I imagine my mother’s open-mouthed shock at having me show up with a boyfriend in tow. I never have before, and I realise I rather like the image. ‘All right,’ I say slowly. ‘Why don’t we have lunch with her and spend the rest of the day on our own?’ There is, after all, only so much of my mother I can take, boyfriend or not.
I don’t hear from Milly for the entire month of December, and I force myself to at least act as if I’ve forgotten. I focus on the charity fundraiser, which goes well, and on spending Christmas with Will, the first Christmas I’ll have ever spent with someone significant.
It is a bright, cold Christmas Day as we drive out towards Chepstow; the sunlight on the Severn has a pure, crystalline quality and the air feels sharp. I rang a week ago to tell my mother I was bringing Will, and she seemed less interested or enthused than I’d hoped, although why I keep hoping for something more from my mother than I ever get, I don’t know. I’m almost forty; perhaps I should stop trying.
The reality is, my relationship with my parents has always been fractured, punctured first by arguments and anger, and then later by bitterness and resentment. I try to remember good times, when I was little, but I can’t.
One of my earliest memories, when I was five or six, is sitting huddled on the stairs while my mother screamed at my father. I don’t remember what she said, what the fight was about, but with years of later experience to draw on, I can guess – my mother’s drinking and my father’s affairs. They always seemed to relate, and they were the continuing looping reel of my childhood, although I didn’t realise the truth of my mother’s drinking or my father’s infidelity until I was in my late teens.
Often their arguments flew over and around me; they were so wrapped up in their own misery that they seemed to forget I was there at all, although when they did remember, I would have preferred they didn’t. I became a bargaining chip, albeit one that didn’t seem to matter very much. When I was about ten or eleven, I remember my mother dragging me out of my bedroom and downstairs, thrusting me in front of my fuming father.
‘Don’t you care about her?’ she’d screamed. ‘Isn’t this a reason to stay?’
My father looked at me for a moment, and he almost seemed sorry. I hung my head, feeling weirdly ashamed, and then he turned away. ‘I’m sorry, Helen,’ he said over my head. ‘But it’s not.’
It’s. He meant me.
When I was fifteen, they finally divorced. The fighting stopped but life didn’t get much better. My father disappeared from the scene, first working in London, and then, when I was in my twenties, accepting a corporate job in Abu Dhabi. When I was twenty-two, he remarried a woman with two young children; I’ve seen them on social media, although not in real life. I haven’t actually spoken to my father in over ten years, although we exchange texts and voicemails a couple of times a year and call that a relationship.
As for my mother… we keep up the flimsy pretence that we’re family, and somehow that matters, even though we go months without talking to each other, and she knows next to nothing about my life. She doesn’t know about Alice. She doesn’t even know that I donated an egg for Milly. Throughout my school years she was distracted and indifferent, except when she wanted to criticise me, usually when she was drunk, and then, of course, the whole debacle happened with my failed A levels, my wrecked dreams, alienated me even further from her.
After Milly rescued me, and I started to get my life back together, my mother reached out, rather sanctimoniously, her attitude one of noble willingness to have someone as difficult and destructive as me in her life again. And while I had no real desire to be in my mother’s life, I recognised that she was the only family I had, and so I have endured the few visits with her every year, letting her complaints and criticism wash over me, trying not to mind.
Now I wonder why I’m bringing Will to see her. Do I still think I can change her opinion of me? Am I finally hoping to impress her?
‘Maybe we should give this a miss,’ I blurt as we cross the bridge. Will looks at me in surprise.
‘Are you nervous? I thought I was the one who was meant to be nervous.’
‘My mother is a difficult woman, Will.’
‘She can’t scare me, Anna. Why do you think I’m not having you meet my parents?’ He smiles, and I try to smile back, but I’m seriously starting to regret this whole endeavour.
‘She doesn’t even make a nice Christmas dinner,’ I half-joke. ‘The turkey’s always dry.’
‘At least the pudding will be delicious,’ he replies, nodding towards the chocolate log I made that is sitting on the backseat.
‘She’s going to be rude to you.’ I feel obligated to warn him. ‘And most certainly to me.’
‘I can take a bit of rudeness,’ Will answers with a shrug. ‘But if she’s rude to you, we might have to have words.’ He reaches for my hand, lacing his fingers through mine, and I am jolted by his touch, by the simple fact of his loyalty. It’s been a long time since someone has stood up for me.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper.
My mother’s eyes widen when she catches sight of Will, clearly not expecting me to bring home such a catch. A trio of Jack Russell terriers cluster around us, sniffing and wagging their tails. Since the divorce, my mother has become a bit obsessive about ‘her babies’.
‘How have you been?’ I ask, going in for an air hug, where we pretend to embrace but don’t actually touch. It’s a skill we’ve perfected over the years.
‘Oh, you know.’ My mother waves her hand. ‘My knees are playing up. I was hoping you’d visit sooner.’ She sniffs, and I bite my tongue to reply that she never asks me. She gives Will a glance that manages to be both simpering and accusatory. ‘I don’t see her enough.’
‘Nor do I,’ Will returns smoothly. I feel bolstered by his support, but already exhausted by my mother’s attitude. This is how it always is, how it has always been, ever since I can remember – the sniping and the indifference, a particularly painful combination.
We stumble through an hour of small talk and sickly-sweet sherry in the sitting room, before my mother makes a big to-do of checking on the dinner, and I go in to help her.
‘Will seems all right,’ she says, her back to me as she empties several ready-made trays of vegetables into microwaveable bowls. She pauses, her hands resting on the counter. ‘Is it… is it serious?’
I take a quick, steadying breath. ‘It might be getting that way.’ It feels like a lot to admit.
My mother stiffens, almost as if I’ve given her bad news. Perhaps I have. I’ve never understood my mum, how she can seem to both resent my presence and its lack at the same time. I don’t visit enough, but when I do, she can’t wait to get rid of me. I’ve never understood it, but it always hurts.