Page 15 of The In-Laws

Taking a deep breath, Katie said, ‘Okay. Maybe the garage will have bananas or – or non-bruised apples?’

‘Miss Kerrigan said you should only ever buy organic fruit from a proper fruit and vegetable shop.’

Miss Kerrigan could take a flying jump off a high cliff. After Katie’s mum had died, she’d had to make her ownschool lunches. They’d usually consisted of a packet of crisps, a slice of buttered bread and a KitKat. She’d survived just fine. Why did everyone have to be perfect? Why was it no longer okay to be good enough, or even average? Instagram and TikTok bloody cooking reels were partly to blame. Perfect, pert and perky mothers baking their own ‘healthy’ bread and preparing ‘from scratch’ meals, making Katie look and feel inadequate. And now this new craze of Trad Wives? WTAF? Were these women all drugged? Women who shunned birth control, had thirty kids swinging out of them, breast-fed two babies while they milked cows, made clothes from curtains, skinned rabbits for dinner and declared how much they loved cooking and cleaning for their man. They must be mainlining Valium. It wasn’t normal to be thrilled with a life of relentless, boring drudgery.

Katie turned to her daughter. ‘Okay, what do you suggest we do, then?’

Lucy pursed her lips. ‘I suggest you do a proper shop. But it’s too late now, so we’ll just have to have horrible lunches. My new best friend, Olivia, will probably share hers with me. She does it a lot becausehermum makes her spaghetti Bolognese and other pasta lunches and puts them in a big Thermos to keep them warm and they’re delicious and nutritious.’

‘Yes, well, Olivia’s mum probably has lots of time to cook because she doesn’t work and has all day to shop and make lunches.’ Katie knew it was childish and pathetic to react like that, but she was hung-over, tired, and being compared to other mothers really triggered her.Try having no mother and a broken heart, she wanted to shout.That’s a real problem. Having a cheese sandwich for lunch is a tiny blip in your day. A dead mother is a living hell.

Lucy put her hands on her hips and stared her motherdown. ‘Olivia’s mum does work. She’s really clever – she’s a doctor. She does operations on people’s hearts and saves their lives.’

Oh, come on! A heart surgeon? A heart surgeon with time to create fancy lunchboxes? Are you kidding? How the hell could Katie compete with that?

Chastened and humbled by the sodding cardiologist, Katie bustled her kids out of the door. ‘Let’s go. I’ll do a shop today, I promise.’ She needed to up her game.

‘Swear?’ Lucy didn’t believe her.

‘Swear.’ But as Katie swore, she remembered she was working late, so she wouldn’t have time to do a grocery shop. She’d have to grab a few bits at lunchtime. It’d be fine. She’d take the plastic wrapping off and pretend they were fresh fruits.

Katie was taking a quick break and downing her fourth cup of coffee when Melanie walked into the salon. She waved at her and rinsed out her cup, while Kya showed her to Katie’s station, put a robe around her and handed her some magazines. Melanie pushed them aside and typed furiously into her phone.

Katie approached her and placed her hands on her sister-in-law’s shoulders, over the robe and towel.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey, yourself.’ Melanie kept typing. ‘Can I get a quick trim and blow-dry? I know I need my roots done but I just don’t have time.’ She finally looked up from her phone.

‘They need doing. Do you ever have time?’

Melanie half smiled. ‘Nope, but I badly need to get them done before the Goldstone awards. I can’t accompany Sloane looking like a bag lady. I need to look like a super-agent. And Nancy made a badger comment earlier.’

‘Of course she did,’ Katie said, rolling her eyes. ‘Okay, I’ll give you a root spray to tide you over, but you have to come in next week. Or I can do them at your house in the evening if that helps?’

‘That would be amazing. I don’t usually get home before nine, though.’

‘Melanie!’

‘I know. It’s just nuts at the moment.’

Katie looked into the mirror, catching Melanie’s eye. ‘You really need to slow down, or you’ll burn out, and you need to see your family.’

Melanie sighed. ‘I have all the best intentions but something always comes up and … well …’

A bit like me, Katie thought, with my plans to shop and prepare more nutritious lunches. Still, though, the twins would turn sixteen this coming year: Melanie had to lean in before they slipped through her fingers. ‘The twins will be gone soon. Don’t miss out on them.’

Katie wanted to add that she saw herself in the twins, but she wasn’t sure how Melanie would react. She could see they were live-wires and they needed boundaries. Katie hadn’t had any boundaries laid down by her dad, and things could have gone a very different way if she hadn’t had a swimming coach who’d kept her from spiralling. Katie had been a good swimmer, she could probably have been a great one, but she lacked commitment. Fred Hanson, her coach at the swimming club, had always encouraged her, supported her and kept a close eye on her. When he saw her beginning to act out, at around sixteen, he had taken her aside and given her a serious talking-to.

‘You have a choice here, Katie, sink or swim – sorry for the swimming reference, but I’m serious. If you keep mitching off school and hanging around with that bunchof messers, you’ll ruin your life. Go to school, and if you want to leave next year when you turn seventeen, have a plan. Find something you like doing and work hard.’

It was actually Fred who’d suggested hairdressing, ‘because you’re always coming in here with new hairstyles’. Katie had cried more when Fred died than when her own dad did six months later. Fred had been the parent-figure she’d craved. Her dad had wallowed in grief and alcohol. He wasn’t an alcoholic as such – he didn’t drink all day or miss work or shout at her or anything like that. He was a quiet, sad drunk. Some people took antidepressants; her dad drank alcohol. He’d often fall asleep on the couch after a few whiskeys. Katie would come downstairs in the mornings to find him passed out, still in his suit. It upset her that her dad had never been able to move on from his grief and find happiness, not even in his own daughter. Still, he did his best and was kind in his own way, if a bit neglectful. The house had always been quiet and sad: Katie had hated that and spent as little time there as possible. It wasn’t her dad she missed, though, it was Fred. He was the one she spoke to when she needed advice. She’d look up at the sky and ask him what she should do – and always, without fail, Fred’s deep voice would come into her head with words of wisdom.

Melanie was totally absorbed in her phone, so Katie combed her hair out slowly, losing herself in her thoughts.

Thankfully, she’d met Jamie shortly after her two losses and he had helped fill the deep void in her life. She had gone out with bad boys before Jamie, but deep down she knew she wanted a good guy. She wanted to marry someone solid, someone who would not let her down, like her dad had. Someone who would keep her from going down the wrong path. Katie was self-aware enough to know thather loneliness could lead her to throw herself into the wrong marriage. Jamie had saved her. He was her person.

She always felt Fred had sent him to her because she’d met Jamie in an old-fashioned bar, full of old men drinking pints of Guinness and talking about the olden days, not young, fit guys you could date. She used to go there with Fred and she had gone in one day after work, feeling lonely and missing him. Jamie was sitting up at the bar, and she noticed him immediately because he was half the age of anyone else there. His car had broken down outside and he was waiting for the AA to arrive. They got chatting and that was that. It was Fate, and she firmly believed that Fred had brought them together.

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