Bad Mothers United (38 page)

It made me feel seventeen again, a schoolgirl poring over her revision timetable. I used to have this tape, I could have said, ‘We’ve kissed to this track. Do you
remember?’

For a long time we sat without talking, just watching the lights on the fruit machine flash out their sequence. Gradually my churning heart settled a little, and I tuned back into the ordinary
world.

‘So,’ Daniel said at last.

‘So.’

‘Where do you go from here? Can I give you a lift anywhere?’

I got to my feet. ‘I’m meeting a friend at Constantine’s. I’ll walk.’

‘Ah.’

He stepped aside to let me past and we stood facing each other for a few seconds. There was no expectation now, I understood where we were.

I said, ‘I don’t know how to do goodbyes with you any more.’

He glanced at his hands, thrust them into his pockets.

‘I guess you could tell me to take care.’

‘Take care, then, Dan. Really, I mean it. Look after yourself.’

‘You too, Charlotte.’

And then there was nothing else to say. I turned and walked away, out of the pub.

‘It’s a belter, I’ll say that,’ Dad observed from his bed in the corner of the living room. ‘I swear you could stick a saddle on it and ride it
down Vickeridge Road.’

‘Where the hell’s it come from? That’s what I want to know.’ Mum, hemmed in behind Dad’s perching stool, squinted nervously at the ceiling.

‘Nothing to do with me,’ I said.

‘Well, you were the one brought in all that holly, Charlotte.’

‘Yeah, but I think I’d have noticed if a spider the size of my fist had been clinging to the branches.’

A lone strand of tinsel above the gas fire shivered in the convection currents. Less than a week to go till Christmas and we hadn’t managed to put up a tree yet.
Stuff Christmas this
year
, Mum had said.

‘Hey up, he’s on the move again. He’s making for the lightshade,’ said Dad.

‘It’s that scuttling movement I can’t stand,’ said Mum. ‘And the way they drop without warning. Urgh.’

I pointed to where Pringle slept on the wheelchair seat. ‘Why haven’t you been training him up to eat spiders? That’d be a useful contribution he could make to the household.
Pay you back for his massive vet’s bill.’

‘Him? He’ll be lucky if he can catch a slug these days, poor beggar.’

The way Pringle was curled up, you couldn’t see the amputation at all. He could have been an ordinary four-limbed cat.

‘No, I’ve seen him circuit the garden at a fair speed. He manages pretty well.’

‘He’s got more working legs on him than me,’ said Dad.

The spider was exploring the light-fitting now with thoughtful interest, like a prospective house-buyer.

I said, ‘Listen, when Will gets back from nursery you’re not to say anything about this. Phobias are learned. I don’t want him growing up frightened of everyday objects.
It’s irrational. Spiders can’t hurt you.’

‘If you feel so strongly,’ said Mum, ‘get yourself a dining chair and climb up after it. I’m not stopping you.’

‘If I could get out of this flaming bed, I’d have him for you. Spiders are nowt, a little tickle on your skin.’

‘Perhaps he was attracted in by your tache, Dad. He might think it’s a mate squatting there on your top lip.’

Mum folded her arms. ‘Don’t worry, Charlotte. The facial hair’s coming off in the New Year. It’s one of my conditions as his carer. I’ll empty his urinal and
I’ll chop up his meals, but I’ve decided there’s no way I’m faffing about grooming a moustache. That’s above and beyond the call of duty. In fact, I should’ve
got shut of it while he was still in intensive care.’

‘Oh aye?’ Dad touched his top lip. ‘First I’ve heard of it. See what I have to put up with, Charlie? It’s bullying. Of the disabled. So what are these other
conditions, then?’

The spider left the ceiling rose and began to trundle in the direction of the bed. We all followed it with our eyes.

‘No more motorbikes,’ said Mum.

‘Well, I couldn’t if I wanted to. I can’t bend me flaming knee, can I?’

‘If you ever get so you do.’

‘It’s not fair to blame the bike, Karen. I was unlucky. You can be unlucky in a car, or crossing the street. You can have a heart attack sitting at home watching TV. There was a
chap at t’warehouse’d lost part of his hand just shutting one of them big iron gates.’

‘You’ve lost a sight more than part of your hand.’

‘I weren’t even going fast.’

‘Exactly.’

Dad sighed. ‘See, Charlie? She gets me at every turn.’

I said, ‘Watch out, it’s directly over your head now. Try and lure it down. Wiggle your lip at it.’

We sat transfixed as the spider made its way coyly across the picture rail.

‘Your dad’s always been quite good with wildlife.’

‘Has he?’ I was surprised.

‘Oh yes. On our first ever date he saved me from a wasp. Flicked its bottom right off.’

‘Move over, Bill Oddie.’

‘And do you remember that time you got mobbed by ducks, Steve?’

Dad nodded. ‘In Queens Park? I do, yeah. But it was you they mobbed. You had summat on your sandwiches that was driving ’em mad. I had to rescue you. And a bloody big goose come
waddling up and pecked me in the knackers.’

‘I’d forgotten that.’

‘I hadn’t.’ Dad turned to me. ‘She couldn’t fight ’em off herself because she were pregnant wi’ you. Blown up like a beach ball, could barely see her
own feet. I had to charge in and pull her out of danger.’

My brain did a little skip of readjustment as I tried to imagine the scene: Mum eighteen and swollen, rising out of a sea of angry waterfowl, and Dad spotty-faced with his hair over his collar
and his bleach-washed jeans. She never talked much about that time, about the marriage full stop. I’d always assumed it was one long round of miserable sniping, but clearly that was wrong.
They must have had their happy days, e.g. the duck encounter. And I looked up at the spider now, still dithering a metre out of reach above Dad’s bed, and I thought, This’ll become
one of those little-nothing family stories too, one of those moments we recall which seem to sum up a mood or a time. Dad sitting up in bed, his bad arm strapped against his chest in a blue
Velcro sling; Mum tucked into the far corner where, till a fortnight ago, the china cabinet had lived; me hovering by the kitchen door, poised for flight in case of spider attack. It had felt
bizarre but also quite nice having both parents at home for once, as if I was little again, a safe harbour after all the upset with Daniel and before I had to start thinking about final
exams.

And even though the circumstances of Dad’s moving in were horrible, nevertheless there was something comforting about the routines Mum had set up around his disability. In the morning,
before I came down, she’d empty his pee bottle and give him his tablets, and then she’d shout me and we’d all have breakfast together. Then I’d have to disappear back up
with Will while she manoeuvred Dad into his wheelchair and got him to the bathroom for a sponge-wash. After that she’d leave him for five minutes’ privacy, then she’d return and
change the bandage on his leg and re-splint him and dress him and wheel him back to bed. At first it felt odd to be upstairs helping Will pull on his trousers while Mum was downstairs doing the
same for Dad, but it’s amazing how quickly your mind adjusts to a new set of circumstances when there’s no alternative. Dad might be in a ton of pain, but he was so happy to be out of
hospital. Mum slotted into the role of carer almost cheerfully, if that doesn’t sound too strange. I suppose she’d done a lot of caring for Nan so it was like old times for her.

Meanwhile, nothing else was getting done. We weren’t bothering with Christmas presents except for Will. Mum said I’d already had mine because she’d discovered the hole in our
savings account and assumed I’d blown it on clothes. To say she was cross was an understatement, but thanks to Daniel’s advice I’d been semi-prepared and just gritted my teeth
till the rant was over. As for a Christmas present, I wasn’t fussed anyway; I’d passed my driving test the week before so that was as good as anything you could gift-wrap.

Christmas Day dinner would most likely be Iceland turkey roll and oven chips, and we’d sent out no cards, not one. We hadn’t even put up the ones we’d received, just stuck
them in a pile on the windowsill. In that pile was a card from Gemma and Laine, who were boycotting Gemma’s house and spending the holiday instead with Laine’s super-cool aunty in
Oxford. There was one from Roz and Gareth with a picture of Santa falling drunk over Rudolph. Martin had sent a postcard of St Mark’s Square in snow, and a message telling me to relax over
the holiday and eat well and read up on the
Lyrical Ballads
for our first tutorial. Near the bottom of the pile, because it had come early on, was Walshy’s effort, a simple robin
on a branch.
To Chazzer
, it said.
How do you keep a northerner in suspense? Tell you next term. X

The letterbox rattled now, making us all jump.

‘Go get the post, will you, Charlotte?’ said Mum, her eyes glued to the spider.

I went without complaint. I’d been first at the doormat every day since I got back, just in case a letter came from Jessie that I needed to intercept. I understood really there’d
be nothing more from her, but you know how sometimes you can’t stop yourself doing something irrational because it feels like insurance against Fate? This morning there were four cards and
a catalogue and a bank statement and two charity circulars and something from the NHS. I flicked through the cards, checked they were all local postmarks, and I was about to go back through when
I heard a thump, a clatter and my dad swearing.

‘God, are you OK?’ I called.

Dad was still in bed, but holding aloft his plastic urinal and looking mighty pleased with himself. ‘He shoots, he scores.’

‘Watch, it’ll climb out,’ said Mum urgently. ‘Put the lid on!’

Through the milky plastic sides you could make out the dark shape of the spider as it scrambled from one side of the base to the other.

‘Let me,’ I said, surprising myself. I went back out into the hall and opened the front door, then I grabbed the bottle off Dad and made a run for it. The urinal clattered onto the
path and the spider, after a few seconds, charged out of the funnel end and disappeared into the flowerbed. As I stood watching, a filthy-looking man walked past leading a tatty wolfhound. He
glanced over and nodded. ‘Awreet?’

‘Fine,’ I snapped, as if hurling urinals about the garden was an everyday occurrence.

He gave me this yucky grin which showed his yellow teeth. Sometimes I love Bank Top, sometimes I hate it.

When I went back inside, Mum was bending over Dad. I don’t want to think about what they were doing with each other.

‘So even in this state I’m not completely useless, am I?’ I heard him say.