Page 4 of The Mother-in-Law

It began, oddly enough, with a dream. A bizarre, meandering dream that started at my Great-Aunt Gwen’s 90th birthday party and ended at the house where my best friend from primary school lived, but she wasn’t a little girl any more, she was an old lady. But somewhere in the middle, Ollie was there. And in the dream, he was different. Sexier. The next day at work, I sent him an email saying he’d been in my dream the night before. The expected ‘what was I doing?’ banter followed, with an undercurrent. Ollie’s office is right next door to mine, but we’ve always sent each other emails—witty commentary about our boss’s Donald Trump hair, suspicious behaviour at the office Christmas party, requests for sushi orders for lunch. But that day it was different. My heart skipped a beat every time his name appeared in my inbox.

For a while I kept my head about it. It was a rendezvous, a tryst . . . not a relationship and certainly nottherelationship. But when I noticed him giving money to the drunk at the train station every morning (even after the drunk abused him and accused him of stealing his booze); when he spotted a lost little boy at the shopping centre and immediately lifted him up over his head and asked if he could see his mum anywhere; when he began to occupy more and more of my thoughts, a realisation struck: this was it. He’s the one.

I tell Ollie’s family the story (minus the dream), my arms spinning around me as I talk quickly and without pause, as I tend to do when I am nervous. Tom is enraptured at the storytelling, patting his son on the back at intervals as I talk.

‘So tell me about . . . all of you,’ I say when I’ve run out of steam.

‘Nettie is a marketing executive at MartinHoldsworth,’ Tom says, proud as punch. ‘Runs a whole department.’

‘And what about you, Patrick?’ I ask.

‘I run a bookkeeping business,’ Patrick says. ‘It’s small now, but we’ll expand with time.’

‘So tell me about your parents, Lucy,’ Diana jumps in. ‘What do they do?’

‘My dad was a professor of Modern European History. He’s retired now. And my mother died of breast cancer.’

It’s been seventeen years, so talking about it is uncomfortable rather than upsetting. Mostly the discomfort is for other people, who, upon hearing this news, have to figure out something to say.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Tom says, his booming voice bringing a palpable steadiness to the room.

‘I lost my own mother a few years back,’ Patrick says. ‘You never get over it.’

‘You never do,’ I agree, feeling a sudden kinship with Patrick. ‘But to answer your question, Diana, my mum was a stay-at-home mother. And before that, a primary school teacher.’

I always feel proud to tell people she was a teacher. Since her death, countless people have told me what a wonderful teacher she was, how she would have done anything for her students. It seems a waste that she never went back to it, even after I started school myself.

‘Why bother having a child if you’re not going to stick around to enjoy her?’ she used to say, which is kind of funny since she wasn’t able to stick around and enjoy me anyway, dying when I was thirteen.

‘Her name was . . .’ I start at the same time as Diana stands. We all stop talking and follow her with our eyes. For the first time I understand the term ‘matriarch’, and the power of being one.

‘Right then,’ she says. ‘I think dinner will be ready, if everyone would like to move to the table.’

And with that, the conversation about my mother seems to be over.

We have roast lamb for dinner. Diana prepares and serves it herself. Given the size of their house I almost expect caterers to show up, but this part of the evening, at least, is comfortable and familiar.

‘I was so impressed to hear about your charity,’ I say once Diana is finally sitting rather than serving. ‘Ollie is so proud of you, he talks about it to anyone who’ll listen.’

Diana smiles vaguely in my direction, reaching for the cauliflower cheese. ‘Does he?’

‘Oh, absolutely. I’d love to hear more about it.’

Diana spoons some more cauliflower onto her plate, focusing intently on the transaction as if she were performing surgery. ‘Oh? What would you like to hear?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’ I feel under the spotlight suddenly, like I’m prying rather than making conversation. ‘I guess . . . what gave you the idea to start it? How did it get off the ground?’

‘I just saw the need,’ she says. ‘It’s not rocket science, collecting baby goods.’

‘She’s humble.’ Tom pushes more lamb onto his fork, still chewing what’s in his mouth. ‘It’s her Catholic upbringing.’

‘How did you two meet?’ I ask, deciding to move to a different topic after my lack of success with Diana’s charity.

‘They met at the movies,’ Nettie says. ‘Dad saw Mum across the foyer and sparks flew.’

Tom and Diana exchange a glance. There is affection in their gaze but something else too, something I can’t quite place.

‘What can I say?’ Tom says. ‘I knew right away that she was the one. Diana wasn’t like anyone else that I knew. She was . . . smarter. More interesting. Out of my league, I thought.’