Mummy Said the F-Word (2 page)

‘So you’ve lied and lied.’

Martin nods slowly.

‘And when’s the first time you actually …’ My voice fractures and I grip the table edge.

His Adam’s apple bobs. ‘That day. In the, er, at the office … the after-sales day.’

‘What?’ I yell. ‘You mean you did it in your office? Jesus, Martin—’

‘No, no … it wasn’t … It was, Um …’ He tails off. ‘In the loo.’

I open my mouth and shut it again. Oh, that’s all right then. They only did it in the office loo. Not on his desk or anything. Let’s crack open the fucking champagne. A horrible gulping noise comes from my gut.

Martin stares at me. His lips are pale and shrunken. ‘I can’t tell you how much I wish this hadn’t happened.’

‘Do you … d’you love her?’ I hate myself for asking that, but I can’t help it.

His mouth tightens, and he shakes his head. ‘It’s not … I don’t know, Cait. All I know is, I can’t be here any more, with you.’

‘Then do it,’ I snarl. ‘Just get out.’

It’s as if he’s secretly yearned to do this for months and has finally been given permission.

The tension around him disperses. He gets up, walks out of the kitchen and heads upstairs to the hall. I hear him stepping outside, closing the front door behind him and unlocking his car. The engine starts. The sound of him driving away merges with all the other East London noises.

He’s gone. I rest my head in my hands and shut my eyes tightly, kidding myself that when I reopen them, everything will be normal again. Martin will be his usual distant self, but at least he’ll be here, still mine.

Nothing’s changed when I open my eyes. ‘It’s natural to feel angry!’ chirps that blasted woman in
Bambino
magazine. My family, my life, destroyed for a quickie in an office loo.

In terms of after-sales service, surely this is taking things a tad too far.

Forget computers, gadgets and all the trappings of our modern age. The greatest gift you can give a child is the warmth and stability of a loving family.

Smug fuck.

Did you know that the tongue is more responsible for bad breath than the gums or teeth? That it forms the perfect breeding ground for odorous bacteria in the form of an invisible layer of soft plaque? Sweep it away instantly with our new Antibacterial Tongue-Scraper, a snip at—

‘Mum!’

I type, ‘£4.99 (special introductory price).’

‘MUM! Where are you?’ Lola’s voice ricochets around the stairwell as she thunders down to the kitchen.

‘I’m working,’ I call back. ‘Watch your DVD, colour your picture. I’ll be finished in a minute.’

We’ve struck a bargain, Lola and me. She will allow me to bash out my sparkling copy for vitalworld.com, a website that seems to thrive on customers’ paranoia about emitting bad smells. In the meantime – and we’re talking one measly hour – she can watch her
Simpsons
DVD or colour in her zebra poster. I know that mothers are supposed to drip with guilt if they so much as try to nudge a toe back into the world of paid employment. However, since Martin’s departure over eight months ago, I don’t have a choice. And Lola’s playdate with Bart Simpson is, I feel, hardly tantamount to infant neglect.

It’s Friday, and we’re just home from school. We live on a quiet terraced road a short walk from Bethnal Green tube station. The area was pretty cheap when Martin and I moved here, soon after getting married, but it’s been gentrified and is now awash with young families. There are numerous all-terrain
buggies
and pleasing, wholesome activities for kids. Jake, my ten-year-old, is at football practice in the new sports hall, which for some reason he doggedly keeps attending, even though the coach commented that he spends most of the session examining his fingernails. Travis, who’s three, is at his psychopathic mate Rory’s birthday party. Good mothers accompany their offspring to parties and stay for the duration. However, Travis didn’t want me to stay. ‘Bye-bye, Mummy!’ he yelled, waving gleefully. My third-born seems to regard being away from me as a fantastic treat.

I continue: ‘It takes mere seconds to scrape the layer of mushroom-like spores from the tongue’s surface.’

Bloody genius! The Booker Prize beckons. I picture myself striding on to a stage in some glittering ballroom to receive my award. I have swathes of rich chestnut hair (rather than nondescript light brown) and the perky breasts of a nineteen-year-old. I am no longer a dumped thirty-five-year-old mother in ratty jeans and an ancient Gap sweater that’s felted in the wash.

‘Mummy! I’ve been shouting and shouting and shouting.’ Lola stalks into the kitchen and plonks herself on my lap, causing my swivel chair to wobble dangerously.

‘Yes, hon. I heard you. This’ll only take me a minute.’

‘You always say that. It’s never a minute. It’s hours and hours and
hours
.’

She sighs dramatically. At just turned seven, she has mastered the art of cranking up my guilt to the max.

‘I’m sorry, hon. The sooner you let me get on, the sooner I’ll be finished, and then we can do something nice.’

‘It’s not fair,’ she growls.

I peer over her shoulder at the screen. What else can I dredge up about this wretched scraper thingy? Ross, who commissions my copy, expects lashings of descriptive detail, and once ticked me off for not making some wart-freezing gizmo sound ‘tempting’ enough. My instinct was to behave in an extremely grown-up manner and tell him to fuck off, but when you’re reliant on one client for 90 per cent of your income, you tend to button
your
lip. ‘You need to lure visitors,’ Ross urged me. ‘Have them believing that our products are –’ he snorted into the phone ‘– Truly life-changing.’

What the hell can I say? ‘Never scrape if you have a new boyfriend staying over as he might assume you have some obsessive tongue-cleaning disorder. Small children, too, might find the process alarming.’

Apparently, you’re meant to pay special attention to the furry region at the back of the tongue, a factlet that’s causing my mid-afternoon sandwich to shift uneasily in my stomach. I’d always assumed that tongues self-cleaned, requiring no interference from their owners. It’s a small step from colonic irrigation. Maybe that particular delight is yet to come: the Acme High-Pressure Rectal Hose. ‘With the flick of a switch, sluice out those hard-to-reach areas.’ I could dispatch one to Daisy to try out on my beloved ex. That’d liven up their Friday night.

‘What’s that?’ Lola leans towards the screen.

‘What’s what, sweetheart?’ Please go. Please let me finish.

‘A tongoo-scrappa.’

‘
Tongue-scraper
,’ I snigger, winding my arms round her middle. ‘You scrape your tongue with it if you’ve got smelly breath.’

‘Ugh. My breath’s not smelly.’

‘No, darling. It’s quite orangey, in fact.’

‘Let me read more,’ she demands.

‘Lols, you wouldn’t be interested. It’s just boring stuff about the things that can go wrong with grown-ups’ bodies.’

‘Please. Just a teeny bit. I want to be here, with you.’

With a sigh, I scroll down so she can learn about high-absorbency deodorising insoles for those whose feet literally
gush
sweat, flooding their shoes, although not so far down as to expose her to discreet pads for mild bladder weakness.

‘I need to get on now, OK? Watch another episode if you like, or do some colouring.’

‘I can’t,’ she mutters into her T-shirt.

‘Why not?’

‘It, Um … broke.’

‘You’ve got plenty more felt pens. There’s that pack of two hundred that Dad gave you.’ My gaze is still fixed on the monitor.

‘It’s not
pens
. It’s the telly.’

I spin her round on my lap so I can scrutinise her face. ‘What about the telly?’

‘My drink went in it.’

‘
In
it? What part did it go in?’

I lean over her to press ‘save’, not wishing to lose one word of my literary masterpiece, and lift her off my knee. Lola scuttles behind me as I stomp from our basement kitchen up to the living room.

I loom over the TV and try to peer into the slits at the back. It’s awfully dark in there and smells faintly of synthetic orange.

‘What happened?’ I demand, running a hand along the slits and detecting stickiness.

‘It just went in,’ she murmurs.

‘What d’you mean, it just went in? This is a new TV! TVs cost money – they cost hundreds of pounds. Don’t you understand that, Lola? Doesn’t money mean anything to you?’

She lowers her gaze. Her eyelashes are so dark and luscious they look permanently wet.

‘It didn’t cost money. Millie was gonna throw it away, but you made her give it to us.’

I sigh. Her lush, wavy hair – reddish-brown, like the outside of almonds – falls around her lightly freckled face. Her lips, which curve beautifully – like her father’s, although it pains me to admit it – are pursed, as if ready to whistle. And she’s right. Millie had donated her unwanted TV to us. Martin took ours when he moved out – can you believe it? It had sentimental value, apparently, and was definitely ‘his’. (It had been presented to him by the senior partners at work when they’d scooped a major award.) I was surprised he hadn’t taken the fucking fridge while he was at it.

‘So,’ I say, ‘your drink went in, and then what happened? Was there a bang or a fizzing noise or what?’

I am trying to remain calm. Since Martin walked out, my formerly extrovert daughter has clung, limpet-like, to me, and I’m loath to upset her. Learning that Daddy wasn’t merely living with Slapper – or Daisy – but also Poppy, her four-year-old daughter, seemed to tear out her insides.

‘It just went off,’ Lola says meekly. She regards me with interest while I switch it on and off several times and bang its top with my fist.

‘The thing is,’ I rant, ‘getting liquid inside electrical things is really dangerous. You could get a shock and die. That’s why you’re not allowed appliances in the bathroom.’

‘What’s an appliance?’ she enquires.

‘Like a fan heater or a microwave. An electrical thing.’

‘We don’t have a fan-eater.’

‘Yes, and now we don’t have a—’ The phone starts ringing.

‘Is the phone an appliance?’ Lola asks as I snatch it.

‘Hello, Cait.’

It’s Martin, aka Wandering Dick, or Shagpants, as Millie is fond of calling him. I hold the receiver away from my ear, as if his voice might infect it.

‘Hi,’ I say curtly.

‘I rang twice yesterday, left a message with Jake. Didn’t he tell you?’

‘Um, I think he mentioned it,’ I say vaguely.

‘He said you were in the bath.’

‘That’s right. Is that OK with you? Or would you prefer me to be filthy and haggard and stop washing my hair?’

‘Is a hairdryer an appliance?’ Lola chirps.

Martin snorts. It sounds like someone trying to clear a nasal blockage, and causes bile to rise in my throat.

‘It was about this weekend,’ he says. ‘It’s quite important.’

‘It
is
this weekend,’ I point out. ‘It’s Friday. TGI Friday. The weekend starts here.’

‘For God’s sake, Cait! Can’t we have a normal adult conversation? Why do you insist on acting like a child?’

I yearn to remind him that his own behaviour has hardly been
impeccable
of late, but manage to keep a grip on myself for Lola’s sake. ‘Is there a problem,’ I say lightly, ‘about this weekend?’

‘Yes. Look, I’m sorry, and I know it’s my turn for the kids, but—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ I snap. ‘Something’s come up.’

‘Don’t say it like that.’ Martin emits another priggish snort. I picture his nostrils quivering damply, and wonder what had ever possessed me to have sex with the man, to fall crazily in love with him, to have to stop myself from squealing with joy when we met up at Batters Corner, which is where people around here met in those days. Seeing him standing there, waiting for
me
, would make me feel that it wasn’t only the night, but my entire life that was just beginning.

‘Martin,’ I say coldly, ‘I’m not saying it like anything. This is my normal voice.’

He exhales. ‘It’s Poppy’s fifth birthday on Sunday. I’m sorry – I’d completely forgotten …’

‘And?’

‘Dad’s electric toothbrush is an appliance!’ Lola announces. ‘Why can’t I have one? They clean your teeth better so you don’t need that scraper thing.’

‘Well, Um,’ Martin mutters, ‘let’s not make this difficult …’

‘You said you’d take the kids to Thorpe Park on Sunday, remember?’

‘Yay!’ Lola beams excitedly. ‘Are
you
coming, Mummy?’

I shake my head fervently. Martin favours showy days out: to zoos, theme parks and chocolate factories, thus proving to our children that although he now lives with Daisy and Poppy, in Stoke Newington, he is still Father Superior and cares about his children. He’s the hunky, baby-cradling Athena-poster daddy. He’s
so good
with our three that strangers’ children flock around him, and grown women weep. No wonder their knickers fly off when he strolls by. He’s the Pied fucking Piper of Stoke Newington. Unfortunately, he is less keen to involve himself in the foraging for nits, or the application of verruca lotion.

Martin clears his throat. ‘Any other time, it’d be fine, but on a birthday … Poppy wants, you know … one-to-one.’

‘Can’t she have one-to-one with her mother?’ I enquire.

‘Yes, of course …’

‘But you feel you should be there too. On Poppy’s special day. Just the three of you. I know maths isn’t my strong point, Martin, but I’d make that
two
-to-one.’ My voice has turned into a croak, which I don’t like at all.

‘Cait,’ Martin says gently, ‘it’s not the right time for a huge get-together.’

So
that
’s how you think of your kids, I seethe: as an unruly rabble, crowding precious Poppy’s day. What’s she getting for her birthday? I wonder. A pony? Fifteen antelopes? A life-sized gingerbread house with a conservatory fashioned from melted-down clear lollies? That wretched child has everything. First time they’d met her, the kids took great delight in relaying a full inventory of her every plaything.