Pedigree Mum

‘I wanna talk to him! I wanna say happy birthday …’

‘It’s not Dad’s birthday yet, not till tomorrow.’ Actually, it is tomorrow, she realises; it’s nearly two a.m. and Rob is officially forty years old. But better not tell Freddie that. ‘Good night, Freddie,’ she says firmly from the landing, realising there’s no point in going back to bed, as she is now shimmeringly awake.

Pulling on Rob’s soft grey cashmere sweater over her T-shirt, Kerry heads downstairs into what used to be Aunt Maisie’s dining room, and is now her designated music room. A music lecturer until cuts swept the university, Kerry is now trying to carve out a living as a freelance songwriter. While this might sound glamorous, her latest commission is for Cuckoo Clock, a long-established TV show for pre-school children (the over-zealous presenters wear bird costumes and sinister-looking rubbery yellow feet). The show is being given a facelift, including a whole stack of new songs, and at least they want her, Kerry thinks defiantly as she sits down at her piano. It might not be quite the illustrious future she’d in mind for herself at music college, but the money’s good, and she also plans to teach piano from home. Isn’t that the modern way of doing things – to have several strings to your bow, so to speak? And surely dozens of parents in a well-heeled town like Shorling are desperate for their little ones to learn the piano. Kerry doesn’t have any pupils yet, but she plans to put ads on all the newsagents’ noticeboards in the next day or two. God, she hasn’t even finished unpacking or organising the house yet. It still amazes her, despite the fact that she should be used to it by now, how little you get done with children around. And the people at Cuckoo Clock’s production company don’t seem to understand that even bouncy little bird songs can’t be hammered out in five minutes.

It’ll be easier when Rob moves down, she tells herself firmly. Then we won’t feel like cuckoos ourselves, stealing someone else’s nest … They’ll also be able to buy Aunt Maisie’s house, which will hopefully make it feel properly theirs. At the moment, thanks to her aunt’s generosity and keenness to move, Kerry and the children are living here rent-free.

After taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she starts to sing and play quietly so as not to disturb the children.

Welcome to the cuckoo clock,

It’s time to say to say hello,

What’s behind the little doors …

‘“What’s behind the lit-tle doors?”’ comes the mockingecho behind her.

She whirls round. ‘Freddie! What are you doing out of bed?’

His lightly freckled face erupts into a wide-awake smile. ‘What are you asking that for?’

‘Because I told you, it’s the middle of the night—’

‘No, about the doors.’ He rakes a hand through his dishevelled brown curls.

‘Oh. Er … to build up tension, I suppose, so it’s a surprise …’

‘But it’s a cuckoo, innit? That’s what’s behind the doors.’

Kerry blinks at her son. She is chilly now, despite the cashmere sweater, and goosebumps have sprung up on her bare legs.

‘You’re right,’ she says flatly. ‘It’s a cuckoo. It really couldn’t be anything else.’

Freddie grins triumphantly and starts swinging on the door. ‘Ha, I knew it was. Now can I phone Dad?’

Chapter Five

Nadine’s flat might only be forty-odd miles from Rob’s new house by the sea, but the way he feels now, he might as well have landed on a different planet. The huge living room is girlie in the extreme, its sofa and chairs strewn with fluffy throws and an abundance of embroidered cushions. There are fairy lights, glowing red lamps and a multi-coloured chandelier. The effect, he muses as Nadine dispenses drinks (aided by a rather worse-for-wear Frank), is a little nauseating.

‘So d’you like my place?’ Nadine asks, curling up beside him on the vast purple velvet sofa.

‘It’s really, um, stylish,’ he tells her, enunciating carefully in the hope of appearing sober.

‘Thanks.’ She smiles prettily. ‘It’s a bit of a mish-mash but I like it.’

‘Yeah, but it’s not yours, is it?’ Eddy teases from his cross-legged position on the pink shag-pile rug. ‘It’s Daddy’s.’

Nadine rolls her eyes good naturedly. ‘Yep, but I’m here for the time being, darling. You don’t think I could live here on an editorial assistant’s salary, do you?’

‘Thank God for Daddy,’ Eddy guffaws, stretching the joke a little thin in Rob’s opinion. He glances down at the gnarled oak table on which the remains of his birthday cake look a little ravaged on a plain white plate, wondering why he’s suddenly feeling protective of Nadine. Her slight haughtiness in the office is, he suspects now, a desire to seem properly grown-up when she’s barely emerged from her teens.

‘So you’re off to your new place tomorrow?’ Ava asks Rob, rearranging her bony limbs on a giant floor cushion.

‘Yes,’ he says, ‘after I’ve shown a couple of people round the house.’

She smiles, her teeth Tipp-Ex white against the blood red of her lipstick. ‘I don’t know if I could ever do that.’

‘Show people around a flat, you mean?’

‘No, silly! Leave London.’ Ava winces.

‘Well,’ Rob says, ‘it just seemed like the right time.’ He can’t explain about the education issue now, and how several friends have faked addresses and religions in order to get their children into decent schools. Mentioning that in front of all of these young things would make him sound about five hundred years old.

‘What’ll you do with yourself down there, Rob?’ Nadine’s voice cuts into his thoughts.

‘Er, just get on with life, I suppose. Get fit, start running, go for long walks on the beach …’ Agh, why is he saying that? Eddy will have him shovelled off to Rambler’s Monthly.

‘I love the sea,’ Nadine says wistfully, ‘but I can’t imagine living away from all the shops and bars.’

Typical, he thinks without bitterness. Just the kind of thing a privileged girl with nothing to think about but chandeliers and cushions would say. Rob, whose father is Italian and his mother a straight-talking Yorkshire woman, is at least aware that life happens north of Watford – or south of Croydon, come to that.

‘Well, I’ve been here for twenty years,’ he explains patiently. ‘The noise, the traffic – I’ve had my fill, to be honest.’

Now he’s sounding like Granddad again. Nadine nods, and at some point the others seem to drift away to different parts of the room, leaving just the two of them sitting very close on the sofa. She isn’t his type at all – too girlie and far too young with her silver cowrie shell necklace which was probably acquired on some gap year jaunt, or maybe Daddy bought that for her too. In fact the thought of having a ‘type’ hasn’t crossed Rob’s mind since he met Kerry. But now, having drunk more than in recent memory, he can’t help but notice how mesmerising her blue eyes are, framed by a sweep of dark lashes, and how her dainty nose is incredibly cute. For some reason, despite knowing the others for far longer, she has chosen to sit next to him. It no longer seems to matter that, while he was getting to grips with disposable nappies and jars of sludge-coloured baby food, Nadine was still in high school. Exquisite is the word that springs to mind now. This girl is exquisite, like a jewel.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ she murmurs, shuffling even closer with her feet tucked under her neat little bottom, ‘but you seem like your heart’s not really in this seaside thing, Rob.’

‘Er …’ A wave of dizziness engulfs him as he blows out air. ‘Yeah, it’s freaking me out a bit. The practical side, the train and stuff – that’ll be okay …’ Hell, he is slurring now. Is he even making sense?

‘But …?’ She smiles sympathetically.

Rob blinks at her. ‘God, I don’t know, Nadine. It’s half two in the morning …’ She nods, encouraging him to go on. ‘Am I ready to move? I don’t know. It started off as a vague idea, something we might do when we were properly grown-up’ – he laughs self-consciously, feeling a little sick – ‘then wham, it’s happened, Kerry and the kids are there already and there’s this awful pressure to sell the London house …’ No, stop it, that came out all wrong. What about that lovely day on the beach with the kite? It had felt completely right then …

Nadine is studying his face. ‘Does Kerry know you’re having doubts, Rob?’

‘It’s too late to stop it now. We’ve taken the kids out of their London school and enrolled them in Shorling. And anyway, she’s convinced we can make it work. It’ll just take time, she reckons …’ He takes a big gulp from his glass, grateful that the others have wandered through to the kitchen in search of something to eat.

‘You poor darling.’ Nadine places a delicate hand on his knee. ‘So you feel trapped …’

‘Well, um, kind of …’ Rob looks down at her hand, feeling no less startled than he would if a rare butterfly landed there. He can hardly swat it away, but nor does he feel entirely comfortable with her leaving it there for much longer. Anyway, why is he grumbling about the move? Is it the vodka, or a pathetic desire to say what he thinks he should say to a girl who can barely have turned twenty? Her hand is showing no sign of removing itself from his knee, and he wonders what the others will think as they come back into the room, armed with a lump of Cheddar and some crackers on a pink chopping board (clearly, neon pink is a theme around the flat). Of course, they won’t think anything. Eddy’s new team are always hugging and mauling each other. It’s not unusual for Ava to give Eddy a languorous shoulder massage in the middle of a features meeting.

Rob swallows hard and tries to centre himself by picturing Mia and Freddie on the beach last weekend, sculpting a sand mermaid with seaweed for hair. He attempts to think of ordinary things: the numerous cracks and leaks he must fix in the Shorling house, and the lone nit Freddie made him examine with a magnifying glass as it writhed on a sheet of white paper.

By the time Eddy, Frank and Ava get up to leave, Rob realises he’s even more inebriated than he first thought. Nadine springs up to fling her skinny arms around her friends before resuming her position on the sofa.

‘So, Rob,’ she starts, ‘what are you going to do?’

He drains the last of his vodka and tonic. ‘I have no fucking idea.’