3. Sophie

Pippa stood in the car park of the golf club and handed Jack a bag of clothes for Robert. I had no doubt that half of them would be dirty and need washing and ironing. She’d never been mother of the year, but over the past six months Pippa had really let things slide.

She crouched down and hugged her son goodbye.

‘Be good for Daddy.’

‘He always is. He’s the best boy.’ Jack’s voice was cold.

‘I’ll see you in two weeks, Robert.’ Pippa ignored Jack.

‘Where are you going, Mummy?’

‘On a little holiday, sweetie.’

‘Again?’ Robert’s face fell.

‘Don’t make a fuss, sweetie, I’ll be back soon. Doesn’t Mummy deserve a break?’

‘Yes, Mummy.’ He looked crestfallen.

Little holiday, my arse. And holiday from what exactly? She barely seemed to be working, after being replaced by a younger presenter on her TV styling slot, and Robert spent most of his time with us. But apparently the poor thing was worn out and needed two weeks in Mallorca sitting on her backside drinking cocktails while Jack and I, once again, juggled work and having to leave early to pick up Robert from school. Adding a young child changed the whole routine of our house and it certainly wasn’t easy.

I’d thought that when Pippa and Jack had agreed to shared custody, things would smooth over. I was happy to have Robert 50 per cent of the time: he was a sweet child and Jess doted on her little half-brother. But I had not bargained for raising my stepson almost full-time. I had a busy job and a tricky teenage daughter on my hands. Jack and I were still finding each other again after a four-year separation, and being a couple was much more difficult when there was a little boy in the next room who had regular nightmares and needed his dad’s reassurance and attention. I didn’t mind that Robert called for Jack, but we needed time and space to connect properly as well, and that had to take a back seat whenever Robert was there. It was hard for Jess too. She was getting used to her mum and dad being back together and now she had a little brother living in the house. I really wanted things to be calm at home for all of us, not unpredictable and messy.

‘We’ll have great fun, buddy,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll take you to the Aqua Park on Saturday.’

‘Yay!’ Robert cheered.

I frowned. I was running a fashion show on Saturday. I’d told Jack I needed him there to keep an eye on Jess. I didn’t like her being unsupervised at weekends. If she went to the park with the groups of teens I saw hanging about the place, she might start drinking, or vaping, or both. I wanted one of us always around to check up on her.

I’d deal with it later. I didn’t have the headspace for it today. I needed to get back inside to the lunch and listen to stories about Mum, look after Dad and avoid Louise, who was driving everyone nuts. After her major wobble during the eulogy, she was now on a mission to show everyone how together she was, so she was bossing the poor golf-club staff around like an army general on manoeuvres.

‘I’m off now,’ Pippa said. ‘By the way, can you make sure to check Robert’s hair for nits? I got a message from the school that they’re doing the rounds in his class.’ She swished around, her cashmere camel coat floating behind her, climbed into her car and drove off without a backward glance.

I looked down at Robert who, sure enough, was scratching his head. I sighed. Could this day get any worse?

‘I’m bored, Daddy,’ Robert said. ‘Can we go home now? Please?’

Jack glanced up at me. ‘I’m so sorry, Sophie, but it’s been a long day for him. Would you mind if I brought him home? Will you be okay without me?’

We hadn’t even got as far as dessert. I wanted Jack to stay, to be at my side for the whole lunch. I wanted my husband with me and his heartbroken daughter on this awful day. I wanted Pippa to have the decency to look after her own son on the day of my mother’s goddamn funeral. But none of that had happened. It had been a long day for the little boy, and I knew if he started acting up it would be a drag for everyone, so I said, ‘It’s fine, take him home.’

I walked them outside the restaurant and gave Robert a kiss and a hug so he knew I wasn’t angry with him.

‘Thanks, darling,’ Jack said, squeezing my hand. ‘I’ll have a bath and a large gin and tonic waiting for you when you get home. Text me when you’re on the way.’

‘That sounds great, thanks.’

Jack kissed me and headed off with Robert, hand in hand. As I turned to go back into the lunch, I saw Gavin’s girlfriend, Shania, sitting on a couch outside, cradling a cup of tea between her hands. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘Yes, fine. Just a bit tired,’ she said. ‘The baby is kicking a lot and I needed to sit down for a minute. And if I’m, like, totally honest, I’m hiding from Gavin. He is determined to introduce me to every single cousin and relation in there. You guys have a crazy amount of relations. It’s a lot.’

I sat down beside her. ‘You poor thing. Our family can be overwhelming. Jack found it hard in the beginning too. He could never remember all our uncles’ and aunts’ names. Seven siblings on Mum’s side and eight on Dad’s. It’s definitely overwhelming.’

‘Yeah, totally. I’m from a small family, so this is very different.’

‘Are you feeling OK generally?’

She nodded. ‘Just tired all the time. I’m hoping now I’m in the second trimester I’ll get my energy back. Work is, like, super-busy so I need to be on my A-game. We’ve just signed a massive deal with the US to distribute my fake tan in all of the Walmart stores, so it’s, like, a really big deal. I’ll have to travel over as much as I can, before I get too big.’

I shook my head. This girl was unbelievable. When we’d first met her, we’d thought she was just another of Gavin’s flings. Dad thought she was from America because of her mid-Atlantic drawl. Mum thought she was ‘for the birds’ and that she was ‘too flighty for our Gavin’. Turns out we were all wrong, so wrong.

When she had set up her fake-tan brand four years ago, we all thought it was a ‘little project’, but she had turned it into a huge success in Europe and now she was planning to conquer the US. Shania had turned out to be a savvy and hard-working businesswoman.

‘Seriously, Shania, that is incredible.’

‘Well, having my whizz of an accountant dad helping me has been key in growing the business.’

‘Let’s not forget your fourteen-hour workdays and your great product. Gavin really landed on his feet with you. I hope my brother is being supportive.’

‘OMG, he so is. He literally does everything for me. I couldn’t do this without him. He’s my personal assistant and my rock.’

‘Good. You need support – you work so hard.’

‘Yeah, but when you love what you do it doesn’t feel like work.’ She smiled.

I liked what I did, but did I love it? No. Did it feel like work? Yes. In the early days, dealing with the young models had been challenging, but I was up for it. I was good at encouraging them, boosting their bruised egos after rejection, getting them buzzed before fashion shows and shoots … I got it, I’d been there. I’d been a young, na?ve, clueless model, so I knew what it felt like. But lately some of the girls coming in had seemed so entitled, needy and over-sensitive. They expected everything to be handed to them on a plate. If they were rejected for a brand deal, a campaign or a runway show, they’d have a full breakdown in my office, then need to take a few days off to ‘recover from the hurtful rejection’, to ‘regroup’, to ‘meditate’, to ‘nurture my crushed self-esteem’, to ‘cleanse the negative energy from my personal space’ … It was relentless and utterly irritating.

Models were rejected on a daily basis. It was part of the job. I was very upfront about that when I signed them. I always told them that being rebuffed was a large part of a model’s life. If you can’t handle it, don’t sign the contract.

I’d stuck with the job because we needed the money. But even now that Jack was back in a well-paid job with his bankruptcy behind him, I would still never give up work. I would never again put myself in a position where I relied only on his salary. I’d learned the hard way how important it was for me to earn money too. I was absolutely determined that Jess would never make the mistakes I’d made by being completely dependent on her husband. She needed to earn her own money. She needed to have security in her life and never, ever end up on the floor, penniless, like I had.

‘There you are, Shania!’ Gavin’s head appeared around the corner. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you okay?’

Shania smiled up at him. ‘I’m fine, babe, just needed a little break.’

He helped her up and kissed her. Turning to me he said, ‘You have to come in, Soph. You have to see the way some of the women are flirting with Dad. They’re shameless. At Mum’s funeral!’

‘What? You’re kidding me?’

Who were these women, and did they have no respect? Mind you, Mum had always told us that when a wife died, which was rare as mostly the husbands died first, the widower was always mobbed. He was fair game and the numbers were in his favour. Seventy per cent of the golf-club members over the age of seventy-five were women. A freshly single man was manna from Heaven. It was every woman for herself. It was dog eat dog to see who could get their claws into a new widower first. Mum had chuckled and said it was like watching lionesses hunting an innocent antelope. It had been funny when it was about someone else, but now it was my dad and my mum and it wasn’t remotely funny.

I marched in and headed straight towards Dad, who was backed up against a wall as some woman, with silver-grey hair blow-dried like a helmet, talked at him.

‘I’ll drop a casserole in to you tomorrow. You won’t go hungry, George. We’ll play golf next week. I’ll book it all and let you know. Don’t you worry, George. I’m here for you.’

I elbowed my way between them. ‘Dad won’t need any casseroles. We’ll be looking after his meals.’ I gave her my best fake smile.

‘Oh, George, is this one of your beautiful daughters?’ the silver vixen asked.

‘Yes, this is my youngest, Sophie.’

‘Lovely to meet you, Sophie. I’m Daphne, a great friend of your mother and father.’

Really? I wanted to ask. Then how come I’ve never heard of you?

What I said was, ‘You must be devastated about Mum, then.’

‘Oh, yes. Anne was a lovely woman.’

‘Yes, she was. Herself and Dad had a wonderful marriage. We’re all heartbroken.’

She made fake-sympathy noises and refused to move away.

I decided to opt for the blunt approach. ‘I need to speak to my father alone.’

The shameless cow lunged at Dad, giving him a kiss on both cheeks, marking him with her awful pink lipstick.

I yanked him by the arm away from her.

‘Who in the name of God is she?’ I asked.

‘I don’t really know. I’ve met her a few times, but I didn’t remember her name.’

‘She certainly knows you. She was all over you.’

‘Ah, she was only being nice.’

‘Nice? Dad, she practically had her tongue down your throat, the pushy cow.’

‘Jesus, Sophie, steady on.’

‘There’ll be lots more where she came from too. Single men are a target here and you’re not bad-looking or too banjaxed for your age.’

‘Don’t hold back, Sophie, tell me what you really think.’ Dad shook his head. ‘You’re overreacting, pet.’

‘I’m not. Seriously, Dad, you’ll be beating the women off with a stick. You’re completely outnumbered.’

As if on cue, Dolores, Mum’s choir friend, a busty woman a good ten years younger than Dad, came rushing over and threw her arms around him, ‘George, my poor, poor George.’

‘She might smother him with those breasts.’ Gavin had sidled up beside me. ‘They’re huge, even bigger than Shania’s, and hers are like watermelons since she got pregnant.’

We stifled a giggle. It was good to laugh. I felt some of the tension in my stomach recede. It had been such an awful time, watching Mum fade away into nothing, saying goodbye to her as she slowly died before our eyes. We were all completely drained, emotionally and physically.

‘What are you laughing about? Please tell me. I need a laugh.’ Julie nestled in beside us.

‘Guys.’ Louise’s voice made us jump. ‘You can’t all stand together in a huddle. You need to mingle.’

‘It’s not a cocktail party, Louise,’ I snapped. ‘It’s Mum’s funeral lunch. We can talk to whoever we bloody want.’ I’d had enough of her bossing us all around.

‘Mum would want us to chat to her family and friends, Sophie.’

‘She couldn’t stand most of her family and, in case you hadn’t noticed, a lot of her so-called friends are trying to throw the leg over Dad.’

‘What? Are you serious?’ Julie was clearly appalled.

‘Yes, Julie, look over there right now.’ I pointed to where Dad was trying to extricate himself from the vice-like grip of Dolores.

‘How can she? How can they? Poor Mum. Have they no respect?’ She welled up.

Louise drank deeply from her wine glass. ‘A single, heterosexual man in a golf club is like the Hope Diamond.’

‘Women of a certain age are scary.’ Gavin watched in awe as Dolores clung to Dad’s arm.

‘She needs to back the hell away. I will not have my mother disrespected.’ Louise’s jaw was set. Uh-oh … She marched off towards Dad and the unsuspecting Dolores.

‘We need popcorn for this,’ Gavin said, and I thumped his arm.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the triplets picking up a bottle of wine from one of the tables and sneaking to the back of the room to drink it. I spun around, looking for Jess. Thankfully, she was nowhere near them. She was sitting with Clara and Tom playing cards. She was so sweet with her younger cousins, it warmed my heart. As tricky as she was at the moment, pushing all the teenage boundaries, the sweet Jess was still in there. She had been a rock to me today.

I decided not to tell Julie about the wine. I’d go over and get it from them. Julie didn’t need to be worried about her sons getting drunk at her mother’s funeral.

Julie and Gavin were watching wide-eyed as Louise reached Dad and tapped Dolores firmly on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘My father needs to be with his family at this terrible time. He does not need to be harassed by women looking to replace my mother before she is even cold in her grave.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dolores spluttered.

‘Back away, Dolores. Now is not your time. Mum was a very special woman and we miss her. We want her memory to be honoured and we need space to process our loss and grieve. So, back away and leave Dad alone. Have some respect. Mum is … Mum was … she …’ Louise began to cry again. Before today, I hadn’t seen her cry since Clara’s diagnosis. And before that was when she was fifteen and came second in a national debating competition. She still claims it was a fix.

Julie rushed over, put her arm around Louise and led her away, mouthing, ‘Sorry,’ to Dolores. I didn’t think Dolores deserved a sorry, but that was Julie, always nice to everyone.

I went over and linked Dad’s arm. ‘How are you holding up, Dad?’

‘I just can’t believe she’s really gone,’ he whispered. ‘We drove each other mad at times but she was my Anne. I can’t remember life without her. My lovely Anne.’

‘Oh, Dad, I know.’ I kissed his cheek.

Would I feel this level of grief if Jack died, I wondered. The thing was, I could remember life without him. I remembered life without him very well. I remembered our terrible break-up, then him meeting and shacking up with Pippa. I remembered all of the pain and heartache. It was still clear in my mind. Would I feel bereft if Jack passed away? I wasn’t sure. I loved him, but there was a lot of hurt and mistrust in our past. And because of Robert, we were stuck with Pippa in our lives, a constant reminder of our years apart.

Mum and Dad had had fifty-three years of constancy. Ups and downs, to be sure, but consistent support, love and respect. It was true love in its raw and honest form.

We’d all have to rally around Dad to help him through. No doubt Louise would have an Excel spreadsheet drawn up for us, but we also needed to give him the space to grieve and feel, to sit and cry or stare at the wall.

I glanced at my watch. It was almost six o’clock. I hoped people would start heading home soon. I was exhausted and had nothing left to give. I prayed Jack would follow through on his promise of a hot bath and a gin and tonic.