Children, like adults, could be very territorial animals. All the more so when they felt that the security of tenure of that territory was threatened? Gavin was a much more independent and self-reliant child than Tom, far less sensitive and imaginative, a sturdy sports enthusiast, who took most things easily in his stride.
She had spent all morning trying to convince herself that the surveyor was being unduly pessimistic in quoting a period of almost a year before the house was fit to move into. A year… She tried to calculate how many weekends, how many holidays, how many nerve-shredding hours of animosity and tension that would comprise. Too many. That would be Marcus’s opinion… The whole idea of moving was to find as immediate a solution as they presently could to their present lack of space.
Working here at home was proving even more impossible than she had imagined. Like her sons, she resented the fact that she had no private, personal space of her own. The kitchen table was not an adequate substitute for her own office and, while Marcus had said she could use his study, she felt reluctant to do so.
Marcus’s method of working was neat and methodical, everything in its place and a place for everything; she on the other hand liked to strew things haphazardly all over the place, something it was impossible to do in a work space that was not really one’s own.
As she surveyed the possessions Tom had strewn all over the bedroom, she recognised wryly that she knew full well to whom he owed that particular trait.
* * *
The visit to McDonald’s was not a success. Tom sulked and picked at his food, refusing to look at her, kicking Gavin under the table. Gavin retaliated in kind, and as for Vanessa…
Watching her stepdaughter’s disdainful, contemptuous expression as she complained in a voice loud enough for those sitting near enough to them to hear about both the health value of the menu and the
intelligence of those choosing to eat there, Eleanor gritted her teeth and tried to hold on to both her temper and her sense of humour.
When she and Marcus had first married on her visits to them, the only things Vanessa would eat had been burgers and fries. From Marcus, Eleanor had learned that Julia was not the kind of mother to be interested in the nutritional value of her children’s diet.
Vanessa’s conception had apparently been ‘an accident’ and it seemed to Eleanor that Marcus had never enjoyed that closeness with his daughter which she shared with her own sons.
It had, oddly enough, been Jade who had been responsible for the change in Vanessa’s eating habits, shrugging impatiently when Eleanor had begged her not to say anything that might hurt or antagonise Vanessa.
‘She’s got you just where she wants you, Nell,’ Jade had told her forthrightly. ‘You’d never let Tom or Gavin get away with the things she does and she knows it. She also knows that you love them,’ she had added tellingly, but, despite what she had said, Eleanor had still not felt able to comment adversely on Vanessa’s behaviour.
‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ Vanessa demanded now, glowering at Tom, adding under her breath, ‘God, this place is so juvenile. Why didn’t Dad pick me up?’ she demanded curtly, turning to Eleanor.
‘He had a meeting,’ Eleanor told her quietly.
Vanessa smirked, giving her a knowing look. ‘I suppose that means he’s got a mistress. Men always tell their wives they’re in meetings when they’re having affairs.’
Eleanor stared at her. Did Vanessa have any idea of what she was saying, or was she simply reacting too naïvely to comments she had heard other girls make, assuming a sophistication she did not yet possess? Taking a deep breath, Eleanor looked at her and said calmly, ‘I doubt that that’s true, Vanessa. If it was, the country would quite simply grind to a halt and, since it hasn’t, we must assume that there are men who, when they say they have business meetings, are actually telling the truth. Your father is one of those men.’
Vanessa said nothing, but she was still smirking. Irritated, Eleanor turned back to the table and snapped unfairly at Gavin, who was still stoically munching his way through his burger.
‘For goodness’ sake hurry up and finish, will you, Gavin?’
When they got back to the house, Vanessa went straight to her room, firmly closing the door behind her. Gavin was watching television and Tom was doing his homework on the kitchen table. There was a small desk upstairs in the attic bedroom, but Tom complained that there wasn’t enough room for him to work on it.
They had been back about half an hour when Gavin suddenly looked up from his work and announced that he had football practice in the morning and that he had left his football kit at school.
Subduing her exasperation, Eleanor told him that he would just have to make do with his spare kit.
‘But the shirt is too tight,’ he complained.
‘It wouldn’t be if you had remembered to bring your kit home with you. I’ve told you before, Gavin, you’ve got a calendar in your room. You know that you’re supposed to write down on it all your school “extras”.
‘I did,’ he told her indignantly.
Eleanor sighed. The hypermarket would still be open. She could buy him a new shirt; it might not be strictly school regulation but at least it would fit him. He would probably need boots as well. If she remembered correctly, his old pair had been getting too small for him…
She tensed as she suddenly heard the noise from upstairs; Tom’s outraged shriek of, ‘Give it to me, it’s mine,’ and Vanessa’s answering,
‘Well, what is it doing in my room, then?’
Quickly she hurried upstairs to find Tom standing on the landing, his face scarlet with temper, while Vanessa stood in the doorway of the bedroom, holding aloft a poster.
‘Stop it, both of you,’ Eleanor commanded. ‘Tom, stop making that noise. Vanessa, please give Tom his poster.’