Coming Clean (15 page)

There was a chorus of agreement.

“Yes, but why do I get the sense that this would be from another building?”

“Come on, Sophie,” Des said. “Since when have you been scared of confrontation?”

“Since I met Shirley Tucker Dill. The woman’s a tyrant.” I looked at Des. “Why can’t you be our spokesperson? After all, you’re our NUJ rep and you’ve been rabble-rousing for years.”

“Usually I would seize the opportunity with both hands, but in this instance I see my role more as coordinating action from the shop floor.”

“Meaning she scares the pants off you, too.”

“Not at all. I just think that as editor you will have her ear more than the rest of us. Plus I can be pretty aggressive when I want to be, and I think I might rub her up the wrong way.”

“Des, you are so full of crap. Just admit you’re scared.”

“OK, hands up. I’m terrified.”

“Well, I’m not,” Nancy said. “The woman’s as common as muck. She doesn’t scare me one iota.”

“So you be our spokesperson,” I said.

“Believe me, I’d be more than happy to oblige, but I suspect that my days on
Coffee Break
are numbered. Now that STD is planning to tabloid the program, she’s going to want some ditzy airhead presenter who eats M&M’s in alphabetical order.”

Des agreed that was a possibility. “But you’ll get a damn good payoff.”

“I don’t want a payoff. I want a job. And with all the media cutbacks, the likelihood is I’ll never work again. Have you any idea how many applicants there are for every presenting job? I may be damned good at what I do, but the truth is, I’ll never see twenty-five again.”

“Come on, Nancy,” I said. “We’re all in this together. Let’s just take it one day at a time, eh?”

She gave a shrug. “I guess I have no choice.”

I turned to Des. “So what’s the possibility that I could be sacked if I become too much of a thorn in Shirley Tucker Dill’s side?”

“She can’t sack you for disagreeing with her and trying to change her opinion. As editor you have a right to express your views. It’s probably a long shot, but she might just respond to some gentle persuasion. Come on, Sophie, what do you say?”

Nancy had just admitted she didn’t have a choice and now I was aware that I didn’t have one, either. Yes, I was scared of taking on Shirley Tucker Dill. Despite Des’s reassurances, I was even more scared of losing my job, but people were relying on me. I couldn’t walk away.

“OK,” I said. “If everybody’s happy, I’ll leave things as they are with Shirley and take the job.”

Des, ever the shop steward, called for a show of hands. It was unanimous. I was the new editor and the “workers’” official spokesperson.

Before we drifted out of the conference room, Des made a short, rallying, “Remember, everybody—as Marx said—we’ve got nothing to lose but our chains.”

“Speak for yourself,” I muttered.

B
ack in my office, I carried on listening to the interviews and features I’d commissioned over the last few weeks and which had been due to go out in the New Year. I wondered how on earth I was going to get them past STD. The piece on the Black Death was clearly for the scrap heap, but there were several items I was determined to fight for, particularly one on postpartum depression and another on parenting autistic children. The secret to placating her might be to balance them with some humorous offbeat items.

By midafternoon my head was starting to ache. I guessed it wasn’t surprising, bearing in mind all that had happened in the last few hours. I took a couple of Tylenol, which had almost no effect, and struggled on until five o’clock. By then my desk was pretty much clear, so I decided to call it a day.

An hour later—after a journey that couldn’t have been more different from the one I’d had that morning—I was heading out of Putney Station. I walked home slowly, hoping the air would ease my headache. I mulled as I walked. Was I really up to taking on Shirley Tucker Dill? What if the worst happened and she managed to fire me? How would the kids and I survive without my salary? I’d taken the editor’s job because I didn’t want to let down my colleagues, but if I lost it, I’d be letting down Amy and Ben—again. That was unthinkable.

As I slid my front-door key in the lock I was aware that, despite the mulling and worrying, the tension in my head had eased. The walk and the air had done their job. I stepped into the hall and was met by shrieks and laughter coming from upstairs. I remembered that Amy and Ben each had a friend over for tea. They were all making such a racket that they didn’t hear me come in. I took off my coat and headed to the kitchen. Klaudia was at the stove, spatula in hand, frying sausages.

“Everything OK?” I said by way of greeting.

Klaudia turned around. “Fine.” It was then that I saw her red eyes and cheeks streaked with tears.

“Sweetie,” I said, going over to her, “what on earth’s the matter?”

“I am not knowing how to tell you.” She was starting to sob.

I took the spatula from her, laid it on the counter and turned out the light under the frying pan. Taking her gently by the arm, I led her to the kitchen table. We both sat down.

“Come on, what is it? Have you had a fight with Marek?”

Marek was her boyfriend back in Warsaw. She shook her head.

“What is it, then?”

“I hef baby.”

“You hef baby? Where? Here? You mean somebody’s asked you to look after it?”

“No. I yam expecting baby.”

“Omigod . . . You’re pregnant?”

“Yes. It happen when I go home. Marek and me, we have relations with naked penis.”

“Ah, that would explain it. Having relations with naked penis probably wasn’t the best idea. So I’m guessing you’re not very happy about this.”

“No. We very happy. Even though we not plan baby.”

“That’s brilliant. So why the tears?”

“I hef to leave you and the children. Marek wants me to go home and for him and my mother to look after me. I yam so sorry I let you down.”

I leaned forward and gave Klaudia a hug. I’d been dreading having to tell her that I couldn’t afford to keep her on and here she was letting me off the hook. I couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, Klaudia, you aren’t letting us down. You’re having a baby—you have to focus on that now. You mustn’t worry about us.”

“But I do worry. Amy and Ben are still much missing their father and I should be here to ease their pains.”

“They’ll be fine. It’s been six months now. I honestly think they’re over the worst. And you have been so wonderful with them—particularly since Greg left. I don’t know what I would have done without you. I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

“Eet has been my pleasure.”

I got up, put my arms around her and gave her a hug.

“You know, Klaudia, we’re really going to miss you, but we’ll manage . . . somehow.”

“You sure? You really mean that?”

“Absolutely. Now dry those tears.”

•   •   •

O
nce Klaudia had calmed down, I went upstairs to say hi to the kids. Amy and Georgia, her best friend (for this week at least), were practicing their lines for the school nativity play. Except it wasn’t called a nativity play anymore. There had been a letter from the school telling parents that this year (“in accordance with our approved diversity procedure”) the children would be performing a multicultural generic holiday play. Georgia was playing the Hindu god Vishnu and Amy was an Eskimo. Topping the bill was a boy in year four who would be doing an impersonation of Elvis singing “Winter Wonderland.”

“Hey, Georgia. Hey, Amy. How was school?”

“Good, thank you,” Georgia said in that singsong voice of hers. Everybody said what a sunny child she was. Her mother put it down to having breast-fed her until she was five.

“And how was your day, Amy?”

“’K.”

“What did you get up to?”

“Dunno. Stuff. Look, Mum, please can you go away? We’re practicing.”

Amy was reaching that age where her parents were becoming an embarrassment, but I supposed I should be grateful. At least she’d said please when she asked me to beat it.

Next door, Ben and Arthur were sitting on the floor, surrounded by pillows and cushions. Propped up against these were the TV remote, the CD player remote, the long-defunct video player remote, the Apple TV remote and an old computer keyboard. “Hi, boys. You OK?”

“Sshh . . . we’re trying to work out the code.”

“The code?”

“For our time machine,” Arthur said. “We need the right code so that we can get to Bef-lehem to see the baby Jesus.”

Clearly the school’s efforts to suppress their pupils’ interest in the nativity story hadn’t worked.

“Mrs. O’Reilly,” Arthur went on, “brought a model of the nativity scene into school.”

“That must have gone down well,” I muttered.

Mrs. O’Reilly was Arthur’s teacher. She’d been at the school for over thirty years. She was one of those devoted, strict-but-kind teachers who managed to bring out the best in even her dullest pupils. The children loved her. Ditto the parents, who would far rather have had Mrs. O’Reilly running the school than the drippy—in accordance with our approved diversity procedure—Mrs. McKay.

“She took the whole of year three into the hall,” Ben went on, “and said that this was a Christian country and Christmas was a Christian festival and that it was wrong that we weren’t being taught the story of baby Jesus.”

“Mrs. O’Reilly said that?” Even as an agnostic Jew, I couldn’t help thinking good on her. But there could be no doubt that once the principal and the school governors got wind of her politically incorrect challenge, her days at Parkhall Primary School would be numbered. I could only assume that she’d done it because she wasn’t far off retirement and didn’t give a damn what the head and the governors thought.

“Yeah,” Ben said, “and then she told us the nativity story, but I remembered it from playgroup.”

“Me, too,” Arthur piped up, clearly not wishing to appear uninformed.

“Mrs. O’Reilly,” Ben continued, “said that the three wise men brought presents for the baby Jesus and one of them got him aftershave.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, it’s called Franky’s Scents.”

Just then Klaudia called up to the kids to tell them tea was ready. The boys sprang to their feet. Clearly, paying homage to the Christ child couldn’t compete with the unholy delights of a plate of sausages and oven chips. They thundered hippopotamus-like down the stairs. I heard Ben begging Klaudia to let them eat in front of the TV. Knowing that I usually gave in to this demand, Klaudia didn’t put up a fight.

Still giggling to myself about Franky’s Scents, I went into my room, got changed out of my work clothes and put on a pair of joggers and a sweater. As I headed back downstairs I could hear Amy and Georgia talking at the kitchen table about getting tattoos when they were older. Georgia wanted Winnie the Pooh above her ankle, and seeing as her mother had two dolphin tattoos (one on each breast, no doubt), she didn’t think this would be a problem.

“If I asked to get a tattoo,” Amy was saying, “my dad would go mental, but Mum wouldn’t mind. She’s pretty cool.”

How about that? I wasn’t such an embarrassment to my daughter after all. In fact, I was one of the “cool” mums. For a few moments, I basked in the warm glow of self-congratulation.

“Mum,” Amy said as I came into the kitchen, “you wouldn’t mind me getting a tattoo when I’m sixteen, would you?”

“I guess not. So long as it was done safely and it wasn’t huge.”

“So a tiny butterfly at the top of my arm would be OK?”

“I think that could be cute.”

Amy looked at Georgia. “I told you she was cool.”

I was busy basking again, but Amy interrupted. “Mum, there’s no ketchup and we’re out of Coco Pops. Plus I had to have whole wheat toast for breakfast this morning.”

A quick check of the fridge and cupboards revealed that these weren’t the only things we were out of. I decided that since the kids were occupied with their friends and not clamoring for my attention, I would nip out and do a supermarket run.

•   •   •

I
pushed my cart up and down the aisles and thought about Klaudia leaving and how she would be the fourth person to have “deserted” Amy and Ben in the last few months. My children were about to develop abandonment issues—I just knew it. They would grow up believing there was no point getting into relationships, because in the end people always walked away. They would need therapy. Who was going to pay for that? Unless our finances improved, it wasn’t going to be Greg and me. In a few years we could have two disturbed young adults on our hands and no way of providing them with the help they needed: one more thing to beat myself up about.

I reached the aisle with jams, pickles and preserves. So far, the only thing in my cart was a giant box of Tampax Super. I picked up a jar of sauerkraut and put it back. It was only Greg who liked the stuff.

I was heading towards the deli counter, wondering yet again if there was anything more Greg and I could have done to save our marriage, when I had a head-on trolley collision with another shopper. Barely looking up, I offered an “Oops-sorry-my-fault.” After a speedy disengagement, I carried on down the aisle.

“Soph?” the male voice said. “Is that you?”

I stopped and looked over my shoulder. I saw a guy about my own age in jeans and a reefer jacket. The floppy nineties hair had gone and been replaced by a short, trendy cut, but the face that smiled out from the dark stubble was unmistakable. It had aged a bit, but in a good, Brad Pitt kind of a way. There was no doubt, the man still had it goin’ on.

“Omigod! Huckleberry!”

As he came towards me, I did an about-turn with my cart. We pulled up alongside the posh Bonne Maman jams and threw our arms around each other.

“Huckleberry—I don’t believe it.”

Huckleberry. The Southern states of the U.S. probably contained a smattering of Huckleberries, but over here it was the kind of twee name a child gave his hamster. A wife in search of an affectionate pet name for her husband’s penis might happen upon Huckleberry. No parent would consider it a suitable name for their son.

Unless, of course, those parents happen to be the Taylors. In the seventies, Huckleberry’s father, Byron, had been a lecturer in American literature at the University of Norwich. His wife, Mimi, was a performance poet. They were both huge Twain fans and had apparently always planned to name their firstborn son Huckleberry.

“So, how long has it been?” I said, taking in the smoky gray eyes that had always been his trademark.

“I don’t know. How many years since we left university?”

“Too many. So how are you? What are you up to? The last I heard, you were teaching in Somalia.”

A passing old lady tutted because we were blocking the aisle. We apologized and moved ourselves and our carts closer to the shelves. I clocked that his cart contained several frozen pizzas and ready meals for one. Then I noticed my box of Tampax Super. I grabbed a jar of pickled onions and stood it in front of the box.

“Yes, I was working at a village school not far from Mogadishu.”

“So you really followed your dream.”

He looked ever so slightly awkward. Maybe these days it embarrassed him to be reminded of his former idealist self. “I guess I did,” he said.

I’d known Huckleberry since high school. Nobody dared make fun of his name. Huck was over six feet, well built and seriously good looking. Girls practically fell at his feet and he did nothing to fend them off. Huck became known as Huck the Fuck. I fancied him something rotten, but he was way out of my league. I was too scared even to speak to him.

By coincidence, we ended up at the same university: Manchester. I studied English. He did modern history. Both in the arts faculty, we found ourselves hanging out with the same crowd and going to the same parties. By then I’d had a couple of boyfriends and my confidence had improved. I wasn’t quite so scared of him anymore. That wasn’t to say I could have gone up to him and asked him out on a date. And anyway, Huck always had a gorgeous blond drama student on the go.

Despite his Huck the Fuck handle and the eat-as-much-as-you-like buffet that was his sex life, Huck was a highly intelligent, thoughtful chap. Like me, he was a member of the university Unite Against Fascism society. Occasionally, after the Thursday night meetings, the two of us would go for a drink in the student union bar and exchange views on the struggle.

Huck would tell me that he was determined to do something meaningful with his life. “I’m not interested in money. I want to be of use.” Behind his back, people said it was all a romantic, idealistic pose and took the piss. Some even did it to his face, but Huck’s determination never faltered. Straight after university he did Voluntary Service Overseas and spent several years teaching in India. Even after Greg and I were married, Huck was still sending me postcards telling me what he was up to. (Despite my denials, Greg was convinced he was an old flame who couldn’t quite let go.) When he went to Africa in the late nineties the postcards petered out.