Lunch with Mother
"I could always ring and cancel," Sandra suggested for the twentieth time that morning.
"Sandra," Mia said sternly. "Bella is ready. She's wearing the dress your mum bought her and let's be honest that gives us at least half an hour of your mum fussing over her. We've spent god knows how long making the car seat fit in your car. Added to which, Esther is probably waiting for us already with your mother. It's a bit late to call and cancel!"
Sandra lifted her head above the kitchen bar and sighed. "You're probably right."
"I am right," Mia laughed. "Now stop looking for whatever it is you haven't lost, put your shoes and coat on and let's go!"
Sandra stood up reluctantly and pouted. "I've already got my coat on."
"Shoes?" Mia asked, cocking her head to one side and trying not to laugh at the dishevelled woman sulking in front of her. Sandra walked around the bar and wiggled her shoed feet in front of Mia. "Right then. Let's go. Have you got your keys?" Sandra shook her head. "Where are they?" Sandra shrugged. "Where did you last have them?"
"Dunno," Sandra grumbled. "I was looking for them."
Mia bit her lip and sniffed. "Remind me, which of us is meant to be the grown-up?"
Sandra blinked, bit her lip, looked straight at Mia, stuck out her tongue and replied: "You are!"
Twenty minutes of searching for the keys which turned out to be in her coat pocket later, Sandra and the two girls were in the car on the way to Barnaby's café. It was, unusually, a café which all the UCOS and extended family members approved of. Gerry and Brian lauded the big fry-ups; Steve was unable to find fault with the pasta speciality; Nick had fallen in love with the vegetarian sausages served with egg and chips and had reliably informed the rest of the team that his partner Dee had also been introduced and approving of the cuisine. It was a café that Rob and Sandra had often used for lunchtime meetings when they'd been avoiding the pub; Esther, Mia and Bella also liked the place. The only unknown element would, as always, today be her mother.
Sandra parked up next to Esther's hatchback in the little car-park around the corner from Barnaby's.
"Shit," she swore. "How late are we?"
"Half an hour," Mia laughed. "It's fine, from what you've told me, if this Esther can cope with her husband for years of marriage, she can cope with your mum for half an hour!"
"I suppose so," Sandra agreed. "Come on then."
They exited the car and walked the short distance to the café. Entering through the door, they smiled in greeting at the two members of staff behind the counter who nodded to the corner where Esther Lane sat alone.
"Hi, Esther," Sandra greeted the older woman with a kiss on the cheek. "Is my mum not here yet?"
"Sandra," Mia interrupted. "I think she's just here now."
Sandra and Esther turned to see where the girl was pointing out of the window. Sandra's mum had indeed just arrived and seemed to be in some sort of argument with the driver of the taxi. Sandra groaned. "Great. She's not even in the same room yet she's already embarrassing me! Esther, this is Mia and Bella. I'm sorry, I'll be back in a sec!"
Mia and Esther smiled shyly at each other as Sandra dodged past the other tables back to the front door of the café.
"Hi," Mia said. "Erm…"
"I asked them for a highchair," Esther filled in the silence quickly. "They did give me a strange look until I told them I was meeting some friends."
Mia giggled. She could easily imagine the perplexed look given to the old lady by the girl behind the counter because she knew the girl from college and knew her sense of humour. "Thanks," she grinned. She had a feeling she was going to like Sandra's friend whose eyes were twinkling at the joke. "Have you met Grace before?"
"No," Esther sat down as Mia settled Bella in the highchair. "I'm sure she can't be as bad as Sandra makes out though."
"She isn't," Mia assured her. She took the seat opposite Esther though, just so that Sandra wouldn't have to sit by her mother.
"I really don't see what your problem is, dear," Grace Pullman's tones belied her approach to the table, Mia and Esther stood to meet her. "If you'd come to pick me up, I wouldn't have had to get the taxi anyway. Mind you, I doubt the service would have been much better! Hello my love!"
Bella giggled up at Grace as she beamed at her.
"What a lovely dress you're wearing," Grace continued, winking at Mia. "Hello Mia, how are you?"
"Fine thank you Grace," Mia kissed Grace's cheek. Why did old people always smell of talcum powder? "Trouble with taxis?"
"Just their drivers," Grace shrugged off her overcoat and hung it on the back of the chair between Bella and Esther.
"Mum," Sandra rolled her eyes. "This is Esther Lane, she's Brian's wife. You met him a couple of times. Esther, this is my mum, Grace."
The two older ladies greeted each other politely and the five of them sat down at the table. "So what have you done with Brian today?" Sandra glanced at the menu that she already knew.
"Oh, he's fishing with Gerry," Esther smiled pleasantly. "After yesterday's debacle over stripping wallpaper I think he was quite glad of the excuse for a day off!"
"Day off already, I hope you're not going to be too soft on him," Sandra joked. She knew she was going to miss him the second she walked into the office the next day. She'd see his desk; empty. It was like a macabre game of musical desks. In seven months time it would be her turn to transfer the contents of her drawers and shelves into cardboard boxes; her turn to leave it all behind.
"Sandra?" Mia gently nudged her hand. "Do you know what you want? To order?"
"There's no need to qualify your meaning, my dear," Grace's tone cut through Sandra's morbid reverie which Mia's warmer interruption had only lightly disturbed. "Sandra always knows what she wants."
Sandra shot her mum a look of daggers. Grace seemed delightfully unaware of the hostility her daughter was showing her as she serenely continued. "I expect it will be the fish and chips. She always tells me how excellent it is here."
With a shock, Sandra realised that her mother was not only not insulting her in public, but had correctly (for once) predicted her choice; and was flirtatiously fluttering her eyelashes at the young man taking their order. So she was being her usual embarrassing self. Mentally sighing and filing the memory of the last three seconds in her mind, she nodded. "Yes, the fish, please."
"You thought I was going to say something else, didn't you?" Grace accused her daughter as soon as the waiter had taken Mia's order and retired to the kitchen. She shook her head. "I'm not always out to embarrass you Sandra. Goodness knows you manage it quite well enough without me. Now are you going to show us this ring or not?"
Sandra could hear the barely constrained peels of laughter in Esther's voice as she added her own plea; "Oh, yes, Brian said it was nice. But that could mean anything from gaudy to crown jewels!"
"Gerry is much better with jewellery," Sandra agreed. She felt extremely self-conscious holding her hand out across the table so that Esther and her mum could observe the pretty band that Rob had placed there eight days previously.
"Your Robert isn't so bad either," Esther marvelled. "That is beautiful. Lucky girl!"
Sandra could feel herself blushing.
"Mmm," Grace added her approval. "He has very good taste."
Sandra waited, but there was no further addition to her mother's review. She smiled. Apparently all she'd ever needed to shut her mother up was Rob's good taste. Bella was quite useful too as she reached out and tugged at Grace's sleeve, distracting the woman and allowing her Nana to replace her hand under the tablecloth out of sight. Sandra chatted to Esther about the boys while Grace engaged Mia in conversation about college and Bella. They ate, they drank, they enjoyed. Sandra quietly congratulated herself on finding both sufficient company and flawless catering to satisfy her mother and deflect the woman's attention from herself. She was just about to agree with Esther's suggestion that they should all get together again when Grace Pullman lived up to her daughter's forgotten expectations.
"Well of course we shall!" Grace smiled around the table. She had decided quite quickly that she liked Sandra's friend Esther and she had been fond of both Mia and Bella the second she had met them. "Have you got a date yet dear?"
"A date?" Sandra looked at her mother in confusion.
"For the wedding, of course!" Grace elucidated. "I assume I am going to be invited this time."
And there it was. Grace Pullman's ability to destroy whatever image of perfectly innocent old lady she presented to the rest of the world and reveal herself as the devil incarnate in one simple insinuation.
"This time?" Mia frowned and looked at Sandra quizzically. Suddenly her father's fiancée refused to meet her eye. Wild accusations flew around her mind in a millisecond before she remembered that her father had once upon a time been married to her mother; everyone had baggage. As Bella thumped her hand idly sitting in front of her, she looked at her own perfect piece of history.
"Mum," Sandra growled. "That was different."
"Was it?" Grace drawled peacefully as if they were discussing the weather. "You see my dear," she leant toward Mia. "My daughter here inherited her father's rash impetuous nature as well as his career choice. She met a man abroad and married him. When they got back to the country I think it was about two months before they were filing for divorce."
"It wasn't like that," Sandra protested ineffectually as she realised how precisely her mum had summarised her previous marriage. "Well, maybe it was."
"Sandra, I always knew you had a wild streak," Esther tried to elevate the younger woman's embarrassment. She realised that no-one knew about Sandra's previous marriage; Brian certainly would have told her if it had come up at work.
Sandra smiled. "I don't know if wild is the right word for it, stupid more like."
"Who was he?" Mia asked quietly.
Sandra bit her lip. She cast her mind back over twenty years. They ordered coffee.
"His name was Max. He was French. Probably still is," she laughed. "I was on attachment to Interpol, stationed in Paris for six months. I was twenty-three and he was very, very good looking. Very debonair. It was just really quick. We'd known each other barely four months when we got married. I'm not sure I ever really loved him. And then I found out that he'd been cheating on me the whole time we were together with one of the students who'd been on work experience there. So I divorced him."
"How romantic you make it sound," Grace rolled her eyes. She paused before saying to Esther: "He phoned the house once, lovely accent."
"I'm sure," Esther replied. "So, the past explained. Have you set a date yet?"
"Not yet," Sandra smiled gratefully as Esther closed the subject. She exchanged a look with Mia where she said she'd explain later and Mia told her that she didn't need to.
"Soon though, I hope?" Grace hinted, bringing them all back to the subject in hand.
"It'll have to be soon if you want to fit in that dress you were looking at yeste-" Mia stopped speaking so abruptly that she was sure the Earth had paused in its usual rotation.
"I'll let you know," Sandra covered quickly and sipped her coffee. "We've barely talked about it."
It was a little white lie, as she and Mia both knew. She and Rob had decided that sooner rather than later suited them both for the wedding; neither saying it but both knowing that they weren't going to have second thoughts. It was strange, she mused, how they both knew it. How it was possible to live so long alone then know in the case of a moment that here was the person that you wanted to marry and make a life with. Never looking back on those cold days of loneliness except with a wistful sentimentality of how it was so peculiar to have lived that way. He'd been married before of course, and so had she, but there was an unspoken acknowledgement that this time it was … different somehow. Also, while she could rarely be accused of being vain, Mia was right: she didn't want to look too pregnant in the photos.
"And you're moving house as well?" Esther effected the change in conversation.
"Yes, somewhere bigger, with a garden maybe. Also, Mia's sharing with Bella at the moment, we want, well somewhere bigger," Sandra explained.
"You'll be able to have a proper nursery then too," Esther said innocently.
"Yes," Sandra responded slowly, turning her attention to the quiet, unassuming lady beside her.
"Well, they'll have to hurry up or the little babe will be too big to enjoy it!" Grace pulled a face at Bella who responded by shaking her head and pulling at Grace's fingers.
"Yes," Sandra replied neutrally. She was still looking at Esther who's attention also seemed to be taken with Bella and who's expression was totally inscrutable.
"Grace, can I offer you a lift home?" Esther asked smoothly, ignoring the curious look of her husband's former boss.