Confessions of a Bad Mother (15 page)

‘Or indeed anything.’

But this suits Sharon, who – even though she babysits happily for
us at home – gets sulky when we try to leave her alone with the kids. The
nearest we get to a romantic night out is to leave them in their room with a
pizza one evening while we enjoy the fried buffet alone. But even then our
spirits are dampened somewhat by her asking what time we’ll be back.

‘I think what we’ve learned here,’ says Peter,
‘is to possibly leave the foreign travel alone for a few
years.’

‘Say, till they’re at college.’

‘By which time we’ll have no money left anyway.’

‘And be too old and knackered.’

‘Still, it’s good to give things a try.’

‘Mmm, though next time when the brochure says
“Children’s Play Area”, it would be useful to find out if
there’s anything more than one swing.’

From no excitement on holiday, we return to plenty. And it’s all
going on outside our house. First we have children chucking silver packets into
the front garden – something clearly more mood-enhancing than chewing
gum. When I go out to remonstrate, they sneer at me. Then a police car hits
another car just outside. Then we have to evacuate when – this is shortly
after the Brixton and Soho bombings – a suspect package is found on our
wall (it turns out to contain stolen car radios). Then one Sunday morning at 5
a.m. I get up to feed Lydia and see a man in the back garden, making for the
house. When he sees me he runs off, but I am shaking. That’s followed by
a ‘joy-riding’ incident in which thieves in a stolen red car drive
into our car with such force that they push it part-way through our
neighbour’s front garden. The back axle is nearly off, and we almost lose
it altogether. In the space of a few weeks, we dial 999 four times, the fourth
one being caused by a cat knocking over a log outside the back door. I
don’t want to go to sleep at night in case I have to get up and defend my
family.

‘Most of it’s kids from the hostel,’ says one of the
policemen we are now seeing regularly.

‘Hostel …?’

‘Yeah. But you’ll find the problem’s mostly at
weekends. Sunday nights they usually go back in.’

We decide to sell. A week before her first birthday, Lydia is making her
way methodically up the stairs. Unfortunately, I am in the kitchen thinking
Peter is minding her, and he is in the sitting room thinking the same. We both
hear the dreadful sound of her tumbling down, down, down to the tiles. He
reaches her first and picks her up. She is all stiff, and apparently
unconscious.

‘Omigod! What shall we do?
What shall we
do???!!!
’

‘She’s coming round!’

She opens her eyes, takes a deep breath and cries – those long,
desperate cries that make you want to rip your guts out and hurl them into the
street. I can see now why the Japanese invented
hara-kiri
. When you feel
this bad, eviscerating yourself can only brighten your day.

After this first weird fainting fit, she has several more. The doctor
offers me a referral to a paediatrician some time hence.

‘When would that be?’

‘Ooh, six to eight weeks. They’ll write to you.’

‘I’d really like to see someone a bit sooner. I want to know
what it is.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t think it’s epilepsy.’

‘Yes, but we don’t know. What about Great Ormond Street?
Could I take her there?’

‘Ooh, no. Tertiary referrals only.’

‘What about private? Peter’s got insurance from work.’
‘Oh, we don’t want to get into all that, do we?’

Somehow, I find myself leaving with nothing except this vague offer of
an appointment sometime in the next decade. But when I get home, I ring Liz and
Andrew, the other parents who use Maureen, and both – though not in our
area – GPs.

‘Of course you can go to Great Ormond Street,’ says Andrew.
‘You just ring up their private bit, and get the name of a paediatrician.
Then go back – to another GP this time – and ask for a referral
letter.’

‘And—?’

‘That’s it. They should see Lydia in two or three
days.’

Three days later we are sitting in a private consulting room, with a Dr
Douek. Lydia plays with the toys.

‘Sorry she isn’t fainting for you,’ I say.

‘That’s all right. Can you describe what happens?’

‘If she cries very hard, or falls down and bangs her head –
she shuts her eyes and goes stiff. Then she flops, sort of faints. Then she
wakes up and continues crying, as if it hadn’t happened.’

‘And how long is she out for?’

‘Not long. Twenty seconds? Less maybe. It’s all because she
fell down the stairs when we weren’t looking. I just feel so
terrible.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I can tell you exactly
what that is. ‘They’re called Reflex Anoxic Seizures.’

The relief is incredible. Although he’s sure it’s that and
not epilepsy, he books an EEG, and gives me the name of a support group. The
EEG is normal, the woman who runs the support group (called Stars) is
fantastic, and although Lydia goes on fainting on and off for the next three
years or so, it does nothing to hinder her ambition to climb trees, balance on
the tops of bunk beds and hurl herself off the climbing frame. But I continue
to feel guilty and always feel I have to ‘confess’ about the
stairs.

Our house is on the market. Although I focus on the big garden, rather
than the Johannesburg-style crime levels, no one wants to buy it. Also, we
don’t agree about where we should go. I think we should stay north, where
our friends are, and Peter thinks we should go south, where we can still have a
garden and be near his sister. I stand firm until we have coffee with a friend
of his from work who lives in Dulwich. We see the park, the trees and ooh, a
pergola
. I concede I just might consider moving there. But it will mean
leaving Maureen, which is unimaginable. Jump-started into planning by the
thought of looking after them myself full-time – a prospect too
terrifying to contemplate – I start ringing nurseries in the area. None
takes kids in nappies. I get frantic, and snap at Lawrence more than usual.

‘You’re bad,’ he tells me.

I get worse. I switch
Thomas the Tank Engine
off for dinner, and
he screams for twenty minutes. We get a temporary respite when we manage to get
some food into him, but then Peter accidentally turns to answer the phone at
the moment Lawrence offers him a biscuit, and the tantrum resumes. Sharon is
there to babysit, and even her magic touch is neutralized. She takes him
upstairs to get undressed and he kicks her. Having shouted at him plenty, I
remain in the kitchen, trembling with frustration and rage. A few nights later,
I make Lydia cry by washing her hair, and he tells me off for that, too.

Still no interest in the house. Sharon tells us she’s got a
full-time nannying job. As Maureen never works after 5.30, and Sharon is the
only other person the children know, our babysitting has just gone up the
spout. The main purpose of going out in the evenings is so we can go to the
cinema, and Peter can’t see a film that starts after seven because he
can’t stay awake. This has nothing to do with having children; he’s
always been like that. When we first met, he quickly became known amongst my
friends – in a rather Native American sounding way – as
The One
Who Falls Asleep
. Many dinner parties have ground to a halt while I, then
the host and finally all the other guests stop talking to observe him nodding
forward with his mouth open like one of those dogs people used to put in the
backs of cars. It’s a 6.30 movie or nothing, therefore, and
Sharon’s new job doesn’t finish till half-seven. I can feel myself
starting to panic.

‘I might be able to get to you around eight,’ she says,
ruminatively. ‘But then again, I might be too tired.’ She’s
looking at an eleven-hour day, which even at her age I’d say is pushing
it. Honestly! These middle-class types have no consideration. I plunge into
gloom until she reveals that though the mother works long hours in a bank or
somewhere, the father of the children in question works at home.

‘What?! So what’s with the 7.30? He can stop anytime!’
I work at home and I’ll stop for anything: to gaze at the cloud
formations, straighten my paper-clips or fall into a happy trance picking my
nose.

‘Yeah, but he don’t,’ Sharon points out.

‘Yes, but he could.’

‘But he don’t.’

This is getting us nowhere. I decide to go and talk to him. We have
mutual friends; it’ll be fine.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ says Peter.

‘I’m only going to ask.’

I get there, and the conversation goes like this:

‘I was wondering if you would consider releasing Sharon an hour
early on some days.’

‘No. You see, she replaces my wife, not me.’

‘I’m sorry? I don’t quite—’

‘I don’t look after the children, my wife does.’

‘So – um …’

‘Sorry, no can do. Sharon will be here until 7.30, when she comes
home.’

Even though I’ve got nowhere, we part on friendly terms. I get
home and the phone rings. It is Sharon. She says: ‘I’m really angry
that you spoke to him when I asked you not to!’ She puts the phone down
and that is that.

‘We’ve got no one now. We’ll never go out
again!’

‘We can stay in,’ he says. ‘You can cook.’

‘Oh, cheers.’

‘You love cooking.’ This is true, but I’m hoping
he’s forgotten.

‘I’m trapped! Help! Help!’

‘We’ll find another babysitter.’

‘Where???!’

‘You found Sharon. You’ll find someone else.’

‘I won’t. I won’t!’ I yank the cork out of a
bottle. ‘And we’re stuck in this scary house. We’ll probably
all be killed.’

‘No, we won’t. We’re going to move to Dulwich and then
we’ll be too far away for Sharon anyway.’

‘I’m not moving to fucking south London. You bastard! First
you charm me into getting married! Then you trick me into getting a mortgage.
Then
you make me have
children
.
Now
you’re trying to
force me to live –
Down
There.
’

‘You left Bloomsbury.’

‘More fool me.’

‘We can have a big garden. It’ll be nice.’

‘Yeah, in SE
300
.’

‘My sister lives there. You like her.’

‘What about
my
friends? I can’t walk to Soho.
There’s not even a tube. I’ll never see Claire or Tilly or Claudia
again. My life is ruined. I hate you!’

‘It’ll be fine.’

‘Yeah. Well, you know what? We don’t need a babysitter now
anyway, because I’m leaving.’

‘There, you see? Problem solved.’

Finally we have a firm offer on the house. Desperate not to lose the
buyer, I exchange contracts. We haven’t found anywhere else to live.

Peter says: ‘I trust you completely.’

‘Well, at least that way you’ll always have someone to
blame.’

Weeks go by. Every Monday and Tuesday I ring fifty estate agents.
Everything is too big and expensive, or too small, or has no garden, or has had
all the storage ripped out to install ‘en suites’. One has been
feng shui’d
and had the front door turned eleven degrees to the
left, or the south, or towards Shanghai, but anyhow it doesn’t matter
because it’s hideous and reeks of dogs.

‘That’s it,’ I tell Peter finally. ‘There are no
four-bedroomed houses with gardens in south London. There just
aren’t.’

Then, when we are about to become homeless, a house pops up in the same
road as our friend with the pergola. It’s long and thin, like our first
house turned on its side. When we go to look round, there is a teenager on the
sofa reading the
Financial Times
.

‘I’ve seen show flats where they put a plastic croissant on
the table, but nothing like this.’

The children love it.

‘There’s even a shed, so they can have a den.’

‘Somewhere to smoke!’

And so we leave the bars and shops of Islington, north London, for the
tree-lined avenues of Dulwich in the south. I have been assuming that Lawrence
and Lydia will be traumatized by losing Maureen. She’s a nurturing and
observant carer of children, but by the time we’ve booked the moving
lorry, I’ve turned her into a cross between Mary Poppins and Melanie
Klein. In fact they turn out to be quite unbothered, whereas I have been crying
on and off since we exchanged contracts eight weeks ago. The thought of
managing without her quiet, clean house to leave them in, the idea of losing
the routine – this crutch – fills me with panic. I am going to be
alone with them both for the first time, nowhere near my friends, and am
trembling with chronic, low-level dread.

On moving day, we take Lawrence to Maureen’s as usual, so we can
finish packing. At 1 p.m., with the lorry on its way, we go to fetch him. In
accordance with Maureen’s routine, they have already begun their daily
visit to the One O’Clock Club. This is Lynn’s domain. She manages
it, and apart from a press release I did for the local papers when it was
threatened with closure, we have had no contact.

When we arrive and see the breadth of activities laid on, I feel a surge
of guilt.
Two
other people have been educating my child –
stimulating him, widening his skill base and doing all the stuff I should be
doing. His passably good manners are surely down to Maureen. She doesn’t
swear, which gives her a head start over me. And she handles all those tricky
management issues, like toy sharing. But I’ve assumed that the stunning
splashes of colour Lawrence brings home are due to my fabulously artistic
DNA.

Wrong! All the kids here are geniuses. The walls are bedecked with a
dazzling display of infant talent. The Wendy house is stocked with dressing-up
clothes, there are pots of paint, glitter, things to stick, plus books, and
even a little reading corner with a sofa. We’d been worrying about the
standard of Islington’s schools: no need! He could have spent the next
eight years here.