12

~ If you're really, really bad at sticking to a task, set a timer on your phone for fifteen minutes and focus on doing one thing – hanging up laundry, hoovering, emptying the dishwasher – until the timer goes off. Enjoy the school-bell feel of your task being ‘over'.

C leo phoned me first thing on Saturday morning and didn't waste time on pleasantries.

‘Where are you?' she demanded.

I was in bed, obviously, idly stalking Mitch online while pondering which clothes I should buy for my new job, and where I might suggest he and I went for dinner to celebrate, when Cleo's voice blasted through my contentment like a foghorn.

Startled, I struggled to a sitting position.

Where was I supposed to be? Was it not Saturday? The last thing I'd done before falling into bed on Friday night was to shove my filthy overalls in a hot wash. They were still in the machine, damp and ready to be remembered in a panic in the early hours of Monday morning.

‘I didn't know I was supposed to be at work today. Look, don't shout at me, but I don't have any clean uniform. You're going to have to—'

‘What? No. It's not cleaning. I need you here to help get things ready.' Cleo paused, as if she couldn't believe she had to spell it out. ‘For Wes's party?'

Wes. My youngest nephew. He was – I did some rapid mental arithmetic – eight today. I flopped back onto the pillows with a groan. Cleo's conversation with Elliot in her office had gone right out of my head, what with the job interview and the whole Mitch excitement.

This was going to be way more exhausting than scrubbing floors, and a lot noisier.

‘Remind me,' I said. ‘This year's theme is …?'

‘Trampolining. Midday at Jumping Jumping. No jewellery, no sharp objects. Wear washable clothing.' Cleo sounded momentarily weary. ‘Very washable clothing. I think that bug you had might going round the school.'

‘Oh good,' I said.

I headed straight to Cleo's via Tesco Express to purchase a gift card for Wes; boring, yes, but I knew from fifteen years of buying presents for his brothers that a gift card would be preferable to whatever a thirty-something woman imagined an eight-year-old boy would want.

It was barely nine, but party prep was in full swing. There was a minibus on the drive by the house; Mum's Polo was parked next to it, and Cleo was checking things off a list, a clipboard in one hand and a travel mug in the other. She swigged and grimaced; it probably contained an octuple espresso.

‘You took your time!' she said, by way of greeting, and steered me towards the garage, where Mum and Dad were at work assembling a production line of party bags.

‘Morning, party people!' I said.

Mum smiled wanly over a catering box of Haribo and fake tattoos. Dad waved a whoopee cushion at me.

‘ Not the whoopee cushions, Dad!' said Cleo. She swung back to me with the clipboard, ignoring the prolonged sound of a flatulent cow reverberating around the garage. The boys' parties brought out a side of Dad I rarely saw. ‘Robyn, I need you to text everyone on this list to confirm that they'll be bringing their child round here for eleven and if they're not here, they're not getting in. OK?'

I nodded. It seemed unlikely. One boy was already waiting in a car with his mum opposite the house. ‘Where's the birthday boy?' There was no sign of Wes, or indeed Alfie or Orson.

Cleo's glossy pink lips compressed into a flat line. ‘Facetiming Elliot.'

I seized on that: I'd been trying to work out how to bring up the Elliot issue on the way over. ‘Will Elliot be joining us?'

Mum and Dad studiously resumed packing party bags.

Cleo snorted. ‘It depends on his work commitments.‘

This, I felt, was unfair. Elliot's workaholic nature had been there from the start. As is tragically the way, Elliot's ambition was one of the traits Cleo had loved most about him to begin with. But as we got older and Elliot rose in the breakdown world, business leeched all the fun out of him. He always attended his sons' parties, lurking in a corner on his work phone, a finger in his ear to block out the shrieking, while Cleo flew around spinning the plates, literally and metaphorically. Cleo's mood would build from muttering to hissing to snarling at Elliot, and he didn't always make it to the candle-blowing-out.

Which was really bad, in anyone's book.

Ironically, now Elliot and Cleo had separated, I thought he spent more time with the boys: he turned up at a pre-arranged hour, shoved them in whatever fancy car he was driving and then sat in McDonald's, fighting recovery-related fires while Alfie, Orson and Wes ate whatever they liked.

‘Elliot's taking the boys out for food afterwards,' Cleo informed me, as if he was taking them to play on the railway lines. ‘He's picking them up from here at four.'

‘Will he be having a go on the trampolines?' I asked.

‘I'll be bouncing him off the walls myself if he's forgotten a present.'

Dad made a forlorn parp with his whoopee cushion.

‘Paul!' said Mum, under her breath.

The party mums started dropping off their boys right on time, almost as if they were scared not to, and by eleven fifteen we were on our way: Cleo driving the minibus and checking arrangements with the trampoline centre on her Bluetooth headset, with Mum and Dad in the seat behind her, Wes next to Orson, and me next to Alfie. Behind us were most of Wes's school class, in a state of collective excitement.

Despite the age gap, there had never been a question that Alfie and Orson wouldn't be coming with us to the trampoline park. The older two were close, and both treated Wes like a cross between a family Labrador and a science project. In front of me, Wes was telling Orson exactly how he planned to execute a triple pike backward whatever; I couldn't see Orson's face but he seemed to be listening. I turned to Alfie.

‘Nice that you both want to go trampolining with your little bro,' I whispered.

Alfie removed one AirPod from his ear, made a ‘cash' gesture with his thumb and fingers, and replaced the AirPod.

‘Fair enough,' I said. Alfie was fifteen, going on twenty- seven, and had both his parents' eye for a business opportunity. He'd been born on the same day as my graduation so Dad had attended that, and Mum had gone to Cleo's bedside to hold her hand and keep Elliot's large and enthusiastic (and now largely emigrated to Spain) family out of the maternity suite. Orson arrived twelve months and three days later: Cleo initially intended to get the messy side of parenting over in one go. Depending on how many vodkas she'd had, she'd confide that Wes was either a ‘wonderful blessing' or the result of the starlight and sambucas above the hot tub on the thirtieth birthday safari Elliot had arranged for her.

So, all those bonuses and overtime were good for something .

The party coordinators at the trampoline centre met us in the car park and from there they swept the assembled guests inside, where two hours of loud bouncing, interspersed with competitive wall-climbing and mini pizzas, commenced.

‘This is nice, isn't it?' said Mum, as we sat watching from the cafe area.

I was checking my phone to see if Mitch had replied to my message about meeting for Sunday brunch at a new vegan restaurant that had just in town. He'd read it (good) but hadn't yet replied (hmm). ‘What? Seeing the kids enjoying themselves?'

‘That, yes.' Mum stretched her legs out. ‘But mainly not being allowed to help.'

Dad and I nodded our agreement. Jake, Jack and Josh, the Bounce Kings, had directed us to the cafe and told us to help ourselves to complimentary coffee and focus on ‘making memories'. From a safe distance, for reasons of insurance. Only Cleo was allowed to get anywhere near the trampolines, and that was only after an intense discussion about whether she'd be able to make memories without first capturing them on her phone.

Mum, Dad and I chatted about Wes's birthday present (a bike), and what Alfie and Orson had been up to, and when Dad went off to find more coffee Mum turned the conversation to me.

‘So,' she began, in a not-convincing casual tone. ‘How are things with you? Any news on the job front?'

‘Actually, yes.' God, it was nice to say that and mean it. ‘I had an interview this week and I think, touch wood, they're going to offer me the job!'

Mum's face lit up with relief. ‘Have you? That's great , love. Who's it with?'

I regretted that immediately. Should I have told her, before I'd got official word? Probably not. Still, there wasn't much point rowing back now, and Mum looked so pleased I couldn't stop myself telling her all about it.

‘Good for you, Robyn.' She beamed with pleasure. ‘I never had any doubt that you'd find something else. So when would they want you to start?'

A cautious person would have stopped at this point, but I was not that person. ‘Soon. It's a maternity cover.'

‘So not a permanent role? Might they not make it permanent, if you do well?'

‘Maybe, but actually that's OK.' I'd been thinking about this: six months was long enough to get the planning stages of Lark Manor underway, then I could start on the marketing and sales plan. It couldn't be more perfectly timed. But what with all the yelling and loud pop music going on behind us, this was hardly the time to explain that to Mum. ‘I've got another project in the pipeline for later this year, so this is going to dovetail nicely.'

‘Another project?'

I made a ‘lips-zipped' gesture across my mouth. This, I could force myself to shut up about. I wanted to present Mum and Dad with the sales brochures, then tell them I wasn't just selling these apartments, I'd overseen the design and marketing, and – drum roll, please! – I owned one! The delight on their faces. The pride, the admiration, the …

Mum's voice cut through my daydream. ‘Does Cleo know you've got this job?'

‘Not yet. But she knows I'm looking. It's not like she'd want me on her cleaning staff long term, is it?'

‘You should tell her,' Mum insisted. ‘She's done you a favour, and you can't just leave her in the lurch when things are so …'

‘Hang on, didn't you say you thought I was doing her a favour by …'

‘Who's doing who a favour?'

I jumped. Orson, Cleo's middle son, had inherited his mother's ability to appear out of nowhere, despite now being nearly as tall as her already. He had Elliot's long lashes, Cleo's long legs, and, inexplicably, thick hair the exact colour of conkers. Genetics wasn't fair, I often thought. I'd have loved hair like Orson's.

‘Shouldn't you be bouncing?' I asked.

‘Not allowed. Too big. I might break someone. And I've done the climbing walls here four times already.' He picked up the top half of the cake Mum had been saving for last, the bit with the icing on, and shoved it in his mouth. He was also going through a startling growth spurt, consuming any food in his wake like an adolescent Pac-Man.

‘Orson! That was Nanna's cake!'

‘It's fine, love.' Mum gave me a reproachful look. She'd stopped telling the boys off for anything when Elliot left. They could have blown up the house and she would just have sighed.

‘When's Dad coming?' he asked, through a mouthful of crumbs.

‘Four,' said Mum. ‘Maybe make that your last piece of cake?'

Orson rolled his eyes and sat down in the seat next to mine. I gave him a one-arm hug. My arm only just went around his shoulders; I could understand why the Bounce Kings had refused to let him bounce with Wes's relatively fragile friends.

‘You know,' I said, affectionately, ‘it only feels like yesterday since you—'

‘Since I was a tiny baby and you accidentally left me in a Starbucks in my carry seat and Mum called the police,' parroted Orson. ‘And it isn't yesterday, Auntie Rob, it's nearly fourteen years ago.'

‘Where does the time go!' said Mum, right on cue, which made Orson roll his eyes again.

I looked at the strapping teenager slumped in his seat. Fourteen years had gone in a flash. Life was going too quickly. Even if I had a baby right now, I'd be well over fifty by the time I had a strapping teenager of my own. Fifty! And what if I wanted another? Was there even time for an accidental Wes?

My imagination wandered. Mitch was a couple of years older than me and wasn't married. (Not as far as I'd been able to find out, anyway.) Was he broody? I indulged a brief ‘what would our baby look like?' daydream, then stopped, because Mum was giving me her ‘tick-tock' look.

I hated that look. Mum and Cleo had got even closer since the boys were born, and while I'm sure Mum wanted me to join their little club, something about that sympathetic look made me want to protest that I was fine ; that I was too busy focusing on my career trajectory, thanks; that children weren't the only signifier of a complete life – and several other arguments that I didn't necessarily believe.

‘Did I mention,' I started, recklessly, ‘that I'm also seeing a …?'

‘Hey, Auntie Rob!' The smell of pizza and Fanta was suddenly very close to my face.

Wes.

‘You're seeing …?' Mum prompted, but I wasn't going to tell her, not with Orson and Wes around. Our night of passion in Worcester would take some filtering for Mum's ears, let alone theirs.

I turned to Wes. ‘Shouldn't you be on the trampolines?'

‘Mum says I've got to let other people get a go. I need to be hospitable.' He grabbed a bag of crisps from Mum's bag of ‘spare' food.

‘Are you enjoying your party, Wes?' asked Mum.

‘Yeah, it's great!' He turned to her with a serious look. ‘Were birthday parties invented back when you were young, Nanna?'

I stiffened instinctively. Cleo told me she'd had ‘the chat' with Orson and Alfie about never asking Nanna about her family, but maybe she'd forgotten to have it with Wes. Or maybe Wes didn't have the family ‘under the carpet' gene.

‘Of course we had parties. Same as you.'

‘In what way?'

It was a phrase he'd learned from the teaching assistant at school. He used it a lot .

‘Well, I had a birthday cake.' Mum blinked, twice. ‘And we played games. Musical statues, musical chairs.'

‘Did you have music in the olden days?' he asked, wonderingly.

‘Wesley! How old do you think I am? It was the 1970s, not the 1870s.'

‘She used to get the housemaid to wind up the gramophone,' I explained, trying to lighten the mood. ‘And lift the needle off the record when it was time to stop.'

Mum spluttered, but Wes wasn't deterred.

‘And did your grandpa make a cake? Like Grandpa does for me?'

We were well into uncharted waters here, and I knew I had to change the subject, but part of me was as curious as Wes. I literally had no idea who Mum's grandpa – my own great-grandpa – was. I only remembered meeting my grandfather once, when I was six. There was an awful strained mood the whole weekend. It ended so disastrously that we never spoke about it afterwards and, hands up, it was my fault. Mum and Dad left me and Cleo in the car while Mum said goodbye to Grandpa, and they were gone so long that I got bored. So bored that I let the handbrake off to see what it would do, and of course it rolled backwards and crashed into a wall. There was so much yelling and shouting I was sick every time I got into a car for a long time after. It also blanked out every other memory of that trip. Just the yelling and tears and the AA lorry.

Mum ‘didn't get on with' her dad and, as with her mum and sister, Dad had been very emphatic that we weren't to ask about him either. I had a vague memory of grey hair, a sports jacket and the suffocating smell of tobacco. We got a lot of presents from our Taylor grandparents to make up for it.

‘No,' said Mum. ‘That's just something Paul – Grandpa – does because he likes watching Bake Off .'

‘In what way?'

‘Well, he likes the challenge of sugarcraft. And blowtorches.' She looked flustered. ‘He used to work on a building site when he was younger.'

‘Did he? I thought Dad always worked for the electricity board.' What a feast of family revelations this was turning into.

‘When he was a student,' said Mum, cagily. She glanced over to where Cleo was dealing firmly with Willow Jones, demanding a prize for her forward tumble, even though there were no prizes. ‘I think a space has come up on the trampolines, Wes!'

‘What about you, Auntie Rob?' asked Orson, unexpectedly. He was at an age where anything to do with family was usually ‘boring' or ‘gross'. ‘What were your parties like?'

‘Oh, your mum and I loved our birthday parties as kids,' I said. ‘Pass the parcel, Sleeping Lions, we had a great time! I'd have a party like that even now, if I could.'

‘Would you?' Mum seemed touched. ‘They were very basic, compared with this.'

‘We had loads of fun.' I wanted to hug her with my words. ‘I loved your Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Those amazing treasure-hunt maps you drew for us! And the pineapple hedgehog.'

We were the only family at school still enjoying a pineapple hedgehog in the late nineties. Mum made it because her mum had made it for her. It was one of the few things I knew about my grandma, a precious nugget of information Mum was happy to share, and so the pineapple hedgehog had become an unspoken grandmaternal presence at our parties.

‘That sounds literally disgusting.' Wes screwed up his nose.

‘I'll make you one later.' Mum patted Wes and Orson. ‘Go on, you two, get bouncing while you've time.'

‘We should do that more,' I said, as Alfie boosted Wes up onto a trampoline then pushed him over for good luck. I could hear Wes saying, ‘… actual hedgehog?'

‘Do what more?'

‘Talk to the kids about family memories.' I was thinking about Terry, who loved telling me stories about his sons and grandchildren, his kindly bruiser of a dad and his sainted mum. I felt I knew them better than I did my own family.

Mum's shoulders stiffened. ‘No, they're not interested in that.'

‘But I'd like to know.' I tried to meet her eye but she was busy tidying up the plates, scraping off the cake crumbs and stacking them for the waitress. ‘A client of Cleo's asked me the other day how you and Dad met and I had no idea.'

Terry, again. He felt he had to ask me a question now and again, if only so he could tell me how his mum and dad met (‘magistrates' court').

‘Mum?' I pushed. ‘I'm talking about you. You and Dad. My childhood.'

It hung in the air between us, the silent ‘not your childhood, mine '.

She stopped tidying and met my gaze. Her expression was guarded, and I felt hurt, and a little uneasy. ‘Mum?' I repeated, less certainly.

Abruptly, her expression brightened. ‘Here's your father with the coffee! Come on, Robyn, move some of these empties.'

I frowned, but moved the plates so Dad could set down the tray of coffees and cake. He leaned forward and I realised he was rolling his eyes meaningfully towards the door as if he was trying to dislodge an eyelash.

‘What's the matter with your eye, Paul?' asked Mum. ‘You're not starting with that allergy again?'

‘No! Have you seen who's here?'

We turned, as one, and saw Elliot standing by the door, holding three metallic balloons all in the shape of an eight. It was a nice idea but it made him look as if he was celebrating some sort of sales milestone, not his son's birthday.

‘He's early,' said Mum.

‘Good!' Dad selected the biggest slice of cake. ‘He can watch his boy having fun with his pals. What's wrong with that?'

‘He's gone off timetable, that's what's wrong with that,' I observed, as Cleo abandoned her trampoline awards and marched over to the door, where she embarked on a sotto voce lecture about timekeeping, going by the way she kept twisting her wrist to look at her watch with as much subtlety as a mime artist. Elliot's shoulders slumped further the longer she went on.

At work, he was a world builder. Cleo could reduce him to a nervous wreck in ten seconds.

‘I feel sorry for the fella,' said Dad. ‘I reckon it's six of one, half a dozen of the other with those two.'

‘Have you forgotten what he did?' I still didn't know what Elliot had done, apart from work too hard. But I could guess. Mum was easy-going apart from three things: incorrect punctuation on signs, thank-you notes and people treating her family badly. She would have made a terrific Mafia boss. All the death threats would have been menacing and grammatically correct.

‘We only get one side of the story.' Dad sipped his coffee, clearly going for a full set of cliches. ‘They should kiss and make up, if you ask me. For the boys' sake.'

‘ Paul !'

‘What?'

Mum's eyebrows jiggled. ‘He's coming over.'

We simultaneously straightened up, which probably only made Elliot wonder what we'd been saying about him.

‘Hello Mel, Paul,' he said, warily. His 888 balloons bobbed behind him like overkeen backing singers. ‘Robyn.'

‘Hello Elliot,' we chorused.

Cleo had told us, when they split up, that we were to be cordial with Elliot. ‘He's still the boys' father,' she said, as if that was something she'd have preferred to have withdrawn, along with his house key and name on the deeds.

It wasn't a problem for me: I liked Elliot. But then I'd been at school with him, and had seen how much he'd had to put up with from Cleo over the years. Plus, everyone had a bit of a crush on Elliot, from his sexy highlights, courtesy of his hairdresser sister, Rhiannon, to his trainers, courtesy of his Saturday job cleaning cars in his uncle's dealership. I didn't exactly benefit from the halo effect of Cleo and Elliot's combined coolness but, put it like this, I didn't have to attend prom with my best mate like Shelley Collett and Sophie Roberts. Even twenty years on, I occasionally consoled myself with that fact.

‘Everyone had a good afternoon?' Elliot asked.

I thought he looked knackered. ‘They've had a great time,' I said. ‘Hopefully they'll be worn out now for you!'

‘Where are you heading off to?' asked Dad.

‘The Beefy Boys. Then a film?' He sounded wary, as if it was a test.

That made me sad. He'd never been wary before; he'd treated us like members of his own sprawling family. A very small, rather uptight outpost of it.

‘Fantastic!' said Dad, encouragingly.

‘Sounds great!' I was conscious that Dad and I were being weirdly jolly, and Mum was saying nothing.

Personally, I didn't buy Mum's affair theory. For a start, Elliot was too busy for any malarky. Besides, look at the evidence – Elliot was hardly dressing like a man in the throes of a new passion: he was wearing an old Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and a pair of cargo pants. Cargo pants! Cleo would never have let him out of the house looking like that. My money was on a row with Cleo about an entirely different matter. Maybe something she'd done? Something Elliot hadn't done? Or maybe just one of those rows that was about nothing at all. Cleo didn't always need a reason.

It seemed clear to me that neither of them was happy apart. None of us were, certainly. And whatever problems they'd had, surely it was worth trying again? But that would involve Cleo backing down or forgiving him, and neither of those options seemed likely. She wouldn't even discuss counselling.

‘Have you had your hair done, Mel?' Elliot asked, uneasily. ‘You're looking … very nice.'

I got the horrible feeling Mum was about to say, ‘It's Mrs Taylor to you, Elliot,' but Cleo saved us from further conversational misery by arriving with Wes.

‘Right, then, we're more or less finished here. Wes, get your things together, and we'll thank everyone for coming. Then you can go with your dad to … whatever he's got lined up.'

I exchanged glances with Mum and Dad but they were smiling politely, which meant nothing. We shepherded the guests into the changing rooms, checked they'd got everything and loaded them back onto the minibus, as Wes, Orson and Alfie trailed off with Elliot towards his BMW, parked, as usual, across two spaces in the car park so no one opened a door onto his paintwork.

I savoured one backward glance at the party area, which looked like a crisp bomb had hit it. I felt very sorry for the cleaners.

Mum and I were the last ones on the minibus, balancing cakes and presents in our arms. As we sat down, Mum coughed. ‘We met at the pub,' she said. ‘Karaoke night.'

She refused to be drawn further, and Cleo started the headcount just as my phone finally pinged with the message I'd been waiting for all day. Brunch tomorrow? Wheatsheaf 2pm – booked in my name. Mx

Yes, I thought, grinning at my own reflection in the minibus window. Yes .