Page 5 of Seven Letters

Mia tried not to, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘And will you please clean up this mess?’

‘It’s a pigsty in here,’ Riley mimicked her mother’s voice.

‘Well, it is, Riley, seriously.’

‘It’s the middle of the night. Stop nagging.’

Mia left the room before she snapped at her daughter. All they did was argue these days – morning, noon and night. It was exhausting. Her friends said their teenagers had comeout of the really moody stage at about sixteen. Only three months to go …

When Mia reached the kitchen, Johnny was sitting at the table sipping coffee, bent over his iPad, reading the news. ‘Is she up?’ he asked.

‘Nope, but she’s awake, so that’s something.’

Mia poured herself a coffee from the pot on the table. ‘Remember the days when you’d wake her and her face lit up with joy to see you?’

‘Yep,’ Johnny said.

‘I wish I’d cherished them more.’ She sighed.

Johnny waved his hand. ‘Ah, it’s only hormones. She’ll grow out of it. Give her some space.’

Mia gripped her cup. That was Johnny’s favourite line, ‘Give her some space’; the other was ‘Leave her be.’ But if you left a teenager ‘be’, and didn’t set boundaries and guidelines, they’d go wild. The rude way Riley spoke to Mia was bad enough. There was no way she was going to give her space to get drunk or take drugs.

Johnny had grown up with five brothers, and his parents had basically let them do whatever they wanted. They’d all turned out OK. Well, except for Stephen, who was ‘fond of the drink’, a.k.a. a raging alcoholic. Johnny reckoned it was a good way to grow up, free and unrestricted.

Mia’s parents had been very strict, especially her mum, who always knew where she and Sarah were, who they were with and what they were up to. True, sometimes it had been a bit much, but now Mia respected her mother’s concern.

But Mia didn’t want to be the ‘bad cop’ all the time with Riley. She was always the one chastising and disciplining. Sometimes she wished Johnny would step in and take the reins a bit more. She was the disciplinarian all day in school. As deputy head she had to deal with all the kids who got intotrouble. She wanted to come home and take her foot off the pedal. But, no.

Johnny got to be Fun Dad, the parent who joked around and made Riley laugh. But it was Mia who had to keep on her back to study, have better manners, eat vegetables and on and on. She’d love to come home, kick off her shoes and ignore it if Riley was flaked out in front of the TV instead of doing her homework. Or not care if Riley never ate any vegetables or fruit. She’d love to ignore Riley’s rudeness when she was in one of her many teenage moods, but she couldn’t. Johnny kept saying, ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ but in the meantime Mia wasn’t going to let her become a monosyllabic, bad-mannered person.

She missed the old days when she’d been a lot more carefree, unburdened by responsibility and being the only breadwinner. She missed drinking too much wine and having spontaneous sex on the couch with Johnny. She missed laughing. Mia couldn’t remember the last time she’d belly-laughed. She was always worried about money. She had a permanent knot in her stomach. When did life get so tough? Where did all the fun go?

She looked at Johnny. She’d like to talk to him about it, to ask him to step up more with discipline and getting Riley to study, but she couldn’t nag her husband now. She needed to build up his confidence. He’d lost his job five months ago and she knew it upset him deeply that he wasn’t providing for them.

‘So, any meetings lined up?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

Johnny swiped his finger across the iPad. ‘No, but I’ve one or two people to contact.’

Mia said nothing. Since theDaily Business Posthad shut down, there seemed to be no movement in the industry. Newspapers seemed to be the past. What was the future for her forty-one-year-old journalist husband?

It was almost impossible to survive on her income alone. She’d accepted the role of deputy head, on top of her teaching job, last year because she’d wanted to earn more to pay for maths tutoring for Riley this year. But now … Well, now there was no extra money for anything. She felt so hemmed in by her work, so trapped in the daily grind, but hers was the only pay packet in the house so she had zero choice in the matter. Every month that passed without Johnny finding a job she felt as if a noose was tightening around her neck, threatening to overwhelm her.

She crossed the fingers of her left hand under the table, like so many of her young pupils did. It was childish, but in a small way calming.

Riley shuffled in, skirt rolled up to mid-thigh, hair tied up in a messy bun. Mia could see her daughter had put make-up on to hide the smattering of spots that had appeared on her cheeks a few weeks ago. They weren’t half as bad as some of her poor friends had, but she was very conscious of them.

‘There she is, the light of my life.’ Johnny grinned at her.

Riley rolled her eyes, but her lips twitched.

Johnny reached over and laid a hand on her arm. ‘Ah, hang on now, I think I saw a smile, did I? No, couldn’t be, not this early.’

‘Go away, Dad.’ Riley pushed off his hand gently, but she was half smiling.

‘What’ll you have? Eggs? Bacon? French toast?’

Since losing his job, Johnny had taken to cooking with gusto. Mia reckoned it helped him fill the long hours and she was delighted to hand over the job to him. It was the one positive thing to come out of the rotten episode.

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