Sue Welfare - Fallen Women

The whole house smelt of curry. It hadn’t been a bad evening so far, a couple of beers and half a bottle of wine, and even Joe was starting to thaw out a bit.

‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, lying there, all on her own,’ Liz added, in case there was some possibility Kate might have missed the point. There was an even longer pause and then she said, ‘You know what Mum’s like, she won’t ask for help and she certainly wouldn’t ring up to let us know she had a fall. If it hadn’t been for her lodger, I probably wouldn’t have known at all. I told him that I’d ring you.’ Heavy sigh. ‘I wonder whether we ought to have a family conference. I’ve been looking at brochures for sheltered accommodation; if you can find the time to get up to Norfolk, obviously.’

The implication, of course, was that Kate was so busy in the fast lane that she never spared her poor old widowed mother a second thought. Kate glanced across the hall into the kitchen. The door was ajar, framing the supper party. The fast lane looked remarkably like a coffee advert, all low lights and soft autumnal tones. Behind the low babble of voices someone had put Gabrielle’s new CD on the hi-fi as a soundtrack.

‘So where did you say Mum is now?’

Bill was busy uncorking another bottle of red. Joe was holding court. Chrissie was looking pale and interesting.

‘The local hospital. They’re keeping her in for observation overnight. I’ve been over to see her, obviously. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay because of the girls, but she’s in plaster up to the knee and her face looks awful, dreadfully bruised, lots of stitches. It could have been very nasty. I thought you ought to know. I didn’t want to say anything to Daniel, didn’t want to upset him.’

Kate sighed. Presumably Liz had put on her best telephone voice so that he wouldn’t recognise who it was. There was that silence again, the one into which Kate guessed she was meant to leap head first.

In the kitchen, in the lamplight, Joe was rolling a joint while at the same time going on about how bloody terrible the parking was getting. The terrible dichotomy of hippiedom finally meeting middle age.

She stood still for a few moments after hanging up the phone; from upstairs Kate could hear the boys playing – the bass beat of Danny’s music overlaid with the ping-ping of a video game from Jake’s room. Where would they be when they got phone calls like this? Never mind getting married, giving birth, or signing up for a mortgage, the realisation that your parents don’t have the secret of everlasting life is the real ticket into adulthood.

Kate had been totally incredulous when her dad died. How the hell did that happen? How could it happen? He hadn’t even been ill. Part of her was still outraged.

Even after five years, the first thought Kate had whenever she thought about her dad was that he couldn’t possibly be dead, it had to be a trick of the light, he was there somewhere if only she knew where to look. He was just hiding, maybe in the next room, and along with a residual ache of loss was a terrible nagging frustration that he kept giving her the slip.

‘Who was that then?’ Joe asked, topping up his wine. ‘Not one of your clients again? You need to get them to ring in office hours, Kate. I’ve told you before. You’ve got this cosy cottage industry attitude towards business – boundaries, that’s what you need. I’ve always said that if you want people to consider you as a professional you have to –’

‘Actually, it was Liz. My mum’s had an accident. I’m just going to go and put a few things in a bag.’ For some reason saying it out loud made Kate feel shaky and weepy. ‘I ought to go and – well, just go and make sure she’s all right. Keep an eye on her. You know.’

‘You’re not going to drive to Norfolk tonight surely?’ Joe asked incredulously. ‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’

‘No, I don’t think it can, I’m not sure what sort of state she’s in – and I’ve only had one glass of wine. I’ll be fine. They’re keeping her in overnight. I want to be there for her, sort the place out, pick her up tomorrow. She can hardly come home to an empty house and Liz’s girls are still little –’

‘Of course you’ve got to go,’ said Chrissie, on her feet, instantly sober, and instantly supportive. She was always calm in a crisis, or at least always calm in someone else’s crisis. ‘We can see to everything here, can’t we, Joe?’

‘Well, yes,’ he began more hesitantly. ‘But I’ve got stuff to do; there’s some Yank flying in for a breakfast meeting tomorrow. I need to drop in to the office – I did tell you, Kate – it’s important.’ And then he looked at her. ‘And you said you’d be able to pick my suit up from the cleaners –’ He blew out his lips and shook his head as if all this had nothing to do with him. ‘And what about the boys?’

Kate stared at him.

Joe had polished off several glasses of Merlot. He had a patch of high colour on each cheek, like a Punch and Judy rouge spot, a little flush that only ever appeared in two situations: when he was drunk or in the first throes of post-orgasmic bliss; not something there had been a lot of just recently.

She felt a flurry of annoyance; she needed him to help her and here he was busy passing the buck before it had even landed. Joe returned the stare, obviously expecting her to come up with something that didn’t include him the equation.

Kate looked away first. In lots of ways Joe was a really good man. But recently they had been stumbling through the raw bickering no-man’s-land of some itch or other.

Forty-two and Joe was only just coming to terms with the fact he was never going to be Sting, that writing the odd jingle and helping out with the sound and light systems for corporate dos was probably the closest he was going to get to the big time or the bright lights of Wembley Arena, and that he was unlikely to be asked to guest at an open air concert in Hyde Park because some roadie had spotted him mingling with the hoi polloi, trying to blend in.

It was Kate who found a lot of Joe’s work – the radio jingles, anyway – and who’d introduced him to the guy who ran the light and sound company. They’d met when she was doing a trade show at the NEC in Birmingham and got talking. He had needed someone who knew something about sound, they had needed the money. How was it Kate could feel guilty about that? Because unfortunately somewhere down the line it had turned from a good thing into her fault; Kate felt as if she’d stolen something from Joe.

At the moment things between them were tense for no particular reason that she could define. But they’d been there before and would probably be there again. Kate had no doubt they’d sort it out; on the whole they were good together.

‘Danny is nearly fifteen, for God’s sake, he should be able to get himself and Jake up and stay out of trouble till you get home,’ Kate said coolly.

Joe didn’t look convinced. ‘I’ve got no idea what time I’ll be back.’

Across the table, Chrissie shook her head. ‘Oh please, Joe. This is an emergency. Jake and Danny can come round to mine. Robbie’s at home tonight. They’ll be fine. Now is there anything else you need?’

The question was aimed squarely at Kate but Joe was in like Flynn. ‘Any chance you can pick my suit up from the cleaner’s tomorrow?’

It didn’t take very long or very much to unravel what remained of the evening. Within half an hour Kate had packed a bag and sorted out Joe and the kids.

Chrissie, arms crossed over her chest, gathered a cardigan up around her shoulders. She leant in through the driver’s side window to say her goodbyes. ‘Now don’t you go talking to any strange men, and give me a ring as soon as you get to your mum’s. And don’t worry, there’s nothing here that we can’t handle between us.’