Fiona Gibson - The Mum Who Got Her Life Back

‘Fancy seeing a film?’

‘Yeah! What’s on?’

Consulting my phone, I run through the list. It’s a madcap comedy we go for, and as Lori and I snigger our way through it – at one point a piece of popcorn shoots from her mouth – I sense my worries about her ebbing away. Never mind her lateness, the school dance, or whatever might be going on in her mother’s life (‘Everything’s fine, Jack! Why wouldn’t it be?’). I have friends whose teenagers would never deign to go to the cinema with them, and it’s one of my greatest joys that Lori doesn’t yet find my company repulsive.

Back at her mother’s pebble-dashed terrace on the Southside, Elaine oohs and ahhs over the presents I’ve bought Lori, which she insisted on opening immediately, littering the living room with torn paper.

‘All that Lush stuff!’ Elaine marvels, arms folded across her dark green sweater. ‘You’re a lucky girl. It’s not cheap in there, you know.’ Behind her, a miniature fake Christmas tree is sitting a little askew on a side table. ‘Get me some henna next time you’re in, will you?’ she adds. I smile; Elaine is the only woman I know who still hennas her hair. Sometimes it’s a startling orangey colour, at other times a deep shade of rust; as a colouring agent it seems rather hit and miss.

Now Lori is enthusing over further gifts of new jeans, a top (incredibly, she still allows me to choose clothes for her), a voucher for trainers and a small wad of cash.

Lori hugs me goodbye, and disappears back into the living room as Elaine sees me out. ‘You’re so good to her,’ she says. ‘Thanks, Jack. So, are you off out tonight?’

‘Maybe. No plans as yet. How about you?’

‘Nope, just a quiet night in for us two.’ She pauses, and as I glance across the garden I can’t help noticing that one of her wheelie bins – the one for glass – is crammed to the point where its lid won’t shut.

‘Look at the state of that,’ she retorts, catching my gaze.

‘It’s pretty full,’ I concede.

She steps further out into the garden, her breath forming white puffs in the chilly air. ‘That’s people dumping stuff in as they walk past.’

I look at her incredulously. If Elaine wanted to lie, couldn’t she have blamed the bin men for failing to empty it? ‘You mean passers-by lean over your wall, open your bin and drop their empties into it?’ I almost laugh.

‘Yeah,’ she exclaims. ‘Can you believe it?’

‘Not really. Not when there’s a perfectly good council bottle bin down the road …’

Elaine purses her lips. Her partying days are long over, she’s always keen to assert; now, it’s just a glass or two of wine in the evenings, and what’s wrong with that?

‘I’ve told you about this before,’ she adds, frowning, although she hasn’t; last time it appeared to be overflowing, she insisted it was ‘mainly olive oil bottles and pickle jars’ (Christ, it sounds as if I’ve created a hobby of monitoring the fullness of Elaine’s bin!).

‘Maybe you should put a lock on it?’ I suggest, at which she regards me coolly.

‘Jack, what are you trying to say exactly?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Obviously you are. Why not just come out with it—’

‘No need to be so defensive,’ I say lightly. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, let’s not start bickering now …’

‘If I’m defensive,’ she shoots back, ‘it’s because you’re bloody sanctimonious!’

Hell, why did I touch on the matter of her drinking now? I should have known better – it achieves nothing – and if we were going to talk about it properly, then it wouldn’t be in her front garden with Lori just a few feet away, inside the house. ‘I don’t mean to be,’ I say levelly. ‘I know I’m not perfect, and I’m not trying to judge—’

‘Not trying to judge?’ she splutters. ‘Well, you are judging. You always have and you’re even worse now, with your running … ’

‘What? I jog up and down the river about three times a week …’

‘… with your personal bests and your fancy sports watch …’

‘Can we leave it please, Elaine?’

She glares at me. ‘Or we could empty the bin if you like, and count the bottles?’

Oh, for crying out loud, why did I let us get into this? ‘Jesus, just forget it okay?’ She blinks at me and, alarmingly, her eyes have filled with angry tears. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask, stepping towards her.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she mutters, and I glimpse Lori, briefly, at the living room window before she disappears again.

‘But you don’t seem—’

‘Just go, Jack,’ Elaine adds, turning away, ‘and enjoy your Christmas. Have a fantastic time, tanking into your dad’s Italian wines with your brother …’

‘ Elaine …’

‘But that doesn’t count as drinking, does it?’ she snaps. ‘Not when it’s good stuff. It never does.’

That went well, I reflect bleakly as I drive home, hoping that Lori didn’t overhear any of it, and reminding myself that Elaine is an adult woman of forty-five, who can make her own choices in life – and is a pretty good mother by all accounts. Lori is apparently well cared for, adequately fed and sent off to school on time. She never has any untoward stories to tell. I’ve tried to quiz her – gently – about whether everything’s okay with her mum, but Lori just snaps, ‘She’s fine , Dad. Why’re you asking?’ I’ve even made it clear that, if my daughter ever wanted to live with me full-time, that would fine with me, we could make it work – but she’s dismissed it. ‘Mum’s just been a bit unlucky,’ she admitted recently, and maybe it’s true.

When Elaine recently lost her administrative job at a community project, it was apparently due to cuts, and not the copious sick days she always claimed were due to her asthma, and never hangovers. When she fell downstairs and broke her arm last summer, it was apparently due to her tripping over the laundry basket on the landing. Lori backed up her mum’s explanation, and I didn’t want to go on about it. Anyway, without installing CCTV in Elaine’s house, it’s impossible to know exactly what goes on.

Back home now, I let myself into my tenement flat in the part of town that’s being flaunted as ‘the new West End’, which just means cheaper than the West End, and less desirable. I like it though, with its muddle of individual shops with their mysterious vegetables piled up in boxes outside.

In my living room, I open a couple of Christmas cards from cousins down south and place them on the mantelpiece with the others. I, too, have a Christmas tree; Lori would be appalled if I didn’t. And while I can’t claim to have had ‘tons’ of festive nights out, there was a jovial pub gathering with a few of us who’ve knocked around together since I was nineteen, when I first moved here from out in the sticks, up in Perthshire. And now – Mr Popular! – my phone pings; a text from my mate Fergus, reminding me that a bunch of them are meeting for drinks in town. It’s tempting to join them right now but, with the drive up to Mum and Dad’s tomorrow morning, I decide to delay the pleasure of a few beers by going for a run first.

A short while later I’m pounding along beside the river. The Clyde shimmers beneath the dark sky, and traffic nudges slowly over the bridge. I keep close to the railings, wondering now about Mags and Iain, and how they’ll fill their days until the shop opens up again after New Year.

I had considered opening up for those in-between days so they’d have somewhere to go. ‘That’s a bit bonkers, Jack – you need a break too,’ Dinah the area manager had said, and she was probably right. Now it’s Elaine who’s snuck back into my thoughts. Will she remember to defrost her turkey and not try to nuke it in the microwave as she did a couple of years ago? Of course she’s capable of cooking a bird, I tell myself, annoyed with my inability to switch off and ‘get in the zone’, as proper runners are supposed to do. I jog on, all of this stuff whirling in my head like a gigantic stew, and then it all stops – suddenly – when I see her in the distance.