Page 104 of Mad About You

Harriet examined the photo first, one she’d never seen before.

Her parents were walking down a tree-lined street she didn’t recognise, bundled in padded coats that indicated it was the depths of winter. Her laddish, scarily youthful, dark-haired father had hold of one her hands, her mother the other, and they were swinging her up in the air. Her mum, with strawberry-blonde long bob, had her lips formed in an open-mouthed smile, and Harriet could imagine her making a ‘wheeee’ noise.

Harriet must be about three, her dangling chunky legs in grey ribbed woollen tights and blackcurrant-coloured Mary Jane shoes. She was whooping ecstatically, a full set of peg-like teeth on show, pure toddler monkey-delight. Her hair was a rust-coloured pageboy cut.

On the back, in her mother’s girlish handwriting, was printed:

This is my favourite one of the three of us. Keep it somewhere safe and close, and we’re always with you. Yes cheesy I know but if I can’t be cheesy now! Lots of love, Mum xx

She stared and stared at the neatly printed handwriting, tried to force herself to accept that the person who had thought those words and held the pen and leaned on the photo to transcribe them, wasn’t here anymore. Harriet was already streaming with tears, so God knows how she was going to cope with the letter.

She unfurled the sheet of paper and read it, eyes racing across its few sentences in a split second, and gasped a sob. She read it six more times, then a seventh.

Acts of kindness, acts of thoughtfulness: they could echo down the years long after the person who had offered them was gone. This was worth knowing. Her mother wasn’t here but this feeling was here with her, in the room. Its effect was real.

Harriet splashed her face with cold water until she was halfway presentable and went downstairs to find Cal, who was stood eating some toast in the kitchen and absent-mindedly reading his phone. He glanced up as she came in, his eyes lighting on her face with a lively expression.

‘Hey up, it’s the wedding crasher.’

She had told him of tomorrow’s escapade last night.

‘It’s got a real shit-or-bust feel to it. It’s either the best idea or the worst idea, and nothing in-between,’ Cal said.

‘You think I shouldn’t do it?’ Harriet asked.

He’d said, in a lower voice, with directness: ‘I think you can do anything.’ She’d had to find something else to say, fast, before it risked becoming A Moment between them, which she had no spare bandwidth to handle.

‘Cal,’ she said now, trying to conceal her chest heaving, as if she’d run a mile. ‘You know how you said to wait until the right time to read my mum’s letter? That I’d know when the right time was?’

He chewed and swallowed. ‘Yes?’

‘It was true. I knew. This evening. I read it. I suddenly needed my mum tonight, so badly, so I read it.’

Harriet was stumbling over her words: she’d meant to say ‘needed to hear from her’ but as soon as she heard herself speak, she knew it was inadvertent honesty. She’d never let herself say she needed her mum before. What was the point in that plea, if it would never be answered? Except maybe it being answered had not been the point. Perhaps there was value simply in admitting it.

‘I don’t know how, but it said exactly what I needed it to say. I didn’t evenknowthere was a particular thing I needed to hear from my mum, and there it was … How mad is that?’ she finished, somewhat anti-climactically.

‘Bloody hell, Harriet!’ A giant grin lit up his face. ‘I’m so pleased for you.’

‘Thank you. I wanted to tell someone. To feel like I’d taken a photograph of this moment, somehow. Recorded it.’

‘Sure. Glad to have been the person here to tell.’

Harriet radiated elation and Cal smiled again, warmly.

‘Do you want some toast?’ he said, after a pause.

‘Hah no, I’m alright thanks. You crack on, I’m going to …’ She gestured to the door. She wanted to go back upstairs and be with her picture and her letter, and Cal nodded a goodbye, mouth full again. She noticed the class and judgement in the way Cal didn’t ask what her mother had said.

She wanted that to stay between the two of them.

49

Today, Harriet’s back bedroom in Meanwood was a dressing room for a hell of a show.

The stage was the Queen’s Hotel, a vast, Grade II-listed, 1930s Art Deco landmark overlooking City Square, up by the train station. Harriet usually loved the grimy romance and faded glamour of old hotels, the warrens of dimly lit corridors and the mysteries of the closed doors in the rooms beyond. There was always a whiff of scandal and Harriet supposed today she’d be bringing it. The Queen’s even had a private, secret entrance to the station. Harriet half-wondered if she’d end up tearing through it.

The costume was the green cheongsam dress, last seen during a rejected marriage proposal. In place of her glasses, Harriet put in contacts, and for greasepaint, applied a thick layer of creamy foundation carefully, sweeping blusher up her cheekbones. The combination of cosmetically uniform pallor and fake rosiness, to Harriet’s eyes, gave her a slightly ‘open coffin’ look. With finger and thumb, she stuck down drag queen-worthy false lashes, like dead flies.

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