She watched Audrey slide the garlic bread into the oven and poured herself a glass of crisp sauvignon blanc. She may not have a job but she had wine and tonight she needed it. She felt the welcome effect of the alcohol make her shoulders relax instantly.
‘There are a lot of options in make-up artistry you know,’ Audrey announced. ‘I could work with a theatre company or on a television drama. I wouldn’t mind working on something like Poldark.’
Whether it was the wine or the relief at having a conversation, Sam didn’t know, but she was going with it for now. ‘Hey, get in line,’ she laughed. ‘We’d all like more of Poldark.’
Between them they served up the dinner and avoided talk of Sam’s work – past and future – or any discussion of Audrey’s suspension. Perhaps she was being irresponsible by doing so, by not issuing her punishment or lecture right now, but just for this evening Sam wanted a moment of calm.
‘We could make a deal you know,’ Audrey suggested as she shook her head at the offer of the last piece of garlic bread. ‘I could finish school, study hard to get good GCSE grades but you let me skip A levels as long as I have a place at a college.’
Leaving school at sixteen had never been an option for Sam; she’d never had a choice about following anything other than an academic path. ‘We can think about it,’ she told Audrey. ‘But you would have to knuckle down and get your GCSEs. That’s the first thing. And before you tell me you don’t necessarily need qualifications to be a make-up artist, I want to you get some so that you have a back-up plan. You never know if you’ll change your mind and I’d hate for you to find you were limited.’ Her words came out as a diatribe, without Audrey interrupting. She braced herself for fallout, topped up her wine and slotted the bottle back into the fridge. She never drank during the week but seeing as she no longer had a job to get up for in the morning, she let up with her own rules for once.
‘OK.’ When Sam looked at her in disbelief, she repeated herself, ‘I said OK, let’s do it your way, Mum.’
‘To do what I’m asking, you’d need to be in school, Audrey.’
‘Which I will be in September.’
‘And how much will you have missed?’
‘Not a lot happens in the last two weeks of term, believe me.’ Her nonchalance didn’t last when she saw Sam’s expression. ‘I’ll make sure I’ve caught up with everything by the time we go back after the summer holidays.’
She was saying all the right things, but Sam knew from experience that talk and the follow-through were two very different things to Audrey. Last month she’d gone on and on about how she’d cook the dinner every night for a week after she’d been given a detention for not handing in her homework. That had lasted all of one evening until she looked so stressed with her studies that Sam had given in.
Sam began to load the dishwasher as Audrey handed her scraped plates one by one before she emptied the leftover chilli into a plastic container.
‘I know I’m a disappointment.’
Her words took Sam by surprise. ‘Is that what you really think?’
‘I can see it when you look at me. You’re disappointed I’m not more like you, that I don’t work hard enough.’
‘Audrey, I don’t need you to be like me, and I’m not disappointed in you.’ How could she explain how disappointed she was in herself? Disappointed she couldn’t keep her marriage together enough for her child, ashamed she never had best worked out the way to manage solo parenting and keeping your teen on side when they blamed you for everything. Sam sometimes wondered if she wasn’t hard enough on her daughter, if overcompensating for Simon’s absence was half the problem.
‘I’m disappointed you got suspended,’ Sam braved saying. Talking to Audrey was like doing a tentative dance where if you put your foot down too hard then you threatened to shake up the entire floor. ‘I didn’t expect it and you’ve got to admit that what you did was wrong.’
‘I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously – I honestly didn’t.’
‘How did you get the email to everyone anyway? You wouldn’t know their email addresses.’
‘Sid hacked into the school’s computer system.’
Sid. The boy Sam had never met face-to-face but who she suspected was a bad influence. ‘How on earth did he manage that?’
‘He’s clever.’
‘Not so clever he didn’t get suspended. I’m assuming he did too.’
‘He did, and his dad went ballistic.’
‘Then you got off lightly with me,’ Sam barked.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I really am.’
With the food, the apology, the tablets and the wine, her head and her stress levels had at least begun to simmer and she pulled Audrey into a hug and kissed the top of her head. ‘It’ll all be fine, I promise. We’ll be OK.’ It’s what she’d wanted to say to her daughter, to herself, for years, as though
