Mum marches into the kitchen and waves an arm in greeting before heading straight for the kettle. ‘Hello, hello, don’t mind me, you know I like to make tea my own way. Goodness, what a mess in here. Feeding time at the zoo, is it?’
Her hair is short, and I can’t stop looking at it. She always said she’d never cut her hair, that it was ‘terribly ageing’, that cutting it would ‘feel like giving up’. Practically her entire life, she’s worn her hair long, salon-highlighted, set in curlers each night to retain the volume. Now it’s short and grey and sticking out in wild tufts. There is something so familiar about her new look, and then it dawns on me – she looks just like her mother, my gran.
‘You cut your hair,’ I can’t help saying as she takes off her anorak and greets me with a firm kiss to each cheek.
‘Have I? No, it’s a haystack. I haven’t been to the hairdresser’s in months,’ she says.
‘You cut it short, I mean.’ But she’s distracted by the children now, leaning down to greet Amy, and finding Felix hiding underneath the kitchen table.
Part of me is waiting for her to look at me, to notice the change and then scream. But she doesn’t, she doesn’t see me at all. Glancing out of the window, I see Dad showing Sam a scratch on his car bonnet. Sam nods in sympathy, then reaches out to give Dad a pat on the back.
‘Have we arrived at an inconvenient time?’ Mum asks. ‘I told your father we should have left earlier, we hit the M25 at the worst time. He’s impossible to get out of the house these days, we had to go back twice to check he’d turned off the car port.’
Dad comes through to the kitchen and takes off his cap. I allow myself a moment to absorb the changes in him. His hair has gone from salt and pepper to entirely white. His face looks ever more lived in, softened and worn. He looks like a grandad, and then I realise that of course, he is one now. Despite all the subtle changes to his physical appearance, his voice and smile are the same and he radiates a familiar, comforting sense of ‘Dadness’.
‘We brought you some tablet from Scotland,’ he says, handing me a brown paper packet.
‘I’ll get the kids into their pyjamas,’ says Sam, scooping up a child in each arm, making them squeal in delight as he spins them around on his way to the door. ‘Then maybe Granny and Grandad can read you a story.’
Now that they’re both here, I lunge across the room and wrap an arm around each of my parents. ‘It’s so good to see you. I’m so glad you’re here, I love you both so much.’
As a family, we’re not prone to overt displays of affection. My flurry of emotion causes Mum to pull away and eye me with suspicion.
‘What’s wrong? Are you sick?’ she asks.
‘I’m not sick. It’s just nice to see you both,’ I say, wiping an eye with the back of my hand.
‘Are the children sick?’ Mum asks, her voice now an urgent whisper. ‘You’re not getting divorced, are you?’ She clutches her chest, and I shake my head.
‘You sounded like you are about to tell us bad news. I’m not sure I can take any more bad news this week.’ She presses her fingertips together, making a spire with her hands, a gesture I must have seen her make a thousand times. ‘Yesterday, the gardener told us that the beech hedge is dead, the whole thing will have to come out. Then we found out the Grievesons are moving. “Downsizing” apparently, though I’m sure they wouldn’t need to if they went on fewer cruises. Such a disruption, moving at our age. If you’re going to downsize, you do it in your sixties, everyone knows that. Quite extraordinary behaviour.’
‘Extraordinary,’ Dad says, giving me a sly wink.
Dad excuses himself to use the bathroom, and as soon as he’s out of the room Mum starts talking in a whisper.
‘It’s blow after blow. I’m extremely worried about your father.’
‘Oh?’ I whisper back.
‘Memory issues,’ she says, tapping her head. ‘My side of the family were all sharp as tacks well into their eighties, but your father’s side has a history of early mental decline. He’s forgetting everything, Lucy – he left his car keys in the vegetable aisle of Tesco’s last week. It was lucky someone didn’t drive off with the Peugeot. They would have found a lovely topside of butcher’s beef in the boot. Then on Thursday I asked him where the book I was reading had gone – the twentieth Richard Osman, special edition, no less. Bert tells me he’s taken it back to the library. It wasn’t even a library book for goodness’ sake! What am I to do? You know how he is about doctors. There are things you can do these days, supplements, electroconvulsive therapy, but he won’t acknowledge he’s going doo-lally.’
‘None of that sounds too major, Mum,’ I say tentatively. ‘I think it’s normal to be a little absent-minded at your age.’
‘Will you talk to him? He listens to you.’ We hear the shuffle of Dad’s footsteps in the hall, and Mum quickly changes the subject. ‘The gardener thinks we should put a fence up, says it will be easier to maintain, but you know my feelings on fences. What would the neighbours think? It would lower the tone of the village. No, no, we’ll have to replant the whole hedge at vast expense. We’ll be dead and gone before anyone sees the benefit, but at least we won’t be letting the side down.’
‘Are you still talking about hedges?’ Dad asks. ‘Honestly, you’d think it was a person who’d died, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth this beech hedge has caused.’
‘When you live in an area of outstanding natural beauty, you have an obligation to maintain certain standards,’ says Mum. ‘Our garden can be seen from the road. Remember when Tilda Stewart-Smith started experimenting with garden gnomes? It was a most delicate situation for the village committee. Poor Tilda, so sensitive, so lacking in taste and judgement.’
‘I don’t see the issue with a fence,’ Dad says. ‘I found a cheap one online. I could erect it myself.’
‘Said the actress to the bishop,’ I say, leaning into Dad with an expectant grin, but he only looks at me blankly. He can’t have forgotten, surely?
‘Dad? Our silly joke, remember?’
‘Ah right, very good.’ Dad smiles back at me, but his eyes look blank. Mum tilts her head at me, as though to say ‘See what I mean’, and now I know I really can’t burden her with my situation too.
As I take them both through to the living room, I’m half expecting them to comment on the house, on the décor, how stylish it is, what an upgrade on Kennington Lane, but of course they don’t.
‘Now, darling, are we still planning on doing an . . . event?’ Mum pauses, her face suddenly sombre. ‘For Chloe, next month.’ Who’s Chloe? I don’t know, so I give a non-committal nod. ‘Because we’re keen to help mark the occasion, however difficult it may be.’ Mum pauses, reaching out a hand to touch my knee.
‘Who’s Chloe?’ Dad says, and I want to kiss him for asking the questions I can’t. I look to Mum to answer, then I see that she’s tearing up. Mum never cries.
‘I’m so sorry, Lucy. He’s awfully muddled.’