A Bed of Scorpions by Judith Flanders Page A

to be as good as it can be. The only divergence is on how to get it there.
    So, when I said Jake was absent-minded, what I really meant was that he was concentrating, just not on me. That was fine, and for the most part I spent the evening as I would have done if he hadn’t been there. Mostly. I didn’t read while we ate, which I would have done if I’d been alone – that seemed a little too blatantly fuck-you. But I flicked the radio on, and listened to that, and then after we’d washed up I put the TV on so Jake could pretend to be watching, while I pretended to read. On the surface, there wasn’t much difference between this evening and many others. Except that he wasn’t really there, and that when I went to bed, he just sat on, staring past the television.
    And in the morning he left early. Without telling me.
    It was the case, not me, I repeated. And for most of the day I believed it.
    Helena rang at lunchtime to say Aidan and Anna were coming for dinner, and did I have anything scheduled that meant I couldn’t come too.
    ‘I’ve got a book launch at six, but that’s all.’ That was easy, but I paused. ‘Is Jake invited too? I don’t know if he’s working tonight, but are you going to ask him?’
    ‘How early can you leave your launch?’
    I was surprised. Helena never got home before seven, and so she rarely ate before 8.30. This was breaking all her rules.
    ‘If you can get here by seven, we can have an hour to talk, and I’ll ask Jake for 8.30.’
    I still hesitated. ‘I think I’m uncomfortable with that. Would it be better if we didn’t come?’
    ‘I’m uncomfortable too. But no one asked us about our comfort levels. We get on with the situation we’ve been handed as best we can.’ The lawyer’s credo. Maybe I’d embroider it on a cushion for her birthday. If I learnt to embroider first.
    I thought for a moment. I was in the middle, and I couldn’t change that. Helena was in the middle because she was Aidan’s lawyer and my mother. She couldn’t change that. Maybe I’d just embroider the damn cushion for myself.
    ‘I’ll get there as close to seven as I can.’
     
    My mother lives a twenty-minute walk from me. Near enough for a friendly back and forth, not so close I feel her terrifying efficiency bearing down on me all the time. I didn’t bother to change, since it was just Aidan and Anna, and in effect a working dinner. Or a war summit. I brushed my hair and put some eyeliner on. That way I’d look as if I’d made an effort. I wouldn’t really, but it would be enough to stop Helena from sighing when she saw me.
    If I didn’t love Helena, I would have learnt to dislike her a long time ago. She seems to do everything perfectly, with no effort. I know that that’s not true – I know it can’t be true – but from my vantage point, that’s what it looks like. She’s been a senior partner at a big City law firm forever, she has an active social life, with dozens – hundreds? thousands? – of interesting friends, with whom she has dinner, goes to films, concerts and theatre. She is well dressed without being a style victim. She exercises,she doesn’t drink too much, she probably even flosses regularly and gets her five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. So you can see why she drives me crazy. Her private life is firmly private. She and my father divorced when I was a young teenager. I don’t know why. I was too young to be told more than an edited version when it happened, and since then I’ve never asked and have no plans to. I’ve always figured if I stick my nose in her business, it gives her licence to stick hers in mine.
    I only spent twenty minutes at the launch. It wasn’t one of my books, or I couldn’t have done that, but I wanted to go and be a warm body to be counted. It was a book I admired, and it looked like it wasn’t going to get much attention. Which is often what happens to books you admire but don’t love. By the time I got to Helena’s,