Bad Mothers United (3 page)
Read Bad Mothers United Online
Authors: Kate Long
‘I’ve been thinking.’ Steve flopped down on the sofa next to Will and flashed me one of his winning smiles – not that it’s ever won much off me.
If only he could see himself. That damn moustache needs to go, for a start.
‘Exhausting for you.’
‘No, hear me out, Karen. I need you to give me some cash.’
‘That’s why you came round?’
‘Well, to see you and Billy-boy here.’ He gave Will a manly nudge.
‘I haven’t time for this. Some of us have work to do.’
I left them watching
Story Makers
and ran upstairs. Will’s cup I eventually located on Charlotte’s pillow so I grabbed it, unhooked one of his hooded tops which was hanging
off the back of her chair, and was about to whizz back down to Steve when I caught sight of Charlotte’s mobile phone propped on the windowsill next to the landing mirror. How in God’s
name had she managed to leave that? Distracted by last-minute fussing, no doubt. That meant something else for me to sort out, hunting down a Jiffy bag, paying for Special Delivery.
My own reflection was disastrous. I looked like one of those ‘before’ women in a makeover programme. My cheeks were flushed, my hair frizzy and unstyled, and the more I tried to
smooth it down, the wilder it got. If Charlotte had been about I could have asked her for help, she knows about these straightening sprays and tongs and what have you, although she’d
definitely have taken the opportunity to have a laugh first. That’s how she is: unsympathetic. I gave up on the hair and instead went back into my bedroom, wiped some powder across my face
then slicked a bit of gloss over my lips. That was better. Then I thought, Bloody hell, it’s only Steve, why are you bothering?
I stuffed the phone in my pocket alongside the sock and stomped back downstairs. ‘Right, then, what do you want this money for?’
‘Just a sec,’ Steve said, waving his hand for me to be quiet. On the TV screen, Bob the Builder lectured a blue digger. ‘We’re seeing whether they get the bunkhouse built
in time for the Scout camp sing-along.’
I swept past and left him to it. There was the kitchen floor yet to deal with, never mind the immediate danger that if I hung around I might try and stove his skull in with Nan’s biscuit
barrel.
By the time he did come through I was almost finished. ‘Do you need a hand with owt?’ he said, surveying the dustbin bags and kitchen roll and bowl of soapy water.
‘Perfect timing, as ever. It’s done now.’
He stooped to pick up an escaped Cheerio. ‘You should have shouted me.’
I said, ‘This money.’
‘Oh, aye. Yeah. Well. It is mine, Karen.’
‘I know that. But you asked me to look after it for you. You told me to hang on to it like grim death and not let you blow it on some spree.’
‘Yeah. Only, I’ve got it into my head I wanna buy a bike.’
‘A bike?’ True he was on the skinny side, but there were the beginnings of a middle-age paunch under that T-shirt. Not surprising when you considered the amount of beer he put away
at weekends. ‘I suppose it’ll keep you fit.’
‘Nah, norra pushbike. A motorbike.’
‘You what?’
‘I’ve seen this Kwacker up in Chorley—’
‘Talk English.’
‘This Kawasaki ZXR 750. The guy’s keen to get rid before his bank has it off him.’
‘You want to buy a motorbike. You.’
‘I had one before.’
‘When? I know when you left school you had that scooter, used to conk out if you went up a hill. You’re not counting that, are you?’
His moustache bristled. ‘Course not. I had an RD 250 LC. It was after we split up, you never saw it. I did my test and I bought it straight after.’
‘Oh? News to me. However did you afford that?’
‘Aw, well, it weren’t a right lot. I got it for cash and it was pretty old. And what it was, I’d done a spot of extra work for a mate. Nothing illegal, it were just holding on
to a few bits and pieces, summat he’d come across unexpectedly, till he—’
I waved my hand at him. ‘Stop there.’
‘I’m only saying. I needed that bike, it were special. It got me through a grim time.’
‘Don’t talk to me about grim times.’
Will appeared in the doorway. ‘Juice, Grandma.’
I handed the beaker to Steve. ‘There you go, that’s something you can do to help.’
Meanwhile I wiped down the sink and bleached it, pushed swollen Cheerios through the plughole. Outside, the bare hedge next to the coal shed shivered with sparrows. Will’s yellow
wheelbarrow lay and mouldered on the scruffy lawn.
Steve came to lean against the unit next to me.
‘So can I have that money, or what?’
‘No. It’s your redundancy package. It’s supposed to last you. Don’t make that face at me.’
‘What face?’
I dried my hands and looked at him. ‘The payment was a one-off, and you’ve already had a car out of it. You’re not going to get another lump sum next week, are you? I mean, not
that I wish to be picky, but you’d actually have to be employed for that.’
‘Well,
I
wanted you to use the cash for your teacher training, if you remember. Only that particular plan seems to have gone off the boil.’
‘Not my fault, is it? Two years to do A levels, three to get a degree, one more for my teaching certificate, I’d be about ninety by the time I’d finished. And I’m lucky
to have that classroom assistant post as it is; there’s any number of mums waiting to jump into my shoes if I give it up and slope off to college.’
Steve scratched his head. ‘It sounds daft to me, having to pass all them extra exams when you already know what you’re doing. Can’t that headmaster of yours swing summat for
you?’
‘Leo? Don’t talk soft. It’s not up to him. He can’t magic me up a teaching qualification.’
‘I don’t see why not. It’s his school.’
‘Have you any idea, Steve, how the actual real world works? Anyway, how could I start a college course when I’ve Will to look after?’
‘I’ve told you, I’ll have him. I’ll help.’
‘Then how would
you
have the time to look for another job?’
He reached out to put his arms round me and, damn it, I didn’t step away.
‘Eeh, we’re a pair, aren’t we, Karen?’
‘No. We very much aren’t.’
‘Aw, come on.’ He tightened his grip around me. I laid my head on his chest, wearily.
I said, ‘You’re having a mid-life crisis, aren’t you? Middle-aged men and motorbikes. I’ve read about it. Trying to claw back the past.’
‘Nowt wrong with that. Everyone wants to hold onto a bit of their youth. What about you and your family history project, all your tapes and family trees and old photos?’
‘That’s to do with the future. It’s for Will, so he’ll know where he came from.’
‘Well, there you are.’ Steve’s hand on my back, roaming. ‘What’s so bad about taking the best from what you had and bringing it into the present?’
‘I’m not sleeping with you again. I always hate myself after.’
‘Shh. We’re having a little cuddle, that’s all.’
‘As long as you know.’
‘Course.’
He moved in for a kiss. A ringing started up in my ears.
‘That’s Charlotte’s mobile,’ I said.
By the time we reached the ring road, I’d pretty much shed the mother-gloom. Funny, it’s like taking off a massive old coat, all heavy and comforting and
stifling, and you’re ages fighting with the sleeves and you think you’ll never get out from under it and yet once it starts to go, it slips off fast.
Then came a rush of light-headedness and excitement. I started thinking about my plans for the term and my reading list, essay topics to cover the Augustans through to the Romantics, and what
I was going to talk about with Martin Eavis. What I was going to talk about with the others, the holiday gossip and news. This term it would all be comparing millenniums, who’d been having
the craziest time the moment Big Ben chimed. Gareth and Roz I knew had been headed for Cardiff to see the Manics gig. Gemma had a rave planned in Glastonbury. Walsh’s dad was supposedly
flying him to Prague for some bash there.
As for me, I was right outside the competition because I’d spent the Ultimate New Year’s Eve sitting in front of the TV watching
Goodbye to the ’90s
with my parents.
I’ve checked in the Encyclopaedia of Sad and it doesn’t get any sadder than that. ‘Mum, what were you doing as the millennium dawned?’ Will is going to ask me at some
point in the future. And I’ll have to say, ‘Arguing with your grandma about whether or not you should be allowed to stay up.’ And he’ll say, ‘Whose side were you
on?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yours, of course, because I am the best mum ever.’ And we will high-five, or whatever it is twenty-first-century youth do to express solidarity.
In the end I’d got my way and carried him back downstairs in his pyjamas, but by nine o’clock he was conked out on the sofa so Mum sort of won that one. At five to midnight I
jiggled him awake, and at 12.01 a.m. Daniel rang the front doorbell and brought a lump of coal across the threshold, which Will then tried to eat. Afterwards, while Mum put my son to bed, I went
out on the lawn and watched the fireworks explode over Rivington Pike. Daniel said, ‘I wonder what the next thousand years will bring?’ and I said, ‘Mortgages, wrinkles and
death.’ When we went back inside, Dad was trying to kiss Mum although he pretended he wasn’t. Daniel left, and I lay awake till two, listening to a woman in the street shouting,
‘Please, Barry, please,’ over and over. In the morning our front garden was full of silly string.
‘Why don’t you ring your mum,’ Daniel was saying now, as we pulled into St Paul’s Street. ‘Let her know you’ve arrived safely.’ Sometimes I suspect
he’s a forty-year-old man trapped in a twenty-year-old’s body.
‘Yeah, all right. Well.’ I was patting my pockets, shifting bags with my feet. ‘I would if I could find my phone.’
‘You haven’t left it behind?’
‘I don’t
know.
No. I had it when I got in the car.’
‘Did you?’
‘Not sure. No, I didn’t. Oh, it’s no good. Give us your mobile. I can ring myself and then we’ll hear it.’
He passed it across and I keyed in my number. An ominous silence followed.
‘Maybe you’re out of signal range.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Ah.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Your mum’ll pop it in the post for you.’
‘Yeah, and have a trawl through my texts while she’s at it.’
‘She wouldn’t do that.’
‘Shows how well you know her, Daniel. Honestly, the less you tell her, the nosier she gets. It’s really infuriating.’
‘She’s only trying to watch out for you.’
‘Stop bloody defending her, will you? Oh, hang on, here she is.’
I held the little phone to my ear and she went, ‘Mum? Mum?’ all cross, as though it was somehow
my
fault she’d left her mobile sitting in Bank
Top.
I said, ‘You put it down by the landing mirror. I can post it first thing tomorrow.’
‘Not this afternoon?’
‘The health visitor’s coming. You know that.’
There was some muttering, then she said, ‘All right. But while you’re here, can you check if my Dryden notes are in my bedside drawer? I meant to clip them in my file but I
don’t think I did. I need them as well.’
‘What, you want me to go and look now?’
Obviously. Everything always has to be right that minute with our Charlotte. I handed the phone to Steve, who took it off me as though it was a live scorpion. ‘Say hello to your
daughter,’ I ordered.
After Mum had rung off I had to stop myself flinging Daniel’s phone down and grinding it into its component parts with my boot heel. ‘Are you still remembering to
take your pill?’ she’d asked me. For fuck’s sake. ‘Are you remembering to take
yours
?’ I should have said.
‘Sorted?’ Daniel enquired.
‘Uh-huh.’ I took some deep breaths. I needed to remember it was Mum I was angry with, not him. An effort was needed. ‘Look, do you have to get straight off or can you come in
for a brew?’
He switched off the car engine and sat back, his brow furrowed.
‘No, I’ll pass. I have to get back to Manchester. There’s a lot of stuff to set up in the lab before term starts. And I need to check in with my mother—’
‘Course.’
‘So I’ll give you a hand with your bags but then I’ve got to be straight off. ’
Rain dribbled down the windscreen in jagged paths.
I said, ‘Dad’s there. Round at ours.’
‘Thought the conversation sounded a bit stilted.’
‘I suppose now the coast’s clear they’ll be all over each other again. It’s ridiculous at her age. She should be past it. And what does she think she’s doing,
raking up the marriage when it died bloody years ago? I mean, either she wants him or she doesn’t. She should make up her mind. The worst thing is this ludicrous pretence that
nothing’s going on between them. Does she think I’m stupid, or what?’
‘Put her out of her misery, then. Talk to her.’
‘About her sex-life?’ I mimed extreme horror. ‘Oh, yeah, top idea. Tell you what, I’ll book us on
The Jeremy Kyle Show
and we can have it out in front of a
live studio audience.’
Daniel closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Give it a rest, hey, Charlotte?’
We sat side by side with the water drumming on the car roof. The drainpipe between our house and next door was sputtering onto the pavement furiously.
I said, ‘I’m really sorry. It’s not you. You get that, don’t you?’
I just feel as if my insides were fish-hooked to a bungee cord, and the further away from Bank Top we drive, the more it pulls my guts to ribbons. And I’m sick of feeling this way
and not being able to keep saying it for fear of boring everyone.
He sighed, pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. ‘Look, go and see your tutor, Martin Whatshisface. He always straightens you out, doesn’t he?’
‘Martin Eavis. Yeah, I will.’
‘Tell him to read poetry at you or play you Telemann till you cheer up.’
‘OK.’
‘OK, then.’
‘Do you really have to go?’
‘I do.’
‘Why the hell do you put up with me, Daniel?’
He only leaned across, kissed my forehead, and opened the driver’s side door.