Mummy Said the F-Word (20 page)

‘You’re joking,’ I mutter.

‘Well, it’s understandable really. When your picture’s in a magazine and you’re discussing personal stuff, they can become a bit …’ She clears her throat. ‘Obsessed,’ she concludes.

‘Right. So I’m setting myself up to be stalked, is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that,’ she says hastily. ‘Just that … you need to be careful. Have your antennae out. Don’t get into a personal thing with anyone, all right?’

‘OK,’ I mutter.

She laughs. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out. You’re doing
a
brilliant job, Cait. It’s exactly what I want. You know we had to re-write Harriet’s copy every week? She still sounded barking, even then. Your copy comes in and we hardly have to touch it—’

‘When
is
Harriet coming back?’ I cut in.

‘Um …’ Millie hesitates. ‘She’s, er … she’s not coming back. I’ve told her I want you to do the page permanently.’

‘Did you?’ I exclaim. ‘Without checking with me first? What did Harriet say?’

‘She … she was pretty pissed off, to be honest. Said she couldn’t believe I’d dragged in any old person to take over her page. I explained that you have years of experience and that you wrote about arse creams and all sorts for that health website.’ Millie sighs. ‘Anyway, she’s only a freelancer, and not on a contract or anything, so there’s nothing she can do.’

I am aghast. ‘I wish we’d talked it over first.’

‘C’mon, Cait, what else d’you have to do?’

‘Nothing, but …’

‘You’re getting twice as much mail as she did. It could be the start of a whole new career for you. Listen,’ she adds, ‘I’ve got a meeting in a minute, so I’ve got to dash … Will you do it?’

A new career? I’m not sure that I want one, but at least it’s a new
something
, which can only be a good thing. ‘OK,’ I say warily, ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Brilliant. Your new picture’s gorgeous, by the way. I was worried that the old one might have scared off readers, brought our circulation down.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Any time. Promise you won’t contact that weirdo emailer again?’

She does the screechy
ee-ee-ee
thing from the stabbing scene in
Psycho
. I wind up the call having vowed not to offer the mysterious R one more word of encouragement.

I keep my promise that evening, prowling around the computer as if it’s a sleeping animal that if woken, might savage me with its teeth. The following day, I allow myself to log on to my email
account
and am relieved to see that R hasn’t contacted me again. I’d like to fire off a quickie, just to ask how he got on with the party in the park (neat idea – must remember for when Lola demands to fill the house with eighteen E-number-fuelled classmates), but manage not to. Whenever the urge becomes particularly strong I conjure up an image of cling-filmed parcels of pubes, which does the trick.

My
Bambino
mailbag does an excellent job of keeping me occupied. The problems are fascinating – like overhearing intimate conversations on the bus – and make me feel marginally better about the crappiness of my own life. When you’re wrapped up in your own woes, it’s easy to forget that so many other people are dealing with ten tons of shit. Perhaps Millie was right and the job does suit me perfectly. Admittedly, I have always harboured an unhealthy interest in other people’s private lives. As a prying teen, I could think of nothing more fun than rifling through my parents’ wardrobe. When I’d unearthed a sex manual filled with photos of a couple demonstrating various positions, I’d been overcome with delight and spent many a happy evening leafing through it.

In my favourite picture, the woman was doing a shoulder stand on the bed, supporting her hips with her hands, while the man was kind of leaning into her, the right way up. I couldn’t fathom that one at all and had tried it out (just the woman part, obviously) on my bedroom floor. Mum had walked in and remarked, ‘Glad to see you’re doing some exercise. You could do with it. You’ve really put on the beef lately.’ Although my feelings were hurt, I was relieved that she hadn’t figured that I’d been copying the woman on page seventy-eight.

Boggle-eyed from poring over the problem letters, I haul Jake’s clean laundry up to his room, leaving a trail of socks as I go. He’s on hands and knees madly scrubbing at something on the carpet with a bunched-up J-cloth.

‘What are you doing, love?’ I ask. ‘It’s nearly nine o’clock. I was just about to ask you to put your light out.’

‘I’m trying to get this stuff off the carpet,’ he mutters without looking at me.

‘What? Get what off?’

‘
This
.’

I dump the laundry on to his bed and crouch down to investigate. ‘Oh, that’s just a coffee stain. I must have sloshed some on the carpet while I was putting stuff away.’

‘What were you doing in my room?’

I gawp at him. ‘I told you. Putting things away. That’s what mums
do
, isn’t it? Are you saying I’m not allowed in your room, Jake? Is that what you mean?’

The ridiculousness of a ten-year-old scrubbing his carpet pales into insignificance. Apparently, I am now barred from certain areas of the house.
My
house, on which I pay the mortgage, or at least half of it. Jake utters something like, ‘Mrruh.’

‘Can you talk to me properly?’ I snap. ‘I can’t understand “mrruh”. I’m unfamiliar with that word.’

He peers up at me through lush, dark lashes. Disdain oozes from his narrowed eyes. ‘I said no.’

‘You mean I’m not allowed in here at any time? Not even to make your bed?’

Jake shrugs. ‘I make my own bed. I know how to put a duvet cover on, and a pillowcase.’

Aren’t you the clever one. ‘Or hoover?’ I ask.

‘You hardly ever hoover. Can’t remember the last time you did. It’s so dusty in here I could get asthma or an infection or anything.’

‘For God’s sake, I do my best! What are you, a health and safety inspector? I thought we’d talked about your cleaning thing, Jake. It’s not healthy. It’s not
right
.’

He stiffens his lips, a gesture which instantly hardens his face. And I feel it then – my chin quivering, like a little kid’s. Like someone whose ice cream has toppled from its cone and landed with a splat on the pavement. My vision is blurring. Jake regards me with a look of faint triumph. What have I done to deserve this? I know it’s not ideal, living apart from his dad, but who’s the one shagging someone else? I might have been too ordinary for
Martin
, or a crap lay, having never suggested the woman-does-shoulder-stand thingy, but I refuse to believe it was completely my fault.

‘Why are you being like this?’ I ask shakily. ‘It’s not like you. Not like my Jake. Is something happening at school? You’re not being bullied, are you?’

His look could curdle milk. ‘No.’

‘Is it about me and Dad?’

He edges away from me and resumes scrubbing the stain, mumbling something into his pyjama top.

‘Pardon?’ I say, too loudly.

‘I said … that stupid magazine. Everyone’s seen it. Lola found it in the kitchen and took it in her bag and now the whole school’s laughing at me.’

‘Oh, Jake, of course they’re not!’

‘Yes they are. And when the new one comes out, with me in the picture instead of just you, it’s gonna be even worse.’ His voice wavers.

‘Darling, I’m so sorry. It’s just my job. I need to earn money, you know.’

‘When are you stopping?’ he demands. ‘When’s that old agony aunt coming back?’

‘Jake …’ I run my hand across the damp patch on the carpet ‘… I’m not giving up. Not for the moment.
Bambino
’s my main source of income. Don’t you understand that?’

‘Fine,’ he says, like an embittered grown-up. ‘I don’t see why you can’t go back to writing about spot cream and all that.’

‘Because the company went bust, darling. Listen, no one will care about a photo in a silly magazine. They’ve had their laugh about it and it’ll all be forgotten. I bet no one mentions it again.’

He shoots me a scathing look, as if I’d insisted that his Christmas presents were fashioned by elves in a workshop. Christ, I’d only come up to put his laundry away. My head is thumping and my chest feels horribly tight. Maybe I’ll have a seizure and he’ll be half orphaned and have to live with Martin and Slapper and Pink Princess in that bloody great penthouse.

With a wave of dread, I realise that Jake would probably enjoy that very much.

‘I’m sorry you feel like this,’ I murmur.

‘Leave me alone.’

‘You mean … you really don’t want me in your room? Ever?’

‘No.’

‘Not even to clean it?’

Jake shakes his head. ‘I clean it myself now. Haven’t you noticed?’

Fine. Bloody fantastic
. I haul myself up from my crouched position, give his laundry pile a little shove, so it cascades all over his bed, and march out of the room, skidding on a sock. ‘Suit yourself, Mr Bloody Perfect,’ I mutter while stomping downstairs.

‘I heard that,’ he snarls after me.

I’m seething as I slam down on to the wobbly chair at my desk. Seventeen emails, including one from R:

Hi, Cait,

Hope you don’t mind me barging in on your Friday night. I’m sure – at least I hope – that yours is proving to be more enjoyable than mine. Billy and I have just had a bit of a fracas. He’s just informed me that I embarrassed him at his party by joining in the games and singing ‘like a silly man’. Is it better to be a not-really-there dad who hides behind the newspaper all day? Who uses the
Telegraph
as a shield?

Crap isn’t it, this parenting business?

R x

‘Yes, it bloody is,’ I reply, my breathing ragged and tight.

I pause, about to press ‘send’, then quickly add a few details: about the son who despises me, and being banned from a room in my own house, when we used to lounge around on his bed for hours retelling the funniest scenes from a film we’d just watched. When Jake had liked me and not regarded me as if I were an embarrassing stain.

I type on and on, my anger fading as I spill out the hurts of the past few weeks. In some magazine I found on the bus, one of those relationship gurus had suggested putting difficult feelings into words – in a journal, perhaps, or a letter you don’t plan to send. Perhaps they were right. It
is
helping; my heartbeat feels normalish at least. I have never been so open with anyone – not Sam, because I couldn’t bear for him to regard me as Chief Whinger; not Rachel, because she wouldn’t understand; and not Millie, because … well, she
definitely
wouldn’t understand. I don’t censor myself, or hold anything back, because R is not a real person who’ll ever know or judge me.

He’s just words on a screen.

‘How long has this been going on?’ Sam asks over dinner on his terrace. It’s a warm May evening, and barbecue smells drift from a neighbouring garden.

‘Three weeks or so,’ I say.

‘He sounds creepy, contacting you out of the blue like that. Why won’t he tell you his name?’

‘I haven’t asked, and I don’t really want to know. Knowing his name would make him more real and then—’

‘You like it that it’s anonymous?’

‘Yes,’ I say through a full mouth. Why is Sam’s bolognese rich and tasty whereas mine turns out anaemic and ill-looking?

‘But it’s not anonymous, is it?’ he insists. ‘At least, not from his point of view. He knows your name, your kids’ names and what your job is … You haven’t told him where you live, have you?’

‘No, of course not!’ I say defensively. ‘I know he lives in North London, though he hasn’t said where.’ Sam looks so concerned, giving me the big-eyed look, that I burst out laughing. ‘It’s a few emails,’ I add, ‘with an anonymous person, like a chatroom or something. What’s the harm in that?’

‘I feel uneasy, that’s all. The way he says exactly the right thing to make you feel better. Or something happens to you and – by some spooky coincidence – something similar has happened to him.’

I glance at Sam. A hint of awkwardness flits across his face, almost as if he’s
jealous
. ‘Are you suggesting he’s spying on me?’ I ask.

‘Maybe. He could be out there now, peering through that hole in the fence …’

‘Or going through my bin, looking for old knickers …’

Sam grins and the awkwardness melts away. ‘Bet he buys loads of copies of
Bambino
and cuts out your pictures to paper his downstairs loo … What does he call himself again?’

‘R. Just R.’

‘R for arsehole.’ Sam chuckles as we pile up the bowls and carry them inside. Now I feel foolish. I haven’t told Sam that I’ve begun to look forward to R’s emails, even getting up early to check my inbox before the kids start clamouring for cereal. And Sam is wrong: I know a lot about my new friend, which is how I regard him. I know he emails in a flurry during Billy’s bathtime, then again late at night until 1 or 2 a.m. I know he loves kite-flying with his son, despises soft-play centres and McDonald’s, and is trying but failing to teach himself guitar. He’s told me how crushed he was when his ex-wife announced that she no longer loved him and that she’d been sleeping with someone from work. How he’d bottled up all the anger and had only been dragged back to semi-normality by throwing himself into bringing up his kid.

Nor do I tell Sam that R makes embarrassing incidents – like Travis tipping forty tampons out of their box in Superdrug – seem funny. I know he’ll fire back something to make me smile.

‘It’s like the people who send in their problems to me,’ I explain as we load Sam’s dishwasher. ‘They don’t know me, so there’s a distance there, which makes it feel safer to share things.’

‘He’s your own private agony uncle.’ Sam laughs dryly.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

He turns to make coffee. It feels like he’s deliberately avoiding my gaze. ‘Have you heard from Amelia?’ I ask, to break the silence.

‘Yes, I’ve seen her actually.’

‘So what happened?’ I ask lightly.

‘She … came up a couple of days ago. She was in London for an interview and stayed the night. Well, when I say she stayed … she actually left before Harvey woke up.’ He laughs hollowly. ‘How dumb is that? Hiding the fact that you slept with your child’s mother?’