“Mum,” I called, letting myself into her house.
I could smell something cooking in the kitchen so headed there. Mum slammed her mobile phone down on the table and gritted her teeth. She then looked up and her face softened. We looked a lot alike; both had the same shape face with high cheekbones, green eyes and black hair. But that was where the similarities ended.
“Nell, baby, I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, gripping her hair, twisting it around her hand and shoving in a large, brown hair claw.
“No, you were too busy smashing up your belongings.”
She made a disgusted noise at the back of her throat and waved her hand. “Your dad called. Arrogant prick wants to come over tomorrow night.”
“Mum…”
“I know, I know. We’re not getting back together.”
I loved both of my parents but growing up they were a nightmare. They first broke up when I was about eight and since then they’d been on and off. I didn’t want them to get back together, they were better apart.
“Well, I hope not.”
“I just said I wasn’t. Do you want a drink?”
“I’ve lost count of the amount of times you’ve said that. Coke please.”
She opened the fridge to get my drink and replied, “I mean it, Nell.”
No part of me believed her at all. The last fourteen years I’d watch them both break their promise not to get back together.
Sighing, I took the glass from her. “Thanks. So what’s new? Work going okay?”
She worked for a private cleaning firm in town, taking care of rich people’s houses. She loved that all she had to do was clean and then come home. Mum didn’t want any big responsibility that usually went with a high paid job, she was happy to earn just enough. Dad was the same, he drove a lorry for nine hours a day and when his deliveries were done he’d go home. I admired that about them but I wasn’t the same. Thank all that was holy I wasn’t the same.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. What about you? That man treating you better?”
I turned my nose up and sat down. “It’s bearable. I’ll find something else soon.”
“You deserve the best, Nelly.”
I hated it when she called me Nelly. It left a bad taste in my mouth.
Smiling tightly, I replied, “Thanks. Hey, did you decide to give Dave a chance?”
Dave was someone that she’d met through a colleague at work. I’d heard all good things but Mum’s one complaint that he was ‘frightfully boring’. Personally I think she could do with boring. Drama was way overrated where she was concerned, and I desperately wanted her to meet someone boring and normal so she’d stay away from her toxic relationship with Dad.
“Oh, I’m way past all of that nonsense.”
“Mum, you’re forty-seven. I don’t think you’re quite ready to book the OAP home yet. You deserve happiness. Where’s the harm in having coffee with Dave?”
“It wouldn’t work out.”
I narrowed my eyes. She’d been open to new relationships in the past and had had a few dates. The only times she wrote a man off straight away was when she was getting back with Dad.
Why couldn’t they just stay away?
“You don’t know that. Don’t dismiss someone before you’ve got to know them.” Please just give the man a chance.
“I’ll think about it. How come you’re so interested?”
“Perhaps because I want my mum to be happy in a healthy relationship.”
“We weren’t that bad, Nell,” she said, lowering her voice in proof that they were that bad.
I was stunned that those words had just left her mouth and felt like a little kid again. My eyes watered and I felt like leaving. How could she say that? How could she just dismiss what’d happened for all of those years? We were all unhappy for so long and here she was telling me it wasn’t that bad. It was horrible.
I turned away from her, partly because I couldn’t bear to look at her and partly because I didn’t want her to see me struggle to keep it together. I heard her open the oven and the definite smell of roast chicken wafted throughout the room. “Have you spoke to your dad recently?”
Why are we talking about him?
Swallowing hard, I replied, “Um, a couple days ago. He’s calling tonight apparently.”
“Hmm, that’s good.”
She said it as if he had barely bothered with me since the first of their many breaks. I was as close with him as I was with her and he called me just as much. I really didn’t understand the point of being with someone you hated fifty per cent of the time.
“Mum, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Do you want onion gravy or plain?”
“Whatever you want is fine with me. You’re distracted.”
“I’m just having a long week, that’s all.”