Queen Mum (26 page)

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If Ben didn’t talk to me now, I was lost.

‘Well?’

‘I’ll do a deal with you,’ he said, his cheeks still burning. ‘I’ll tell you the truth, and you don’t mention it to Dad.’

‘No deal,’ I said.

When I first had sex with Tom it was in a hotel room in Manchester. He booked it so we didn’t have to feel rushed, he said, or spied on; it was such a thoughtful thing to do. He paid for
it out of his Saturday job. And everything went OK, considering. It was a nice experience. He claimed he was a virgin, but then, so did I, so who knows?

Later on we used his bedroom, then the halls of residence, but never my mum’s house. I couldn’t, it seemed wrong when she was all alone, disrespectful. I often lay in Tom’s
arms afterwards and wondered how she coped without this closeness.

Now this, in my house; this deceit.

‘Was it planned?’

Ben rolled his eyes. ‘Like I planned to shove a big spike through my foot.’

‘So help me!’ I burst out, throwing my arms up in anger.

‘Sorry,’ he said at once. ‘Mum?’

I’d turned away and was gripping the edge of the shelf that held his PlayStation games. ‘Give me a minute,’ I said.

When Tom and I first slept together he was so careful and restrained. I think both of us kept our eyes closed while we were doing it; at least, his were closed whenever I peeped. He asked me
three times whether he was hurting me. Afterwards he held me very tightly and told me he loved me. That’s what it should be like.

‘It wasn’t planned. Not on my side, anyway. She did a dodge to get off school when she knew I was stuck at home. First I knew was when she rang the doorbell.’

I turned back round so I was facing him. ‘How did she get out of lessons?’

‘Forged a note on her mum’s headed notepaper, she said.’

‘You seem very ready to shop her.’

‘Why should I stick up for her? She’s dropped me in it.’ Ben’s foot twitched with annoyance, or embarrassment. ‘I
told
her she’d be in deep shit if
anyone found out.’

‘But aren’t you having a relationship with her?’

‘No! No way. She’s a mate, she’s . . . Sometimes I don’t even know if I like her all that much.’

‘You must have known what she was after, coming up to your bedroom when everyone was out. I did tell you she had a crush on you.’

Ben put his fingers through his hair, then looked angrily at me.

‘She came round here, right, and there was nobody else in. What was I supposed to do; ring you up to come and save me? Leave her standing on the mat? So she came in and she spun me this
story about being upset because she’d had a row with Jaclyn or somebody, although I didn’t believe her because she didn’t seem that fussed and she didn’t go on and on about
it the way she normally does when she’s teed off. She made herself a drink and then she said she wanted me to show her a new PS2 game, so we went upstairs.’ He paused.
‘Don’t make me tell you any more.’

‘Keep talking,’ I said coldly.

He sighed and hung his head. ‘She took her shirt off, just took it off. I never even touched her. She was asking me if I found her attractive—’

‘Do you?’

‘Not really, but—’

‘How come?’

‘Dunno.’

‘And yet you were going to have sex with her?’

‘Well, you know, when it’s offered on a plate like that—’

I stepped across and slapped his face.

‘
Mum!
’

‘Do you have
any
kind of morality, Ben Weaver?
Do
you?’

He stroked his cheek in bewilderment. I hadn’t hit him hard but he was so shocked he couldn’t speak. I’d hardly ever smacked either of the boys, even when they were going
through the tantrum stage. Even when Joe hurled a cricket ball at my mouth and laughed when it connected. Once, when we were on holiday in Devon and before Joe was born, I walloped Ben’s legs
for going too near the cliff edge. But that was fear; that was love.

‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ I said.

I knelt down so I was eye to eye with him, the way I did when I talked to Charlie Castle. Then, keeping my voice as steady as I could, I said: ‘I shouldn’t have hit you, it was a
rotten thing to do. But tell me now, Ben, for once:
what’s going on in your head?
’

Close to I could see the unevenness of his skin, a little smudge of biro ink by his ear, a minute crumb caught on his sweatshirt collar.

‘Sometimes—’ he began.

‘Yes?’

His eyes darted round the room and his lips moved.

‘Please, Ben. I need to know.’ You owe me this, I could have said.

‘Sometimes,’ he said slowly, ‘I get this total shut-down of feelings. Like an emotional coma, nothing. So everyone else is racing about cheering, or sobbing in the aisles and
I’m just standing there, watching. Then . . . ’

I wanted to ask him about the times that had happened but I didn’t dare interrupt him.

‘Then there are other times, you know, when I feel this – ’ he spread his arms wide like the hare in
Guess How Much I Love You
– ‘when I feel this
rage
– do you know what I mean?’

‘About Joe?’

‘I suppose so. There are so many . . . ’

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to say it.’

‘Go on, Ben.’

‘There are so many
wankers
out there who are still alive, and Joe’s not. See, there you go, I can’t talk about this with you, Mum, because it’s upsetting
you.’

‘It’s not, carry on.’

But I knew he was remembering a time when we didn’t talk about Joe. In particular he’d be thinking about an afternoon when I’d picked him up from his new secondary school, and
I was hanging round the gates with some of the other mums making that halting, cheery chat you do in the playground. Juno wasn’t there that day, or I’d have been all right. Ben was
kicking gravel, wanting to go home, but one of the women was telling us about her daughter’s eye operation and I didn’t want to walk off in the middle of it in case it seemed callous.
She paused, and then another woman spoke to Ben. She asked him which school he’d been at before, and whether he had a brother in Year Nine because there was another boy who looked like him. I
knew what he was going to say, I knew because I’d heard him explain to other adults, watched them scrunch and freeze. The counsellor had said it was healthy for him to do this. But that day I
couldn’t cope. I wanted us to appear undamaged for one more afternoon.

So I pulled him to me and, like someone in a weak comedy, clamped my hand over his mouth.

They must have thought I was mad. I’ll never forget the look of surprised dismay in Ben’s eyes as I dragged him away, his confidence in both of us knocked flat at a stroke. We drove
back home in ringing silence. It was an appalling thing to do. And now I was asking him to talk to me.

He dropped his arms to his sides. ‘I don’t know how to explain it any more, Mum. Do you get what I mean?’

I used a line that the doctor had given me years ago. ‘It’s normal to feel extremes.’

‘Do you?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘So how do you cope? ’Cause there are times when I want to go berserk. Smash things. Even now.’

I slid myself up so I was sitting beside him. My knees hurt and my back was stiff; I felt old. Sometimes I don’t cope, I could have said. There are days when I want to draw the curtains
and not move ever again, and days when I could throw scalding coffee over your father’s head for even smiling.

‘I focus on you and your dad, and Grandma,’ I said, finally. ‘I concentrate on loving. I don’t know that there’s anything else to do. Love’s the way
out—’

‘But what if the person you love doesn’t love you back?’ he cried, his face flushed again. ‘What then? ’Cause that’s just, shit. Sorry. But it is. Love makes
it worse as far as I can see.’

My heart had given a great leap. ‘You have a crush on someone?’

‘Not a crush. Don’t say that, that’s patronizing.’

‘Who, Ben?’

He swore again under his breath. I thought, he wants me to know, I just have to ask again.

‘I think I know who it is.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Is it – Ian Nuttall?’

It must have been the tension of the moment; Ben laughed out loud and thumped the duvet with his fist.

‘No it bloody isn’t! God, Mum, what is it with you? Do you
want
me to be gay, or something?
Jesus
-wept! Ian Nuttall? Jesus. You haven’t said anything like that to
Dad, have you? Or
Juno
?’

I shook my head vigorously. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

‘No, I don’t either. You better not have said anything. Bloody hell! What goes on in that hot little brain of yours, eh?’

There was a kind of insane smile on his face, not entirely pleasant.

‘I promise I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.’

‘Good!’

‘So who is it, Ben?’

The smile shrank away and he looked miserable again. ‘You won’t tell?’

‘Never.’

‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Like I trust you.’ But I could feel the words coming. ‘It’s Pascale, Mum. And she hates me.’

By the time Tom came home that evening, I’d established that Pascale didn’t Hate Ben, but she was never going to go out with him. ‘She says she thinks of me
like a brother, how sick is that?’ he told me despairingly. ‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend but there’s someone in the Upper Sixth she fancies. That’s what Soph reckons,
although she might just have said that to put me off.’

Both of us needed to get out of the house, so we’d limped down to the weir. The water twisted below us in freezing ropes. I tried to make sense of my son.

‘I knew Soph was coming on to me,’ he said. ‘I’m not blind. But I thought it was a wind-up. Then I decided it was to get at Pascale, because she was jealous or something.
I never thought she was serious. Maybe she isn’t. Soph’s so weird it’s difficult to tell what’s going on with her.’

Ben also wanted to know what was going to happen to him. ‘So what you going to do? I’m already grounded for the next
year
, aren’t I?’

‘I’m going to pass it on to your dad,’ I said. ‘Again.’ Although Tom would probably give him a whisky and shake his hand. Well done, my boy. Welcome to the
World.

‘I hate the way you do that, make me tell it all twice. It was bad enough going over it with you.’

‘You should have thought of that before. I’m out of my depth, this is men’s talk.’

Besides which, I was going to have to go and tackle Juno about Sophie. And what in God’s name was she going to say?

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