The Bad Mother's Handbook (12 page)

‘Telephone!’ Nan shrieked up the stairs.

I gave in, shoved my slippers on and nipped down to
the hall. It was a woman from Bolton Social Services.

‘We just need you to give us a couple more details. I
think you missed a page out on the form. Have you got
your National Insurance number at all?’

I ferreted it out of the Useful Drawer in front of Nan’s
glassy stare, then returned to the phone.

‘I thought you were ringing to tell me you’d found my
birth mother,’ I said, knowing it was stupid. They’d only
had the forms a week.

The woman gave a short laugh. ‘We have to process the
information first. Then you get assigned a social worker,
and have an interview. It’s the procedure.’

‘Will it take long?’

‘You should hear back from us in two to three months’
time. Give us a call if you haven’t heard anything by
then.’

Two to three
months
?’

‘It’s the procedure.’

‘No sooner?’

‘We’re very overstretched at the moment.’

Aren’t we all, love, I felt like saying.

Nan opened the door as I was hanging up. She was
focusing again and gave me the once-over. ‘Ooh, swanky.
Turn round. You’re a bonny woman when you want to be.
I never see you in a dress.’ She stroked the sleeve thoughtfully.
‘You want a nice pair of courts with that. Did you
know you’ve a button loose?’

‘You’re one to talk,’ I said. ‘If anyone’s got a button
loose, it’s you. Now look, I’m off upstairs to reinvent
myself. Stick the telly on and
don’t
touch the kettle till I
come down again.’

*

A miracle!
A
bloody
miracle! Well, two actually,
although one’s quite small-scale. And Fate can go stuff
itself. Start the clocks again, open the champagne, exhale.

We were in the hall for the last assembly of term. We’d
had the sermon, some gubbins about how all the people
in hell have to eat with six-foot-long chopsticks, where
do they get this bilge from? Then it was the hockey and
football results, then some Year 7 kids got a road safety
award then, finally, it was the dismissal prayer. The Head
put his fingertips together in that way that always makes
me want to give him a good kicking, bowed his oily head
and began.

‘Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day . . .’

I prayed: Oh, God, please make me not be pregnant,
please please, I’ll make such an effort with Mum and
Nan and I’ll revise really hard and never have sex again
until I’m at least twenty-five, and then only with the pill,
a condom and a cap as well, please, God. Amen.

Someone was digging me in the ribs.

‘Get a move on, cloth ears,’ Julia hissed, and I looked
up and saw the line of upper sixth nearly out of the
door and a big gap where I should have been following.
I lurched forward and scuttled after them, aware that all
the Year 11s behind were watching and sniggering. ‘What’s
up?’ asked Julia when we got outside.

‘Nothing. Just . . . I’ve got to go somewhere.’

‘Not coming into town with Anya and the twins?’

‘Gotta go straight home, sorry. Thanks.’

I knew the bus was waiting, but first I had to go check
the state of my knickers.

The cubicle was narrow and the lock put up a fight.
I closed my eyes, pushed my underwear down quickly and
stared. Blood. BLOOD. Thank Christ. My knees buckled
and I sat down on the toilet rim, still staring. Not much
blood, but that didn’t matter. It was OK, everything was
going to be OK. Outside girls came and went, cisterns
flushed, then it all went quiet. I’d missed the bus but I
didn’t care. Catch another one. I could fly home, if it came
to that.

Oh, the other little miracle, hardly worth mentioning
really but one less thing to worry about. I’d been dreading
seeing Daniel Gale and having to invent some lie
about why I stood him up. Then, when he wasn’t in on
the Monday I began to wonder if he’d chucked himself off
a motorway bridge or something, that’d be just my luck.
Any minute now, I thought, the head of sixth is going
to walk into the classroom with a stony face and ask us if
we knew of any reason why he might have been feeling
depressed. Then he was in registration on Tuesday, a tad paler than usual perhaps, but definitely not dead. He kept
trying to catch my eye, and I kept staring at the floor. I
tried for a quick getaway out of the common room but he
beat me to the door and put his hand on my shoulder, all
breathless and earnest. Here we go, I thought, clenching
my teeth.

‘I am
so
sorry,’ he began, making my mouth drop
open.

‘What?’

‘About Saturday. God! I hope you didn’t wait for long.
I know you must be really angry with me, I mean it’s the
most awful manners, you must think I’m unbelievably
rude—’

‘No! No, not at all—’

We were hustled through the door in the general
scrum. Someone pushed between us with a large art
folder then the bell went above our heads. We grimaced
at each other until the din stopped.

‘Look, I’ll be quick.’ He pushed his hair out of his eyes
and blinked. ‘I did try to contact you. I went through the
directory but there were stacks of Coopers and my mum
was on the phone most of the night anyway. The thing
is, we heard on Friday night that my grandfather in
Guildford had died. Mum wanted to go down straight
away but Dad persuaded her to wait till Saturday morning—’

‘Oh, God, I’m really sorry.’

‘Yeah, well. Thanks. These things happen. He was a
nice guy but pretty old. Mum’s all over the place, though,
and so is my grandmother. So you can imagine, it was all
a bit hectic over the weekend, travelling down there and back. But I really am sorry about leaving you in the lurch
like that.’

I tried not to seem joyful. ‘Forget it. Honestly. It must
have been awful for you.’ I laid a hand on his arm and he
looked down at it in surprise. I took it off again hastily.

‘The thing is, I was really looking forward to it.’

‘No bother. Some other time.’

‘We’re down there again this weekend. It’s the funeral
on Friday.’

‘We’ll catch up at some point. I’m in town most
Saturdays.’

The corridor had gone worryingly quiet.

‘So, what, the Saturday after?’

‘Whatever, yeah. Look, we’d better get a move on, it’s
nearly twenty-five past. Last day or not, Stokesy’s a complete
git if you’re late for any of her lessons, she keeps
records, you know, and then makes sarky comments on
your report.’

‘And I should be in physics, which is right over the
other side, which means it’ll be half-past by the time
I make an entrance. Hardly worth going, in fact.’ He
furrowed his brow. ‘Do you fancy bunking off, just for
this session?’

‘You
what
?’ Daniel was even more law-abiding than
me.

‘I don’t mean leave the building or anything rash like
that. We could just go back into the common room and
have a coffee. Quite a minor crime.
I’ll
be OK, I can say
I was overcome with sudden grief, and I’ll put on an
innocent expression and swear to Mrs Stokes that I compelled
you to stay and counsel me. You’d get away with it because you’re normally so good. And they think I’m so
weird they wouldn’t like to pursue it for fear of sending
me into a mad fit.’

I began a laugh, then looked away in embarrassment.

‘Sorry. I shouldn’t be so flippant about the grandfather
situation. I’m not, honestly. He was a great guy and I’ll
miss him. Only it’s so bloody serious at home, awful actually.
Scary seeing your parents show their feelings.’

I thought of our house, where Feelings flowed like hot
and icy water, constantly. I realized my mouth was open
again, and shut it.

‘So, what do you say?’ He cocked his head and looked
at me over his glasses.

‘You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?’

‘I like to think so.’ He turned to go back through the
door. ‘Coming?’

‘Nope. You might be a genius but I have to work my
tail off to get a half-decent grade. She’s going over past
papers today and I need to be there. That’s the trouble
with me; I’m just so bloody conscientious.’ I smiled and
he smiled back. ‘Enjoy the coffee, though. And I will use
you as an alibi, if that’s still OK.’

‘I’ll be ready to prostrate myself with misery at break
time.’

And he did. And then I bled. Happy Easter.

*

I
T DIDN
’
T GET OFF
to a particularly auspicious start, that
Sunday. I’d downed a couple of gins for luck, and put the
new dress on. Then I stood in front of the wardrobe mirror,
trying to decide on earrings, studs or danglies. Downstairs Nan was belting out ‘Tell Me the Old, Old Story’, presumably
they’d had it at church that morning. From behind her
bedroom door Charlotte was moaning like a cat in pain,
which meant she must have her headphones on. And
me?
Well, tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be
. . . I breathed
on the glass and waited till the mist cleared:
Celine Dion!
(Sound of cheering, clapping, murmurs of amazement
etc.) Pouting at my reflection I took a deep breath. I had to
admit, the new highlights did look good.

‘
Baby think twice, for the sake
—’

The smoke alarm began to go off in the kitchen.

‘Fucking hell,’ I said to Celine in the mirror, and legged
it down the stairs. Nan met me at the bottom.

‘Karen! The toaster’s set afire. What do I do?’

I shouldered her aside and barged into the kitchen.
Black smoke was rolling from the toaster slot. Nan
appeared at my shoulder, wringing her hands.

‘I were just mekkin’ a bit o’ dinner—’

‘I was
going
to do it, if you’d just waited for two
minutes!’ I yelled and she shrank back into the lounge.

I wrenched the plug out of its socket and flung a
dishcloth over the toaster. The smoke stopped. I opened
the back door, put on oven gloves and carried the thing
to the step, then stood looking at it. Thirty seconds later
Charlotte came in, sniffing.

‘What’s that awful smell?’ she said, then she spotted
the trail of crumbs across the tiled floor, the dishcloth
bundle. ‘Oh, right, yeah. I bet Nan’s been putting the
cheese spread on again before the bread goes in, I caught
her trying that one last week. She scrapes it on about an
inch thick and it welds itself to the element.’ She put on a sorrowful face. ‘Poor old Nan. She doesn’t understand, it’s
not her fault. Do you know she’s crying on the sofa?’

I ignored her; it was that or stab her to death with a
fork. I didn’t know why she was being so bloody reasonable
all of a sudden but I could do without it. The doorbell
rang.

‘That’ll be Ivy. I’ll go. By the way, you’ve got odd
earrings in, Mum.’

‘A
ND
I
VY IS
?’ Mr Fairbrother took a sip of his pint. He’d
moved his chair a little off from the rest of the Fourgates
Ramblers and we were sitting at the end of a long table in
the lounge bar of the Feathers. Thank God he’d seemed
pleased to see me: thank God he’d been there at all.

‘One of Nan’s friends from her Mothers’ Union days.
Ivy Seddon and Maud Eckersley take her up to church
every Sunday, then Ivy comes and sits with her in the
afternoon. They take her to the Over Seventies’ Club
on a Wednesday across at the Working Men’s, and Maud
visits on a Tuesday morning and stays for her dinner. And
if one’s ill, the other comes, they never let me down. Then
I have a woman from Crossroads Carers on a Monday and
a cleaner for three hours on Thursday, which I pay for out
of the Allowance. I mean, I could leave her with Charlotte,
and I do, sometimes, but I try not to. And anyway,
Charlotte’s at school most of the time, so I couldn’t even do
part-time work without some help. It’s funny how these
things creep up on you. Ten years ago, even five, Nan was
fine, just a bit forgetful, then . . .’

Mr F looked sympathetic. ‘Your mother’s lucky to have
that support network. That’s the marvellous thing, though, about community. Our parents grew up in a time when
everybody knew everybody else in this village. Times may
have been hard, but they all helped each other out. There’s
too much isolation these days.’

I nodded, thinking of myself. Where was my little
network of support, my social life? At fifteen there was a
big group of us, out every weekend. More energy than
we knew what to do with, on the phone all hours; it used
to drive Nan mad. We all had plans, we were going to set
the world on fire. Then Dee, my best friend, moved to
Cheltenham, and then I got pregnant, and there was just
this
gulf
between me and the other girls, even though they
tried to be nice about it.

Some of it was not understanding. They got fed up of
me moaning about always being tired, and they didn’t see
at all why I couldn’t leave the baby and just go off places at
the drop of a hat. And I couldn’t confide about the horror
of veins all over my boobs, peeing when I sneezed, the big
jagged purple lines on my tummy.

Some of it was, too, they were scared it might happen
to them, that they might ‘catch’ my pregnancy. I always
remember one of them, Donna Marsden, coming to see me
in hospital. She’d got a little rabbit suit for Charlotte and
she’d come all prepared to coo. But she barely looked at the
baby. What she couldn’t keep her eyes off the whole visit
was my saggy stomach, bursting out from under one of
Nan’s old nighties. She was clearly appalled. Finally she
slinked off down the ward in her size-8 jeans and I sat in
the metal-framed bed and cried my eyes out.

The bottom line was, I was going to be married with a
baby while they were all buggering off to college to screw around and do things with their lives. And by the time
some of them came back to Bank Top to settle down and
do the family stuff, I was divorced, and they didn’t much
rate that either.