So now another family lives here, filling it with their own memories.
I push open the kitchen door. Mum is standing with her back to me, arranging bits of smoked salmon into a neat pattern on a plate. ‘Finally,’ she says, brightly. ‘I thought I was going to have to entertain the poor girl on my own.’
She turns around and smiles, her eyes crinkling softly at the sides, and it takes everything I have not to fall apart again. There’s less grey in her hair, but aside from that, she’s exactly as I last saw her. She’s wearing black trousers and a smart button-up velvety cardigan thing, and even with my extremely limited fashion knowledge, I can tell this is one of her ‘special occasion’ outfits. I feel a powerful rush of love for her.
‘Now, I’ve done some little salmon bits to start with,’ she says. ‘And the beef’s in the oven. But, you know, I forgot to check with you whether she actually eats meat. Because more and more people don’t these days. You know Hiam’s son, Henry, well, he’s become a “pescatarian”, and …’ She breaks off, her finger quote marks still hanging in mid-air. ‘What’s the matter, darling? Is something wrong?’
I realise I am clenching my jaw painfully, twisting my mouth into a shape that’s supposed to resemble a smile. Clearly it’s not having the desired effect.
‘Oh God,’ Mum sighs, dropping her hands to her hips. ‘She’s a veggie, isn’t she? I knew it.’
I can’t take it any more. I rush forward to hug her.
‘Blimey,’ she laughs. ‘What’s all this?’
She pats my back gently, and I speak into her shoulder, my voice thick and muffled. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I mumble. ‘I’m so sorry …’
‘Don’t be stupid, darling,’ she says. ‘I can easily do her a macaroni cheese.’
There is so much I want to say to her that I don’t know where to start. I want to apologise for all those terrible things I haven’t even said yet; to tell her I won’t mean them when I say them, and that she’s the best mum in the world and I’m a useless, pathetic excuse for a son. And I want to warn her about what will happen in – what will it be? – twelve years’ time.
There are a million things I want to say, but I don’t get the chance to say any of them. Because the doorbell interrupts me.
Mum breaks out of the hug and claps her hands together: ‘Right, you let her in, I’ll go and get the baby pictures.’
She laughs at whatever expression I’m currently wearing, and then adds: ‘I’m joking, I’m joking. We can do the baby pictures after lunch.’
She nudges me out of the kitchen. At the end of the hallway I can see Daff’s silhouette through the stained glass on the front door. Oh God. I’m just about getting a handle on seeing Mum again, and now I’ve got to open the door to a nineteen-year-old Daphne. I take a deep breath and try very hard to compose myself.
Through the glass I can see Daff fiddling with her hair, and when I open the door, she stops and smiles at me.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey … you look amazing,’ I say. Because she really does.
A whole year has passed since ‘yesterday’, but she looks pretty much exactly the same: young and happy, albeit with a touch more nervous energy about her. The cold air outside seems to have coloured her entire face – her cheeks and the tip of her nose are a soft pastel pink and her big brown eyes are bright and glistening. She’s wearing a black knee-length coat with smart blue jeans and a plain white shirt underneath. Just visible under the collar, winking in the sunlight, is the diamond necklace her parents bought her for her eighteenth.
She leans forward to give me a hug, and when she pulls back, she looks at my chest and laughs. ‘Great to see you’ve made an effort too.’
I follow her gaze downwards. The T-shirt I picked up at random from my bedroom floor turns out to have the slogan PERVERT 69 emblazoned across the front.
‘Shit, sorry … I’ll change.’
Behind her, I can see a little brown car pulling out and disappearing up the road: Daff’s dad, Michael. I’d already met him and Daphne’s mum by this point – they’d come up to uni for a weekend at the end of first year.
‘Isn’t he coming in?’ I ask her.
She shakes her head. ‘No way, I sent him packing. Way too stressful to have the parents meeting each other as well. Maybe he can say hello later when he comes back to pick me up …’
She breaks off and grins over my shoulder. Mum is wandering through from the kitchen behind me, doing a frantic double-waving routine that is bordering on jazz hands and is presumably intended to waft away any meeting-the-mother awkwardness.
‘Hello! Hello! You must be Daphne!’ she beams as she dances towards her.
I’m sure I was absolutely mortified by this the first time round, but now it just makes me love Mum even more. She’s clearly nervous and desperate to make Daff feel welcome: I’ve spent the past few months talking about her pretty much non-stop, so Mum knows how big a deal this is.
‘Hello! Hi! Yes! You must be Rosie!’ Daff is doing the jazz hands back at her now, making them look like some kind of 1920s musical hall double act. Despite everything, I can feel a bubble of laughter rising to bursting point in my chest. I start doing the jazz hands too, and suddenly all three of us are laughing together.
‘It’s so lovely to finally meet you,’ Daff says, sticking out her hand for Mum to shake. Mum looks at it for a second, clearly thinks about taking it, then swats it away and pulls her in for a hug.
‘Sorry, sorry, embarrassing mother,’ she says, squeezing her tightly. And as Daff squeezes back, she shoots me a sideways glance that is pure excitement and happiness.
‘Anyway,’ Mum says, letting go of her, ‘come on through!’
Chapter Fifteen
We sit around the kitchen table, and I eat the salmon while they talk.
I’m not even particularly hungry, to be honest, but stuffing my face seems like a good excuse for not speaking, and right now, forming coherent sentences is proving to be way beyond my grasp.
I’m doing my best to keep it together, but the whole thing is just so insane. I thought I would never see Mum again, and now here she is – somehow – sitting centimetres away from me, chatting and laughing and telling me to please, for God’s sake, leave some salmon for everyone else. For the first time since I’ve been back here in the past, the confusion and fear is outweighed by sheer, mind-melting joy.
Mum was – is – an English teacher at the local secondary school. And at times like this, you can really tell. She bombards Daphne with questions about the English course at uni – which writers does she like best, which modules has she enjoyed most – and pretty soon the conversation blossoms to cover not just books but telly and music and whatever else. It’s a bit like watching a dream first date unravel in front of me, because they agree on literally everything: from Charlotte Brontë to Bob Dylan, Alan Partridge to Adrian Mole.
‘We’re doing medieval poetry this term, which is a bit of a slog,’ Daff says, as talk returns to uni. ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; all that sort of stuff. It’s a bit like being bored to death in a language you don’t fully understand.’