The Aftermath Of You

Chapter Two

No, it definitely wasn't.

Lulu Handcock stood theatrically in the doorway, her frazzled grey hair (possibly from being washed solely with dandelion juice) tied back in a loose bun, her bright blue eyes blazing from a face that had seen one too many summers and laughed at just as many jokes. She wasn't laughing now, however, her eyes fixed firmly on Toni's guilty face. She waited in silence.

Toni affected a surprised tone. "Mother!"

"Liar!" Lulu stood awaiting a response, but Toni found a most disconcerting patch on the arm of her sofa, and picked at it intently. After realising no comment was forthcoming, Lulu threw a bundle of newspapers on Toni's lap and stalked off to put the kettle onto the stove. Dragging herself up, Toni unfolded the newspaper and turned obediently to the Classifieds.

"You can stop looking at the death notices," her mother called over her shoulder. "Gosh, you're so depressing! Why don't you start wearing black and playing death music and just be done with it? I hear that's what all you young ones do these days."

"I don't think I'm classed as a young one anymore, Mother; I'm almost twenty five. "

"God almighty! Do you know that when I was twenty five years old I already had a child and a mortgage? I was normal. Why can't any of my children be normal?"

Toni was an only child, but Lulu felt vindicated by using expressions like that.

"At least look at the employment notices."

"I already am," Toni lied.

She skimmed all of the columns quickly - RADCLIFFE EARL, RICHARDS MARVIN, ROBINSON JULIE - feeling vaguely reassured that somewhere out there someone possibly felt just as miserable as she did.

Lulu started rummaging around in Toni's pantry. "Don't you have anything edible in here?"

"I have soup." All lovingly pre-packed into tidy containers in the fridge, with her grandmother's neat handwriting on each.

"And you wonder why you're still single!"

"No, actually, Mother, I never wonder."

Lulu appraised Toni coldly. "You know, you could be pretty if you wore a little bit of lipstick."

Toni gazed at her mother in interest. Lulu Handcock had always snorted at parents who told their children how wonderful they were, feeling that they were giving their kids an unrealistic idea of their potential; she would never do that to her daughter. Lulu never mentioned Toni's looks, personality, strengths, or creativity, and she also made sure she didn't mention the fact that she loved her (or didn't love her, for that matter), or that since Toni had got an A in all her reports she could become a doctor, a CEO or a politician. Instead, Lulu would listen quietly without a comment to Toni's timid self-congratulation, and if it hadn't been for Toni hearing her mother bragging about her daughter's school results over the phone days later, she might have begun to wonder if there was something amiss with her Lulu's hearing.

"Pretty.  Really?" Toni asked. The last time she'd looked in a mirror she'd felt more than a little letdown. There had been a time when Toni Handcock had been gloriously cute, with big blue eyes, a small straight nose, and pouty lips. But now she looked gamine and haunted. Her once feminine body had disappeared. In its place a figureless plank with sharp hips and bony elbows.

"You should fix your hair." Lulu walked to the couch with a coffee in hand. Sitting down she began to slurp it happily. "It's in dreadful condition."