Read Online Out on a Limb by Lynne Barrett-Lee - Free Book Online

Remember. Que sera, girls. Que sera.’
    I’ll give her Que bloody sera. Mum, there’s no milk… Oh, dear. Que sera! Mum, my boyfriend’s just dumped me… Oh, bless. But, chin up! Que sera ! Mum, I think I cocked up my Geography O level… Darling, don’t panic . Remember – Que Sera . I’ve really come to hate Doris Day.
    Trouble is, it is my mother’s philosophy of life perfectly captured in three cheesy syllables of Spanish. The mantra with which she has wafted through, let me see, three careers, four husbands (two dead, two divorced, none beheaded at the last count), and at least two stray fiancés that I know of. But while it may have served her well – and it has, up to now – it’s certainly not serving Pru and I well now. And I did fail my Geography O level, as it happens. And what if I’d passed it? Things could have been so different. I could be working as a cartographer in Brisbane or Nairobi. And could send my commiserations on a postcard from there. Still. At least she’s going back to Pru’s again tonight. For that we must be grateful. Que hurrah.
    ‘Gawd, gawd, gawd!’ says Dee, with some feeling. ‘That is some bombshell! But surely they can’t just throw her out. Doesn’t she have any rights?’
    Taking your worries out on a shuttlecock doesn’t have quite the anger-quenching properties of a session with a punchbag, but in the absence of one, it will just have to do. ‘Apparently not. Well, she has all the usual ones – if she barricades the door and refuses them entry they’ll have to get a court order to evict her. But she’s not even there, is she? She’s at my sister’s.’
    And will soon be back at mine. And then at Pru’s. And then mine again. We’re passing her back and forth as if engaged in an intense bout of correspondence chess. Is this how the next few weeks – God, months – are going to be? And if that’s not indigestible enough a thought to be going on with, the next one – the nagging one – the one that can’t seem to help propagating in my head, is the thought that we all know whose house she’d rather be billeted at; the one with a vacant room (but it’s not vacant! It isn’t ! It’s just temporarily unoccupied!), the one without two eight-year-olds, but mainly the one without an irritable husband already installed as head of state.
    Dee opens her water bottle and takes a long swig from it. ‘Well, she should hot-foot it back there and stake her claim, if you ask me. It’s disgraceful.’
    It’s impossible. She can’t function on her own yet, and even if she could, she doesn’t want to. When did she ever? ‘We were thinking of launching a counter-attack over the matter of the conservatory, as it happens,’ I say. ‘That cost them close on fifteen thousand. And I know for a fact where the money for it came from. Her flat. God – sorry, excuse me for a second – but what a low life bastard scoundrel that man has turned out to be! I mean, he knew, Dee! He knew all along! Yet he happily helped her spend her money! It’s all gone, you know. All spent on bloody cruises!’
    Dee thinks for a moment. She always thinks about things. In her position (which is one of being married to an alcoholic, and thus having undergone months – no, years – of sitting in therapists’, mediators’ and counsellors’ offices), I guess looking at angles and weighing up least-worst options and trying to calmly fathom motivations and solutions becomes pretty standard after a while. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t quite like that. I mean, they were getting on, weren’t they? And it’s kind of what you do when you’re old, isn’t it? Go on cruises and that. I mean, to be fair, why wouldn’t they? If they could afford it, why not? You can’t take it with you, after all. And what would they want to save up for at their age?’
    I pick up my own bottle, rather wishing it contained gin instead of water. ‘Oh, I know, I know. That’s what she keeps telling me. But that