‘Well, it wouldn’t look like this exactly, but for the floor space, about three grand.’
‘Three grand a month!’
‘A week.’
Wendy’s face was so gobsmacked, so dumbfounded that Cherry started to giggle. She couldn’t help it – she wasn’t being malicious or making fun of her, but with her mum’s jaw dropped and held in some sort of freeze-frame, it just looked funny.
Wendy slowly closed her mouth. ‘Jeez Louise.’ And then, aware of how she must have looked, she started to laugh too, and for a short while when each looked at the other, it just made them laugh more. It was a rare moment, the two of them getting on, sharing a joke.
Pleased with the way they seemed to have hit on a safe topic, Wendy suddenly got an idea. ‘Hey, me shifts change next week. I get Tuesdays off. Maybe I could come and see you, take you for lunch?’
Cherry thought quickly and pulled a face. ‘I only get half an hour.’
‘That’s illegal!’
‘It’s fine—’
‘No, you’re entitled to an hour. It’s the law. You should speak to your boss about that.’
‘Leave it, Mum.’
‘No—’
‘Mum, please!’
Wendy was silenced. For a moment. ‘Are they paying you properly?’
‘Mum!’
‘Only, you was never that good with money, always frittering it away.’
Cherry choked on her tea, actually splattering some on the cream leather sofa.
‘Don’t look at me like that. You blew your savings on a trip to Australia.’
‘A working holiday. A cultural experience.’ She looked around for something to wipe the tea off with and found a box of tissues, Kleenex Collection, with a photograph of water lilies on the front. It was designed to appeal to homemakers who thought it important to make tissues part of their decor. For a moment she hesitated, not wanting to take one, as if it were a sweet offered by a witch who’d trap you in her lair once you’d tasted it. She was reminded that if she ever lost her job, this flat was where she’d have to come back to. The bleakness of it all frightened her.
‘You could have invested it,’ continued Wendy. ‘Premium bonds or something.’
‘Mum, premium bonds pay you no interest.’
‘No, but they’re better odds than the lottery.’
Cherry gritted her teeth and decided not to point out the obvious. Instead, she said, ‘What would you do, if you won?’
‘Go on a big holiday. I’d take Holly. She could do with a bit of cheering up.’
‘Would you move?’
‘There’s them nice new houses that they’ve built next to the River Wandle.’
Cherry made a sound of exasperation. ‘Mum, you could leave Croydon, you know.’
‘Never. Born here. It’s in me blood. No better place as far as I’m concerned.’
This declaration made Cherry fidgety again and anxious to speed the evening along. To think she could’ve been sat in the Cavendishes’ beautiful house tonight. She had desperately wanted to accept Laura’s dinner invitation but knew that cancelling the visit to her mother was just too complicated. It would only have prolonged the agony anyway, as she would’ve had to have found another date.
Cherry had already invented something she had to get away for – meeting a couple of friends for drinks – and had told her mum on the phone before she’d even arrived. She surreptitiously checked her watch. She could start making sounds in about ten minutes. Croydon was so far out it could legitimately take ages to get anywhere else in London. In actual fact she was going home to figure out what to wear the next day – an outfit that had to cover the evening too. Something that would be suitable for ‘supper’ with Mr and Mrs Cavendish. (‘Supper’ didn’t sound so bad now.) Daniel had said not to worry about what she wore, but of course that was ridiculous.
‘Anyway, maybe I’d win enough to buy one of them big mansions on that Webb Estate.’
Cherry stiffened.
‘You ever hear from Nicolas?’ said Wendy, feigning nonchalance.
‘No.’
‘I suppose it’s to be expected.’ She sounded reassured, as if her suspicions had been proved right, and it made Cherry bridle.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know, he was a bit different, wasn’t he?’
‘Different how?’ she said dangerously.
‘Well,’ started Wendy nervously, ‘the rich have a different life. Not something we really know about.’ Wendy patted Cherry’s hand, meaning to be consolatory, to dismiss him and welcome her back to their mutually supportive club, but inwardly, Cherry recoiled. She was consumed with anger and pride. Even her own mother thought he was out of her league. It was so wrong, so utterly ridiculous to believe that you couldn’t be with someone else, that they were better than you because they had money.
‘You’re not upset, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Only . . .’
‘What?’
‘You might not have seen this . . .’ Wendy pushed across the local paper and opened it up at the local weddings section. Nicolas’s face smiled out at her; next to it was the blonde from the bar in a tiara and white gown. They radiated togetherness. Cherry went rigid and forced herself not to show any emotion other than indifference. She looked at the photo for signs that he was thinking of her instead, that the marriage to – she read the name – Gabriella Clara Butler Oswald was something he was pressured into, something he had to endure if he were to stand a chance of taking over his father’s business. She thought she might have caught a glimpse of strain in his smile, but then that could’ve just been a reaction to the relentless greed of the wedding camera, shot after shot. She pushed back the paper. ‘Good luck to them.’ It was said in a tone that meant the subject was closed.
‘Do you want to check your room, see if there’s anything else you need to take back with you? I’ve sorted through all your old toys from when you was little.’
Cherry did not. She already had everything she wanted from this flat, and the thought of taking any part of her childhood into her new life felt like the worst kind of contamination. ‘I can’t, Mum – I’m going to meet some friends. Maybe next time, eh?’ And with that she stood. ‘I need to be going, actually – got to get back into London.’
Wendy covered her disappointment and stood too. ‘Ah well, thanks for coming out all this way, love. I do appreciate it.’
There was a brief silence during which neither of them said anything, and then Cherry smiled brightly. ‘Right,’ she said, and made her way to the door.
She let her mum kiss her on the cheek and then found a small box pressed into her hand.
‘Happy birthday,’ said Wendy, beaming, expectant, and Cherry could tell it was something she’d been dying to give to her. It was wrapped in doodled flowery paper, the kind that looked as if it was designed by a four-year-old and came under the category ‘cute’. The right thing to do would have been to open it there and then, but Cherry couldn’t face pretending not to be disappointed. She put it in her bag.