The Only Boy For Me (7 page)

I finally get him into bed and am tucking him in, when he sits up and I can tell from the look on his face that he has important news to share.

‘Mummy, you know sausage rolls?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, James had them for his packed lunch, and he let me have a little bit and it was brilliant, though I didn’t get much sausage because James was saving it. Can I have sausage rolls tomorrow?’

‘Not tomorrow, darling, I won’t have time to go to the shops.’

‘We could go to the shops before school.’

I have a strong suspicion that this is a ploy to try out his new police-approved biting technique.

‘No we can’t, I’ve got to go to work tomorrow and Edna’s coming. But I’ll get some tomorrow while you’re at school.’

‘Alright, but get proper big ones not the little tiny ones, because they’re no good. I’m really hungry now, Mummy. Can I have a snack?’

‘No, it’s bedtime. Now stop chatting and settle down, it’s sleep time. Sweet dreams, darling.’ I back out of the doorway swiftly before he can think of anything else to say.

I go up to check on him half an hour later, expecting to find a sleeping child. Instead I’m greeted as I open the door
with a red-faced Charlie saying furiously, ‘Go away, Mummy, I’m having a waggle.’

I’m not quite sure how to react to this. I’ve been adamant that playing with your willy is fine in private, but not in Marks and Spencer’s, however long the queue. But somehow it feels deeply dodgy to have interrupted him. I have visions of family therapy at some point in the future, where I’m accused of hampering his psycho-sexual development. I decide it might be best to simply ignore it.

‘I just wanted to say goodnight. You should be asleep really, you know.’

‘That’s OK, Mummy. I love my willy. I bet you wish you had one.’

Apart from late on Saturday night when the gin and chocolate supplies have run out, I can honestly say I never have, but naturally do not share this information with Charlie.

‘No, darling, I like what I’ve got.’

I know this is a pathetic euphemistic defence of female sexuality, but I’m too tired for anything more robust.

‘Well, I think willies are much better. You know, if you have a hole in the front of your pyjamas you can poke your willy right out. You can’t do that with your bottom, can you, Mummy?’

Not unless I am very drunk, no. But I can’t let this slur go unanswered.

‘No, I can’t. But you wouldn’t have been born if everyone had willies, so both sorts are good. I love my bottom and you love yours, so that’s great. Now go to sleep, you’ve got school tomorrow.’

Please God he does not share this conversation with Miss Pike.

I go back downstairs feeling shattered, and make a cup of
tea. I’m halfway through it when Leila rings. She thinks it’s all terribly funny, and vows to adopt waggling as her new word for the week. The conversation moves on to other favourite euphemisms and we end up nearly hysterical. Our favourites are tinkle and hampton. We both think they’d make very jolly names for characters in a children’s series. We finally get round to what she rang for, which is to fix up a visit at the weekend as she thinks it’s too long since she last saw Charlie. The lovely prospect of a day with Leila is only slightly marred by the fact that she tends to ask what time Charlie goes to bed about half an hour after she arrives. She adores him, but her boredom threshold for child-centred activity is very low, in common with most of my friends who don’t have kids. Last time she came down she got involved in a Lego-building session which nearly sent her into a coma. Also she usually wears some item of exquisite clothing that Charlie manages to stain permanently. I make her promise to wear something washable and arrange for her to come down on Sunday. I also confirm we’re meeting for supper tomorrow night, for some Charlie-free gossip time. If the weather is nice on Sunday we can go to the beach and Charlie can run about getting soaked. I can’t wait.

Edna is due at the crack of dawn tomorrow, so I set the alarm clock extra early so I can get up and clean the kitchen before she arrives. I wake full of good intentions, but end up standing in the kitchen watching the birds building a nest in the hedge opposite the window. I’m tempted to put some kitchen paper out for them to make duvets with, but suspect they prefer the twigs and straw from the field next door. I do manage to remember to spray Jif cleaner all over the kitchen surfaces, which suggests a recent cleaning spree. And even through I know this won’t fool Edna for long, it makes me
feel better. I’m dressed and ready to go by seven thirty, when Charlie belts downstairs and starts telling me all about his dream about Egyptians. Smiling vaguely, I try to steer the conversation away from pyramids and then Edna diverts his attention by offering to cut up fruit and take all the peel off for breakfast. Charlie is thrilled because I usually refuse this kind of fiddly task. We all troop into the kitchen and Charlie does a dance while listing all the different kinds of fruit he’s going to eat. He finally decides on pineapples and strawberries, and I beat a hasty retreat to the car before he discovers that we only have apples and a mouldy old orange.

The motorway is a nightmare: a lethal mixture of lorries, heavy rain and lots of people clearly desperate to get into hospital as quickly as possible by crashing their cars into the central reservation. I find myself stuck behind an old git in a Mini Metro doing fifty miles an hour in the middle lane trying to overtake lorries but failing dismally. Each time I try to get into the outside lane some bastard in a BMW speeds up and refuses to allow me to move out. It feels like I will be stuck like this for ever. Eventually I lose my temper and accelerate so I’m almost inside the exhaust pipe of the old git and then I move sharply into the outside lane without giving the BMW driver time to speed up and block my way. He is furious and starts flashing his lights at me. I retaliate with my new favourite trick, which Barney taught me. I switch on the rear fog lights which light up the back of the car in a major way, suggesting I’m about to make some sort of emergency stop.

It’s very stupid of me to get drawn into such ridiculous behaviour, but most gratifying to see that it works, and the BMW driver brakes and pulls back. He’s obviously decided I’m mad, and I proceed to confirm his conclusion by moving
back into the middle lane once I’m safely past the old git in the Metro. The BMW instantly speeds up to pass me but he can’t resist slowing down when he’s level with my car to give me a threatening look, whereupon I give him a one-finger salute while keeping my eyes firmly on the road. I’ve got purple nail varnish on, which I think adds a touch of style to hand gestures. I know, without looking, that he is distraught. Brilliant.

I finally make it to Soho and the car park, only to discover that the few remaining spaces are on the roof, up a hideous wobbly metal ramp which shakes as you drive on it. An idiot in a Range Rover gets halfway up and then loses his nerve and reverses back down, causing havoc as two cars are behind him. What is the point of designing cars with four-wheel drive and the ability to climb cliffs if they sell them to idiots who can’t park them? All the car parks in Soho are awful, but the train costs a fortune, takes hours, and there are only two choices home at night: five pm or five fifteen pm. After that you have to go via Aberdeen. So I’m stuck with the car. I manage to drive up the wobbly ramp and park, and make it into the office with just enough time to realise I have left a crucial folder in the car, but no time to go back and get it. Perfect.

Barney is already sitting in the meeting room looking thunderous. It turns out he came in early and tried to make a cup of coffee with his new machine, and managed to scald his thumb with boiling-hot water by pressing the wrong button at the wrong moment. Stef warns me that he’s behaving as if amputation might be the only way forward, and has told her to bugger off, twice, and take that bloody machine with her. I make a huge fuss of his thumb, which has a tiny red mark on it, and produce one of Charlie’s dinosaur sticking plasters from my handbag and offer to
stick it on, to ‘keep the wound clean’. He is almost tempted, but finally recovers himself and tells me to sod off. I find some Savlon in the office first-aid kit, and insist on smearing his thumb with about half the tube. Barney is delighted, and cheers up hugely now he has had ointment and a proper fuss made of him. Just like Charlie, really, but with less screaming and slightly more swearing.

We’re talking about plans for the shoot in Cornwall next week, when Lawrence bustles in. He hates not being in meetings, and says do we need him? The honest answer would be no, but Barney can’t resist the temptation of telling him all about his dreadful injury. Lawrence says oh he knows all about scalds, he burnt his whole hand once on a kettle and it was agony. Barney looks at him with utter contempt, and asks him where on earth did he get those trousers. Lawrence is wearing brown leather trousers today – a serious mistake not least because the sofas in the meeting room are also leather, so comic sound effects are produced every couple of minutes, much to his embarrassment and Barney’s delight.

The accountant, Ron, turns up and he and Barney go upstairs. Barney has clearly forgotten telling Stef to bugger off, and asks her if she would make them some tea. Peace is restored, and we all get on with some work. I then have a tedious meeting with Ron trying to explain Barney’s expenses from the last couple of shoots. As Barney’s filing system consists of stuffing receipts in his pocket and occasionally chucking them all in a drawer, this takes some time. We discover receipts for all sorts of things I have no memory of, and have to be very creative. Finally Ron agrees to let me go, but says he may have to call me on a couple of things in the next day or two. Lovely.

The list of messages on my desk makes me feel faint, so I
go out and eat cake and drink so much black coffee that I have a major caffeine rush and wonder if I’m having a heart attack. I suddenly remember sausage rolls for Charlie’s lunch tomorrow and try all the smart patisseries on Old Compton Street, but they look at me like I’m mad and can only offer spinach quiche. Finally I have to trudge to M&S in Oxford Street, and buy two packets of large sausage rolls as instructed. I do not allow myself to even consider buying anything else or I’ll be there for hours trying to visualise what’s in the fridge. The woman on the till looks at me with pity, obviously assuming I’m having some sort of food crisis and am about to eat eight jumbo sausage rolls for lunch. I get back to the office to find the list of messages has grown even longer, but I rally and manage to make a huge number of calls and confirm most of the crew before I realise it’s nearly six and I haven’t called home.

Edna is fine, but Charlie is not. He hated the pizza Edna made for supper, and wants to know if he can stay up late to watch
Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
which will give him nightmares. Complicated negotiations follow, which eventually result in him agreeing to go to bed at the usual time if he can watch a video of
Buffy
tomorrow night with me, which means I can distract him by tickling him during especially scary moments. This annoys him intensely, but it does mean he won’t wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Edna doesn’t know how to use the video – in fact I’ve only just persuaded her that using the microwave won’t affect her perm. So I have to go through a long instruction process which I know will result in her taping the world bowls final.

I’m meeting Leila in a trendy new club for an early supper. I arrive late, as usual, and she’s sitting by the bar looking wonderful in a new suit, which must have cost a fortune. It did, but it makes her look fabulous, so, as she
quite rightly says, it’s really a bargain. The place is full of skeletally thin young women who appear to have come out in their underwear and very little else. Lots of lacy slips, very high shoes and tiny little cardigans. Floral is back in, apparently, but only in acid colours. And only if you are a size eight. Otherwise long black jackets are still popular. I feel about eighty, and don’t think my long black jacket is long enough. But will this stop me having pudding? Not a chance.

I’m not drinking as I’ll be driving later, but Leila is making serious inroads into a bottle of champagne and is on top form. There are loads of advertising types milling about, so we do lots of useful but exhausting networking. I’m reminded yet again that my ability to remember people’s names is less developed than it should be. Leila remembers everyone, including the names of their children and pets. I can barely recall the name of a really nice woman I worked with last year – and we spent all night bonding in the hotel bar listing all the things we hated about directors, men in general, our thighs, and hairdressers who cut your hair too short.

Finally we move to our table, and a very complicated ordering process begins. Leila is on some new diet, and can only eat very odd combinations of foods, but also has to make sure that the things I order are the things she really wants, so she can eat mine and it won’t count because she didn’t order it. It’s all going well until we get to the chips, when I suggest it might be best if we order two portions, and she gets cross and says I’m not playing the game properly at all. In the end we settle for a large bowl, and thankfully when the food arrives the bowl turns out to be enormous and barely fits on the table, so all is well. I tell Leila that Mum has booked a villa in Spain for a week, for the half-term
holidays after Easter, and has invited me and Charlie. It’ll be a brilliant way to escape the usual spring weather of gales and torrential rain. Mum says she fancies a little holiday and Dad has invented a golf tournament so he doesn’t have to come. He’s not keen on holidays with the under-tens. Leila thinks a holiday is an excellent idea, and is planning something similar. Her idea of something similar turns out to be a week in Venice, and I offer to swap but she is having none of it and says Charlie would be bored in the Cipriani, and would be honour-bound to fall into the Grand Canal. Sadly I have to agree, and promise to bring her back a straw donkey.

We move on to general gossip, and Leila makes me laugh so much I nearly choke at one point, and have to be banged on the back by the waiter. To be honest, I don’t think he needed to slap quite that hard, but composure is regained and Leila points out it could be worse: he could have tried the Heimlich manoeuvre. I almost wish he had, as trying to lift me up would have wiped the smile off his face. The puddings are glorious – Leila’s new diet positively encourages crème brûlée, apparently – and the coffee and the bill arrive without the usual half-hour wait. Perhaps the waiter thinks I may start choking again. Leila insists on paying and makes me promise to put my share towards a present for Charlie, but only if it’s something noisy and plastic. She is now off to meet a new man and go dancing. I cannot imagine where she gets her energy from, as I can barely stagger back to the car.