Page 6 of Out of Control

“Oh, Fiona! I’m glad I’ve caught you. I know it isn’t your usual day for visiting but could you pop in and see your mum? I just did my morning check on all the residents and she sounded down in the dumps. You know how she gets sometimes — lonely like everyone else here. I don’t know why they find it so hard to confide in each other. When I asked her what the problem was, she said something about not knowing what was happening at Christmas.”

Fiona sighed. As the date of her retirement had got closer, these last-minute requests from her mum, via the complex manager, had become more frequent — it was as though the old lady wanted to lay claim to a significant part of her daughter’s retirement. Fiona didn’t mind visiting but she liked to do it according to the timetable they’d agreed, and Saturday wasn’t her day. Before Joe had turned up, today had been earmarked for trying out a new Pilates class and then a spot of Christmas shopping. Joe and the breakfast and the job of washing up last night’s dinner stuff, a task which he had ignored, meant she was running too late for the class and her day had become annoyingly skew whiff before it had started.

“Do you think a phone call would do the trick?” That would only take ten minutes out of the already spoiled day.

There was a hesitation before Mrs Fairchild replied. “No. I think she was up really early baking and she mentioned having a delicious sponge cake all ready and waiting.”

Fiona sighed. Her mum’s reaction to any woe was to bake. Which then made the old lady even more fed up because there was no one to eat her baking. “OK. I’ll be there, but don’t give her a time otherwise she’ll sit and watch the clock.”

On the drive over to the sheltered housing complex, Fiona braced herself for an inquisition into her love life and for the criticisms that had been part of their relationship for as long as she could remember. An only child, she carried all her mother’s hopes and expectations single-handedly. One expectation that Dorothea had been voicing more regularly was to spend more time with Fiona when she retired. Which was now. This visit would be an opportunity to ensure those expectations were managed realistically for both of them.

Her mum’s sheltered flat was like a dolls’ house with an open-plan lounge/kitchen, a bathroom with an accessible shower, a bedroom which just fitted a double bed pushed up hard against the wall, plus a ‘dining room/second bedroom’. This latter space wasn’t big enough for either purpose and had become Dorothea’s jigsaw room, with a camp bed folded up under the window ‘just in case’. Fiona had had a joiner fix shelving to two of the walls to hold the old lady’s extensive jigsaw collection, and in the centre of the room was the old family dining table covered in a mat, specifically for doing jigsaws. A radio sat on the windowsill so that Dorothea could listen to Radio 4 as she worked.

“So,” her mother said when Fiona was settled in an armchair, “have you got yourself a nice young man yet who’s willing to settle down? Or is it still that one-night-a-week chapwho I’m not allowed to meet? Has he got three heads or something?”

“His name’s Joe. And . . .” she paused for dramatic effect, wishing she could have a drum roll to accompany her announcement, “he moved in with me last night.” There was no point muddying the waters on the technicality that the situation was forced by a burst pipe, or mentioning that Fiona wasn’t sure if she wanted him there.

“About time too. Are you getting married?”

Married? Fiona’s stomach lurched and she felt like a horse shying away from a sudden hole in the road. “We . . . haven’t discussed that.”

“But you’d say ‘yes’, if he proposed?”

Fiona wished she’d kept her mouth shut on the Joe situation.

“Hmmm.” Dorothea set her lips in a thin line when Fiona didn’t respond. “Growing old alone isn’t much fun, and I should know.” She pointed to the slices of Victoria sandwich, liberally dusted with icing sugar and thickly filled with buttercream, on the plate between them. “Eat your cake. I’ve cut you an extra-large piece — I don’t get many visitors to share it with.”

The cake was twice the size of a standard piece. “Mum — I can’t eat all that.” Fiona patted her stomach.

Dorothea waved a hand dismissively. “For heaven’s sake just tuck in. You’re far too skinny.”

Her mother’s cakes were the best; Dorothea hadn’t won the WI Christmas Cake Competition seven years in a row for no good reason.

“How about I wrap my piece in a serviette and take it home for Joe? He’s got a very sweet tooth. And he appreciates his food.”

“Well, that’s a point in his favour.” The old lady smiled. “Remind me before you go and I’ll get him some of the flapjack I made yesterday. I could make extra for next time you call?”

“No, Mum. It’s fine, really. And I did want to talk about my future visits.” Fiona took an orange felt tip from her bag. “I’m going to mark more dates on your new calendar for next year. OK?”

The old lady beamed as Fiona circled an extra day per fortnight and added the dates to her phone calendar. She’d chosen times when she’d have an hour to spare en route to the Retired Means Active club meetings.

Then Dorothea diverted back to her favourite topic: her daughter’s inability to sustain a relationship with a suitable man. She seemed to have forgotten about her anxiety over the Christmas arrangements which had brought Fiona here in the first place. “Even if he likes my cake, this Joe-person still sounds dodgy. He keeps you at arm’s length for months and months and then, all of a sudden, he moves in. It’s your pension lump sum he’s after. Mark my words, this won’t end well.”

“Mum! You can’t judge a person you’ve never met. And he didn’t keep me at arm’s length, it was the other way around.”

“And why are you so cagey when I ask how the pair of you met in the first place?”

Her mother had decided that today was the day for awkward questions. If Fiona admitted to internet dating, her mother would voice a less than positive opinion on it.Keep it vague.“Mutual interests. But it’s really not important!”

“If it was a normal relationship, you would have introduced us already.” Dorothea had a mouthful of cake and tea before continuing. “Now Rob, he was a nice lad. You never gave him a proper chance to put things right and show that he could change. You can be an unforgiving woman, Fiona.”

Fiona choked on her tea. In one breath her mother was saying, with no proof at all, that Joe should be avoided because he was after her money. And in the next she was saying that Rob,who had gambled away everything they had plus some, should be given another chance.

“The thing is, Fiona—” her mother leaned forward as though she was letting her daughter into one of life’s biggest secrets — “you are sixty. Your life is at least two-thirds finished. Your ability to attract a man is probably limited to the next five years; by then everything will have sagged and wrinkled beyond repair. Unless you want to turn into an old maid — and, as I’ve already said, growing infirm on your own is no walk in the park — you need to get your act together. Stop letting things that have gone wrong in the past, like your marriage to Rob, frighten you off trying them again. Learn to trust again.”

“Mum, it’s my life.”

“Exactly. That’s why you don’t see it objectively.” Dorothea dropped her voice to a dramatic stage whisper. “I’ve heard on the maternal grapevine that Rob is back in town.” Dorothea sat back in her chair with a satisfied look. “Single. Available. He’s looking to meet new people. I told his mother about that retired business club thing you’ve joined.”

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