It was always Audrey’s job to set the table. She did so without prompting this evening, but threatened to bring back Sam’s headache every time she plonked something down on the table – the cutlery, the bowls, the side plates for the garlic bread.
Damn, the garlic bread. She’d forgotten all about it. And when Audrey noticed her oversight, she uttered her first words in three hours, swear words Sam was pretty sure her own father never would’ve stood for under his roof.
‘Watch your language, Audrey,’ Sam bristled, all plans not to clash with her daughter impossible to execute when Sam found herself the only disciplinarian. At least if someone else set the rules sometimes, it wouldn’t all be her fault. ‘I’ve been at work, come home and cooked a meal – don’t you dare swear at me for forgetting one simple thing.’
‘Yeah, well, you won’t be able to say that tomorrow will you.’
So she had heard her say she lost her job. But it hadn’t exactly elicited sympathy. ‘No, I won’t. And have you thought about what me having no job will mean to you?’ She was met with a shrug. ‘No, you haven’t.’ She cursed when she knocked the wooden spoon onto the floor and tomatoey liquid splashed across the tiles. She swiped a piece of kitchen towel across the spill.
‘It means you’ll be home all day,’ Audrey said, as though that would be the biggest obstacle. Mind you, she kind of had a point.
‘It does mean that. But it also means I have to watch finances. Which means no more allowance.’ She shoved the soiled kitchen towel into the bin and slammed the lid shut.
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Call it punishment for getting suspended.’ Allowance was due tomorrow and Sam hadn’t intended to withdraw it quite so soon, at least not until Audrey had caused her even more stress to add to her day.
‘Seriously!’
‘We’ll need to tighten our belts until I find something else.’ And stopping the allowance would mean Audrey wouldn’t flit off so much at the weekends or in the evenings when Sam had no idea what she got up to. ‘It’s not up for discussion, Audrey.’
Her announcement was met with a steely gaze before Audrey put the oven on and found the garlic bread from the freezer. She must be extra hungry or a revelation like No Allowance would’ve sent her storming out again.
Sam washed the spoon, dried it and gave the chilli another stir.
‘You’ll get another job though, right?’
Sometimes it was like living with two people when it came to Audrey: the one who yelled at her that everything was unfair and everything was Sam’s fault, then the Audrey who took a step back and looked at a situation with a different eye. Sam had to admit the latter didn’t happen all that often but when it did, she grabbed onto it with both hands.
‘I could leave school early, get a job myself,’ Audrey suggested.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’ The sympathetic Audrey moved over and bolshie teen took her place.
‘Because you’re fifteen!’ She almost added that she shouldn’t be so stupid, but insulting Audrey when she was in this mood was like pouring brandy onto a Christmas pudding and setting it alight.
‘I could get a part-time job.’
‘We’ve talked about this.’
‘No, we haven’t.’
‘Audrey, we have.’
‘No, you talked, you didn’t let me have a turn.’ Her voice softened. ‘Loads of kids my age have a part-time job.’
‘And as I said before, when your school work improves, go for it. Until then, your focus has to be on that.’
Audrey toyed with the pieces of frozen garlic bread as she waited for the oven to preheat.
Sam turned the gas off beneath the pot of chilli. She’d learnt to read her daughter’s moods through looks, words, tone and body language, and she sensed Audrey was at least willing to enter a discussion now rather than closing her off. ‘Are you worried about your school work?’ Probably not the smartest thing to be involved in a prank if she was.
‘Not really. But I have thought about my future, much as you think I don’t give a —’ She stopped when Sam gave her a look that suggested foul language wouldn’t be tolerated a second time. ‘I do care about my life. And I still want to be a make-up artist.’
And there it was. The career choice Sam tried to gloss over whenever Audrey brought it up because it wasn’t what Sam thought of as a reliable career path. She wanted Audrey to have job security, a future. ‘You still need qualifications. In the long run you won’t regret it.’
‘I’ve looked into it. I could get a college diploma – there’s no need for me to go on to do A levels.’
‘I want you to have options, that’s all,’ Sam insisted, doing her best to remain calm.
No response. Her sweet, kind, loving daughter was in there somewhere, hidden beneath this firm shell, this exterior that gave off warning signals if she tried to get too close. But Sam was rarely sure how to crack open the surface unless it was on Audrey’s terms. Some of it was the usual mix of teen emotions, the egocentric perspective on life that was par for the course at this age, but her father leaving had stolen a part of Audrey’s childhood, which seemed to have manifested itself in her defensive attitude when it came to anything Sam might have the audacity to suggest or approve of. Sam felt on tenterhooks with her daughter the whole time. She never knew what to expect from day to day,
