Maybe the poor girl just wanted some of her mum’s soup, Gilly concluded, giving it a stir and tasting it. Not everything everyone did had an ulterior motive.
‘Hi, Mummy!’ said Helena quietly as she let herself in through the back door and Gilly’s heart sank. Helena hadn’t called her ‘Mummy’ since she was in primary school: there was definitely something wrong.
‘What’s up?’ said Gilly. She watched as her daughter tried to pretend there wasn’t anything but she’d always been an awful liar.
‘Let’s have lunch first,’ said Helena, taking a cheese scone from the cooling rack and breaking off a bit. ‘I’m starving!’
‘OK,’ said Gilly, ‘but promise me it’s nothing health-related, or something really ghastly.’
‘Nothing health-related,’ Helena said quickly. ‘Let’s have lunch.’
Gilly found bowls, plates and knives and put them on the table. The butter was already there. ‘Do you want a sandwich or will the scones do?’
‘They’re my favourite! Of course they’ll do.’
Gilly relaxed a bit. But as Helena sipped the soup Gilly noticed she was only nibbling her scone and was spending quite a lot of time fiddling with her knife, slicing off slivers of butter; she wasn’t actually eating much.
‘What’s wrong, darling?’ Gilly said. ‘I wish you’d tell me. Have you broken up with Jago?’
Helena put down her spoon. ‘Jago and I are just friends, Mum.’
‘So what is it?’ Seeing the anguish on her daughter’s face was killing her.
‘Mum, it’s about Leo.’
‘Leo?’ This was the last thing Gilly would have thought of. ‘What about him?’
‘It’s not easy to say.’
‘Oh, please, Helly! Just tell me! If it’s not health-related what on earth can it be?’ The thought that Leo might turn out to be married with a family did now cross her mind. ‘Is he married?’
‘OK, Mum. Do you remember that time we were going to visit Martin at uni and there was a car on the wrong side of the road, coming at us full pelt, and you had to swerve into the ditch to stop us getting killed?’
Gilly thought, then nodded. ‘Yes. It was terrifying. And afterwards I never thought I’d get the car out of the ditch.’
‘Leo was driving the car.’
‘What do you mean? How can you possibly know?’ Then Gilly began to realise what had happened. ‘You recognised him?’
‘As soon as I saw him, when we all had lunch. I got a very good look at him at the time of the accident.’
Gilly had never known Helena to be wrong about things like this. If she said someone was whoever she said it was, it was them. One hundred per cent. ‘So why wait until now to tell me?’
‘Because I wanted to find out more about it. He may well have been taking a sick child to hospital.’
‘We would have seen if there’d been a child in the back of the car.’
‘Not if it was lying down! Or it might have been an animal he was taking to the vet?’
Gilly’s head was spinning. What a horrible coincidence! A coincidence that it had been Leo driving – one she would never have known about if it wasn’t for her daughter’s uncanny ability. They’d always joked about her having a superpower but its effect was far from super now. She felt sick. ‘But how would anyone be able to find out anything like that! It’s not possible!’
Helena nodded. ‘You’re right. But my friend did find out other things about him, things you ought to know too.’
‘Gossip, in other words!’ Gilly was cross now and glad to be. It was so much better than being devastated.
‘No, not gossip. Facts that can be proved.’
Gilly realised that Helena was as upset as she was but she still wanted to kill the messenger. ‘Like what?’
‘He did time in prison for embezzlement.’
‘Well, that’s not murder, is it? And he’s served his sentence. Does he have to be treated as a criminal for the rest of his life?’ Gilly got up from the table and started flinging things in the dishwasher in a way that she knew meant she’d have to reload it later but not caring. She was shocked and angry and wanted to make a lot of noise.
‘Mum! I’m not telling you what you should do with the information, but when I found out I couldn’t not tell you.’
‘But why were you even looking?’
‘You know why.’ Helena was very quiet, possibly a bit tearful now, but Gilly didn’t care.
‘Because of your stupid “thing”,’ said Gilly. ‘Why can’t you find out something nice with it from time to time!’
Helena got up. ‘I’m going now. I’m really sorry to have upset you. And if Leo is the love of your life I’ll learn to get on with him.’
Helena went to Gilly as if to embrace her but Gilly kept her arms by her side, refusing a hug from her daughter for possibly the first time in her life.
‘I’ll ring you,’ Helena said and walked out of the kitchen, leaving the soup still steaming.
Tears were pouring down Helena’s face as she drove back to her studio. She felt as awful as she could feel given that nobody had died. Jago came across when he saw her getting out of her car.
‘Not go well?’ he said, taking in Helena’s tear-streaked face and tragic expression.
‘As badly as it could have gone, given that we didn’t actually come to blows. I was as tactful as I could be but Mum was just devastated. I could have tipped a barrel of water over her and she’d have been less shocked. Honestly, Jago, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake telling her. I should have just kept it all to myself. She’ll never want to speak to me again.’
Jago came forward and took her into his arms, pressing her face into his old Guernsey jumper. It was dusty, a bit smelly and scratched her face. She didn’t ever want to move away.
‘Look, it seems terrible now but you and your mum love each other. You’ll be friends again in no time. It’s just the shock of it. When she gets used to the idea of it all she’ll think about it and realise you only did it for the best.’
‘I know,’ Helena told his jumper. ‘But I’ve shattered her dreams, and for what? If she loves him, she’s going to stay with him. It’s just me she’ll hate.’
‘Come into the house and have a cup of tea,’ said Jago.
‘You’re busy. You haven’t time for tea.’ Reluctantly Helena let go of Jago’s jumper; she’d been unaware of clutching it.
‘If I haven’t got time to give a friend a cuppa when they’re in a state we might as well give up. Come on.’
He put his arm round Helena’s shoulders and took her into the house.
‘I’m so sorry to cry all over you like that,’ said Helena, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘I hope I haven’t got snot on your jumper.’
‘My jumper would be honoured and besides, it’s had far worse. Fish guts being one example.’
‘Oh, yuck!’ Helena had stopped sniffing now and felt bizarrely better for her cry.
‘I know!’ he said. ‘I had a job on a fishing boat one summer and I kind of liked the uniform so I kept it.’