Mothers & Daughters by Kate Long Page A

pictured the shop, and Moira. I loved driving into town every day, chatting to customers, Friday lunches at Healey’s, going through the reps’ catalogues. Then Mr Woodhall’s face loomed across my memory again, triumphant:
‘I take it you didn’t really stab your husband to death and then take Jasmine to Disneyland afterwards?
’
    I stood up quickly, still holding Dad’s hand. He looked in my direction for a moment, as if to ask what I was doing.
    â€˜Breaking a dream,’ I told him.
    But the film played on. Mr Woodhall pushing the book across to me, the house point chart on the wall behind him a column of red stars, a jar of teasel heads on his desk.
    â€˜How could you have made her read something like this out in front of everyone?
’
    â€˜Oh, I can’t
make
Jasmine do anything, Mrs Morgan. You should know that. No, she volunteered to share this
.’
    I looked down at my father’s scalp, the marked and uneven skin, the sparse grey hairs. If he would only talk to me, I’d not find myself falling into these thoughts. Don’t pick up my gloom, I told him silently.
    â€˜Hey,’ I said, sitting myself closer to him, ‘remember how good our Jaz was that time I broke my arm? Wasn’t she a love? Did all the shopping for me, came in from school every night and got straight on with tea. It brought out the best in her, being in charge like that. For that month she was smashing. It makes me wonder—’
    â€˜What?
’ another person would have said.
‘What does it make you wonder?
’
    And I’d have gone,
‘Oh, nothing
.’
    The clock ticked; Dad sighed. Jaz’s childhood ran away before my eyes.

CHAPTER 6
    Photograph 329, Album Three
    Location: a fairground, Pwllheli
    Taken by: Carol
    Subject: a teenage Jaz swooping down in the seat of a ferris wheel, with Nat next to her, both mid-scream. Nat is leaning into Jaz and looks to be properly frightened; Carol guessed she didn’t want to go on this ride but didn’t dare back out. Jaz, on the other hand, knows no fear
.
    At the edge of the picture is the claw end of the giant inflatable hammer that Phil’s been forced to carry all afternoon. Carol thinks she might wrench it from his grasp and club him with it, any minute now. Except that would be a comic gesture, and it is not a comic situation
.
    The whole holiday, they have been sniping at each other. The caravan they rented has acted like a microscope, hugely magnifying all that’s wrong with their marriage. There somehow isn’t the space to argue, and anyway, they can’t in front of Nat
.
    Today has been the worst. Every time the wheel carries the two girls upwards, Carol and Phil start to row. By the time Jaz is at the zenith, they are all but spitting at each other. As she’s lowered into view again, it’s smiles all round
.
    As if their daughter’s blind and stupid
.
    One day, Jaz thinks, she’s going to meet someone to whom she can confide all this, someone she can totally trust. Someone who will never let her down
.
    I was going to dress up to see David: my blue skirt from Autograph and a cream blouse, heels. But then I thought, I can’t be bothered with all that. I’m not being intimidated. Let him see me as I am.
    Typically, the place he’d chosen turned out to be a hotel restaurant, not a pub. The waitress put us in a sort of conservatory, blond wood and sage fittings.
    â€˜I knew you’d wear a suit,’ I said.
    David looked surprised. ‘I’ve come straight from work.’
    â€˜So have I.’
    He made no comment. We can’t all be property moguls, I felt like saying. Someone has to meet society’s need for pot pourri and napkin rings.
    â€˜It’s a tad pretentious here, but they do a decent lunch menu,’ he said. ‘Do you want to look at the wine list?’
    â€˜I’m not sure it’s a good idea to add alcohol into the