Bad Mothers United (23 page)
Read Bad Mothers United Online
Authors: Kate Long
All right, I’ll come to Manchester with you
.
I’ll miss a precious weekend with Will and I’ll meet your friends. I’ll listen more carefully when you tell me
about neurons and stuff. I’ll try and be pleasanter with your mum. I won’t make fun of your marvellous –
no, not that –
I won’t make fun of Amelia any more,
I’m sure she’s very nice. Obviously you have to have a social life. And I do trust you, I’m sorry if I got it wrong. The problem is, I get so stressed over missing Will and
everything else slides out of proportion. It feels as if there’s not enough of me to go round
.
As if I’m failing on a dozen fronts.
He’d nod, he’d smile, the row would be over. We’d pull in at motorway services and share a muffin.
‘Daniel?’
His expression stayed grim.
‘Don’t you love me?’ I said. A tiny moth-sized flutter of panic had started in my chest.
‘God, Charlotte. More than you have any idea.’
His voice sounded bleak and lost. Across the horizon in front of us, dark clouds gathered and the sky flashed with sudden summer lightning.
When we pulled up outside my house I found I was shivering all over and my teeth were chattering. My hands, when I tried to take off the helmet, were numb and useless.
‘You’re never cold?’ asked Steve incredulously.
‘Frozen,’ I said. It was easier than trying to explain the exhilaration still coursing through me. Every fingertip tingled. I hadn’t felt so alive in years.
‘So, do you get it? Do you understand why I needed this bike?’
‘Suppose.’
That was enough for Steve. He beamed proudly. ‘Champion. We’ll make a biker of you yet. Hey, and I nearly forgot. I were talking to this old gimmer in t’warehouse last week and
he was telling me about his daughter doing this teacher training course actually in a school, you know, working and getting paid for it. How smart is that? I don’t know if it was legit but he
reckoned it was. She didn’t have a degree or anything, and she’s older than you. So I thought it might be worth looking into.’
‘What’s it called, this course?’
‘Dunno. I can find out. Do you want me to?’
‘Well, yes.’
I dragged off the jacket, aware that my blouse underneath was patchy with sweat. I needed to get inside and take a shower; what’s more, if Steve showed any sign of wanting to join me, I
wouldn’t say no. Not today. My whole body sang like a guitar string, joyously tense.
‘Oh,’ he said as I opened the gate and stepped through. ‘By the way, I’ll need that back. The jacket.’
‘What?’
‘It int mine. I borrowed it.’
I looked down at the thick leather bundle. I’d assumed it was mine to keep, like the helmet had been. Feeling foolish, I held it out to him. ‘Fine. Have it.’
‘Ta.’ He rolled it as best he could to tuck under his arm. ‘It’s Lusanna’s. It’s her spare.’
‘Lusanna.’
‘The girl from the Kawasaki Club. You know. As swapped me your helmet. She loaned me the jacket this morning, after you rang.’
‘Ah, right. That Lusanna.’
Steve thinks he’s Mr Enigmatic but I can read him like a book. The reason Lusanna was able to hand her jacket over immediately was because she was with him when I rang; or rather, he must
have been round at hers because you don’t cart spare jackets about with you for no reason. And he never rises before ten on a Saturday, which meant he’d stayed over.
I said. ‘Are you seeing her?’
He gaped, then shut his mouth and came over shy. ‘Yeah, like, sort of.’
‘That’s great.’
‘Well.’
‘No, it’s good. It’s good.’
‘’S’only casual. Nowt, really. Don’t say anything to our Charlie yet, eh?’
The face of a healthy, unpoisoned cat appeared at my upstairs window, meowing to be let out.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said. ‘None of my business. Anyway, tell her thanks for the jacket. Tell her it was a bit loose on me but it did the job.’ I laughed
lightly to show I wasn’t being a bitch by saying that, but no one was fooled. We both knew that, if anything, the jacket had been on the snug side.
‘OK.’ He sighed and looked down at his massive boots. ‘Anyroad, Karen, I can probably blag you a jacket of your own from somewhere, if you’re interested. Shall I? We
could go out again sometime. I mean, it was a blast, yeah?’
‘I’ll see you around,’ I said and closed the gate between us.
KAREN: What I wanted to know about was my dad’s side. I haven’t really got anything there except names. (Pause.) I know there was an Aunty Annie somewhere, my
dad’s younger sister. She moved down south, didn’t she? With her husband? (Pause.) Did you keep in touch? (Pause.) Were she and my dad close? Did you have much to do with her?
(Pause.) Well, we’re getting nowhere fast today. All right, Mum, tell me about your uncle Jack. I know he went to Mesopotamia during the First World War and he came home poorly.
Didn’t he catch malaria? And he never fully recovered. You told me he was always cold, and you were in trouble if you left a door open near him because he couldn’t bear
draughts.
(Sounds of someone coming into the room.)
CARE ASSISTANT: Now, how are we doing?
KAREN: She’s incommunicado today.
CARE ASSISTANT: Oh dear. Are you not feeling so bright, Nancy? She had a bad night, I think. You couldn’t get off, could you? Shall I get you some tea? Are you ready for
a cuppa and a biscuit?
KAREN: Mum? Did you hear? Is she OK, do you think?
NAN: Uncle Jack’s dead.
KAREN: I know, Mum.
NAN: Jimmy’s dead, Bill’s dead, my mother and father.
(Pause.)
KAREN: But we’re here, Mum. Me and Charlotte, and Will. We’re all still about. I’m bringing Will tomorrow for you. He’s cut another tooth. You said he
was teething, didn’t you?
NAN: I shan’t mind, when it’s my turn.
KAREN: Oh, don’t say that. Come on, now. Come here. Oh, Mum. (Pause.) Sita’s going to bring you a cup of tea. You’ll feel better after you’ve had
something to eat and drink. You will, I promise. (Pause.) Sita, could you turn that tape-player off, please? Just, that red button. Thanks.
CHAPTER 8
I swear there’s a special circle of hell reserved for mothers who repeatedly ask about their daughter’s love-life. Two weeks into the summer holidays and I felt
chewed to bits.
By day I had Mum making ever more earnest enquiries about when she was going to see Daniel again, how we were getting on, was I being
nice
to him. Meanwhile, for every one of the
fourteen nights I’d been home, Will’d had me up with nightmares or just fancying a play in the small hours. ‘Mummy,’ I’d hear him shouting through the wall.
‘Mummy, come!’ ‘It’s your own fault,’ Mum said when I complained I was exhausted. ‘He’s been sleeping through for me. But you get him all excited at
bedtime and then he can’t settle.’ Obviously I’m not supposed to have fun with my child post-5 p.m. Not supposed to cuddle him after dark, either. ‘Look, if he wakes up
and there’s nothing really wrong, then tuck him in and leave him,’ says Mum, all sanctimonious. ‘Don’t lift him out of bed and start chatting, or make his teddies talk or
read him a story. He’s not going to want to sleep after that, is he?’ I said, ‘So now I’m not allowed to comfort my own son? Is that how you used to treat
me
when
I was little?’ And she went, ‘Why do you always have to twist my words, Charlotte?’ In the end I told her, ‘Decent mums don’t mind getting up in the night.
It’s our job.’ But she switched on the hoover and drowned me out.
So this early light found me sitting on the floor of the front box room, resting my neck against the wall with my lap full of teddies, while Will bounced up and down on his duvet.
‘This used to be my room,’ I told him. He took no notice, obviously: like I had any kind of a life before him. But I
did
, I wanted to tell him. I was a child once, without
any cares, with a mummy and a nan who arranged everything for me. I sailed through my days, gold stars in my schoolbooks and clean plates at the table. ‘A good girl’, I’d hear
people say.
It was when I grew up and struck out on my own that the trouble started.
By the crack of illumination under Will’s curtains and the glow of Bedtime Bear I could make out the wardrobe mirror I’d stood in front of the day it dawned on me I might be
pregnant. Will had been nothing more than a little tiny grub-thing wriggling about inside me when I’d put my hands on my stomach and wished him away with all my might. Three months later
and blown up like a cushion I’d sat on the bed sharing Mintoes with Nan while Mum raged about us, screaming how I’d ruined both our chances. In the corner, where nowadays Will’s
nappy-changing unit lived, I used to have a bean bag. Daniel had once sat on it and listened to me angst about whether I still loved my baby’s father or not. But it was the room next door
– Nan’s old room – where Dan and I had our first real kiss. That was where we’d begun. The beginning and the end. From outside of us I could see the whole shape of our
relationship, the highs and lows, the points where we’d been closest and where we’d drifted apart. Probably Daniel could draw a graph of it, labelled axes, the lot.
I deserve better, Charlotte.
Had somebody fed him that line? I’d been replaying his words for a fortnight, waiting for the pain to hit. After all, this was my best mate in all the world, the biggest part of my adult
life after Will, closing the door on me. Basically I think I didn’t believe it.
‘What do you want me to do, Daniel?’ I’d said. ‘You knew I had baggage when we got together.’
‘It’s not the baggage. It’s how you see me. It’s like you’ve been gradually disconnecting yourself all year, I don’t know why. Not through lack of effort on
my part, that’s for sure. I try and do everything to suit you. And now I’m tired of being in the background, taken for granted.’
‘I don’t take you for granted.’
He just looked at me. In the end I’d had to lower my gaze, away from the lie.
The light under Will’s curtains was growing stronger, now casting a bar across the duvet and carpet. Next to me Will rolled and kicked his legs out sideways, battling the bedclothes.
‘Mummy,’ he said. ‘Stuck.’
I turned sideways to unravel him and he snuggled into me, butting his head against my breastbone. What about you, you poor fatherless ferret, I thought. When will you realise Daniel’s
not around any more? Will it matter to you? How much do the under-threes remember? That hurt, the worry that my fucked-up love-life might be damaging my own child. It cut deep.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ was what Daniel had said.
And somewhere in the middle of my disbelieving panic, Walshy’s shining face was rising up between us, his choppy fringe, his laughing eyes. Walshy in boxer shorts and sunglasses,
standing on a plastic garden chair singing ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn’. Walshy, the man I thought I wanted right up until the day he was mine for the taking.
I’d got it so wrong.
‘Mummy,’ whispered Will down my ear. ‘Need some juice.’
Here I was in the nursery, cold and stiff from sitting on the floor. Charlotte Cooper, single mum again.
‘Shall we go downstairs?’ I could make a hot drink and stick the gas fire on. Watch a video. Text Roz and ask how she was doing. I had a driving lesson at nine. No point trying to
go back to bed now anyway.
Life sails on, whether you’re ready for it or not.
Banging drawers, running taps. Half past bloody five in the morning, and I think it started up earlier than that only I refused to open my eyes so it could have been any time.
Don’t want to wake up. Feel old and unloved and fatty-fat fat. Big blobby whale like the ones you see on the news, stranded on beaches. Done for. Jiggered. Yesterday, I tried on a blouse I
bought two months ago, and it’s too tight across my bust. Ripped when I tried to take it off. Bastard buttons, bastard bloody useless thread. Cheap rubbish, that’s what it is. Keep
thinking about Steve. I don’t want him, not really. Keep thinking about Eric.
God Almighty! She can’t half slam a door, can my daughter. I’ve told her till I’m blue in the face to leave Will during the night and he’ll settle himself, but oh no,
she’s on this mission to prove she’s Wonder-mum. ‘I’d never turn my back on a child who needs me,’ she says. No one can do pious like our Charlotte. Well, she can get
on with it. Good luck to her.
Bloody birds singing. Shut up.
Opened some daft magazine article last night,
Reclaim Your Zing!.
Assuming you ever had any zing in the first place. Mine ran out about 1980.
Sniff a pine cone
, urged this
article.
Buy a fresh duvet cover. Change the way you part your hair. Cut out sucrose.
Never read such bobbins. Cut out sucrose? White sugar’s been one of the truest friends
I’ve had. White sugar in tea. Wish someone would bring me tea in bed. Open that door now with a tray, slice of toast, flower in a vase—
Bloody cat trying to claw his way in now. How’s he managed to break out of the kitchen? Scratching at the wood, miaowing. Really odd miaow that cat has. Doesn’t sound right. Sounds
like someone pretending to be a cat. Sometimes he says ‘meringue’. That’s not normal, is it? Bloody shut up, Pringle, or I will feed you slug pellets.
Oh, bugger it. Duvet back, swing legs down, connect feet with carpet, unseal eyelids. There, see? Sun’s barely up.
Grope for door. Forehead against panel for a moment.
Open door a tiny crack. Look, flea-bag, if I let you in, will you stop your racket? Right. Come on, up, yes, curl up on the pillow next to me and go to sleep.
Eyes closed again.
Pringle loves me, at least. Curl up, Pringle. No, not padding about with your bony paws all over my face, Lord knows where they’ve been. Or showing me your backside. Euff. Settle down.
Settle. Down. Bloody mog.
Not that this bed’s going to see any other kind of action for the foreseeable future.
God, cat, I’m going to open that window and chuck you out. I will, too. Wrap you in a pillowcase and drive you to the canal. Should have done it months ago. Meringue? Never mind meringues.
Will you LIE DOWN?
