And he wasn’t comfortable with her. When they took Mam to the doctor’s and neither of them was allowed to go in with her, they would have to sit together in the waiting room. He kept quiet. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Yet, when her mam was there, he would be coming out with all sorts of things.
‘Do you know what windmills are for, Mandy?’
‘What are you reading at school, Mand?’
‘What do you think Mummy would like for her birthday?’
He called Mam Mummy. Mandy never called her that. She didn’t even look like a mummy.
He gave a sigh of relief when Mam came out of the consulting room. Not because she was smiling, the doctor hadn’t given her bad news, but because Mummy was there again, between them. It was easier with three of them there.
Mandy liked it best when it was just her and Mam. It was like old times when they went to the shops together. Mandy wasn’t old enough to call this nostalgia. They would sit in a cafe and Mandy would get a plate of chips. Mam would pinch one, letting it cool for a moment on her saucer.
‘You could talk to Les more.’
‘I do talk to him.’ She could feel her socks slipping off. When Mam asked questions like this, Mandy imagined that a small vicious dog under the table was tugging her shoes and then her socks off for spite. She had to pretend nothing was happening.
‘You grunt at him. He’s only trying to be nice.’
‘He asks stupid things.’
‘Pardon, madam?’
‘I’ll try.’
It was on one of these trips that Mam took bad. Mandy hated Les even more for not being there with his car. It ended up with Mandy calling for her first taxi.
They were pushing a trolley between them through the supermarket’s automatic doors. They had a lot to get. Mam waved a long list about, then clasped her head. She grabbed her bag off the trolley.
‘Mam?’
Mam whirled round and ran back out of the double doors.
The duvet went back upstairs. Mam under it, in bed. The heating went back on. Mandy watched the telly with Les and he watched The Benny Hill Show. He laughed all the way through. His short, barking laugh filled the room. Mandy couldn’t see what he was laughing at. She tried her best to join in and even talk to him.
‘When will Mam be better?’
He stopped mid-laugh and looked at her, mouth hanging open, full of crisps.
Les started taking Mandy to and from school. He waited outside with all the mams and seemed pleased to see her. He stood a little apart from the others and they didn’t try to include him. A few asked how Mandy’s mam was and Les was rude to them.
‘She’s all right,’ he said, tight-lipped. Mandy blushed with shame.
‘They’re Mam’s friends,’ she said as they walked off quickly, quicker than everyone else.
‘Your mam doesn’t need friends. She’s got me.’
It got to the summer holidays. Mam’s room was hot, musty, dark green. Her bedside table was covered with bottles of pills, cups half-empty with soured barley water and scummed coffee. Les was reading to her in a loud, clear voice, Catherine Cookson novels, one after another. He didn’t try to put any life into the voices, but Mam seemed to be asleep most of the time anyway.
One morning Les woke Mandy up.
‘Get up, Mand. We’re going on a trip.’
He opened her curtains. Mandy screwed up her eyes.
‘Where to?’
His hair was white in the light. ‘Flamingoland. Get dressed.’
Now that Les was here they were supposed to have holidays. More money now, Mam had said. Two weeks away in a caravan. Coniston maybe. Pack up his car and ride away over the hills. Picnics, plodging, going round shops. Les had said they would go mad with all his money. It was useless until he had met Mandy’s mam. He would lavish it on them, he said. Their lives would change for ever. First, though, Mam had to stop the tranquillisers.
She was trying hard. Failing. Trying harder. But she couldn’t go on holiday yet. She explained to Mandy that she wanted to be taken back home to her sickbed each night. ‘So it’ll be day trips we’ll be having this summer,’ she said. Scarborough, Ullswater, Flamingoland.
She got a letter from the TV people one morning and Les had to write back for her. She couldn’t take her place on the team for Family Fortunes because she was bad.
‘There,’ Les spat as he wrote. ‘That’s what them tablets are doing to you. You can’t go on the telly stoned to the eyeballs.’
Mandy was watching her mam, lying on the settee. Her eyes were like Cleopatra’s in history books, but she wasn’t wearing make-up.
Aunty Christine, who was clever and would have gone to college if it wasn’t for that insurance clerk, took Mam’s place on Family Fortunes. Grandma was disappointed in her. She thought she might have pulled herself together in time. But she didn’t come to visit. Their family team won three thousand pounds.
Mam, Les and Mandy watched it from under the duvet. Mam came down for the evening for once, even though she already knew how it ended. Grandma and her sisters had already blown the money on a holiday. Mam thought her sisters looked tarty. They were abroad now.
‘All the questions were easy,’ said Mam afterwards as her family waved to her under the rolling credits. ‘I’d have won that.’
‘We know, love,’ Les said.
Mandy went looking for clothes in the washing basket, wondering what was suitable for Flamingoland Zoo.
Last night Les had said, ‘Mandy…’ He
