‘I’ve got a visitor for you,’ he calls, and pushes the door full-open.
Janine sits in a high-backed faux-leather fauteuil in front of a window that looks out on to a blank wall, two plastic tubes hooked into her nostrils. She looks up with childlike curiosity and a big smile, then her face falls, fills with confusion.
‘Are you sure you’ve got the right room?’ she asks, between breaths. ‘Who are you?’
Collette feels a lurch. She was never much of a mother, but she can’t have forgotten me, surely? ‘It’s me, Mum,’ she says, and walks further into the room. Crouches down beside her mother’s chair and looks up. ‘Lisa.’
Janine’s shrunk. She looks like a facsimile of herself, like someone’s run her through a photocopier that’s running low on toner. Last time Collette saw her, her hair had been loose-permed and lowlights ran through a base of yellow blonde. Now, she’s grey: grey skin, grey eyes, grey greasy hair that looks like it’s been cut with the kitchen scissors, charcoal lines running up from her lips and into her nostrils. She stares at Collette for a long time, then shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says, decisively. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Lisa’s only seventeen. You’re bloody ancient.’
‘She comes in and out,’ says Michael. ‘Don’t let it worry you. Next time you come, she’ll remember everything, most likely.’
Collette puts a hand on her mother’s. Wrinkled, spotted, big blue veins standing out on the back. When did she get like this? She’s only sixty-seven, for God’s sake. It can’t have all happened since I went away, surely? Was she getting like this and I just didn’t notice?
‘And Lisa’s pretty,’ says Janine, snatching the hand away.
Collette finds that she is trembling. She busies herself by looking down at her bag and searching out her packages. ‘I brought you some stuff, look. I thought you’d like them. See?’
She holds up her gifts, like prizes. ‘Those chocolates you like. And some nice smelly stuff. Chanel, look. You always liked Chanel.’
‘Ooh,’ says Janine, all sunny smiles again. She snatches the box of Ferrero Rocher from Collette’s hand, delves within with the fervour of someone who’s eaten nothing but mash and pudding cups for months. ‘Mmmmm-mmmmm,’ she says, mumbling them between blue gums and gasping for breath between smacks. She’s grown a moustache. Thick hairs like wires, blacker by far than the hairs on her head. She holds up the bottle of Chanel Nº5, always her aspiration scent, the one she longed for, the one Collette would save and save for from her Saturday jobs, to buy her for Christmas. Wrinkles her nose and drops it on the patterned carpet as though it were an empty box.
‘So what was it you wanted?’ she asks. ‘I haven’t got any money, if that’s what you’re after.’
Collette perches gingerly on the pink candlewick bedspread on Janine’s bed. ‘No,’ she says, gently. ‘I just wanted to know how you are.’
‘It’s my daughter who’s got the money,’ says Janine. ‘Not that she can be bothered to come and see me. D’you want a chocolate? They’re nice, these.’
‘Yes,’ says Collette, ‘that would be nice. Thank you.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘These are lovely,’ says Vesta, and helps herself to another. ‘What did you say they were called again?’
‘Shirini Khoshk.’ Hossein hovers a finger over the white card presentation box, selects a heart-shaped sandwich covered with shreds of something green and pops it whole into his mouth.
‘I’m never going to remember that,’ says Vesta. ‘You know what they remind me of? Biscuits.’
‘Yes,’ says Hossein, solemnly. ‘That’s right. They are like biscuits.’
‘Well, I never knew Persians ate biscuits.’
Hossein smiles. ‘What did you think we eat?’
Vesta sits back in her lawn chair, dunks a pastry in her PG Tips. ‘Oh, I dunno. Babies and that, I suppose.’
‘Only on Eid,’ he says. ‘They are very expensive.’
They lapse into contented silence and gaze up at the azure sky. The garden is prepared for Vesta’s party: blankets from her airing cupboard and her mother’s full tea service laid out on a side-table Hossein has carried out, and water bubbling on a primus stove left over from the Three-Day Week. The others are due any minute, but she doesn’t really mind too much if they don’t show up.
This is nice just as it is, she thinks. To be honest, I could do without having to make polite conversation with people I hardly know, though of course that’s the way they become people you do know. I bet him from Flat One doesn’t bother to show. Didn’t answer his invite. Not that I’m bothered if he doesn’t. All sandy hair and pale lips and not meeting your eye in the hall. Not a party animal, Gerard Bright. No great loss to one, either.