On my fourth Sunday at ‘the cottage’, as he preferred to call it, he surprised me by not rushing me home as usual, but instead asking me if I’d mind putting on a ‘nice dress’ for the day.
I had a few clothes at Ant’s place by then, including a summer dress. I peered out at the garden – it was a wet, blustery March morning and, although it was nearly eleven, almost dark. So, I explained that the weather was a bit cold for dresses.
‘Wear one anyway,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine.’
I looked out at the garden again and despite the fact that I found it quite sexy when he got all masterful like that, I replied, ‘Ant, I’m not wearing a dress today. Anyway, aren’t you going to take me home? What do you care what I wear?’
‘I wanted to take you to see Mum,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like a trip to the seaside.’
‘Oh,’ I said, thinking, Wow, this is serious. Meeting the in-laws! ‘Sure, that would be lovely, Ant. But unless the weather down there is better than here, which I doubt, I still don’t think I’m wearing a dress.’
‘Oh, just wear what the fuck you want,’ Ant said. ‘I don’t know why I give a shit.’
I was so shocked that my mouth fell open.
The drive to Broadstairs took about forty minutes, and the rain didn’t let up for one instant. Ant’s mood remained as dark and brooding as the weather, and I couldn’t help but think I would rather have gone back to my flat, my dressing gown and my lonely little kitten.
I suspected Ant’s silence was to do with my failure to wear the dress, but as I was quite certain he was being unreasonable and was scared of getting into an argument about it, I said nothing. Instead, I sat with my palms in my lap and watched the windscreen wipers sloshing the rain back and forth.
As we drove past a road sign to Broadstairs, I momentarily forgot that I was supposed to be sulking. ‘What’s she like?’ I asked, wincing when I realised that I had spoken first.
‘Who?’ he asked obtusely.
‘Your mum,’ I replied. ‘You’ve never told me much about her.’
‘Well, she’s my mother,’ he said, wrinkling his nose as he glanced at me and shrugging.
I tried for a moment to work out whether the fact of her being his mother was supposed to explain why he couldn’t describe her, or whether it was supposed to be description enough, then tried a different tack. ‘What did she do?’ I asked. ‘When she worked, I mean.’
‘She didn’t work,’ he said. ‘She was way too busy to work.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Busy doing what?’
‘Busy being my mother,’ he replied.
I turned to the side window, discreetly pulled a face, and went back to being silent.
His mother’s place was in a generic nineties build of what would best be described as ‘retirement flats’. It was only about a mile from the sea, but faced the wrong way, looking out instead over a supermarket car park.
Anthony had bought flowers from the corner shop and when we reached her shiny blue door he held them out in front of him so that they would be the first thing she saw.
Marjory, a tallish white-haired woman, was unimpressed by the flowers, which she pushed unceremoniously to one side. She looked about seventy, I thought, and had a lot of crow’s feet around the edges of her mouth, which seemed to have been caused by her permanent thin-lipped sneer. To say that she was not instantly likeable would be a pretty severe understatement.
‘So you’re ’evvah, are ya?’ she asked, looking down at me from her dominant position on the step. ‘A real ’alf-pint model, ain’t ya?’
I felt as if I’d been slapped, but when I looked back at Anthony for reassurance, he simply gestured with his chin for me to follow her into the flat.
‘Sit darn, then!’ she said, sounding as if I’d been standing in the middle of the room for minutes, rather than seconds. ‘I’ll make tea.’
I swallowed with difficulty and perched on the edge of the floral sofa, glancing around at all the knick-knacks on the surfaces – she seemed to have a penchant for china cows. The room was severely overheated, so much so that it seemed difficult to breathe. I patted the space beside me, hoping that Ant’s proximity would provide a feeling of support, but instead he sighed and followed his mother to the kitchen.
‘They’re from the garage,’ I heard her say, presumably referring to the flowers. ‘I dunno why you bovvah. They don’t last more than a day.’
‘They’re not from the garage,’ Anthony replied. ‘They’re from the shop on the corner.’
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Same difference. And that’s ’er, is it? That’s the one you’ve been on about?’
‘Yes, Mum. I thought it was time you met.’
‘If you’d found yourself a smaller model,’ she said, making no effort to be discreet, ‘you could have kept ’er in yer pocket.’
‘Mum,’ Ant said, sounding part plaintive, part amused. ‘Be nice.’
‘And why’s she dressed like a boy?’ Marjory asked.
‘It’s cold,’ Ant said. ‘It’s not exactly dress weather out there, is it?’
‘Cold?’ she said. ‘You kids don’t know what cold is. In my day the boys looked like boys and the girls looked like girls, no matter what the wevvah.’
‘Mum,’ Ant pleaded. ‘Give it a break, OK?’
We only stayed an hour, but honestly it felt like four.
At first, I did my best to break through Marjory’s icy force field by doing everything I could to charm her. But as it was clearly an impossible task – she only ever replied to my comments with at best lazy sarcasm, at worst silence and a sneer – I quickly gave
