Page 61 of Forever, Maybe
“Nell!”
He heard Stephanie’s voice on the other end, calm but firm. “Are you okay, Nell? What’s going on?” Joe always joked that Stephanie sounded like someone who could chew your balls off for breakfast and spit them out without breaking a sweat.
“I’m fine, fine,” Nell said quickly. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Ten minutes.This wasn’t just a fight. This was real.
“Nell,please!”
“Don’t. Don’t talk to me!” She yanked her overnight bag closed with a sharp, decisive tug.
“This is stupid! You cannae walk out just because I brought up babies!”
She didn’t answer, and the silence was louder than anything she could’ve said. It turned out shecouldwalk out.
And she did.
Chapter twenty-five
April2016
Nell headed downstairs. No-one had yet answered the door. Danny was out back in the garden. Another cliché. He was firing up the expensive barbecue he'd bought a couple of years ago, after conducting a ridiculous amount of online research. Gas-fired, enormous and capable of grilling enough sausages, burgers, chicken wings and their vegetarian equivalents to feed a small army.
(Only for the barbecue to sit idle for most of the year—his long work hours and the ever-uncooperative Scottish weather sub-optimum for regular grilling.)
Joe and his lot had already arrived, clearly via the garden gate, which explained why she hadn’t heard them. Their kids were swarming around Calamity Jean, the children’s entertainer Nell had hired for the afternoon. Clown shoes, red nose, the lot. Worth her weight in gold—the kind the Swiss stored in vaults for wealthy, ethically flexible clients.
The doorbell rang again.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she muttered, throwing a defiant, hopefully unseen (though she wouldn’t put it past her mother-in-law to have x-ray vision) two-fingered salute with both hands.
The childishness of it made her giggle. She’d once assumed, back in her teens, that adults didn’t do that sort of thing. That by your late twenties, some internal switch flipped, triggering sensible, impeccable behaviour from then on. No more hysterical laughter at farts, dainty sips of wine and gracious refusals of seconds. No more late-night Nutella eaten straight from the jar with a teaspoon (or your finger). Just solemn nods about interest rates and the unsettling realisation that you finally understood pensions.
No. No, no, no, and absolutely not.
By the time she reached the front door, the bell had rung a third time. Danny was still in the garden, oblivious. She pasted on her best “hello, lovely mother-in-law” smile—greatly improved by the makeover Stephanie had just given her—and flung the door open.
“Hello, Nell, love. How are you? I’ve brought fairy cakes.”
Her mother-in-law might be the last person on Earth still making fairy cakes instead of cupcakes, and for that, Nell grudgingly approved. Cupcakes were, to borrow a Glasgow phrase, an “aw fur coat nae knickers” confection—an excessive pile of icing that promised more than it delivered. Fairy cakes, with their modest swirl of frosting, were far more satisfying in the flavour department.
Trish’s appearance hadn’t changed a bit in all the years Nell had known her. Her bob was precision-engineered, the mahogany brown hair falling in perfect symmetry around her face, with two blonde streaks framing her parting like goalposts. The make-up was the same too. Sapphire blue eyeliner, two vivid stripes of blusher carved along her cheekbones and an orangey-pink lipstick that Stephanie swore she must have bulk-bought as a teenager and never strayed from.
Over one shoulder, Trish carried a handbag and, slung alongside it, a cotton tote bag. Spray bottles jutted out of the top.
“Shall I give the bathrooms a wee clean for you, love?”
Nell’s jaw tightened, tension radiating upwards. “No need, Trish! The cleaner came on Friday, and I gave them a quick spruce this morning.”
Trish shook her head, her bright smile unwavering. “Och, it’s no bother! Lakeland in the Buchanan Centre sells the most marvellous shower spray. Shifts soap scum in seconds. Why don’t I dump the cakes and crack on?”
Before Nell could muster a reply, Trish was off, sailing past her like a battleship on a mission. She greeted Bobby, who had materialised in the hallway, and then swept into the kitchen.
I shouldn’t let her get to me.
Nell’s shoulders, missing the memo, were already inching toward her ears. Trish’s standards of cleanliness operated on an entirely different plane—impossibly high, vaguely terrifying and the living embodiment of the phrasecleanliness is next to godliness. Nell’s brief stint living with her had left her in a constant state of feeling inadequate, forever trailing behind some unattainable domestic ideal.
She could already hear her mother-in-law shooing Corrie from the kitchen with a sharp, “Get out, you germy little thing!” Never mind that her poor old cat was far too arthritic to leap up onto any surface, let alone the counters.
