Page 48 of Paper Roses

She pulls a phone from her bag and aims the camera at us. “Smile, boys,” she says. We hasten to obey, and she clicks a few times. “Jed, are you constipated? Put your arm around the boy.”

“I bet the royal family have less troublesome paparazzi than her,” Jed mutters under his breath.

“Stop whinging.” His mother checks her phone. “Such abeautifulcouple,” she says. “Wait until I tell Mary King. Her son-in-law looks like a constipated turnip. Six o’clock for the Welcome to the Family Artie Party.”

I wave. As we watch her walk back down the street, I start to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Jed asks.

“Just meeting your mother. It’s like finding out that Godzilla had parents.”

“Why did I never realise that you were cheeky? It seems like a dangerous oversight to have made.”

We lapse into a comfortable silence. The sun is warm on my head, and he appears to have forgotten that he still has his arm around me. I fix the comfort surrounding me firmly in my memory. He drops his arm as soon as his mum is out of sight, and I shiver at the loss.

Then he seizes my shoulders and looks into my eyes. “Thank you,” he breathes fervently.

Guilt floods me again. “What the hell have we done, Jed? I feel terrible deceiving her.”

He sighs. “I know. Thank you for getting me off the hook, though.”

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have beenona hook.” I grimace. “We’ve now committed ourselves to more lies. The slope into wickedness is a lot more slippery than my old RE teacher told me.”

“I just don’t want to tell her the truth.”

“I’m guessing she wouldn’t approve?”

“No. Marriage is for love only.” I flinch, but he doesn’t notice, as he’s lost in thought. “She thinks everyone is like her and Dad were. I didn’t want to disappoint her.”

“Won’t she be more disappointed when we separate?”

His gaze turns thoughtful. “She’ll be sad for a bit, but she knows these things happen. My brother is divorced.” He looks up, brightening a bit “At least she’ll think we gave it the good old British try.”

I grimace. “Jed, she’s your mum. Not Admiral Nelson.”

“You have no idea. If she’d been directing the Battle of Trafalgar, it would have been won in seconds.”

“Let’s go and unpack our cases and then we can face your family.”

“How do you manage to say that in such a sunny tone of voice?”

“It’s my superpower.”

Jed’s family home is a thirties semi-detached house in Wandsworth. It’s on a long street with similar houses and I can hear children’s laughter coming from somewhere nearby. The house is obviously well loved. The windows gleam in the sunshine, the paintwork is immaculate, and the front garden is neat and tidy.

I climb out of the car, smiling at Jed as he opens the door for me. “It’s lovely. Did you grow up here?”

“I was born here.”

“Really?”

He smiles. “Another area of life where my mother was convinced she knew better. Said she’d have a happier birth if she was in the place she loved.”

“Well, she’s probably not wrong. Hospitals can be rather frightening.”

He pauses on the pavement and I want to hoard his tender, concerned expression like Midas with a bag of gold. “You sound like you have personal experience of that,” he says.

“My dad was in hospital for a while before he died.”

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