Page 41 of Mad About You

‘Hi.’

‘Aren’t you going to ask me inside?’ Jacqueline said, in a combative tone, that suggested the imminent rinsing mightbe better behind closed doors. Harriet led Jacqueline through to the front room, wondering if she’d just stupidly invited the vampire across the threshold when she could’ve simply shut the door on her. Why didn’t being wholly innocent feel more powerful? It was an ambush and Harriet was unprepared.

Jacqueline glanced around at the furnishings, to make it clear that Harriet was being judged. ‘Jon says you’re renting a room that you found online.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Harriet said.

Jacqueline looked back at her with a triumphal pony-shake of her head, as if the fittings proved a point. ‘You’ve walked out on Jon todossin a stranger’s spare room. I hope she likes having you here.’

Harriet briefly wondered why Jon hadn’t added ‘and she is dwelling with a MAN’ to the list of charges, then thought,ah, it was because it’d lead to confessing to lamping him.

‘How did you get my address?’ Harriet said, as if she didn’t already know the answer.

‘Jon gave it to me. Lest you attack him for that, he’s still so protective he’d not have handed it over had I told him the truth. He thinks I’m here to see if I could talk you round, persuade you to give him another chance. I think we both know that’s not going to happen. This is more some woman-to-woman honesty.’

Oh, what a fucking HERO. He’d immediately unleashed his mum on Harriet, on the outside chance it might get him what he wanted. And Jacqueline genuinely thought that gave him nobility?!

Jon didn’t overlook his familial vices, Harriet had beenwoefully naïve on that score. He gave them a pass in the certainty they’d do the same for him – all in it together, co-enablers. Somewhere there was a Barraclough family crest with a Latin motto that translated asEat Shit Losers.He knew perfectly well his mother was a nuclear warhead in Hobbs occasionwear, but she was never going to razehisvillage.

Harriet finally accepted the truth of everything Lorna had said that night when she’d told her about his proposal. It was ruthlessness. Ruthlessness using a telephone voice, in chinos.

He gave himself a psychological comfort zone of wilful ignorance. When you confronted him, tried to make him take responsibility for the consequences, he slithered through your hand like a bar of soap. He meant no harm!He’d simply not spent a second considering or caring if he would do harm, which actually was the same thing.

Offstage, Harriet heard the front door open and close and wished, fervently, that Cal Clarke hadn’t got home from theYorkshire Postthis very second. He’d now hear all of this. Jacqueline had the sort of voice that cut through.

‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ Jacqueline said. ‘I wasn’t going to bother with you, but then I thought, no – someone needs to force you to look at what you’ve done. And it sure as hell won’t be your victim: my distraught, loyal son.’

He was loyal alright, loyal to his own interests.

‘You are not a mother, Harriet. If you were, you might have some idea how it felt to see my youngest son, broken, sobbing, askingwhy doesn’t she love me, Mum? What did I do wrong, Mum?The shame he felt in confessing to YOUR behaviour was devastating. You have humiliated and shattered him.’

‘I’m sorry if Jon is hurt, but—’

‘I will finish, thank you!’ Jacqueline barked, with a vehemence that startled Harriet into silence.

‘I never thought you appreciated him, and it was agonising to watch. I could see him striving, so hard, for you to love him the way he loved you. I could see the effort he made that you didn’t reciprocate. You made him feel like he wasn’t worthy of you, like he wasn’tenough for you. In fact it was quite the opposite way round, but of course, a besotted man cannot see this. But even I could never have anticipated thesheer viciousnessrequired to throw that ring back in his face, on the same night you accepted his proposal in front of his entire family.’

Harriet wished she hadn’t blushed a shade of nectarine. ‘That situation was chosen by Jon. Would it have been better if I’d said no on the spot, and let him down with you all as an audience?’

‘I think anything is better than telling a man you will marry him, and then withdrawing that an hour and a half later, Harriet, yes. Falsely accepting a proposal is plain hideous.’

Harriet could see how this version would effortlessly make her the gaudy whore of Ilkley boomers’ wine clubs and book groups. It was one of those anecdotes where no one would spoil it by asking themselves precisely what Harriet had: what was the good girl’s option here? Marrying someone you didn’t want to, because it was ill-mannered otherwise?

‘Sorry, but that’s total rubbish,’ Harriet said, with a force she didn’t quite feel, and saw the sour satisfaction pass across Jacqueline’s face. She should remember the law of being goaded: you losing your temper was a victory for them. Itwas proof of who you really were. ‘My crime is breaking up with Jon, the end. You’d hate me however it happened.’

Harriet feared she’d not heard Cal go upstairs. Please God, don’t be listening. She couldn’t reasonably object, if he was – Jon had provided Cal with a legitimate interest in the Barraclough family, and after all, this was his house.

Considering that she’d moved in with a man with a scandalous love life, so far, Harriet hadn’t exactly pulled off ‘low-key’ in this department either.

‘Irrespective of the precise degree of brutality with which you’ve treated Jon, you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life, I’m afraid. You peaked with my son,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Women will be queuing round the block to date JJ.’

Ewww. Bragging about your single son’s sexual prospects? Harriet hoped if she was ever a mother, she didn’t tell herself this sort of thing was ‘lioness with her cubs’ behaviour. Seemed a very gendered sort of brag, too. Harriet couldn’t imagine a father saying of his dumped daughter, ‘she’ll be alright as she’ll get mad amounts of dick’.

‘He’s handsome, he’s successful, and you could not ask for a kinder, more devoted man. He can’t see it yet, but he who laughs last, laughs the longest. And he will be laughing long, long, after you’ve stopped, my girl.’

Jacqueline cast another appraising look at their surroundings. Given the house was nice, Harriet took the implication to be:meh, none of this is yours.

‘I haven’t split up with Jon to look for an upgrade. I’m not replacing an iPhone. Relationships are about being right for each other, being happy.’

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