The First Time I Saw Your Face Read Free

uncharacteristically morose, he gave her a playful nudge with his hip.
    ‘Look, I know we’re in another one of her dips, but she’s always pulled herself round before; she’ll do it again. And at least this time I’m here, just upstairs. It’s not like before when you and Joe had to keep going round to check on her.’
    ‘I know, I know. But it’s hard on you.’
    ‘My turn, Tess.’
    ‘That’s what Joe thinks,’ she said with a grin, and Mack had no problem imagining just what the straight-down-the-line Joe would have said. The phrases ‘Now he’s stopped skulking around’ and ‘Pulling his weight’ would have featured largely. There was no dissembling with Joe, what you saw was what you got. Hard to remember that when Tess first took up with him, the all-knowing, arrogant Mack he was then figured she could do a lot better than a guy learning how to be a joiner. Now Joe had his own business and had proved to be a bit of a star on the husband-and-Dad front, while Mack had what? Granny and particles.
    ‘Sensible guy, Joe,’ he said.
    ‘That’s why I married him.’
    ‘I thought that was because you were pregnant.’
    Tess cuffed him on the arm and looked covertly towards the car. ‘Shh. That’s why I married him then . Not why I married him at all.’
    ‘OK, OK, and mind the writing arm, will you? Anyway, what’s all this about it being hard on me? You still do too much. I’d have made her sort out her own dental appointment.’
    ‘Oh really, tough guy? Who was it got her glasses fixed when she sat on them, and remind me, how many times in the last week have you cooked for her, hmm?’
    ‘Yeah, well, it keeps me busy.’
    Tess gave him a disbelieving look and he took the point that they were both as bad as each other. Phyllida had them on the rack again with her drinking, and all they could do was keep her on her feet as long as possible and ensure everything jogged on around her.
    When they reached the car, Mack sensed Tess was back on an even keel, even though there was still a ring of hiked-up brightness about her voice as she opened the driver’s door and said, ‘Right ho, everyone. That’s sorted.’
    On the way home, while playing ‘I Spy’ with the girls, Mack studied Phyllida’s profile. At first glance, she didn’t look bad for a woman in her sixties. Up closer, though, the texture of her skin was like sucked paper and the whites of her eyes had a jaundiced look to them. She was dropping too much weight as well. Phyllida turned her head as if she was aware he was studying her and he pretended to immerse himself in the game of ‘I Spy’ again, but he was still thinking about her.
    When he was growing up, he thought all mothers smelt of alcohol, just as his father smelled of the little Turkish cigarettes he’d taken to smoking since his stint reporting in the Middle East. The pair of them joked that they were ‘work hard, play hard’ journalists, with Phyllida swearing that she wrote better with a drink inside her. Hard to pinpoint when her ability to drink heavily had tipped overinto something else. Five, six years after his father had died, he guessed.
    After Phyllida, Tess and he had left London things had, despite the odd hiccup, got a little better, but since he’d been exiled back to live with her in Bath this time, the general trend had been mainly downwards. He wondered from time to time if that had something to do with him.
    ‘Phone box begins with an “F” doesn’t it?’ Gabi asked, pulling him out of his thoughts. He set her right before dipping back in.
    Things might have been different if Phyllida had ever admitted that things were as bad as they were, gave what she was its proper name. Not a hope; too proud to say, ‘I spy something beginning with A.’
    As they pulled up outside the house, Tess said, ‘I could just pop in and get Mum settled,’ and he answered, ‘No need,’ and was out of the car and round by Phyllida’s door before Tess could argue.