‘Have you been speaking to Linda?’ Mum asked, her face brittle with hurt. ‘Meeting up? Is that how it is? She gets special treatment and I’m discarded like a used tissue?’
I tried my hardest not to mind. Not to drown in the swamp of guilt and self-loathing that I’d been trying to ignore for the past three weeks. I gripped my mug with both hands and willed myself to resist apologising, or making excuses.
‘Tina, making accusations like that is not helpful. If you can’t speak respectfully to Ollie, then she’ll leave.’
‘Oh, are you her mouthpiece now, as well? She can’t even tell me herself how she’s feeling?’
‘You haven’t asked me how I’m feeling,’ I managed to say, hating how my voice sounded so weak, on the verge of whining. I accepted that Mum was the one who’d suffered here; it was her feelings that mattered, not mine. I just couldn’t help wishing that she would act like a mother, just once, and put her child’s feelings first.
Mum’s mouth twisted in derision. ‘And how am I supposed to do that, when you’ve blocked my number?’
‘I told you that I needed some space.’ Stop shaking, voice!
‘Oh, and what, now you’ve had enough space it’s time to come crawling back to Mummy? Found the big, bad world isn’t much fun on your own after all? I knew it wouldn’t take long for you to realise how badly you need me.’
‘Tina,’ Linda warned.
‘This was a mistake,’ I muttered, starting to push back from the table. ‘We’re not ready.’
Linda reached out and gave my hand a squeeze as I stood up. Some of her steely strength must have zipped through her fingers into mine, because I straightened my spine, hitched my bag up onto my shoulder and looked my mother straight in the face.
‘I’m sorry that moving out hurt you. I’m sorry that I had to block your number. But this isn’t all about you. I needed to do this for me. And while I do appreciate everything you’ve done, I think in the past few years I’ve more than repaid my debt.’ I paused to catch my breath. ‘As if a mother should expect anything in return for raising their own child. Right now, you can’t see past your own hurt to consider things from my point of view. I understand, but I won’t sit here and be spoken to like this. Take care of yourself, Mum.’
I gave Linda’s hand a reciprocal squeeze, turned and walked towards the back door.
‘I’m sorry!’ The inevitable wail trailed after me. ‘I’m sorry, I just miss you so much. I feel lost. I can’t help it when I say these things. I’m your mother; you can’t just cut me off. I need you, Olivia. Please don’t go!’
I paused for the minutest of microseconds, waiting to hear even a hint that she was, in fact, sorry about anything other than not having everything her own way.
The last thing I heard as I pushed through the door and stumbled to my car was the sound of my mother’s wretched sobs, stabbing at my heart like a blunt knitting needle.
I spent most of the evening clutching my new daisy-embroidered pillow, while Nesbit snuffled and licked my tears away. My guilt gradually dissolved into self-pity, until, after a night of restless dreams, I dragged my duvet out to watch the sun rise. I curled up in my new garden chair staring at the trees and the birds and the sky, and I nudged that sorrow into gratitude that I was here, and not there any more, and that today was a new day, rich with endless possibilities as beautiful and magnificent as this new dawn.
I knew the best way to stop replaying my encounter with Mum, each time imagining increasingly convoluted conversations that brought me no sense of satisfaction whatsoever, was to keep pushing forwards. After a day of meetings and admin, followed by Nesbit dragging me around the woods for half an hour, I sat and pondered the Dream List, wondering which item to tackle next.
Something simple, and stress-free, given the tender state of my heart. Item one was perfect.
I decided to wait until Friday, given that I had a new reader on Wednesday to prep for, and Yasmin had insisted on meeting me in the park on Thursday for some puppy training (‘No, it isn’t fine and you can’t sort it yourself and if we wait any longer you’ll have trained him to do everything you don’t want.’)
That also gave me enough time to make sure I could create the type of evening I’d intended when I originally added it to the list. I was going to cross off item one in style.
But before then, I met with my third new reading client in the library. Jaxx was fairly typical for ReadUp. He’d left school at sixteen with no qualifications and no aspirations beyond hanging out with his mates and having a laugh. However, a few years on he’d learnt that having no money was no joke. He was bored and his parents were always on his case. It was time to grow up.
‘So, Jaxx,’ I asked, once I’d shown him to my usual table. ‘What are you hoping to get out of this?’
He shrugged. ‘I want to set up my own business.’
‘Okay, that sounds interesting. What kind of business?’
‘Like, sellin’ stuff and that.’
‘What type of stuff?’
Jaxx sat up in his chair; he held up his hands as if displaying an imaginary sign to accompany his grand announcement. ‘Nomato!’
He then sat back, grinning slyly as though he’d just revealed a hitherto unknown secret of the universe.
‘Nomato? I’ve never heard of that.’
His grin grew. ‘That’s because I’m ahead of the game.’
‘So… what is it?’
‘A substitute for tomato sauce, innit? Only without any tomato.’
‘Of course!’
‘Cheaper, tastier, one hundred per cent laboratory manufactured, so no need to rely on natural ingredients once the environment’s gone whack. No stress about tomatoes going rotten, stuff like that. Don’t need to keep it in the fridge or nothin’. And it lasts for years.’
‘Wow. Did you invent this yourself?’
‘Nah. A gaming mate told me about it. He’s sold bucketloads where he’s from, in Russia. People can’t get enough of it. Raking it in.’
‘And it tastes better than actual tomato sauce?’
He pulled out a tiny jar, like the type a hotel might use for individual jam pots, and reverently placed it on the table. ‘Tasting is believing.’
‘Um. Thank you. But we aren’t allowed to consume our own food or drink in the library.’
I could see Irene’s nostrils twitching from here.
‘Take it home, try it later. You can use it on anything – pizza, pasta, stick it in a curry. Use it as a dip, or in burgers or wraps – literally anything tastes better with a dollop of Nomato.’
I took the sample. ‘There’s no list of ingredients or nutritional information.’
‘Nah, that’s just a prototype, innit. Most of the ingredients people here wouldn’t understand anyway.’
‘I think you still need to list them, by law. There’s quite a lot of regulations involved with importing and selling food.’