‘Hello Sawyer how are you?’
‘Ms Summers. Good afternoon.’
‘Oh please call me Summer. It is lovely to see you again dear.’
‘It’s lovely to see you too. Do come in. What a lovely surprise.’ What else is Sawyer mean to say seeing her future mother-in-law saw turn up unannounced at her office, waiting to see her. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘No thank you.’ Summer takes a sit on the armchair offered. She scanned the office discreetly, her future daughter-in-law, for however long or short a time, is quite the accomplished woman with the plaques of awards on walls and her bookshelves. ‘I am so sorry to turn up unannounced like this, and in the middle of your workday. I just got into London and wanted to come say hello. I also wanted to see if you’d be up for lunch or dinner.’
‘As it so happens, I always take a lunch break.’ Sawyer asks her assistant to clear her calendar for the next two hours and book a table at a nearby Japanese restaurant, a cuisine she knows Summer Summers favours. She wonders if Jameson knew about his mother coming to London and failed to mention it to her. She’ll have to kill him later.
As if reading her mind, Summer says, ‘Jameson doesn’t know I’m here by the way.’
Sawyer laughs a little, ‘you might have just saved his life.’ Bag in hand, Sawyer leads them out of her office.
As they make their way through the office, she ignores the looks from her colleagues having seen Summer Summers, THE Summer Summers traipsing behind her. One of the best-selling coffee table books on their roaster centres around her career as a magazine editor, the woman is a legend and here she is on a random summers’ day in London, stopping by for lunch. If that isn’t a turn for the books Sawyer doesn’t know what is. She knows there will be questions later from her curious co-workers and friends, some of whom are still invited to her wedding with Marcel, who have no idea that woman walking behind is about to be her mother-in-law in a few short weeks. She’ll have to make up a story; she is running out of stories. Talk about a clusterfuck of events. She pushes those thoughts to one side and focuses on the here and now; lunch with her soon to be mother-in-law. Because this isn’t just a lunch between women.
They are seen to immediately on arrival, and shown their table at the Hoku Mayfair, the Japanese restaurant about five doors down from her office. Their orders are placed within minutes, the headwaiter having been informed by Sawyer’s assistant ahead of time, is waiting on them personally. Sawyer is confident she will not run into any of her colleagues here, Hoku is not somewhere for a casual lunch, and they only gave her reservation because the owner is a very good family friend and client of her parents. Sometimes nepotism wins the day; she’ll take it.
‘To what do I owe this visit?’ Sawyer kicks things off for them.
‘I don’t know how to say this, so I am just going to say it, and I hope you’ll forgive my son.’
‘I’m listening.’ Sawyer suspects she knows what the woman sitting across from her is about to tell her but does not pre-empt the conversation.
‘I spoke with Jameson, and he told me everything. I want to make sure that you are okay with the madcap idea of yours and his.’ Summer looked worried for her sanity.
Sawyer smiled, warmed by the kindness of this woman who has been nothing but generous with her at every turn.
‘Because you know, you don’t have to do this.’
‘I know. And to answer your question I am okay with it. He didn’t hold a gun to my head and in a way, it is helping me out more than it is helping him.’
Summer shakes her head, ‘it’s helping him more and that is his story to tell you, but I want to make sure you know what you are doing because marriage is a different ball game and right now I see things in him that all at once gives me hope but you might both be holding yourselves back because you think you are not entitled to those feelings. I don’t want you to get hurt my dear. As much as this is a fool’s errand, I have also never seen my son so at ease. Jameson has been through something, and he will tell you because I have told him he cannot keep you in the dark about it, but there is also a lightness to him that is only possible because of this.’ She sighs, ‘if you feel an ounce of something for my son, please don’t hold yourself back, you may have the contracted six months or a lifetime together, feel it and let him feel it with you because I know he does, a mother always knows. He will come to you and tell you his story but in the meantime, I want you to know that I am here for you if you ever want to talk about anything. I haven’t spent much time getting to know you and I intend to rectify that.’
‘Thank you.’ Sawyer did not know she needed to hear these words from a woman she hadn’t even spent more than a day with. Their families have met and bonded somewhat with each other, but it was all under the cloak and dagger of the operation. Summer Summers is right, this thing between herself and Jameson is mad at best but it’s too late to turn back now and her heart is fighting its own epic battle every day. Marcel has a gun to hear head, and she is simply trying to breathe one day at a time counting down to the wedding. It is the only thing she is looking forward to.
‘I used to run away from love.’ Summer says dipping a California roll in soy sauce before coating it in the edamame paste. ‘I ran so far from it you’d think it was an axe murderer.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I wanted a love like my parents had and I knew I would never find it with any of the men I was in involved or made a child, with, but that realisation always came too late. I missed the love of my parents, and I desperately wanted that for me. I wanted a big family of my own. Growing up an only child gives one a different perspective on life and I wanted a big boisterous family that I could shower with all my love. I was also afraid of becoming the second wife who had to live in the shadow of the first.’
‘All five men?’
‘All. Six. Stelios was also married before me.’
‘How did you know he was the one then?’
‘Well for one I was certain there would be no more children from me, I’d raised five boys on my own, and my youngest was at College and starting his own business, I could not be pregnant the same time two of my daughters in law were popping out babies!’
Sawyer burst into laughter so rib tickling she almost choked on her food.
Summer continues, ‘I would have looked mad, and I was approaching fifty.’
‘Did you love anyone before Stelios?’
‘I did. My sons were all conceived in love and with love, and their fathers are the most wonderful men, but they gave me sons I fell in love with and that was more than enough. And then I met Stelios, divorced, so he came with his baggage and three adult children forging their own paths in life. His ex-wife and he are very good friends which is its own cup of tea, so there were many reasons why we couldn’t work but here we are, ten years on, and I have loved every moment of it. I was afraid of commitment, I wondered if I was good enough to be someone’s wife, or mother or girlfriend there was always a fear that I would never be good enough and-’
‘How can you think that?’ Sawyer interjects, ‘you are Summer Summers, the most iconic woman in fashion.’
Summer smiles wistfully, ‘my mother killed herself after losing my father in car crash. We were closer than two peas in a pod and yet I was not good enough for her to stick around. That kind of thing plagues you your whole life, I carried it with me and never gave my relationships the time to blossom until Stelios with his quiet confidence and infinite charm. He moved his life to New York to be with me, we lived in the city for five years by which time I was more than ready to move to the beat of our own drum. When I saw the love he had for my sons, and the mutual respect he shared with their fathers, it was a no brainer. And I had my own big family.’ Summer shrugs, taking a sip of sake beer. ‘Jameson and I are most alike you know. He feels things keenly and he loves hard. Right now, he may think he is guarded but there is a chink in his armour and that chink is you. You have slotted into the place he guards hard, and he doesn’t even know it.’ Summer reaches for Sawyer’s hands, ‘feel it knowing that when or if you have to walk away from each it’ll be that old and wonderful cliché, of having loved instead of not at all.’
Sawyer knows she has a lot to think on, her mother-in-law had come here on a mission to feel her out but also to give her assurances and make a case, as it were, for her son. ‘Thank you for telling me that and for making sure that I am okay with everything.’
‘No matter what happens, know that I will always be there for you.’
‘Thank you.’