Mummy Said the F-Word (29 page)

The man glances down at the child, murmurs something and looks back at me. There’s a flicker of recognition. The fine hairs on the back of my neck spring up. A small smile crosses the man’s lips, and he turns back to the jars, selecting one and studying the label.

I am aware of the hubbub of the shop and Travis making
bleugh
noises by the Greek salads, but everything seems hazy. The way the man looked at me – it was as if he knew me.

R. I breathe in sharply. It could be him. My skin tingles.

‘Can I have crisps?’ his son asks.

Say Billy, I will the stranger. Say Billy, then I’ll know it’s you.

‘You can have a small packet,’ he says, ‘but you’re not eating them before dinner.’

He’s bargaining, like all parents do. He throws me a look, and his eyes gleam flirtatiously. I smile back, but my mouth feels wrong, as if it’s too big and unwieldy for my face. My flirting muscles have seized up through lack of use.

‘What’s for dinner?’ the boy asks.

The man glances at his son, then at me: a ‘kids, eh?’ look. ‘Cats’ brains,’ he says, ‘then toads on toast.’

The boy giggles. ‘What else, Daddy?’

‘Eye of newt, wing of bat.’ He pings another grin at me.

So unaccustomed am I to flirtatious behaviour in shops, my cheeks are now blazing red. (I am not counting Darren in the TV shop. Look what happened there. I have even had to bin Jake’s Pac-a-Mac, such sordid memories did it evoke.) Travis is prodding a humous wrap. Lola and Eve have wandered to the fruit display, where they’re shunning non-glamorous species such as apples and pears in favour of pots of blueberries and pomegranate seeds. ‘Look, Mummy,’ Lola exclaims. ‘They’re so pretty! Like little beads.’

‘Yes, sweetie,’ I say vaguely. The man and his kid are heading away from us now, and I want to call out, ‘Billy!’ just to see if the child turns round. But what if it’s not him and his dad gives me a look that says, ‘What the hell are you doing, yelling at my kid?’ Shouting, ‘R!’ would be just plain weird.

The man takes the boy’s hand, and they turn the corner out of sight. My heart thumps against my ribs. I want to charge after them and cry, ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ but Rachel already looks concerned for my well-being. ‘Cait?’ she says, ‘are you OK?’

‘Yes … yes, I’m fine.’ I force a grin.

‘Worried about this
Bambino
thing?’

‘I suppose so.’

She narrows her eyes as I snatch Brie and grape sandwiches – the most child-friendly variety in my line of vision. ‘Did you see that man?’ she adds. ‘The one in the white T-shirt? He was looking at you … really staring. Bit creepy, wasn’t he? D’you know him or something?’

I scan the aisle for flapping ears. ‘There’s this man,’ I hiss, ‘who emails me, got in touch through the magazine. We’ve become … sort of friends, although we’ve never met, and I know this sounds stupid, but I’ve got this strange feeling …’

‘What kind of friend?’ Rachel hisses back.

‘Well, I confide in him. Tell him stuff about Martin, the kids, pretty personal stuff.’

Her eyes widen. ‘Why on earth d’you do that?’

‘I … I just fell into it. It felt … safe.’

‘And you think that was him? That staring guy?’

I shake my head. ‘Like I said, I’m probably being stupid.’

She frowns, glancing around wildly and catching the eye of a scrawny teenage boy, who freezes under her glare. He scuttles off, as if fearing that she might wrongly accuse him of filling his pockets with lemon-stuffed olives.

‘Cait –’ Rachel turns to me ‘– what do you know about this man?’

‘That he has a son, and is single, and lives a couple of miles away.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Um, R.’

She casts me a despairing look, as if I’ve just plunged a grubby hand into the help-yourself salad display. ‘He could be anyone, Cait.’

‘Yes, I know.’

My heart plummets. I don’t have it in me to object as Lola drops a pot of pomegranate beads into my basket. Or the gigantic cookie flung in by Travis. All the sympathy, the advice, the gentle ego-boosts: what do I know about him really? He might not even be a dad. Billy could be a complete work of fiction concocted to draw me in. R could be eighty-seven years old with a criminal record. Or a pervo flasher, a stalker or a Hannibal Lecter who’s planning to make a handbag out of my skin. I’ve started to believe that he’s there for me, and scamper down to the kitchen as soon as the kids are in bed to see if he’s mailed me – which he invariably has. It’s so pathetic I could slap myself.

Caitlin Brown, get a life.

I feel leaden as we queue up at the checkout. The other women – apart from Rachel, who favours a sagging cardie and worn-out jeans ensemble – are dressed smartly in the Hobbs/Jigsaw
mode
and are all, without exception, wearing heels. Their appearance would lead one to believe that their last hairdresser appointment was more recent than nine months ago. Their perfumes mingle pleasantly.

I glimpse my reflection in the mirrored tiles. The whole wall is a mirror; what possessed Leoni to think that this was a good idea? My hair is suffering a frizz attack, and there are bruise-coloured shadows under my eyes. And there I was, feeling superior to Rachel in her baggy old cardie, when at least she can get it together to knock together a picnic.
And
stay married, even if it’s to an oily twerp.

I pay for our contribution, and the male sales assistant – wooden beaded necklace, hint of the surfer haircut about him – doesn’t even make eye contact.

There’s no sign of the man from the olive section, or his little boy.

‘Yuck,’ Travis cries, prodding a sandwich on the conveyor belt.

‘It’s just cheese,’ I murmur. ‘Cheese with grapes in.’

‘That’s not cheese.’

‘It’s Brie.’

‘Don’t want bee! Want sausage.’

I shut off my ears.

‘Don’t like it,’ he rages, punching the cellophane-wrapped packet.

I glower at him, trying to scare him with my fierce-mummy face. ‘Shush, Travis. Stop whingeing this minute.’

‘Children in Africa would love that sandwich,’ Rachel murmurs.

‘Want SAUSAGE!’ His cry ricochets around the shop, causing customers to grip their bunches of tarragon fearfully.

‘Stop this,’ I bark at him. His eyes bulge as he crumples, wailing, to the floor. ‘Travis!’ I hiss. ‘There aren’t any sausages here.’

‘There are!’ His mouth is a cave of misery.

‘This. Is. Not. A. Sausage. Shop.’

‘Oh dear,’ Rachel murmurs. Of course she never has any problems with Eve. Why did I think this would be a good idea – to come to Leoni’s and force poncey food on to my kids, which will probably have Lola spewing all over the sports-centre floor?

Something outside catches my eye. It’s that man again, straightening up after fastening his kid’s shoe. I freeze as his gaze meets mine through the glass.

‘Hello,’ he mouths. His eyebrows raise, and there’s a tweak of a smile.

Travis hauls himself up and scans the window to see what’s caught my attention. ‘Who’s that man?’

‘I don’t know.’ I turn away from the window.

‘It’s not Daddy,’ he growls, and his bottom lip shoots out, pink and gleaming.

‘No, darling, it’s not.’

He blinks at me, moist-eyed. ‘There
are
sausages. Look.’

I follow his jabbing finger to the cooked-meat counter. Above it hangs a colossal salami, bound in mesh, speckled with creamy fat, long enough to span a small river.

‘I think,’ I murmur, ‘that’s a bit big for our picnic.’

As we leave, causing a visible ripple of relief from the other shoppers, Rachel turns to me. ‘Was that him? The one who was staring through the window?’

‘I didn’t notice,’ I murmur.

Rachel shakes her head, and I glimpse pity in her eyes. ‘Oh, Cait,’ she says, ‘we’re going to have to find you a man.’

Although the gymnastics display doesn’t start for twenty minutes, the sports hall is already teeming with revved-up parents brandishing cameras and babbling on the low wooden benches. Bev and Marcia try to draw me into conversation, but I’m still agitated by the possible R sighting in Leoni’s, and not in the mood for chit-chat.

Like an obedient hound, I trail after Rachel as we search for somewhere to sit. As there’s no space on the benches, we bag a corner of floor, kicking aside a curled-up waterproof plaster and a discarded crust before plonking ourselves down. We have already helped Lola and Eve to wriggle into their leotards, while Travis checked every locker in the changing area for forgotten coins. I do wish he wouldn’t resort to such blatant scavenging.

‘You hear of all kinds of things going on,’ Rachel muses, ‘with the weirdo types you meet in chatrooms.’

Oh no. She’s still on about my pervo emailer with the serrated knife and black bin liner to stuff me into. She forgets that I am rather long in the tooth for paedo-type grooming.

‘It’s not a chatroom,’ I correct her, but there’s no point. She won’t allow a computer in her house, so fearful is she that it might infect Eve’s brain, even though I have pointed out that you can download Nigella’s canapé recipes and all kinds of wholesome stuff. I mean, it’s not
all
horse porn.

I scan the rows of parents who are seated uncomfortably on the benches. There are several lone dads. A few have sons of around Billy’s age. This is beyond pathetic. It’s Lola’s big moment, her annual performance on the bar and horse and other instruments of torture which, through some genetic quirk,
she
seems genuinely fond of. Months she’s spent practising her forward rolls on the living-room floor, and I’m scanning the hall for another glimpse of the Leoni’s Larder man. Get your priorities right, woman.

‘Hope you’re not nervous about this reader thing’, R had emailed this morning. ‘What makes you any less equipped to do this than that awful Harriet woman? I know you’ll be brilliant, and I’ll be rooting for you.’

The thought of R rooting for me evokes a warm, treacly feeling, which is quickly cancelled out by the terrible fact that the event begins – speedy calculation – in twenty-six hours’ time. Thursday evening, 7 p.m., Jacob’s Court Hotel, Bloomsbury. Introduction and open question and answer session with our very own agony aunt, Caitlin Brown.

Caitlin Brown, whose younger son is extracting the grapes from his sandwich and grinding them into the floor with his foot. ‘Stop it,’ I hiss, rifling through my bag for tissues to wipe up the mess. All I can find is a mangled serviette from the diner, covered in Lola’s dragon drawings.

Across the hall, she hops around nervously, flailing her skinny limbs. Her group’s coach, an Amazonian girl with hair scraped back into a severe ponytail, seems to be giving an inaudible pep talk. Lola scans the hall for me and I wave encouragingly.

Twenty-six hours. Anything could happen in twenty-six hours. I might fall prey to a terrible virus and be carted off to an isolation ward. The kids would be scooped up by Martin, who’d do fun, spontaneous things with them; then they’d all jolly on home, where Daisy would dish up a sumptuous roast. (Actually, she wouldn’t. Lola has let slip that Daisy’s cooking ‘doesn’t taste of anything’, which gave me a brief, if pathetic, stab of pleasure.)

Or an accident. I might be run over and maimed by a drunk driver. Then I won’t have to stand up in front of 200 readers. No, that would be a bugger regarding getting around and doing stuff.

I could die. In the next twenty-six hours I might drop down dead and be spared ritual humiliation. Lola and Travis would
move
in with their dad – no, not enough space in the Lego flat. They’d all come to live at
our
house. The thought of Slapper using my toiletries causes bile to surge up my throat, but hopefully they’d bring her out in an unsightly rash and she’d stop. After a few weeks of missing me, and occasionally wondering where I’d gone, my family would live happily ever after, with no one forcing them to eat Brie. Would anyone remember to feed the sea monkeys?

‘Look, Cait, aren’t they sweet?’ Rachel murmurs.

Lola and Eve’s group are lining up to begin their routine. They
are
sweet, brimming with keenness and none of the cynicism that seeps in as they grow older. Their routine starts simply – they walk gingerly along the bar – and Lola’s concentrating so hard I can almost taste it. There are fluid forward rolls and leaps over the horse. She throws me a walloping smile. I grin and wave, overcome by a surge of love for her. She’s an easy kid really. She’s never flung herself on to a shop floor screaming for sausage. While she goes to Martin’s without a fuss, I know she’s always delighted to come home to me. Lola never regards me with a blaming eye.

As for Travis, he has now plucked the Brie from his sandwich and is daubing it on to the floor for me to wipe up with my soggy napkin. Sausage tantrum aside, he is generally sunny-natured and still needs me, for which I am pathetically grateful. And Jake? He and I are bound by a fierce, aggressive love that makes me so angry and sweaty I want to stomp away from him, then stomp right back and nuzzle his hair and glean approval. It’s so mixed up with him. No one warned me that parenthood would be so complicated.

The group finish and the girls line up. Straight backs, chins high, bodies encased in pink-and-blue Lycra. Lola looks so delighted I want to run over and hug her. The next age group run through their routine, and the next, and it feels like we’ve been trapped in this dusty corner for several weeks. Yet it’s not the done thing to leave, even if your backside is throbbing and you’re scared it’ll never function normally again.

Finally, it’s prize-giving. The kids are sitting in rows on the floor with faces tilted in expectation. An elderly lady with a swirl of silvery hair is brandishing a trophy. Across the hall, someone catches my eye. Expensive-looking grey suit, white shirt open at the neck, dark hair cropped just so. Martin. I’m so shocked to see him my heart flips, the way it used to, when just hearing his voice on the phone sparked a ripple of desire.

Quick check: he’s alone. No Slapper, no Pink Princess, no Jake. He catches my eye, does a raised-eyebrow hiya thing. I hiya back. He grins sheepishly, looking ungainly on the bench, with his knees jutting towards his chin. Gymnastics displays, school plays – all the dutiful-parent events, with the exception of parents’ evenings – have always been my territory, Martin’s professional life being unable to accommodate the odd afternoon off.