I Heart London. Lindsey Kelk

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СКАЧАТЬ lovely to get a quick reminder that I’d actually spent the last two years in New York and that they weren’t picking me up from my first semester at uni.

      ‘All right, love?’ Dad patted my shoulder and took the handle of one of my suitcases. ‘Flight all right?’

      ‘Not bad,’ I replied. ‘Although I do appear to have flown into the Twilight Zone.’

      ‘Eh?’ Dad trundled after my mum, leaving me behind. ‘Twilight? Your mum was reading that. Nonsense, if you ask me. I watched the film. Not my cup of tea but it passed an evening. Come on − I’m gasping for a coffee and she won’t let me buy one at Costa now I’ve got a Gaggia at home.’

      Not ready to discuss my mother’s progressive choice of reading material or my dad’s new espresso machine, I played the dutiful daughter, stuck out my bottom lip and did as I was told.

      Home, sweet home.

      ‘News, news, news.’ My mum looked over her shoulder from the passenger seat to make sure I hadn’t bolted out the back of dad’s Volvo. Fat chance, since Dad had activated the child locks. ‘You know Vera from the library?’

      ‘Yes?’ I was clutching my phone so tightly my knuckles were white. I didn’t have a blind clue who Vera from the library was.

      ‘Dead,’ Mum announced. ‘Cancer.’

      And now it seemed I never would.

      ‘Brian as well, from the butchers,’ she continued, looking to the heavens as though more dead people I’d never met were going to wave down and remind her they’d carked it. ‘Who else? Well, Eileen, but you didn’t know Eileen. Oh! Do you remember Mr Wilson?’

      I shook my head.

      ‘Yes you do,’ she encouraged. ‘He used to walk his dog past our house. Every day!’

      ‘Ohhh,’ I exclaimed dramatically. ‘That Mr Wilson.’

      ‘Dead,’ she declared. ‘He didn’t have cancer, though. Something wrong with his pancreas, I think.’

      ‘It was pancreatic cancer,’ my dad said, snapping his fingers. ‘Went like that.’

      ‘Patrick Swayze, Steve Jobs and Mr Wilson who walked his dog past our house.’ I stared out of the window. ‘Pancreatic cancer certainly has claimed some of the greats.’

      I was fairly certain I heard my dad turn a laugh into a cough, but it was covered up by my mother’s continuing list of obituaries. To take the edge off it, I swiped my phone into life and checked for messages. Nothing. Nothing from Jenny to say she was on her way, nothing from Alex to say he’d lain awake all night sobbing into my vacant pillow, and, most importantly, nothing from Louisa to apologize for leaving me at the mercy of my parents.

      ‘And her from the post office had another baby,’ my mum carried on. We’d exhausted the funeral roll call and moved on to who had had a baby and whether that baby was in or out of wedlock. ‘And Briony, who you went to school with − she’s on her third. Third! Two different dads, though. And of course there’s Louisa’s little Grace. What a beauty.’

      ‘Speaking of Louisa …’ I leaned forward to rest my chin on my mum’s seat. ‘Where is she?’

      ‘Oh, Grace was a bit colicky this morning and she couldn’t leave her,’ she replied as though my best friend abandoning me was no big deal. ‘Your priorities change when you have a baby, Angela, as you will find out. You’re not the centre of the universe, you know. Louisa has a husband and a baby and they always come first.’

      That was my cue for major sulking. Mostly because while part of me knew she was right, another much larger part of me still thought Louisa should have let said husband take care of said baby, seeing it was a Saturday, and be at Heathrow as promised. Sinking back into the back seat of the car, I turned my gaze out of the window again and watched the motorway whizz by. It felt strange to be on the wrong side of the road. It felt strange not to see any yellow taxis. It felt strange to hear my mum and dad’s voices and Radio 4. It felt strange to be in England. Every second we sped closer to home, we sped further away from New York. It was like it was all falling away, as though it had never happened. And that was a thought I did not want to even entertain.

      ‘First things first − kettle on,’ my mum stated, dropping her handbag onto the table like she always did while my dad went into the living room and turned on the TV like he always did.

      I stood in the middle of the kitchen, clutching my handbag to my body, trying not to cry. That had definitely happened before, but it wasn’t standard behaviour. I didn’t know what exactly I was expecting from my parents’ house, but nothing had changed. Not a single thing. The bright yellow wall clock was still running five minutes ahead. A box of PG Tips sat open next to the kettle, as always, even though the tea caddy was completely empty. The spare keys still sat in the hot pink ashtray I had made out of Fimo when I was twelve. The sun shone through the window, right into my eyes, reminding me to move.

      ‘Are you going to stand there all day?’ my mum said, turning to me and filling the kettle from the filter jug as she spoke. ‘Are you tired?’

      ‘Not really,’ I lied. I was completely exhausted, but it was more that this was all too much to take in. I was suffering complete sensory overload and I was worried that if I went up to my room and found the Boyzone posters on the walls, I might lose it completely. ‘Might have a lie-down in a bit.’

      ‘Well then, we’d better hear the story,’ she said, settling the kettle in its cradle and sitting down at the kitchen table, an expectant look on her face. ‘Let’s see it.’

      For a moment, I thought she meant my end-of-term report, but then I realized she meant my engagement ring. Because I was engaged. To a boy. In America. I stayed frozen still in the middle of the room and held out my hand, fingers spread, eyes wide.

      ‘I haven’t got my binoculars, Angela,’ she sighed. ‘Come here.’

      Reluctantly, I dropped my bag and moved over to the worn, wooden table. Same place mats, same salt and pepper shakers, same artificial sunflowers in the centre. Before I even sat down, my mum grabbed my hand and yanked it across the table. My dad bounded over like an overexcited teenager.

      ‘Ooh,’ he cooed. ‘It’s very nice.’

      ‘It is, actually,’ Mum agreed, sounding surprised. ‘Shame he didn’t bother to ask your father’s permission, but still. At least it’s tasteful.’

      ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ I asked. Mistake.

      ‘Well, who knows what an American thinks is an appropriate engagement ring. You could have ended up with God knows what on your finger, couldn’t you? Unless you chose it. Did you choose it?’

      She almost sounded hopeful.

      ‘I’m not marrying Liberace, Mother,’ I pointed out. ‘Alex chose it. All on his own. And it’s beautiful. I couldn’t have picked anything I’d love more.’

      ‘I said it was nice.’ She pursed her lips and brushed her grey-blonde hair behind her ears. ‘And should I bother to ask when and where you’re planning on getting married? Or are you going to tell me you’ve already run off to Vegas?’

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