Another Mother's Son Read Free Page A

real crisis but hardly at all up until that point. I rely on her, in a sense, to gauge the severity of a situation and am almost pleased to be put down because it means that, according to Liz, I am making a fuss about nothing. All kinds of awful things have happened to her and, although she never brings them up in conversation, they hover like warning angels as I prattle on.
    Have you started dating? she asked when Ewan gave up university after two terms. Sometimes boys don’t like that. Well, there was Richard Watson but … Richard Watson, she shrieked, have you gone mad, Lorna? It’s either someone you already know, or a stranger, I said. Both have their pluses and minuses. He works at the Office for Budget Responsibility. But Richard Watson? she said. Ewan wouldn’t have known, I said, unless he was a fly on the wall of The Albert in Victoria Street or Richard’s grim flat off Fulham Palace Road. Another explanation might be the birth of Stefan, Liz said, referring to my ex-husband’s new son. This has all happened so bloody fast – gestation like rats – though the baby would mainly affect Ross, as he is the one who has lost his position. Ewan is still the firstborn. We would have gone off the rails among our own age group, I said. Universities tolerate time-wasters and they have their own counselling services. Why has he come
home
?
    The middle son, too drunk on the dark and the mystery of the sea to reply to his mother’s messages, or just too drunk, returns from Cornwall in time for me to drive him to Brighton for the start of Freshers’ Week. The journey passes without much conversation. Oliver listens to music, and I, who dislike the A23, concentrate on the road. He sits with the passenger seat pushed back in semi-recline. From my sit-up-and-beg position, I see mainly his legs, the tear in his jeans at the knee, and his thumbs as they move over his phone. The clouds are high and grey and gusts of wind buffet the side of the car with hollow sounding thuds.
    At one point, Oliver starts talking about wreck tours off the south coast, then, as suddenly as he began, he replaces the earpiece under a lock of blond hair and falls silent again. This leads me to believe that his mind is on diving and that starting university is an irrelevance and not in any way momentous to him. Only time will tell whether he too will return home before or after graduation and live in his bedroom.
    As far as I know, Oliver has no girlfriend. He hangs out with a group of friends, and who within that group is paired off with whom I have no idea. He is free. He won’t be making those complicated weekend train journeys that Ben Allardyce and I went in for, having ended up in mutually inaccessible university towns. We used to go on three-and-a-half-hour journeys from Colchester to Nottingham, or Nottingham to Colchester, via two quite separate London terminals and sometimes Grantham as well.
    I keep my thoughts to myself. They come and go, like traffic flow. It feels peaceful to be in the car occasionally smacked by the wind, Oliver beside me, the tinny beat from his music a constant accompaniment.
    London suburban landscape repeats itself. Detached, mansion-sized roadside pubs with banner advertisements for Sunday roast, garden centres flanked by banks of shopping trolleys, superstores, ditto. Glimpsed countryside vanishes as fast as the good parts of dreams. I sing at one point because we are on the road and moving but Oliver catches sight of my lips and gestures to me to cut it out.
    We drive towards the South Downs but instead of speeding on towards the sea – the desire for which is quickened by the sight of the coastal hills rising in a long, grey-green line – we turn eastwards at the Patcham interchange, head for the Brighton suburb of Coldean and arrive at the university campus at around midday.
    I park the car while Oliver collects a key from the site manager of the halls of residence. As