It’s an agonizing twenty-minute shuffle before we reach the conveyor-belt. ‘What would it be like if Sofie had to do this on her own?’ Neeve says quietly. ‘This is such bullshit.’
As bad luck would have it, Sofie beeps on her way through the scanner and has to go into a Plexiglas cubicle to be done more thoroughly. The urge to howl rises up in me: will we ever make it home?
She passes the Plexiglas test, and once we’re all through, I walk us towards the lounge. The distances in the airport seem vast today – I should have booked a motorized buggy. I’d always thought I’d be mortified to be seen in such a thing, but right now I’d kill to be sitting up in one, slowly beeping my way past people walking almost as quickly as I’m gliding.
‘A trolley’s what we need,’ Neeve says. ‘We’ll stick Sofie on it. Keep an eye out for a spare.’
But before we’ve found one, we reach the lounge.
‘Twenty-five quid each!’ Neeve mutters, as I hand over my credit card. ‘Another seventy-five pounds. It’s utter bollocks, this whole business!’
‘Shush,’ I say. ‘Get in.’
Sofie curls up on a two-person couch, her feet in my lap, my coat over her. Neeve takes off to get ‘Twenty-five quid’s worth of free stuff’ while I catastrophize. What if Sofie isn’t allowed on to the flight? Seriously, what will we do?
Oh, God, here’s a high-heeled, bossy-arse lady to tell me off!
‘Everything all right here?’ She gestures at the little bundle of bones that is Sofie.
‘Teenage daughter,’ I say, with a confident smile. ‘Bad period pains. Need to get her home to a hot-water bottle.’
‘No shoes on the furniture.’
‘They’re not. They’re in my lap.’
‘Mum,’ Neeve says. ‘I’ve stolen enough biscuits to open a shop and the board says “Go to gate”. C’mon.’
Outside the lounge, I spot an abandoned trolley. Neeve and I coax Sofie on to it, along with her case. I push, and Neeve wheels our bags.
‘We’ll laugh about this one day,’ Neeve says.
Maybe.
At the gate, waiting to board, I feel as if holes are being burnt in my stomach lining. It probably looks like a piece of Belgian lace down there. I’m sweating with anxiety as I give our boarding passes for inspection. The steward gives Sofie a hard stare – but we’re let on.
We stash her by the window and my body is as taut as a steel hawser while we taxi, then queue, then queue some more. Finally, mercifully, the wheels are up. None of us speaks while the plane ascends higher and higher, and it’s only when the seatbelt signs ping off that Neeve and I both exhale long and loudly, then turn and give each other a tentative smile.
84
Monday, 12 December, day ninety-one
‘Darker.’ Mum is excited.
‘It’s not a good idea,’ the beautician says.
‘But why would I get my eyebrows tattooed if no one will notice?’
‘They will notice them.’
‘That poor beautician,’ Alastair says. ‘Lilian O’Connell, mother of five, has a will of iron.’
It’s Monday morning and Neeve’s latest vlog, starring my mother getting eyebrowdery, has just gone live.
‘It’s almost like a thriller,’ Alastair says. ‘Waiting to see whose will is going to prevail. My money’s on Locmof.’
‘Who?’
‘LOCMOF – Lilian O’Connell, mother of five.’
The beautician – Elaine – calmly explains that as Mum’s hair is blonde, her eyebrows have to match.
‘But who says I’m staying blonde?’ Mum asks. ‘I could change it tomorrow to red. Or blue, even! So go a couple of shades darker on the brows. Please.’
The vlog takes us – speedily – through the hour-and-a-half process, and at the end Mum has beautiful well-defined mid-brown eyebrows and looks noticeably different.
‘It completely changes my face!’ she raves. ‘I look visible. I’m a woman you’d notice. A woman you’d respect.’
‘I respected you well before this, Locmof,’ Alastair says. ‘Amy, is there any way she’d adopt me?’
‘You’ve a perfectly lovely mother of your own, you ingrate. Why do you always have to want the woman you can’t have?’ Then I see the time. ‘Oh, God, Alastair, it’s ten to one. Hurry!’
The Christmas madness is well under way – the lights, the crowds, the carrier bags, the catch-ups, the mulled wine, the hangovers. Work overlaps with pleasure, as I deliver gifts to favoured journalists and clients, then take them for lunch or drinks. Today we’re having our office lunch, although, as Alastair says, ‘It’s a bit ice-to-the-Eskimos seeing as our job is one long piss-up.’
‘Mine isn’t,’ Thamy mutters.
At home we’ve put up the decorations, although we’ve had to do without a few things, like strewing lights through the tree in the front garden, because we needed Hugh and a ladder.
In Hugh’s absence, Kiara has requested a change to our usual Christmas Day. ‘I don’t want it to be just us four, I’d miss him too much and so would Sofie. Could we do something, maybe with Derry? Or Declyn?’
‘We could go to a hotel?’
‘Oh, no, Mum!’ I should have known that Kiara would recoil at money being spent needlessly. ‘That would be every kind of wrong. And I want us to cook together!’
Shite. A million times shite. Hugh always does our Christmas dinner and Kiara’s idea of sharing the load is opening the oven door and shouting, ‘What colour is “done” supposed to look like?’
Derry dislikes cooking even more than I do. It’s going to be awful.
‘Would it be okay if I bought Dad a gift?’ Kiara asked. ‘Even though he won’t be here to open it.’
A bud of rage blooms in me: I hate him for doing this to her.
Next thing, Maura got involved in the Christmas Day arrangements and suddenly it was decided that the entire family was going to Mum and Pop’s for the lunch.
Derry broke the news to me. ‘But you’ve got off lightly, Amy, you’re on trifle and cake duty.’
‘Jackson and I will help,’ Sofie says.
To my great relief, Sofie is doing well. Wonderfully, even. She’s eating, she’s engaging in things, and she and Jackson are as together as they ever were.
‘We’ll make a trifle,’ I tell her. ‘But I’m buying the cake. Life’s too short.’
It’s Mum on the phone.
‘Amy. I got recognized from the vlog thing. In Cornelscourt. Some girls came up to me and asked, “Are you Neeve Aldin’s granny?” ’
‘But that’s great!’
‘I know, right! They wanted to see my eyebrows up-close. Then they said I was a legend.’
‘Mum. Mum.’ Neeve comes into the kitchen, while I’m reluctantly cooking dinner. My heart contracts. What now?
‘Mum.’ Her voice is hoarse. Then tears begin to fall.
‘What?’
‘It’s happened.’
For the love of God! ‘What has?’
‘Income. Money! Finally.’ She’s crying properly now. ‘An agency want to advertise on my site. They’ll pay me. The hits are high enough.’
‘Oh, Neeve!’ Things have been improving, I know. Her subscribers have increased sharply, the calibre of freebies has improved, and a few smallish companies have suggested a brand partnership. But this is in a different league.
‘Mum, can you believe it?’ Her voice is thick with tears. ‘Actual real money. Earned by me, and not just the pennies they pay me in that effing nightclub. I’d been thinking of becoming a Deliveroo driver after Christmas and now I won’t have to.’
‘Oh, Neevey, well done! You’ve worked so bloody hard on this, you deserve it.’
‘I have to thank Granny. Her first vlog changed something.’
It did. There are thousands of interchangeable YouTube style bloggers, all pushing a cross-section of the same stuff to the same demographic. For any to succeed, they need a USP: a cute doggie, a cute boyfriend or – as in Neeve’s case – a cute granny.
‘You had the idea to film her,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to take some credit.’
‘Suddenly things have got better.’ She’s weeping again. ‘Daddy is finally properly in my life and now this! I never thought I could be this happy!’
85
Tuesday, 13 December, day ninety-two