The School Gate Survival Guide (30 page)

So when the world was slowly coming alive on Saturday morning, I was in the deep, deep sleep of the emotionally exhausted. It took some time for the thumping on the front door to filter through and even longer for me to go and investigate. If that was Colin, he could toss off. I was amazed he’d taken me seriously and hadn’t let himself in. I opened the door a fraction and peered out. A man in blue overalls waved a clipboard at me. ‘Morning, sorry to disturb you so early. I’m here about the gas.’

‘Oh.’ I crossed my arms over my chest. ‘Excuse the pyjamas, I was expecting someone else. I didn’t realise you guys worked at weekends. Anyway, brilliant, come in.’ I waved him through. ‘The boiler’s in the kitchen, through there. It won’t light. Give me a sec, I’ll go and get dressed.’ I raced upstairs, having the first kind thought about Colin I’d had for a while. At least he’d bothered to phone the council. That probably meant moving out had come as a surprise to him. Good.

I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and ran back downstairs. I expected the bloke to be tinkering with the boiler but in fact, he was standing in the kitchen, scribbling something down and looking round as though he was sizing up the joint.

‘Have you had a look? What do you think?’ I stayed in the doorway in case I’d welcomed someone into the house who was going to slit my throat. In fact, now I looked properly, there wasn’t much of a toolbox thing going on. He turned round. Something sympathetic flashed across his face. I knew before he said a word.

‘I’m not here to fix the boiler. I’m here on behalf of the gas company because your bill hasn’t been paid.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Since last November.’ He patted his identification card as though I’d challenged him.

I’d spent all that time pretending to be my Great Aunt Inmaculada, talking in a ridiculous Spanish accent to avoid phone calls from the people we owed money to. But when it mattered most, I’d opened my door and practically provided a trolley for him to wheel away our stuff. I looked down at my feet. My two bright red toenails stood out against the three I’d left unpainted during my quick fix on the way to the ball the night before. I waited.

The man rotated one shoulder as though he’d slept on it funny. ‘Do you know how much you owe?’

I wanted to explain. Explain that I hadn’t been here. Colin not working. The whole school money drain. He wasn’t going to be interested in my non-payment of the gas bill in favour of the new trainers I’d had to buy Harley because they had to be completely white, not the white with black stripes I’d sent in. Or the fifteen pounds I’d spent on a huge French dictionary for Bronte, plus four on Ferrero Rocher chocolates she’d demanded to take in on Italian day and a couple of quid on neon laces for Funky Footwear Friday. ‘I’m not sure.’

He flicked a page over. ‘It’s one hundred and ninety-seven pounds, twenty-three pence.’ Panic jolted through me. I had ninety-five pounds rolled up in an elastic band at the back of one of the drawers at Clover’s. My emergency money.

‘I can’t pay that. I haven’t got the money.’ I thought of Colin, curled up on the settee eating Jaffa Cakes through the autumn and winter with the heating high enough to grow orchids. ‘Can I pay a bit off a month?’

‘You could have. But the gas company has sent so many letters and called so many times with no response that they’ve lost patience.’ He was shrugging his shoulders.

‘My kids are coming home today. We can’t live without any heating. And my hob’s gas too. I’ve got to be able to cook.’

‘I’m sorry. If you don’t let me install a pre-payment meter which works with a pay-as-you-go card, you’ll get disconnected completely.’

I had visions of the money running out in the middle of cooking dinner, endless freezing showers, the heating going off in the evening when there was no chance of topping up the payment card. It was just another rung down the ladder, another confirmation that we really were the welfare family. I imagined Harley’s posh friends sitting there while I nipped down the corner shop to recharge the gas card so I could heat up baked beans. No doubt the electricity would be next. The guy was tapping his pen in a ‘let’s get this show on the road’ sort of way.

I held my hand up. ‘Just give me a minute, will you? I need to talk to my husband.’ Husband seemed much easier than explaining about the loser who’d never married me who was now shacked up with the bird next door. I darted outside, slopping down the path in a pair of Colin’s work boots I’d missed in my blitz the day before. I hammered on Sandy’s door and shouted through the letterbox.

‘Colin! Colin! Colin!’

The bedroom window opened and a very mussed-up Colin stuck his head out. ‘What? Bloody hell, Maia. What you making a racket for this early?’

‘Sorry to drag you away from that beauty you’re playing housey-housey with but I’ve got the guy from the gas company next door. He wants to install a pre-payment meter, otherwise we’ll get cut off. We owe about two hundred quid.’

‘Don’t look at me. I ain’t got no money.’

‘Colin, don’t you care that your kids will be living in a house without any heating, hot water or any way of cooking anything? This is not just my responsibility. You could have paid a bit towards it from your benefit, you could have, God forbid, opened an envelope while I’ve been away, or let’s go wild, got off your fat arse and looked a bit harder for a job. It’s not bloody good enough to stand there saying, “Don’t look at me”.’ I was shouting so loud, my throat was vibrating.

A sulk descended on him. Sandy was calling out something I couldn’t quite catch. ‘Don’t change the fact I ain’t got no money. Hang on a sec.’ He disappeared from view. I heard him grumbling and rumbling to Sandy and a swirl of short, high-pitched answers.

His head reappeared. ‘I can give you forty quid. That’s all.’

‘Whoop bloody whoop. I need it now, like, he’s waiting next door, ready with his spanner.’

Colin huffed off inside. A few minutes later he stood at the door in his boxers, his belly hanging over them in a freckly blubber. He handed me a pile of dog-eared fivers, a pound coin and a pile of two pences.

‘Great. He already thinks we’re scum and I’m going to stand there counting out eighteen, twenty, twenty-two.’

Colin scratched his belly. The nails he kept long for the guitar he never played rasped across his skin. ‘What about that posh friend of yours? Can’t you tap her for a bit of a loan?’

The fact that Colin even dared to mention Clover made me want to lunge at him with a baseball bat. Sandy deserved my thanks, not my anger. I would do everything I could to make sure that Colin didn’t come boomeranging back to me. Ever. He couldn’t even be bothered to come next door and make sure that the house where his children would be living, had heating. Colin loved the kids, but not as much as he loved himself.

‘A thank you would be nice,’ he said.

I ignored him and stomped back off to find the gas man standing in the kitchen.

I held out my hand. ‘I can give you forty quid now.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not authorised to take it. Let me install the meter. It stores the debt and takes an agreed amount each week.’

I couldn’t argue. There didn’t seem to be enough air in me to form a strong voice. I considered my options. Clover. Mr Peters. The meter. Queuing up at the corner shop to top up my gas card seemed less shameful than making a begging phone call. ‘Okay, the meter.’

He nodded. ‘It’s for the best, really it is. Some people say they wouldn’t be without it, even when they didn’t want one to start with. It will help you budget.’

I texted Clover to say I was going to be late for the children and received a text full of smiley faces back. I put on my biggest jumper, gathered up all the envelopes stacked on the side and set them out in piles on the front room floor. Gas, electricity, phone, council tax. All red, official and threatening. Every time I opened an envelope I closed my eyes and had a little bet on how bad it could be. If we owed less than £150 in electricity, that would be good. More than £200, terrible. Less than £40 on the phone, okay. More than £85, disaster. Each time it was more than I’d guessed at. By the time I’d finished, I worked out we owed about £825, plus Colin had credit card bills of more than £1500. I didn’t even know he had one. His debts could be a nice little moving in present for Sandy.

I wondered how desperate people felt when their businesses collapsed owing millions. I couldn’t imagine feeling like this, times a hundred, let alone a million. My mind was racing. Maybe the children would get taken into care because I couldn’t afford to look after them. Perhaps we’d get evicted. Maybe we’d all end up living next door at Sandy’s, with Colin lording it like some sultan with his harem. Maybe we would have to move to a caravan. I lay on my back on the floor. Me and my big dreams of the kids speaking nicely, learning Latin, for God’s sake. Of me getting an Open University degree. It was laughable, beyond ridiculous. The prof would have called it ‘delusions of grandeur’. I let the tears pour down my face. I didn’t care what the gas bloke thought, or anyone. I deserved to have people look down on me for my stupid, stupid, stupid choices.

There was one envelope left which didn’t look like a bill. Handwritten in blue ink. I looked at the postmark. Sandbury. Briefly I thought Mr Peters might have written to me. He wouldn’t write to me where Colin could open it. He wouldn’t write to me, full stop.

I braced myself for some other horror I hadn’t thought of yet. I pulled out a single sheet of paper with the red letterhead of the prof’s solicitors, Harrison & Harrold.

Dear Ms Etxeleku,

We have received correspondence from Stirling Hall regarding the education of Miss Bronte Caudwell and Master Harley Caudwell. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you and propose a meeting at our offices at 10 a.m. on Monday 24 March. We look forward to seeing you then unless you advise us to the contrary.

Yours sincerely,

Peter J. Harrison

Two days until I had to sit in front of Mr Harrison and admit to being an official failure. I rolled over, put my head on my arms and sobbed until my throat was raw.

I rang Clover to brief her on the Colin situation. I swear I heard her clapping her hands, though she said all the right things and told me she’d bring the children home for me. When they arrived, Harley rushed back into the house as though he had turned up at some luxury Spanish villa and it was all to explore. Bronte stood grumpily by my side while I talked to Clover on the doorstep. I invited her in.

‘No, darling, I’m going to leave you to it, you’ll want to have a bit of a catch up
with the kids
,’ she said, none too discreetly.

Yes. I knew I had the joy of explaining that I’d chucked Colin out to look forward to. ‘Is everything all right with you?’ I said, knowing she’d get that I meant Lawrence.

She gave me such a happy smile that my belly churned at the thought of telling her about Jen1. I’d want someone to tell me though.

‘There’s been plenty of talking going on. I’m beginning to understand a lot of things.’ She didn’t look like one of the things that had become clear was that her husband was copping off with someone else. She glanced down at Bronte. ‘Anyway, we’ll catch up soon. You go and sort the children out.’

She handed me a couple of bags of the children’s clothes. I thanked her and hugged her really hard. At least I already knew my children’s dad was a good-for-nothing arsehole. She still had that discovery ahead. I waved her off.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Bronte said.

‘He’s next door at the moment.’

‘At Sandy’s? Is he putting up shelves in her bedroom again?’

‘Shelves?’ I said.

‘Yeah, Gypsy said Dad’s always putting up shelves in Sandy’s bedroom.’

I’d never known Colin to put up a shelf anywhere. It was better for everyone if we believed that Colin had suddenly developed DIY skills.

‘I’ll let him know you’re back. I know he’s dying to see you.’

Bronte was frowning, trying to puzzle it out so I ran next door. I could see Colin sitting at Sandy’s little kitchen table, dipping biscuits in his tea and laughing with Gypsy and Denim. How much that hurt surprised me. I didn’t think anything to do with Colin hurt any more. I rapped on the window. Sandy looked up without smiling but the kids waved at me and Colin immediately appeared at the door.

‘I saw them get out of the car. Can I come round?’ The aggression was gone, replaced by something softer.

Bronte came flying down the path. He swung her high into the air, kissing her and swirling her round. ‘How’s my little princess? Still talking to your old dad, then, not gone all hoity-toity on me? What they been feeding you? You’ve grown six inches.’

‘You’d better come in. Harley wants to see you too.’ I tried not to sound too accusing.

He stepped into the hall and started rubbing his hands together. ‘Cor, it’s cold in here, innit?’ I felt the right hook I’d got to grips with in my boxing classes with Ram flex in my fingers.

Brawling in the hallway wasn’t going to get our family powwow about our new living arrangements off to a good start. I left Colin swinging Bronte by her ankles in the front room and went upstairs to find Harley. He was in his bedroom squeezing between his bed and his wardrobe to find his slippers. I’d got so used to seeing him rattling about in a bedroom big enough to play Scalextric in, it felt as though the whole house had shrunk around us. I stood staring for a moment.

‘Mum, stop standing in doorways looking at me, it’s freaky.’ But he was laughing.

‘Sorry. I’m trying to get used to being here again. It feels funny seeing you in your tiny bedroom.’

‘I like being back.’ Harley shrugged. ‘I like having all my things again.’

‘Do you really?’

‘Yeah. Just the four of us. The twins got on my nerves a bit, all that silly singing and dancing and doing their hair and trying clothes on. I miss the quad bike. And the dogs. And Orion, a bit, I suppose. But I see him at school.’

Oh yes. I hadn’t had the school discussion yet. Before that little joy, we had the ‘Mum’s not living with Dad any more, it’s just the three of us’ conversation to get through.