The Not So Perfect Life of Mo Lawrence Read online

  Michelle had been on a fast upward track in her career, but seemed to Darrell to have no regrets about leaving it behind. Darrell had long observed that whatever Michelle decided she wanted to do, she went at with single-minded and unswerving ambition. Michelle had pursued Chad from the second she’d first spied him, sitting on a park bench on a balmy Charlotte summer day, surrounded by a gaggle of doting blondes like some gleaming Nordic hero. She’d extracted him swiftly and ruthlessly from the women, whom she’d described to Darrell as the human equivalent of a crème caramel, all golden and soft and syrupy.

  ‘That’s the thing with Southern women,’ Michelle had told Darrell. ‘They’re all so freaking polite. It was like Dynasty. They were Krystle. I was Alexis. I’m not even sure they knew what happened,’ she’d added. ‘I should have stolen their Tiffany charm bracelets while I was at it.’

  Chad and Michelle had been married within a year. Virginia had been surprisingly accepting of Chad’s choice of wife. According to Michelle, Virginia Lawrence’s own preference for her son would have been the daughter of one of her Boston social register acquaintances or, failing that, Zara Phillips, who was close enough to being a princess. (Virginia had eliminated Princess Stephanie of Monaco for being 1. too old, 2. too slutty, and 3. too like an iguana.)

  In Michelle’s opinion, Virginia had accepted her lack of social standing and/or crown when, during the inevitable phone calls that preceded the wedding, Virginia had recognised in Michelle’s own mother a kindred spirit. Michelle’s father, when she was twelve, had left not only his wife and child, but also the country. Darrell knew Michelle hadn’t been too bothered by this; the scandal of it gave her a certain cachet among her friends, and her father had regularly sent excellent presents from his new home in the Yukon, like beaded, fur-lined boots and (the gift Darrell personally had coveted) a silver pendant in the shape of a howling wolf. Michelle’s mother, on the other hand, had wrapped around her a protective cloak of propriety. Her vowels became impeccable, her home immaculate. Now, twenty-three years later, her respectability was as gleaming and impervious as the layers of polish on her ugly Victorian furniture. Even from eight thousand miles away, Virginia Lawrence could sense this and appreciate it. Michelle may have been a little too … frank for her taste, but Michelle’s mother was above reproach.

  Neither Darrell nor Michelle’s mother had come to the wedding. Darrell had just bought her first house, so her excuse — extreme poverty — had been acceptable to Michelle. Michelle’s mother’s excuse, on the other hand, had been a reluctance to fly. Michelle had recounted to Darrell her conversation with Chad, in which she’d explained to him that this was in fact complete bollocks, and that the real reason was that her mother considered the whole of North America beyond the pale for harbouring her errant ex-husband.

  ‘But we’re nowhere near Canada,’ he’d protested.

  ‘Yes, but to Mother Horton, it’s all one,’ his new wife had told him, ‘just as every Asian is a buck-toothed slant-eye and every African a spear-thrusting ooga-booga man.’

  Mrs Horton had sent a tasteful card and a cut-crystal vase of such extraordinary ugliness that Michelle was reluctant even to inflict it on Goodwill.

  Nine months and one week after the wedding, Harry was born. He looked just like Chad, and instantly became the second object of Lowell and Virginia’s veneration. Rosie, much to Michelle’s relief, arrived dark, fierce and squalling. ‘She’s a mini-me!’ a delighted Michelle had told Darrell. ‘When her hair grows I’m going to cut it exactly like mine. We’ll be terrifying!’ Now, at eight months, Rosie’s hair was still a downy fuzz, and Darrell couldn’t quite picture her with Michelle’s dark, dead-straight bob. She had no doubt, though, that Michelle would keep her word. Michelle always meant exactly what she said …

  ‘So …’ said Darrell. ‘Why does Chad want this new job then?’

  ‘I have no freaking idea!’ Michelle said. ‘It makes no sense at all. Virginia is in a complete lather about it, not to mention Chad’s dad. I’ve never seen big Lowell express even a smidgeon of uncertainty. Lowell knows best about everything — he’s like Dr Phil, only not so tactful. Even that stint in hospital didn’t faze him — he came out more “Ride of the Valkyries” than ever. Now, it’s like he’s shrunk in the wash. He hesitates before he speaks, and the other night at dinner he actually asked Virginia if he should have a second helping of pie. It’s pitiful! But Chad refuses to admit there’s anything wrong. He says they’ll get used to it, as if us being ripped from the family bosom is akin to a new set of dentures.’

  ‘Um …’ Darrell ventured. ‘His dad’s health couldn’t be a factor, could it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, when people close to you have a scare, it can freak you out a bit …’

  Michelle’s voice rose. ‘Are you making the ludicrous suggestion that Chad is running away because his father had a stroke? It wasn’t even a big stroke. It was a teeny-tiny one. He’s fine. You’d never even know he’d had one.’

  ‘A TIA can mean a bigger stroke is on the way.’

  ‘What’s with all this “TIA” bollocks? Have you switched to writing grubby doctor-and-nurse romances now?’

  ‘No, I just did quite a bit of reading when Tom died.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Darrell said. ‘We both know you are an insensitive cow.’

  ‘True,’ said Michelle. ‘So you won’t mind if I ask why you were reading about strokes when said late hubbie dropped dead of a dud heart?’

  ‘I just wanted to be prepared for anything. You know, just in case next time it was more obvious …’

  ‘Chad’s dad has the best doctors filthy lucre can buy. They won’t let anything worse happen to him. It would be like shooting a golden-egg goose.’

  The knob on Darrell’s bedroom door rattled as someone outside struggled to open it.

  ‘Hang on a mo, Mo—’

  Darrell dumped the laptop off her knees and hopped off the bed. Outside the door she found her boyfriend, Anselo, trying and failing to hold two cups of tea in one hand without spilling any.

  ‘Thanks!’ Darrell took one from him.

  Anselo wiped the spilled tea from his hand onto his ancient Stranglers t-shirt and nodded towards the laptop on the bed. ‘You done?’

  ‘Not quite. Come on. Hop up and join me. Michelle’s in a state about having to move states.’

  Anselo gave her a pained look. ‘How will I help?’

  Darrell smiled. ‘Someone else for her to rant at.’

  ‘Look who’s here,’ said Darrell brightly as she and Anselo settled onto the bed.

  ‘What do you know about San Francisco, Gypsy boy?’ demanded the little on-screen Michelle.

  Anselo shrugged. ‘Not much. Earthquakes. Cable cars. Flowers in your hair?’

  Michelle scowled. ‘All I know about it I learned from the first George of the Jungle movie. I don’t know anyone who lives there at all.’

  ‘Danielle Steele lives there,’ said Darrell, ‘and, according to Wikipedia, in a fifty-five-room mansion that used to belong to a tycoon called Adolph B. Spreckels.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’m pretty sure Dani and I won’t be bonding over goldfish crackers and Ben 10 at the ex-Spreckels pad any time soon. Any other leads?’

  ‘I know someone who lives there,’ said Anselo.

  Darrell’s surprised enquiry chimed with Michelle’s. ‘Who?’

  ‘My sister.’

  ‘I thought she was teaching art somewhere up north?’

  ‘That’s Jenepher, my youngest sister. There’s another one in between her and me. Aishe.’

  ‘Why is your sister named after a continent?’ said Michelle.

  Darrell frowned. ‘And why don’t you ever mention her?’

  ‘First,’ said Anselo, ‘it’s Ay-sha, not Asia. And second, I’ve only seen her twice in—’ Anselo did a quick calculation. ‘Wow. Twice in the last sixteen years.’

  ‘Is she
the family pariah?’ Michelle asked.

  Anselo scowled. ‘She was the one who wanted to leave. As soon as she could. She took off when she was seventeen.’

  ‘To San Francisco?’

  ‘Europe. Odd-jobbed around for almost two years. Then in Germany she hooked up with a Norwegian death metal band who were on tour. Got pregnant to the drummer. Took off again. Had the baby in a backpackers in Bratislava.’

  ‘Jesus!’ said Darrell. ‘Is she insane?’

  ‘Personally, I’m beginning to like the sound of this woman,’ said Michelle. ‘So where did she and the infant Scandiwegian head to from Bratislava?’

  ‘Jamaica.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where she met the owner of a chain of Louisiana fried-chicken outlets called Frank Lewis. The guy, not the chicken outlets. He was black, and weighed about twenty stone. I saw a photo. They got married in New Orleans and he was dead less than two years later.’

  ‘Let me guess. Heart attack? Sorry, Darrell.’

  ‘It was my guess, too. Are we right?’ Darrell asked Anselo.

  ‘Nope. Choked on a peanut at a bar. Tossed it up to catch it in his mouth and it went right down his windpipe. He was too big for anyone to give him the Heimlich manoeuvre.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’ said Michelle. ‘But kind of hilarious as well. Oh, don’t give me those faces. It’s a bit funny. Admit it.’

  ‘My uncle saw her just after he died. Felt she genuinely loved him,’ said Anselo.

  ‘OK, fine,’ said Michelle, ‘I’m a cow. Move on. So is that how your sister got a green card? Marrying a Yank called Frank?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘And she’s in San Francisco?’

  ‘Marin County. Across the Golden Gate Bridge. Moved there about ten years ago. We never thought she’d stay so long, because before that she’d never stayed anywhere more than a few months. Guess she wanted to give her son some stability when he was growing up, though stability isn’t something Aishe’s ever seemed to put much store in.’ He added, ‘Mind you, by now her son’ll almost be grown up. He’ll be — what?’ Anselo did another quick calculation. ‘Fourteen?’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Darrell asked.

  ‘Gulliver.’

  ‘As in travels? Makes sense, I suppose.’

  ‘More likely as in “Never do anything that could be remotely considered conventional. Or simple”,’ Anselo added darkly.

  Darrell and Michelle exchanged a glance through the Skype screen.

  ‘Your sister’s a rebel,’ said Michelle. ‘A mutineer on the good ship Establishment.’

  Anselo shook his head. ‘Aishe doesn’t need a cause to be angry. She doesn’t even need provocation. She’d pick a fight with a silent order of nuns.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Michelle. ‘What’s her number?’

  3

  ‘Gulliver Herne-Lewis!’ his mother yelled up the stairs. ‘If you do not pick up this stack of t-shirts that I have washed, dried and folded for you, then I will take them to the back garden and set them on fire. And then I will come to your next band recital completely naked, my body covered only in the smeared ashes of your incinerated shirts. Comprende?’

  Aishe heard a short, muffled response, which may or may not have been a word.

  ‘Mr Paste-faced Know-it-all will be turning up in five minutes. Your shirts have until then to stay un-charred. Got it?’

  No response at all this time. With some effort Aishe fought down the urge to race upstairs, rip open her son’s bedroom door and slap him upside the head. What was it that drove her so nuts? she wondered. The complete absence of any desire to make an effort? Gulliver had always been such a helpful little boy, she’d rarely had to tell him twice to do anything. It was as if he’d always known they’d been a team, him and her, and that teams always pulled together. But over the last few months it seemed that for every inch in height he had suddenly, alarmingly, gained, he’d lost a proportionate willingness for any kind of interaction. The week before, Aishe had been flicking a duster over the photographs on top of her bookshelf and found herself smiling fondly at a photo of her curly mopped urchin, all round, freckled cheeks and a huge, gappy grin. How sweet he’d been when he was little, she’d thought. Then she’d recalled that the photo had been taken only last year, and felt her insides flip with an emotion she found hard to pin down. It seemed most like regret, she decided. But what on earth for? I kick arse as a mother, she told herself. My son is growing into a fine young man, despite his troglodyte tendencies, and it’s beautiful and gratifying to watch.

  Aishe thought about her brother, Anselo, the one she was closest to in age — and in personality too, though Anse had always been a bit too stuck in the duty and obligation groove. Anselo, the middle Herne, had been a skinny little child, much slighter than his two older brothers. He’d been quiet and wary, too; a silent, frowning observer when his strapping, handsome brothers would inevitably throw themselves into the thick of things and emerge yelling in either triumph or pain, usually the latter. But the last time Aishe had seen him, which was over seven years ago, she’d been agog to see how much he’d filled out. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered and well muscled. ‘Wow, bro,’ she’d said to him. ‘Been hitting the gym?’ He’d reddened and brushed off the remark with his usual scowl. And then he said what he’d been forced to say, and the conversation went rapidly downhill from there.

  Her two oldest brothers were married now with a brood of children each and a matching set of over-stuffed English rose wives who expected them to bring home the bacon and lie about their ethnic origin at dinner parties. The wives felt that even being thought to have Arab blood was less of a social death than being Roma Gypsy. Stupid fat cows.

  Anselo, however, was not married. Well, as far as Aishe knew …

  A jaunty tattoo sounded against the door. Aishe bristled. Even the way he knocked was gratingly smug.

  ‘Gulliver!’ she yelled again. ‘Get down here. And kiss goodbye to your shirts on the way.’

  Aishe’s house being very small, the front door was all of two feet from the stairs. She wrenched it open and glared.

  ‘Hello,’ said her visitor mildly, as he stepped inside. ‘You could always attach wires to his testicles. Although I doubt he’s let you see him naked for at least three years.’

  Aishe closed the door behind him with more force than was strictly necessary.

  ‘Let’s hope you know more about teaching than you do about child rearing,’ she said.

  Benedict glanced pointedly up the stairs, at the top of which Gulliver had failed to appear. ‘Shall I fetch him for you?’

  Aishe put her foot on the first stair and gripped the banister. ‘Gull—!’

  ‘I’m here!’

  Gulliver sloped onto the landing. His curly hair was now so long, Aishe observed, that it brushed his shoulder blades. It wasn’t her own rich chocolate-brown colour, and it certainly wasn’t blond like the man who’d fathered him. It was a dark, coppery red, a colour that popped up every so often amongst her Gypsy family. They were called pawni Romany, fair Gypsies, even though they were only fair compared to their sable-haired, olive-skinned relatives. Aishe’s uncle Jenico, the head of her extended family, was a pawni Romany. Uncle Jenico was also an enormous bear of a man, at least four inches taller and three axe-handles wider than even the newly buff Anselo. Gulliver had grown six inches in as many months and was now pushing five nine. Aishe offered up a quick prayer that he didn’t end up the size of his great-uncle. The house was barely big enough for the two of them now.

  Still, she hoped her son would have more meat on him than the stripling lounging against her front door. Benedict Hardy was tall, around six two, and as lean and fine-boned as a whippet. He had very long legs, their thinness exaggerated by the tight, tapered black jeans he always wore, topped with either a Buzzcocks-style blazer or a zipped motorcycle jacket, à la Joey Ramone. Both jackets were just that little bit too small, but instead of emphasising his
ninety-pound-weakling physique they somehow contrived to make him annoyingly stylish. He had suitably punk-pale skin and white blond hair so close-cropped that from a distance his head looked shaved. In Aishe’s opinion, he was saved from looking like an anaemic wading bird only by a generous mouth and a lively pair of green-brown eyes.

  Aishe was of the opinion that Benedict’s dress sense was a complete put-on, a sad attempt to disguise the fact that he was a former English public schoolboy, which by definition meant he could be neither authentically streetwise nor cool. Aishe could not recall the name of the school on Benedict’s resumé, but its influence — an accent of clipped precision and an air of amused self-assurance — was yet another aspect that set Aishe’s teeth on edge. She herself had left school at sixteen, with a few good marks but not enough to get even a half-decent qualification. She knew she wasn’t a thicko, though — she’d successfully home-schooled Gulliver right up until the start of this school year.

  Aishe preferred to forget the arguments and tension that had arced between her and Gulliver all through the last summer holidays. It was the first time they had ever argued seriously, the first time he had ever challenged her authority, questioned her judgement. All because Gulliver had told her he wanted to give up home-schooling, wanted to go to a real school, like a normal kid …

  That’s why Benedict was here. He was Aishe’s compromise. Gulliver could go to a ‘real’ school next year. The ‘normal’ kids his age would all be starting high school then, so it seemed sensible timing. They could all be new and ‘normal’ together. Until then, home-schooling it was. Aishe would teach him history and Spanish. Benedict would tutor him in the subjects that Aishe struggled with — maths, science, English and music.