Free Maloney's Law by Anne Brooke Page B

each time I visit, her father seems to have changed something, either in the house, the garden, or the attached allotment. It keeps him busy in his semi-retirement years, Jade once told me, but I think the itch must always have been there.
    By the time we arrive, the A12 has gathered the car to its road-maintenance busy breast and regurgitated us after two hours twenty-seven minutes of queuing. Mrs. O’Donnell, primed from her en route conversation with her daughter, sweeps us into the living room where two large glasses of wine are waiting. As I’m the one driving, I’m forced to leave half of it.
    ‘Good journey, dears?’ Mrs. O’Donnell — whom I can never quite bring myself to call by her first name — says with a smile.
    Jade launches into a brief and bitter monologue about the state of UK roads which, being the woman she is, soon segues into a bright and gossipy monologue about what she’s been up to in the social centre of Stratford. This includes salsa, her reading group currently preparing for discussions on the latest Anne Tyler novel, and whether the late summer sales will be worth investigation. As I know about most of it already, I phase out and sip my wine.
    I’m sitting on a plush deep crimson sofa with Jade to one side and her mother in the chair opposite. The carpet is an old-fashioned ’70s patterned style, big and bold and bright, or would be if the O’Donnells were the house-proud types, and the walls are a plain sea-green. By all the laws of design, it shouldn’t work, but in a room this size it does. I love it, and I hope they never change it.
    Leaning back, I close my eyes for a second or two, the background hum of the women’s voices acting like a cradle-song. The burgeoning smell of roasting lamb and potatoes rocks me into the sort of family comfort zone I never really had. The next thing I know Jade is leaning over me, shaking my shoulder.
    ‘Hey, Paul, Mum’s asked you the same question three times, and all you can do is snore.’
    ‘I’m not snoring, I wasn’t asleep.’
    ‘Leave the poor boy alone, darling,’ Mrs. O’Donnell says. ‘He’s tired; it’s a long journey and he’s driven all that way.’
    ‘No, really, Mrs. O’Donnell, it’s fine. I was just listening to you, that’s all...what was it you were asking?’
    She opens her mouth to reply, but at the same time the back door clicks open and there’s the sound of a grunted hello. Jade’s father has returned from his morning viewing of the allotment, and this is the cue for her mother to leap up and head for the kitchen to check her husband is all right. There’s a lot to be said for rural values, and I’m almost sorry Jade doesn’t share them. Might be nice if she leapt up to greet me at the office once in a while. The thought makes me smile.
    ‘What’s up with you then?’
    ‘Nothing. I’m just amused by the lies you tell about me snoring.’
    ‘I have witnesses. Independent ones,’ she makes to carry on but it’s too late. The door has already opened and Mr. O’Donnell is standing on the threshold. He’s a big man, grey tufts of hair emphasising his baldness, and whenever I’ve seen him he’s always dressed as if he’s about to step into a tractor and go ploughing: baggy hard-wearing trousers, old striped shirt, and holey jumper, usually green. The opposite in style to his daughter, although their faces are similar, something about the mouth and nose making my friend a definite O’Donnell.
    ‘How’s my favourite daughter then?’
    ‘Dad, I’m your only daughter.’
    The two of them exchange a quick but sincere hug, and Jade twangs her father’s black braces.
    ‘That hurts!’
    ‘Sorry.’
    She isn’t though, and neither is he. It’s part of their ritual of greeting. The sight of it twists my stomach, and I wonder how things might have been if my father had ever been like that, though it’s only now I can admit it wasn’t all his fault. It took two of us to make my family as it is