Mummy Said the F-Word (9 page)

‘Oh.’

While Lola clutches my hand, Jake mooches several yards behind as if wishing to minimise the chance of being seen in public with me. Travis stops to examine every chunk of loose plaster in the wall, every crushed chip carton and grubby bottletop on the ground.

‘No, hon, that’s dirty,’ I insist, tugging him away from teeming bacteria.

‘Why do people write to that lady?’ Lola won’t let this one go.

‘Well, an agony aunt’s supposed to be clever and wise and know the answers to lots of things.’ I cringe inwardly.

‘Why?’

‘Sweetie, you’re just saying “why” all the time to keep me talking. You’re not asking real questions.’ It’s Lola’s favourite game: Why? Why? Why?

‘I’m not,’ she huffs. ‘I just don’t understand why they write to that lady …’

‘Maybe they don’t have anyone else to talk to.’

She grins, pulls her hand free and bounds towards our house. ‘I don’t need an agony aunt,’ she yells back, ‘’cause I’ve got you, Mummy.’

I glow all over. Maybe I am doing something right after all.

Later, when everyone’s been shuffled off to bed and I have a few moments to myself in the sitting room, I stumble upon a feature in
Bambino
that makes me snort with laughter. It’s called ‘Single and Loving it!’ which strikes me as protesting too much. You never see ‘Happily Married and Loving It!’ or ‘In a Fabulous
Relationship
and Over the Fucking Moon!’ I am compelled to read on.

It’s actually a list of the amazing things a single woman can do when there’s no pesky significant other to wreck her fun. These include:

Why would I want to do that? It seems extravagant and wasteful. Tragically, I still keep to my side, leaving space for an invisible man.

What, with three children to get suppered, bathed, pyjamaed and storied?
Bambino
is a parenting magazine. Aren’t they supposed to understand?

How does one flirt again? Please remind me. I vaguely recall something about eyelash fluttering. If I tried that, I’d look unhinged. Plus, I’d probably pick on the man who’d club me over the head and drag me into a bush.

That’s more like it. There’s plenty I don’t miss about Martin. Road rage, for instance. The nerve of it, that anyone had the audacity to drive on the same road as us! In a perfectly normal and responsible manner!

Him: ‘Jesus, look at that – what the hell’s he doing? God, this drives me mad. What’s he PLAYING at? Bloody idiot.’

Me: ‘He’s indicating right, and, look, he’s performing a perfectly safe right turn.’

Him: ‘Fine, OK, so
I’m
in the wrong, am I?’

Nor do I miss his polite enquiries as to whether we have any milk/loo roll/bacon, being seemingly incapable of checking for
himself
. I don’t miss his throaty snoring. Or his habit of calling me ‘the wife’, as in, ‘I’d love to come, Damon, but the wife says we need to show our faces at the school car-boot sale. You know how it is …’ As if I’d invented school and its fundraising activities just to spite him.

I curl up on the sofa, wondering why I loved him so overwhelmingly. What had possessed me to send flowers to his office, and buy a hideously expensive gold ring for his little finger? Having children had changed everything. Apparently I’d had no time for Martin any more, the poor neglected cupcake. Imagine: attending to our baby’s dirty nappy rather than massaging his aching back. We’d fluttered like moths in separate parts of the house, coming together – though not literally – for exhausted fortnightly sex.

Ugh, the sex. The faked orgasms, the way he’d roll off with a satisfied grunt and turn his back to me. The lack of any post-coital conversation whatsoever. I hadn’t expected detailed discussions about how it had been for him, but a few words would have been nice. Like, ‘That was lovely,’ or, ‘Goodnight, darling,’ or even, ‘If you’re thinking of going downstairs, honey, would you fetch me a glass of water?’ That’s just common manners, isn’t it? Rachel’s Guy isn’t much in the looks department (mid-brown hair plus ginger gene which has burst out, startlingly, in the form of a carroty beard), but I’ll bet he says sweet things after they’ve done it. Heck, even Millie’s one-night stands lie around chatting afterwards, if her stories are to be believed.

I slam the magazine shut and head down to the kitchen to locate wine. There’s one message on the answerphone; I must have missed a call while I was upstairs reading
Titchy-Witch
.

‘Hi, Caitlin,’ comes a voice I don’t recognise. ‘It’s, um, Darren. From the TV shop. Hope you don’t mind me calling you …’ Awkward pause. Weird, maybe he works evenings. ‘I, um, wondered if you’d like to go for a drink or something? No problem if not, just thought, yeah, um, thought I’d ask …’

It comes out in a rush. I’m so gobsmacked I don’t even write down his number.

Darren, the TV Doc. A boy, virtually a
baby
, asking me for a drink. I replay it and he definitely says Caitlin. Caitlin with the laughable antique TV, a three-year-old child and two more that he doesn’t know about. Didn’t he assume I’m married? ‘Best thing you can do with this heap of junk is dump it. Don’t let your husband take it apart and start fiddling with it.’ Cheeky boy. Was he fishing, or do I simply have an air of the dumpee about me?

Embarrassingly, I play his message for a third time, snatching one of Travis’s Chunky Wax Crayons for Little Hands to scribble down his number. What did Rachel say about being open to opportunities? A drink with a cute younger man … why the heck not? What harm could it possibly do?

I’m grinning, and my heart’s thumping in a slightly hysterical manner, as I tap out Darren’s number on our banana-shaped phone.

‘What I can’t understand,’ Sam says, poring over the heap of
Bambino
mail on my kitchen table, ‘is why they’re so different. The awful, tragic letters people send in and the trivial stuff they print in the magazine. The ones about the kid nagging in the chemist’s, or little Popsicle wanting to invite too many kids to her birthday party …’

‘I’ve only ever read one serious letter on Pike’s page,’ I tell him. ‘When Daddy Strays’ pings into my mind.

‘But this lot –’ Sam swoops his hands over the pile – ‘these are people whose lives are falling apart.’

I hand him a mug of coffee and plonk myself on the chair beside him. ‘You know what? I reckon Harriet never bothered answering real letters. She just made up her own. Ones that would be easy to answer. It’s easy to be rude and confrontational when there’s no risk of offending a real person.’

Sam chuckles and peers at Pike’s page. I left the magazine lying open in the hope that inspiration might emanate from her photo. It hadn’t worked. It felt as if she was
spying
on me, appalled by the pile of muddy wellies by the back door and the murky sea-monkey tank.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Sam declares. ‘There’s something shifty about her.’

‘It’s not a bad idea, is it? I could make up some trivial problems of my own. It’d be easier than grappling with this lot.’

‘What would Millie say?’ he asks.

‘I don’t think she’d mind. Hey, why don’t you help me make some up?’ I dive for the computer, dragging over an extra chair for Sam, poised for fun.

‘Um, I wouldn’t be any good at that.’ Sam stays put at the table.

‘Oh, come on! You’ve got an overactive imagination. What about all those stories you make up for Harvey?’ I pat the chair encouragingly.

He colours slightly. ‘Stories aren’t personal. Men don’t talk about personal stuff.’

‘I don’t mean
real
problems … Unless you have some? That’d be even better! Tell me something – anything – that’s bothering you and I’ll try to figure out some answers. It’ll be good practice, like mock GCSEs before the real exams.’

Sam’s jaw tightens. ‘Sorry, Cait. I can’t help you with this.’

I frown at him. ‘Really? You don’t have any problems at all?’

‘No,’ he says firmly.

‘Not … not even a tiddly one?’

‘Not a tiddler, no.’

‘Lucky you.’ I laugh uncomfortably.

He shrugs and looks away.

‘Please, Sam, I just need …’ I tail off, realising that he’s willing me to shut up. What the hell have I said? His eyes are guarded. This isn’t like him at all. Something must be worrying him, something I’ve dredged up with my big gob and stupid game. I feel a stab of hurt that he won’t share it with me.

‘
You
make them up,’ he says, brightening as he ambles towards my desk. ‘I’ll help with the details.’

‘Right,’ I say, less enthusiastically now.

Still, we manage and the mood lightens. With Sam’s help, I concoct five problems that sound feasible and become so immersed in formulating replies that I start to feel sorry for Sally of Lines., whose daughter’s overuse of the F-word is getting her into trouble at school. As for Sickened of Inverness, whose husband insists on two full rounds of golf every weekend, leaving her to ferry their children to a myriad of activities, I could almost bomb up to Scotland and punch him. I try to invent a problem about whether an elderly mother should move into a home, but tail off and look at Sam.

‘Are you sure you feel OK doing this?’ he asks tentatively.

I shift on my chair. ‘No, not really …’

‘Can you imagine making them up week after week? And all those people emailing and writing letters, desperate for help.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ I say, laughing.

Grinning, he checks his watch and gets up from the chair. Harvey is sleeping over in Jake’s fragrant room. Jake begged, and I’m trying to make things better between us.

As Sam leaves, he says, ‘You know what? I think you should forget about that Pike woman and just be yourself. You don’t need to make up the letters, Cait. You can tackle the serious stuff.’

I shiver in the doorway. ‘It’s not that easy …’

‘Don’t people tell you things? What about that cab driver whose wife had cancer?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘And the old lady we met in the park who was gutted because her granddaughter had dropped out of uni – remember her?’

‘That’s different,’ I insist.

He pulls his jacket around himself, shivering. I wish he’d stay longer. Just being around him makes me sense as if my life’s, well, almost normal. Rachel makes me feel so inadequate sometimes. With Sam I feel less alone.

‘People tell you stuff, Cait,’ he adds, ‘because they know you’re interested and will listen.’

The smile warms my face. ‘OK. I’ll give it a go.’

As we say goodbye I realise I haven’t even mentioned my forthcoming casual, doesn’t-mean-anything drink with Darren.

Having reconvened with the sad and the desperate, I settle on five genuine dilemmas. The strange thing is, answering them isn’t as difficult as I’d imagined. I try to picture myself sitting beside each woman in a bar and figure how I’d react if we fell into conversation and she poured out her worries, the way people do sometimes after a few drinks. Lola totters into the kitchen in a half-sleep, and I gently steer her back upstairs to bed. Jake and Harvey have crashed out top to toe beneath a muddle of astronaut duvet. Travis shouts for me on the pretence
of
wanting a drink, but really, I suspect, because he needs to know that there’s one parent who hasn’t left him.

Back at my desk, ideas start to form. It all falls into place, as if these women and I are really talking, without noticing the hours slipping by. When I’ve finally finished, I check the time. It’s 2.37 a.m. I’m not even tired. It’s been challenging and – dare I say it – fun.

Maybe I can pull this off after all.

Thursday evening, 6.25 p.m. How to de-mother yourself in ten simple steps:

Not because I am anticipating that Darren will glimpse de-fuzzed areas. After all, I shall be returning home to three innocent, sleeping children plus Holly, our peachy-skinned nineteen-year-old babysitter. However, it’s beneficial to the old, battered ego to feel less gorilla-like on such occasions. It seems terribly unfair that while certain areas – e.g. breasts – droop and wither with age, pubic hair exhibits newly abundant growth, as if liberally dosed with hormone-rooting powder.

Right now, Lola is urgently hammering the locked door. ‘Mummy, what are you doing?’ she yells. Then, ‘Is the toilet an appliance?’

Hmmm. Not sure I’ve got it right. Top is terribly transparent, breasts pitifully un-pert. An image of Slapper at Thorpe Park pings into my mind and I switch to a black knee-length dress, fancy patterned tights and high boots.

‘Why are you standing on your bed?’ Lola enquires, striding into my bedroom.

‘It’s the only way I can see all of myself in the mirror.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Just out with a friend, love.’

Despairing shake of the head. ‘Don’t wear that dress. It makes you look like a witch.’

I no longer know. Can I get away with a shortish skirt as long as it’s ‘teamed’ (I do love a bit of fashion-speak) with opaque tights, or would genuinely young people start laughing or retching? Once, as a joke, I asked Jake if low-rise jeans were acceptable for a woman of my advancing years. ‘Only with a really long jumper,’ he declared, shuddering visibly. ‘I once saw an old woman in a hoodie,’ he added.