Page 73 of The Life Experiment
Maya shot Layla a dead-eyed glare. ‘Layls, please. Save the humble attitude for someone it suits. Why don’t you invite Angus round tonight and tell him how you feel?’
As her death date flashed before her eyes, Layla winced. ‘I can’t, Maya.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I can’t,’ she snapped. Moving her attention away from her irritation, Layla focused on her mother. Joanna stood a few feet away, touching a pair of printed trousers with a longing look in her eye. ‘Is Mum okay?’
‘Mum? She’s fine,’ Maya replied. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘She seems sad, that’s all. When we were in the fitting room, she was being negative about her legs.’
‘Layla, we’ve been over this. Mum’s always harsh about her body,’ Maya dismissed, but Layla was tired of accepting that. Most of all, she was tired of seeing her mother act as though she was someone to be ashamed of.
In the next few stores, Layla watched Joanna interact with her surroundings. She observed her being drawn towards colour and print and beautiful fabrics, only to retreat and find the plainest, baggiest, darkest thing in the store. Even then, Joanna didn’t touch the item. It was almost as if she didn’t think she deserved it.
At first, Layla wondered if money was the problem. While her parents weren’t experiencing the same financial difficulties they’d had when David wasn’t working, they still had debt. Filling her lungs with air, Layla decided that if her mother picked up an item and loved it, she would buy it for her.
The problem was, everything Joanna’s eyes wandered to, she didn’t reach for.
Eventually, Layla snapped. ‘Come on,’ she said, plucking a dress Joanna had been looking at off the rack. ‘You’re trying this on.’
Joanna’s expression looked like Layla had asked her to undress in the middle of the shop floor. ‘Layla, I can’t!’
‘Yes, you can. Maya, grab that purple dress over there and that floral jumpsuit. Mum was looking at them earlier.’
‘Layla,’ Joanna cried, but Layla didn’t give her mother another second to argue. Instead, she dragged her to the fitting room.
‘This is so exciting,’ Maya cheered as the two sisters sat opposite the fitting room curtain. ‘I haven’t seen Mum get dressed up in ages!’
‘That’s because there’s no point dressing this body up,’ came a muffled response from the other side of the curtain. ‘It looks terrible no matter what.’
As Layla’s eyebrows dipped, Maya shrugged and checked her phone. ‘Dad says he’s having a great time with Jayden. Their boys’ weekend is going well.’
‘I bet Dad’s exhausted. Jayden will have him playing game after game.’
‘Too right. Dad never tells him no, though. The other day, Dad took Jayden to the park while I was at work and it started raining.Jayden was upset because his feet got wet so Dad carried him all the way home.’
No matter how sweet the story was, anxiety still gnawed Layla’s stomach. ‘He shouldn’t be doing that, Maya.’
‘I know, but he’d walk through fire for Jayden. For any of us. You can’t stop Dad being himself. You’ve just got to love him for it.’
‘I guess,’ Layla replied, trying to silence the nagging feeling in her gut. The thing that distracted her, though, was a snort of disgust coming from inside her mother’s fitting room.
‘Yep, as hideous as I imagined,’ Joanna called out.
‘Show us,’ Layla replied.
‘Trust me, you don’t want to see this.’
‘Mum, come on.’
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Joanna quipped before throwing open the curtain. ‘Ta-da!’ she sang, waving her hands to announce herself as the punchline to a joke.
Maya looked up from her phone and frowned. ‘What’s hideous about that?’
‘My hips are too wide for a dress like this, to start with.’ Joanna turned back to the mirror, lingering on the way the fabric embraced her. ‘And look at my arms!’
‘What’s wrong with your arms?’ Layla asked.
