Instead, I sat listening to her talking at her son. I choose the word at rather than with, or even to, intentionally, for it was far more a monologue than any kind of conversation.
In essence, Marjory complained. She complained about the pain in her hip and her noisy neighbour. She complained about the useless idiots at the town hall and joyriders in the car park; about someone called Trish who hadn’t returned her Tupperware box and ‘the immigrants’ who were the reason she couldn’t get an appointment at the clinic. Finally, she complained about the doctor (implying that she had got an appointment), who didn’t even speak what Marjory called ‘propah’ English.
By one, we were back outside and as the rain had stopped we wandered down to the seafront in search of food. The sky out to sea was dramatic-looking, with dark clouds to the left and pretty patches of sunlight over the waves to the right.
‘I love the sea,’ I said, thanking the gods that Marjory’s dodgy hip had kept her at home.
‘Mum does too,’ Ant said. ‘That’s why she came back here.’
‘From Warrington?’ I asked. ‘That’s where you grew up, right?’
Ant paused outside a fish and chip restaurant and held the door open for me. ‘Yeah. She moved back here when Dad left,’ he said, once he’d followed me in. ‘She grew up in Botany Bay. It’s just along the coast.’
I almost asked when and why his father had left, but decided it would be tactless to do so. Plus, the ‘why’ part of the equation seemed fairly obvious, for who could possibly put up with Marjory? ‘Was she always like that?’ I asked instead as we slid into a booth, that thought leading to this one.
‘Like what?’ Ant asked, sounding genuinely confused. He picked up the menu and began to study it.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, treading carefully. ‘She doesn’t seem very happy.’
‘Happy?’ Ant repeated, looking up at me and frowning.
‘No. I mean, she seems a bit angry, really, doesn’t she?’
‘Angry? Wow,’ Ant said, raising an eyebrow. ‘And what brings you to that conclusion, Little Miss Psychology?’
‘Well, she wasn’t very nice to me,’ I pointed out.
‘No?’
‘No. Calling me half-pint . . . Telling you that you couldn’t have found a smaller model. It wasn’t exactly tactful, was it?’
Ant laughed at this, and it was genuine laughter that erupted from within.
‘Sorry, I think I missed the joke,’ I said, bitterness creeping into my voice.
‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know?’ Ant laughed, and there was something in his thin-lipped sneer that reminded me of his mother. I hadn’t known before where that came from, but now I did, it scared me.
‘Know what?’
‘That you’re small,’ he said.
‘No, I know that,’ I replied. I was starting to reach the borderline between anger and tears, and I didn’t really want to lapse into either, not now, not here, in the middle of a fish restaurant. ‘I know I’m not huge, but . . .’
‘So she was merely stating the obvious,’ Ant said.
‘Yes, but why?’
Ant shrugged. ‘How should I know?’ he said. ‘We can pop in on the way back and you can ask her if you want. Anyway, what are you having? I think I’ll just go for cod and chips.’
‘So his mother’s horrible,’ Mum said when I phoned her that evening. ‘Not everyone can be as lucky as you, sweetheart.’
‘Yeah, but she’s really horrible,’ I insisted. ‘And he didn’t even stick up for me.’
‘I thought you said he did,’ Mum replied. ‘I thought he asked her to be nice.’
‘Yeah, he did ask her to be nice. And she wasn’t. She wasn’t nice at all.’
‘Look, honey,’ Mum said. ‘Do you want my advice?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Go for it.’
‘Don’t go to war with his mother. Because that’s a battle you can never win.’
‘But she’s . . .’
‘Just see as little of her as you can, and ignore her when you do. It’s not her you’re dating, after all. And whatever you do, don’t try to make him choose, because blood runs thicker than water and all that. If you force him to choose between the two of you, you’ll just end up single all over again, and none of us wants that, do we? The only way you can get a mummy’s boy away from his mother is to wait.’
‘Wait?’ I repeated. ‘Wait for what?’
‘Eventually she’ll either come around, or she’ll drop dead,’ Mum said.
‘Right,’ I said, sighing deeply.
‘Actually, I need to see you,’ Mum added. ‘Can you come up next weekend?’
I couldn’t. I had to work the following weekend, covering for Sheena, who was on leave.
‘The one after, then,’ Mum said.
‘I might get Ant to drive me,’ I told her. ‘Maybe it’s time you met him too. Make up your own mind.’
‘No, don’t,’ Mum said, surprising me. ‘I want you all to myself.’
I didn’t see that much of Anthony over the following two weeks. He had to work a few evenings, wining and dining some developer he was trying to do business with, and when he wasn’t working he claimed to be tired. As I myself had to work right through the weekend, I was shattered in the evenings as well.
So I spent my time with Dandy, staring at but not really watching the reflection-free TV screen. It turned out that the way Ant had positioned the sofa was better after all.
I didn’t actually mind being alone, because the only time I’d met Ant – for lunch on the Wednesday – he hadn’t been that nice anyway. He’d seemed different, somehow – harsher, harder, more like his mother, perhaps. I wondered if it was just a phase or whether something had broken between us. Perhaps meeting his mother had changed the way I saw him for ever. Whatever the explanation, I found myself feeling relieved when he said he couldn’t see me.
By the end of the second week, I sensed that I was reaching a decision. The time had come to end the relationship, I suspected. I just had to find the courage to tell my friends and
