Bad Mothers United (33 page)

I was in the back kitchen trying to defuse a bottle of pop Ryan Marshall had been shaking but I heard her come in, all loud and jolly. I swore under my breath and eased the
bottle cap as carefully as I could; even so, dandelion and burdock spurted down my arm and dripped onto the floor. He’s a little sod, that Marshall kid. His mother hasn’t a clue.

I stood the bottle in the sink and wiped round, then I went through to say hello. Charlotte was pulling off her jacket, her cheeks all red and her make-up smudged. She was wearing black tights
and daft ankle-length socks over the top, and her skirt was far too short. She’s going to have to smarten up when she goes job-hunting, that’s for sure. As I watched, Will came bowling
up and she straight away flung herself down on her knees, started mauling about on the carpet with him, rolling about and banging into table legs. You could see her knickers and everything. I
caught Ryan’s mum looking at Drew Tipton’s mum, and smirking.

‘She studies at the University of Central Yorkshire,’ I said. Who were these women to dismiss my daughter at a glance? That’s the trouble with kids’ parties, the mothers
who hang around and pass judgement.

‘And does she have a boyfriend?’ asked Mrs Marshall.

‘No,’ I said firmly. I wasn’t even going to think about that today. I’d given up grieving over Daniel; any grief-energy I had was going on my ex. It is amazing how one
crisis can completely eclipse another.

Eric, meanwhile, was squinting out of the window. ‘Did someone give you a lift, Charlotte?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I walked it.’ She was tickling Will and I couldn’t see her face because her hair was hanging down.

There was a plastic bag on the sofa. I said, ‘You’ve not been buying him extra, have you?’

‘It’s only something I picked up along the way, Mum. Stick it on the pile.’

Now she’d come we could at last let the birthday boy loose on his presents. The trike was meant to be held back as the grand finale, but he went straight for it and tore away the top layer
of paper before we could stop him. Then he lost momentum, distracted by a sparkly pompom I’d stuck to the gift tag. Eric had to lean in and finish the job, and by the time he had, Will had
broken into a box of Smarties. ‘Look,’ everyone was going, ‘look at your lovely trike.’ Will just carried on stuffing Smarties into his mouth. Ryan made a determined grab
for the handlebars but Drew’s mother distracted him with a party blower. When it was clear that progress had completely stalled, Charlotte knelt to help. She undid the parcels one by one,
showed them to Will and then to us, and piled them in the far corner, away from Ryan. Maud had sent a children’s prayer book, short-sighted Ivy some liqueur chocolates. Debbie, who used to
clean for us back in the days when I was Mum’s carer, had posted a dinosaur nameplate for his bedroom door. Leo had sent a parcel of Enid Blytons and Sylv a new ladybird dish and spoon.
Charlotte’s impulse-buy turned out to be a light-up map of the stars. God knows what possessed her to get him that, it was way too old for him. Mrs Marshall had bought him a toy trumpet (evil
cow), and Mrs Tipton a jigsaw alphabet.

Eric had got him a football. ‘I hope he gets on with it better than our Kenzie,’ he said. ‘You throw a ball in his direction and he just flinches. He’s not remotely
interested, are you, son? Oh, hang on, where’s he disappeared to now?’

We all looked round but he wasn’t anywhere obvious.

‘Well, he can’t have gone far,’ I said. ‘He’s in the house, for definite. He’s too small to reach the front-door latch and the back one’s locked.
I’ll check the loo, shall I?’

‘I don’t want him wandering about,’ said Eric.

It had crossed my mind he might have sneaked off to my bedroom to stroke my velvet scarf – he’d developed a bit of an obsession with it last time he was here and in the end I’d
let him wear it round his shoulders like a cape. There’d been tears when he had to part from it. In fact, I’d said to Eric he could have it if it meant so much, but Eric flat-refused. I
suppose it did make the lad look a bit camp.

Kenzie wasn’t in the bathroom, so I came back through to the lounge thinking my suspicions were confirmed only to find everyone crowded round the armchair by the window.

‘Come out, love, you’re missing the party,’ Mrs Tipton was saying.

‘We saw the curtain moving,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘I think you might have to pay a visit to the dry cleaner’s in the near future.’

I pushed through and knelt on the chair. Squashed up against the wall behind it, the material well scrunched in his chocolatey hands, was Kenzie. My lovely chenille curtains were smeared to
beggary.

‘Oh dear,’ I said, trying not to sound pissed off. ‘Is someone feeling a bit poorly?’

He didn’t respond, so I bent over and tried to pull him out.

‘Let me,’ said Eric. I assumed he was going to lift his son up and give him a cuddle, but instead he barked, ‘Get out of there now, you wee maddy! Why do you have to keep
letting me down?’

It did the trick. Kenzie moved immediately, slithering past the arm of the chair, and out. I took the opportunity to give him a quick wipe as he passed, and in return he stopped and wrapped his
arms round me, his face against my skirt. ‘Have you got tummy ache?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘Come sit with me, anyway. We could have a look at Will’s jigsaw, yeah?’

As I settled us onto the sofa, I caught sight of Charlotte’s face.
Say what you like, that kid’s well weird
, her expression said. I looked down at his tender, buzz-cut scalp
and it was true. You could feel the need coming off him in waves.

‘Some children can’t always cope when someone else is getting the attention,’ Mrs Marshall was saying in a poor imitation of a whisper. Then she went, ‘Were you playing
hide and seek, Kenzie? You have to tell us so we can join in next time.’

Just because she owns a four-bed detached house with a cobbled drive and views of Anglezarke, she thinks she is somebody.

‘How’s your Lucy doing?’ Mrs Tipton asked her.

‘Oh, still at Bristol. Started her post-grad training.’

‘Did she get sponsorship in the end?’

‘She did, she heard at the start of the summer. Which means she’s been able to put down a deposit on the flat as well as set a date for the wedding. It’s all fallen into place
for her.’

‘It always seems to, doesn’t it?’

‘It does.’

I said, ‘Watch Ryan doesn’t hurt himself on the grate.’ Really I meant,
Never mind boasting about your daughter, take control of your bratty son and stop him picking fake
coals out of my fireplace to lob at the cat
.

Across the room Charlotte and Will had squashed themselves into the other armchair and were sharing a sausage roll. Will was laughing and she was jiggling her feet as if she was stamping out
bugs on the carpet. Her hair draped over his chubby arm, his cheeks glowed with happiness. And I thought what a nice picture that would make if I’d happened to have a camera in my hands
instead of a gloomy infant picking sugar blobs off Iced Gems.

As I stared, she raised her head and her eyes met mine.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ she mouthed.

In the middle of the party stress, it was such an unexpected moment that something kindled inside me and I came over all maternal, whoosh. Funny how that sometimes happens. I thought, Well, we
don’t do so badly between us, do we? Will’s happy. Not like Kenzie, scared of his own shadow, or that mini-thug Ryan. My grandson’s growing up, looking more and more like his
mother. It’s wonderful to watch, there’s something new from him every day. If Mum could see him now. Her lovely Nan. You know you gave her such joy, Charlotte, when you left Will here.
You’ve no idea what he did for her in those last few months.

In my mind’s eye I could see Mum so clearly, as she had been when Charlotte was small: plump, capable, never fazed by a houseful. I remembered birthday parties then, the way she’d
calmly set out each crimp-edged cardboard jelly dish, make chocolate-finger log cabins and funny-face toasties. She liked traditional, but she knew how to spin things to make them fun. It was her
idea to turn ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ into ‘Stick the Bandana on Axl Rose’, and hold dressing-up races using my old lipsticks, beads, hats and heels.

Kenzie wriggled, burped, then slid off my lap. Across the room Charlotte was still laughing, blowing at Will’s hair now to make it stick up, and the mums had decided to rearrange all my
plates on the table. Behind the TV, Pringle retched quietly. Ryan and Drew were taking it in turns to jump on a mini-roll which had fallen off the table. And it struck me, for the first time since
she died, that I’d been recalling Mum with simple love and pleasure, without that automatic flood of guilt I’d become so used to.

A warm hand on my shoulder. ‘OK, Karen?’

I glanced up and it was Eric, standing behind the sofa. I am OK, I thought. Thanks to you. Charlotte had been right, of course. The old wedding photo I’d found under the bathroom sink had
only fallen out of the airing cupboard. No ghostly hand had planted it there. Yet it still had been a sign: a sign I needed to banish forever the idea that Mum was somewhere looking on, hurt. Why
does pain sometimes feel the need to latch onto more pain? I imagined my guilt as being like a kind of smothering ivy, quick-germinating and rampant, a parasite, dragging me down. Then along had
come Eric, an outsider, to tear it clear with his big strong arms. So what if he never offered to babysit? How did that matter, in the scheme of things? Friendship wasn’t an accounts sheet,
two columns to be balanced. The peace of mind he’d brought me was worth a thousand hours of childcare.

‘I suppose I’m a bit tired,’ I said.

‘You must be.’

He reached down and began massaging my shoulders lightly. The contact was so unexpected I blushed like mad and shifted forward in the hope my position might hide from the others what he was
doing. I knew obviously what I should do was pull away, spring up and offer a round of coffees or attend to the various carpet disasters. But what the hell. It felt glorious. I deserved it. Eric
might never be my boyfriend, there was no way that was going to happen now, but I’d take whatever came next down the list.

So I relaxed my muscles and let my eyes focus on the fireplace, tried not to think about the mums looking on, or Charlotte, or the voice inside my head going,
What the hell is this?
Hospitals, potties, shredded wrapping and pet vomit: the rest of my sorry life would be waiting for me when I came back down to earth.