Fiona Gibson 3 Book Bundle. Fiona Gibson

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      Chapter Thirty-Two

      ‘I can’t believe you still buy him an advent calendar,’ Nadine tells Mary, Rob’s mother. ‘That’s the cutest thing I ever heard.’

      Rob watches in tight-jawed silence as his girlfriend fixes his mum with a beaming, red-lipped smile which has yet to be returned.

      ‘He’s always had one, hasn’t he, Eugene?’ Mary flicks her gaze towards Rob’s father, who merely nods and looks down at his plate. ‘I gave it to him last weekend,’ she adds, ‘in time for the first of December. But he left it here.’

      ‘That’s even better,’ Nadine goes on, ‘because today’s, what – the eighth? So you’ve got eight chocolates to eat, Rob, you lucky man!’

      Rob darts a look at Nadine, trying to transmit the message that she must stop this immediately, that his parents’ rather stiff and formal dining room is no place to start wittering on about advent calendars and taking the piss out of him. Conversations here tend to orbit the same safe territories: the children, his job, his father’s pickle business and his mother’s latest triumphs at the WI.

      ‘Oh, I love advent calendars, don’t you?’ Nadine is addressing Mia and Freddie now, who are regarding her with astonishment, as if she’s just burst out of a cake. She picks up her glass of sparkling water and beams around the table. ‘They’re one of the best things about Christmas, aren’t they? Do you two get them?’

      Mia nods wordlessly, and Freddie picks at a nostril. Rob glimpses his mother’s terse face and calculates how much he might possibly get away with drinking without making a complete arse of himself. Clearly, Nadine feels out of her depth here. Mia and Freddie are still gawping at her, now pushing green beans and sweetcorn around their plates. Rob knows he should try to take charge of the situation, but doesn’t want to make the atmosphere worse by telling them not to stare or demanding that they eat their vegetables.

      Eugene is slicing his pork chop with such delicacy that he could be performing a delicate operation on a human kidney. Mary’s entire face looks as if it might crack, even though it was her who’d insisted, ‘Of course we want to meet this Nadine, seeing as you’re having a child with her.’ She’d pronounced it ‘Nay-deen’ in her strong Yorkshire accent, wincing slightly as if she’d meant to say, ‘tumour’. ‘We want to welcome her into our family, Roberto,’ she’d added stoically.

      ‘Oh, I’m in a pretty menial job at the moment,’ Nadine is explaining (one of his parents must have asked her a question, Rob isn’t sure which). ‘It’s not what I really want to do, though. What I’m really interested in is interior design, making spaces fun and inspiring, and after the baby’s born I hope to pursue that.’ She stabs a bean with her fork and pops it into her mouth.

      ‘So who’ll look after the baby?’ Mary asks while Freddie mutters that he’s ready for pudding now.

      ‘Sorry?’ Nadine frowns.

      ‘In a minute, Freddie,’ Eugene says kindly, refilling his grandson’s glass with orange juice.

      ‘I mean, who’ll take care of your child,’ Mary asks, ‘when you rush off back to work?’

      ‘Er, a nanny or childminder or nursery,’ Nadine says, in an isn’t-that-obvious? voice.

      ‘Oh, so you’re planning to do that, are you?’ Mary counters.

      ‘Mum,’ Rob cuts in, ‘we haven’t decided any of that yet.’

      Nadine throws Rob a confused look, then focuses back on his mum. ‘Er … I will want to go back to work, Mary, so, yes. I can’t imagine being a full-time mother.’

      ‘Can’t you?’ Mary exclaims.

      ‘No, I imagine it’d drive me mad,’ Nadine replies with a small laugh.

      Shut up, shut up, shut up, Rob wills her, glancing fretfully at his mum in her violently-patterned purple floral dress, with her lipstick applied a little too thickly today. He needs to talk to Nadine alone and explain that Mary is of the opinion that if you don’t willingly spend every СКАЧАТЬ