Bad Mothers United
Read Bad Mothers United Online
Authors: Kate Long
Kate Long is the author of
The Bad Mother’s Handbook
,
Swallowing Grandma
,
Queen Mum
,
The Daughter Game
,
Mothers &
Daughters
and
Before She Was Mine
. She was born and raised in Lancashire and lives with her husband and two sons in Shropshire. Visit her website
www.katelong.co.uk
ALSO BY KATE LONG
The Bad Mother’s Handbook
Swallowing Grandma
Queen Mum
The Daughter Game
Mothers & Daughters
Before She Was Mine
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Kate Long 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Kate Long to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
TPB ISBN: 978-1-84983-792-7
PB ISBN: 978-1-84983-793-4
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-84983-794-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For Damian McClelland, Jon Dwyer, Carys Roberts MCSP, Sister Lease and the team on Ward 121 at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, for Midlands Air Ambulance and
everyone involved with saving my husband’s life and limbs in 2010.
All t’world’s queer ’cept for thee and me.
And I’m not so sure about thee.
Spotted this woman walking towards me in BHS, right miserable face on her, thick waist, bad hair. I thought, Eeh, you’ve let yourself go, love. Then I realised it was a
mirror.
CHAPTER 1
Some things change, some stay the same.
The day our Charlotte went back to university it was lashing down. I watched her dodge along the front path, twirling her umbrella, while Daniel struggled behind with her bags and cases and
coats and poster tubes – all the rubbish she reckons she can’t survive the term without. I’d brought Will up to the window so he could wave to his mum –
Bye bye, Mummy,
you buzz off and enjoy yourself, don’t bother giving us lot a second thought
– but after thirty seconds he’d wriggled out of my arms and gone to sit in front of the TV again.
I left him where he was. We don’t make a big deal of these partings in case it upsets him.
When Charlotte reached the car she stood back and let Daniel open the door for her, even though it meant that to do so he had to squash one bag under his arm and balance a holdall between his
hip and the rear wing. Then he’d somehow to take the umbrella carefully off her while she climbed in, mustn’t for God’s sake let any moisture get to that swinging mane of
straightened hair, and meanwhile there’s water pouring off the umbrella canvas and dripping from the spokes onto his shoulder. That lovely lad. Devoted isn’t the word. I wondered
whether he’d noticed she wasn’t herself this holiday.
I saw my daughter rearrange whatever was in the footwell, then pull down the vanity mirror to check her fringe. Daniel began wrestling to close the umbrella. Across the road, two kids in anoraks
cycled figure eights round the Working Men’s Club car park. The rain was coming in waves now. And I thought, Well, it’s been raining all my damn life, hasn’t it? How many days has
it NOT rained? My first morning at the big school, a passing car splashed mud nearly up to my knickers. My sixteenth birthday, a bunch of us were supposed to be going up the Pike to get drunk, only
it drizzled non-stop and we ended up stuck in Rivington Barn tea room, trying to swig cider without the waitress seeing. It was coming down in stair-rods on that third date with Steve, which meant
we had to stay in, which meant we started having sex before I was ready, which meant I got caught with Charlotte and ruined my entire future, never even got to take my A levels. There were flood
warnings on my wedding day, and the week my decree absolute came through, the Irwell burst its banks. It was pouring the afternoon I moved in here, Mum standing on the doorstep going,
‘We’ll work things out, you’ll see.’ Me going, ‘Twenty bloody one and I can’t believe I’m back home where I started.’
Of course at school we were taught that there was actual science behind all the wet. Clouds sweeping in off the Irish Sea had to rise to get over the Pennines and as they did, they cooled and
condensed, dumping their load on the Lancashire side. By the time they got to Yorkshire, they were wrung out. All I can say is, Barnsley must be parched. I can remember the teacher making us sketch
diagrams of fat clouds, landscape in cross-section, notes below about how soft water was a crucial component of the textile industry and how without it, our local economy would never have got
going. No hills, no mills.
So we’re used to unkind skies in this village. But sometimes it feels more personal. Certain people are born to be rained on.
After Daniel had driven off, after I’d waved and waved, watched till the car reached the end of the street and turned, I had this sudden sag of tiredness. It’s the holding myself
together that does it. Trying not to start a row every five minutes. Whatever I’m doing with Will, it’s wrong, she wants it her way. Except she’s not around then to follow
anything up. All right for her to decide he’s having an extra story at bedtime, or encourage him to throw his fifty-odd teddies round the room as a fun game. It’s me who’s left to
settle him again, mauling up and down, trying to keep the house safe and tidy. Ask her to rein him in and that makes you Mrs Miserypants. ‘Let him have FUN,’ she says. Subtext:
Because you never let me have any, did you?
This deprived childhood she’s supposed to have had.
So always after she’s gone an emptiness takes over my insides and all I want to do is flop on the sofa with Will. This time was worse, though, because I knew something else was wrong,
something new, but I hadn’t dared ask and now I’d lost my chance.
What would
you
have done with her, Mum? I thought. You always knew how to get round Charlotte.
On the windowpane a cloud of my misty breath shrank away to a smudge.
There was always Steve – I could ring him, talk it over. He was her dad, after all. He might have an idea. But no, not that. Mustn’t call Steve.
I said to Will, ‘Right, work to be done. Grandma’s just going to be in the bathroom,’ and his big eyes rolled briefly in my direction, then back to the screen where the
Teletubbies danced. I went through to the kitchen, paused to put away a few plates that had been left out on the drainer, then pushed open the bathroom door. The usual chaos greeted me: towel slung
over the bath side instead of hung up on the rail, empty box of eyelash dye stuck between the taps, toilet roll finished but not replaced, Will’s colander of plastic toys knocked over,
spilling across the bottom of the sink. For me to pick up, because I’ve nothing else to do. Ruddy students.
I had meant her to take some Vim back with her because, heaven knows, that manky old suite they all use in York could do with a scrub. But here the bottle was, sitting on the windowsill. I
grasped it by the middle, gave it a vigorous shake and squirted five or six thick gouts of scouring cream across the inside of the bath. Then I plucked the sponge from behind the water-pipe and got
down on my knees to start cleaning. Thought of my mother in her apron and slippers doing the same job, looking up and smiling as I came in.
You’ll have t’cross your legs a minute,
love, till I’m finished.
Remembered the old wall-mounted toilet cistern we used to have when I was little, with its swinging chain and extra piece of string tied on so I could reach it.
The soap in the dish always multicoloured, all ends of bars squashed together because we’d never to waste anything. I suddenly had an image of Steve’s maroon bath, me sitting with my
feet under the running tap while he poured half a bottle of Radox over my legs. God.
God
. It was vital not to phone Steve.
‘Where Mummy?’ Will was standing in the doorway, swaying.
‘Mummy’s gone to York,’ I said brightly. I opened my arms to give him a hug but he stepped back into the kitchen again, out of sight.
‘Kit Kat,’ I heard him mutter.
‘Hang on a sec, sweetheart.’
The cupboard door clicked, rattled, then banged as if it was being kicked.
‘Will, stop that.’
I placed the sponge on the side and hauled myself to my feet. Every damn stick of furniture in this house has some sort of child-lock on it, every domestic task’s an obstacle course.
When I came through, he’d given up attacking the cupboard and was laid flat out on the lino, holding his breath and drumming his heels. First time Charlotte saw him do that she thought he
was having a proper fit, wanted me to ring for a doctor. I told her, ‘It’s just the Terrible Twos. No need for panic. You were a nightmare at that age. You used to knock your head
against the wall if you didn’t get your own way.’ (She used to pee herself on purpose as well, but I didn’t say that.) She went, ‘What should we do, Mum?’ and I said,
‘Leave him to get on with it.’ But she wasn’t having that, so we ended up distracting him with a glove puppet I’d picked up at the Christmas Fair. That brought him round.
Except then she started with, ‘How come you’re so much nicer with him than you were with me when I was that age?’ I must admit, at that point I went upstairs and left her to
it.
I looked down at where Will lay. ‘Hey, tell you what, how about a nice banana instead?’
‘No narna! No.’ He rolled up onto his feet in one fluid action and ran to tug at the cupboard door again.
‘OK, just one finger of Kit Kat then. And we’ll see Mummy soon, yes?’
He didn’t even turn round.
With a flick of my thumb I undid the child lock and pointed to the biscuit tin. Daft move because there was a stack of bowls at the front, but Will being Will he just dived in and tugged. Out
tumbled the bowls, plus a box of Cheerios that Madam must have opened even though there was one already on the go. Finally, as a sort of encore, a tower of ancient canned salmon toppled and fell.
The cans rolled across the floor tiles unharmed, but the dishes weren’t so lucky. The first shattered, the second split into two neat halves and the third lost an inch-wide chunk from the
rim. Cheerios flowed and settled around the debris. So now I’d a floor covered in smashed crockery and cereal, and a toddler in the middle trying to bite off the lid of the biscuit
barrel.