themselves on the scuffed leather sofa beneath the kitchen window, Mum continues her search for a snippet of paper which will save me from a gastric bypass operation. Newspapers are piled up on wonky wooden chairs, and bookshelves are crammed with formidable tomes, all dusty and sticky with kitchen grease in which evr’thing is spellte lyke this. Finding her library oddly fascinating, Fergus selects one from a shelf.

      ‘What does this mean, Grandma?’ he asks, proceeding to read in a grand, theatrical voice: ‘“Tehee, quod she and clapte the window to!”’

      ‘Hang on a minute, love,’ she says distractedly.

      ‘I think it means he’s telling her to shut the window,’ I venture.

      ‘But why?’

      ‘Um, maybe it’s draughty …’

      ‘Yeah, but what’s the “tehee” bit about?’ Fergus wants to know.

      I glance at Mum in the hope that she’ll stop excavating the paperwork and answer him. ‘I think she’s laughing at someone,’ I say, bobbing down to help her gather up a heap of yellowing journals which have slid off the table in a dusty heap.

      Fergus frowns. ‘Is it meant to be funny?’

      ‘What’s that, Fergus?’ my mother asks.

      ‘Mum was just translating something Medieval for us,’ Logan says with a smirk.

      ‘Was she?’ Mum chuckles. ‘Good luck with that, Alice. It’s not like you to take an interest in my library.’ I form a rictus grin. Mum is of the impression that I can barely manage to read anything more taxing than Grazia, which these days isn’t too far from the truth.

      Having dumped the book on the table, Fergus pulls something from his jeans pocket. ‘Look, Grandma – I’ve got a translator.’

      ‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you’re taking an interest in language, Fergus.’

      ‘Yes,’ I say quickly, ‘but it doesn’t speak Medieval. In fact it doesn’t make much sense at all. Please put it away, darling.’ Before it starts squawking about rape …

      ‘Ah – here it is, I knew I’d kept it safe for you.’ Mum brandishes a scrap of paper as if it’s a treasure hunt clue and presses it into my hand.

      ‘Thank you, Mum.’

      ‘Let me know how you get on …’

      ‘Of course I will.’ If I’m not too sodding fat to stagger to the telephone …

      ‘Anyway,’ she says, visibly relieved now, ‘I thought I’d do burgers for lunch, okay, boys? That’s what you like best, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yeah, that’s great, Grandma,’ Fergus says dutifully. I drop my gaze to the diet. In fact, it isn’t newfangled; rather,