“Did you need protecting?”
She shrugged. “Not really.” Then she added, “But it was nice anyway. And I liked feeling part of a normal family, just for a bit.”
“There’s no such thing,” Mark said sadly. “I hate to tell you, but there’s no such thing as a normal family.”
“Don’t patronise me, Mark.”
He laughed. He was twice her age, he supposed. Almost, anyway. Really, he had every right to patronise her.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll pretend, for argument’s sake, that life with Craig and Elsie could be like normal family life.”
Now she snickered. “Well, maybe not. But don’t you know what I mean? Don’t you hanker after a bit of ordinariness?”
“I don’t know any more,” he said. “I really don’t know what I want any more.”
Penny was silent for a few minutes. They blew on their coffee and started to drink, stuck in their private thoughts. What he’d said sounded so bleak. She hoped she wouldn’t end up like him. And it seemed awful to think that.
Penny said, “When I think, what made it impossible to be with Craig was the way he fixed our telly.”
“Hm?” A smile played on Mark’s face. The thought struck her that they were both enjoying this conversation more than they’d like to admit.
“He was so methodical and dry. He took it all to pieces and hoovered all the parts —”
“He hoovered your telly?”
“Then he put it back together and it was mended.”
“That’s amazing!”
“Yeah, but how can I shag a bloke who thinks like that? I’d have much more respect for someone who got in a flap and chucked the bits around, or who made it blow up or who...I don’t know…wanted to read instead.” She stopped and laughed at herself.
Mark shook his head, tutting. “Fancy hoovering the telly!”
“Don’t you see what I mean?”
He grinned. “Craig sounds like a handy feller to have around.”
“But can you imagine having sex with him?”
“You’d be watching for that nozzle coming your way...listening for the hum as his Hoover bag inflates...”
“Oh, shut up,” she said, with a grimace. “The sex was all right.”
“Only all right?” he asked mischievously.
“Sometimes it was smashing.”
“Good,” said Mark simply.
Talking like this reminded Penny of the night before. It reminded her that when she had returned home and told Andy — diffident, quiet, worried-looking Andy — all about it, she had become furious with Craig. When she stamped off to bed, all she could think was that Craig went down on her only because he was mad and thought that he could become infected somehow by her fanny juices. That he would get access to what he called her superpowers. That was all he wanted out of me, Penny thought glumly.
She shook these thoughts away and said to Mark, “Craig couldn’t tell me anything about myself. He liked my mystery, he said. Some fucking mystery.”
Mark pulled a face. “Did you like his mystery?”
“It sounds awful, but I think I knew everything about Craig the first time I met him.”
“He’s that superficial, is he?”
“I don’t mean that exactly.” She felt hateful. “
“You’re right. You sound awful.” Mark shrugged. “Maybe you’re not the right person to see into Craig’s depths. He’s certainly not going to see yours.”
She wanted to thank him for that. He looked at her straight on and she was discomfited. She said, was starting to feel guilty about him. “How do I tell him all this? I have to finish with him, don’t I?”
Mark smiled and tipped the rest of the coffee down his throat.
Jane didn’t have much to do in Darlington. Really, it was for
the run out that she went. She had to be back in Aycliffe for three, to meet Peter at the school. They liked you to be there to pick up your kids, what with funny people wandering round. In the past year school security had improved tenfold. Dunblane.
So Jane had time enough for a pot of tea with her mam in Binns. Rose said she was off soon to Tunisia with her newish husband.
“I don’t know where you find the energy...or the money.”
“Neither do I!” Rose laughed. She looked like a jolly person, Jane thought, gloomily twiddling the plastic carnation from the table’s centrepiece. My mother’s a jolly person, jiggling her breasts under her mohair jumper, tucking into cream cakes in Binns cafeteria. How could I have come from her?
“I don’t know very much about Tunisia,’ said Jane.
“Apparently it’s extremely hot,” Rose said. “Ethan’s been before. He went most places with the navy.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll come back all bronze and lovely for the spring.”
“Lovely.” Rose stopped talking about her holiday and fixed her daughter with a stare. “So what is the problem?”
“There’s nothing.”
“Oh, come on.” Rose let out an irritable sigh. “You could be pleased for me. I’m having a life at last. Don’t I deserve one?”
“Of course you do. I—”
“You look narked.”
“Maybe I am.”
“It doesn’t do to get jealous, Jane.” Rose reached for her Regals. “Especially not of your old mam.”
Jane snapped, “I just wonder when it’s all gunna come to me. I want my luck to change. I want my life to be different. I’m not even thirty and it’s like it’s all over.”
“It’s not over!” Rose smiled. “Look how young you are.”
“Oh, I’ve said that to mesel’ for years, Mam. But I never do anything different. Nothing’s gunna change now.”
“Look at my life!” Rose spread her massive hands in a gesture of wonderment. “My life changed overnight when I met Ethan! And I was over fifty!” The look on her face said it all: she believed that everything could change for the better in a flash. “You need someone to come along and transform you. That’s all.”
“But that’s your life,” said Jane, wishing she’d never started this conversation now. It was making her feel worse than ever. “That applies to you, not me.”
Rose frowned. “Why should you be any different to me? You’re my daughter, for
