—Full-color leaflet (print run: 10,000) produced

by Danny Hogan

On Thursday night, while Ellen was trying to pack for her weekend away, there was a knock at the door.

“What happened?” said Ellen, when she opened the door and saw her mother holding a bottle of wine and smiling socially as if she was arriving for a dinner party.

“I’m ‘dropping by,’” said Anne. “Stop looking so panicked. I had dinner in the area, and I made an impromptu decision to stop and see my daughter. For heaven’s sake, you’ve gone completely white. It’s not that unprecedented, is it?”

“Yes it is,” said Ellen, standing back so she could come in. “You don’t drop by.”

“I can’t believe you still haven’t got rid of this wallpaper,” said Anne, running her fingertips disdainfully down the wall in the hallway. “I’d be ripping it off—”

“And painting it a nice neutral color,” finished Ellen. “I know. You’ve told me, and I’ve told you, I like it. It reminds me of Grandma.”

“Exactly,” murmured Anne. She walked into the kitchen and winced as she always did at the orange worktops as if she’d never seen them before. It was all some sort of performance to prove how she’d moved on. Her mother had enjoyed a perfectly idyllic childhood in this perfectly lovely, spacious house, on the beach, mind you, but for some reason she liked to behave as though she’d spent her childhood in a white-trash ghetto and she now lived in Paris.

“Glass of wine?” said Anne.

“No, I won’t actually,” said Ellen. “I overindulged last weekend, and I’m trying to be alcohol-free this week.”

And I’m pregnant, Mum.

The thought crossed her mind but felt strangely meaningless. Although nothing had changed since she’d done the test on Monday, now that the initial shock had worn off, it had begun to seem less and less likely that she really was pregnant. For one thing, apart from that night when she’d had the roast potato “cravings,” she hadn’t experienced any symptoms; she felt completely normal. It had also crossed her mind that she would probably miscarry. She was in her thirties, after all, and you were meant to take vitamin supplements when you were planning to get pregnant and make an appointment with the doctor and have blood tests. As soon as this had occurred to her, she had become positive that it would happen. If she didn’t make too much of a fuss about it, or overthink it, this pregnancy would probably just slip quietly away, until her body was ready for a properly organized pregnancy.

“Oh, well, I won’t either then,” said her mother. She put the bottle of wine down and rapped her knuckles gently on the table. It seemed an uncharacteristically pointless gesture, and Ellen remembered Melanie’s call earlier in the week about her mother seeming “secretive.”

“How are you?” she said.

“Me? I’m well. Very well.” Her mother stopped rapping and shook her head slightly. “Shall we have a cup of tea then? What were you doing when I interrupted you so shockingly?”

“Packing,” said Ellen, as she put the kettle on to boil and carefully selected two of her grandmother’s most flowery, old lady-ish china cups and saucers. “I’m going away with Patrick for the weekend. To Noosa.”

“Ah, Patrick,” said Anne. She settled herself down at the table. “I really don’t need the whole teacup and saucer palaver. I’m not eighty.”

Ellen ignored her and took out the teapot.

“A tea bag will do! Are you eighty?”

“So, what did you think of Patrick anyway?” said Ellen, warming the pot just to annoy her mother. “Both Mel and Pip called to say how much they liked him.”

“Did they?” said Anne. She raised her voice over the bubbling of the kettle. “Well, I certainly didn’t dislike him. You really should replace that kettle.”

Ellen put down the teapot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean it’s so loud. It’s like a plane taking off.”

“No, what do you mean, you didn’t dislike Patrick?”

“He’s perfectly innocuous,” said Anne.

“That is so insulting!” Ellen was half laughing in disbelief.

“If you want to know the truth, I just felt that there was something not quite right about him. A sort of coldness.”

Coldness! This, from her warm, cuddly, motherly mother.

“Oh, and you’re such a discerning judge of character.” Ellen sat down at the table and watched her hand shake slightly as she poured the tea. It was rage. She was filled with rage on Patrick’s behalf.

“Well, you asked me,” said Anne. “I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just telling you how I felt.”

“You thought Jon was wonderful.”

“Jon was good company.” Anne smiled fondly, as if Jon was a dear old friend.

“Mel said the other night that he was a self-satisfied prick. He was brutally sarcastic. He treated me like I was an idiot. He was bordering on verbally abusive.”

“Oh, Ellen, he wasn’t. Don’t try to rewrite history. Especially don’t rewrite it to make yourself the victim. I hate that victim mentality women have these days. It was just a relationship that didn’t work out. He wasn’t an evil monster.”

“Jon made me very unhappy,” said Ellen. He was SO an evil monster! Her voice trembled. She was reminded of the year she turned fifteen when her hormones went crazy, and it seemed like every conversation she had with her mother ended up with Ellen crying. “And Patrick makes me very happy.”