I wondered if it was my imagination that the other parents appeared to give the school gate women a wide berth as they bragged in loud voices about their children’s recent test results and made scathing comments about a private maths tutor who wasn’t meeting their expectations and who they were all planning to dismiss en masse in the next couple of days. I noticed that the ordinary parents shot surreptitious glances their way indicating a mixture of curiosity and distrust.
I’d changed my transparent top for a soft cotton tunic that looked good with my bootcut jeans and I made an effort to hold my head high as I waited alone outside Rowan’s class, reasoning that even if I still felt inadequate inside, I needn’t let everyone see it.
When Miss Packton flung open the doors, dead on 3.15, she gestured to me to approach the classroom. Only when she’d ensured that the other children had all been delivered safely to their designated pickups did she steer Rowan out last, beaming at me.
‘He’s been an absolute star,’ she said brightly. ‘I think he’s thoroughly enjoyed his first day, right, Rowan?’
‘Yes, miss,’ Rowan said bashfully, his cheeks turning pink.
‘And this’ – she brandished a large sheet of paper, turning it so I could see the carefully applied strokes of colour – ‘is the masterpiece he produced when I asked the children to draw or paint their favourite outing.’
It was a painting of two figures on a beach. Even I could see it was impressive for an eight-year-old. The tall figure I instantly recognised as Isaac and the short one was obviously Rowan himself. The sea was behind them as the figures stooped to gather tiny pieces of rock. I recalled the outing immediately. Isaac and Rowan had searched for fossils at Saltburn-by-the-Sea while I relaxed with my Kindle and a flask of tea in a fold-up deckchair on the stony beach. I felt a pinch of regret when I realised this had been last summer. Since then, we hadn’t had any full days out as a family at all.
Rowan shakes the painting at his father now, eager to get his full attention after waiting hours to show him. Isaac glances at the artwork but he doesn’t take it from Rowan’s hands to inspect it further.
‘It’s fabulous, buddy. We had a great time that day, didn’t we?’ He opens his briefcase and looks inside distractedly.
Rowan nods, but I notice the effect that Isaac’s lack of enthusiasm has on his mood. He puts the paper down on the hall table and returns to the living room, the spring in his step gone. I glare at Isaac.
This is exactly what we had to put up with in his old job, with its unsociable hours and emails streaming in twenty-four-seven. It took every drop of energy and attention from him, leaving us, his family, with nothing. There were times when it felt like we just got to see his exhausted husk at the end of the day before it all started again early the next morning.
He catches my pointed look and tries to rescue the situation by injecting some false enthusiasm into his voice. ‘Well done, champ. Did you have a good first day?’
Of course, Rowan, like most kids, is wise to the tricks of busy adults, and Isaac’s ploy to sound interested doesn’t work.
‘It was OK,’ he mumbles.
‘I can’t tell you what a bitch of a first day it’s been for me, Janey,’ Isaac says in a low voice. He closes his eyes briefly and allows the weight of his head to hang a moment. ‘Hot shower, meal and bed, I think. In that order.’
‘Fine.’ I don’t bother to remark on anything about my own day. I’m certainly not going to tell him how I’m excited about the school job that’s up for grabs, and I’m shelving my plans to cook the two rib-eye steaks I have in the fridge. It might sound petty, but I feel like he doesn’t deserve my efforts. Maybe if I treat him in the same offhand manner he uses with me, he might twig that he needs to up his game a bit.
‘Is there anything to eat?’ he asks. ‘I’m starving.’
‘I suppose I could rustle up an omelette,’ I say.
‘An omelette?’ His voice is laced with disappointment.
‘Yes, Isaac, an omelette. I didn’t plan on cooking a meal this late, and I’m tired, too.’
‘OK. Thanks,’ he says, and heads upstairs still in his shoes and coat. Still clutching that bloody briefcase like his life depends on it.
Twelve
As Susan Marsh boarded the number 342 bus, she realised that at that moment, for the first time in her life, she felt truly happy. Turning eighteen had made all the difference to her being told what to do and when to do it by her parents. She knew they meant well, but they were… well, just being parents.
Best of all, she’d learned on her birthday last week that she had been successful in winning a place at nursing college. She was really excited about that. Way back in primary school, when all her friends had seemed to enjoy dressing up as Disney princesses and pirates, Susan had felt happiest in her play nurse’s uniform. Not a doctor, mind, it had to be a nurse, because nurses had more time to be with patients and spread their kindness. Susan had developed the opinion, through childhood visits to the hospital to battle severe asthma that she had thankfully grown out of, that doctors always seemed to be racing against the clock, with little time to chat.
Achieving her dream of earning a place at the nursing college in the city, with vocational training in the Queen’s Medical Centre, had just blown her mind.
Even better, when her mother raised an eyebrow at a brief glimpse of midriff, or her father remarked on the fact that she hadn’t got home until half past eleven when she’d always been expected to return from a night out no later than eleven, Susan was able to say in a smug voice, ‘Remember, I’m an adult now.’
They had no need to worry really. She had always been quite a conservative dresser, and because of her nursing ambitions, she had no problem in turning down all-night parties in favour of an early night with a cup of Horlicks so she could be at her best for lessons the next day.
She brushed off a couple of flecks on her new tailored beige trousers and ran admiring fingers over the silky-smooth blouse her mum had grudgingly bought for her birthday.
‘Isn’t it a bit see-through?’ Erin Marsh had murmured, narrowing her eyes and tilting her head this way and that.
Susan had laughed. ‘I think you can just about glimpse the fact that I have a lacy bra on, Mum, but it’s not as if I’m baring my cleavage.’
Her parents didn’t realise how lucky they were. Susan knew girls at college who wore dresses so tight that they had to leave their knickers off!
Susan and her friend Melissa Deakin had been looking forward to tonight’s event for ages. First had been Susan’s eighteenth last week, which she’d thoroughly enjoyed. There had been a slap-up birthday lunch with her parents during the day, and then Melissa had arranged surprise tickets to see a favourite rock band, who were appearing at the Royal Concert Hall. Afterwards they had gone to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, reputedly the oldest pub in England, where a group of college friends had gathered to help her celebrate.
The countdown had then started in earnest for Melissa’s own eighteenth, which, thanks to her barrister parents being rather well off and living in a mansion in Wollaton, was going to be a fancy affair with a proper band, catering and even a magician performing in a hired marquee in the grounds.