Crappily Ever After (3 page)

It’s nanny burnout. Spend too long raising other people’s families and you don’t want to do it for yourself. You lack the energy, incentive and motivation. Men resisting commitment should get themselves a nanny girlfriend; there are so many of us just as happy to avoid the marriage/baby route as you are. Preferring, instead, to commit to Caribbean holidays, a nice apartment in the city, spa treatments and spending all the money we’ve earned over the years and been too busy and knackered to spend. 

But anyway, back to Mike, the train and last Friday‘s story.

Katie came out of school wailing that she hadn’t been invited to the latest birthday party of a class member. 

‘You don’t even
like
Sasha,’ I protested. ‘Last week she was a poo poo head I seem to remember. How can you expect her to invite you?’

‘That’s not the point!’ shouted Katie. ‘This week I gave her a lolly.’

‘Only because you knew the invites were going out on Thursday.’ I raised my eyebrows at her. I had her on that one. I watched as her young mind tried to think of a suitable retort. She failed, and resorted to scuffing the toes of her shoes all the way home. 

We returned to find a sulky Henry watching the Hard Rock channel on cable.

‘How was your day, Henry?’ I tried to arrange my features into something resembling an interested smile – and ended up with a half grimace, half escaped mental patient look.

‘Hmmph.’

‘Lovely,’ I soothed. 

Later, a traumatic teatime was finally over. Georgie had tipped his bowl upside down onto his head and smiled at the other two through spaghetti hair. Hysterical laughter alerted me while I was loading the tumble drier. Katie’s laughter, that is. I’m not sure Henry snorting and grunting through five octaves counts. I cleaned up without a word and spoon-fed Georgie the second batch of Spaghetti Bolognese.

‘Eat up please, Katie.’

‘Don’t like sgetti.’

‘You said last week it was your favourite. I made it with meatballs.’

‘Actually, I think you’ll find that I don’t like Bolognese.’

‘You obviously don’t like ice cream either, then. Since you’re not having any unless you have at least three more spoonfuls.’

Katie reluctantly licked her fork and continued, holding her nose dramatically.

Bath time at last. One hour until the official start of the weekend.

‘I’m not having a bath with
that
,’ Katie informed me disdainfully, head held high and indicating at a food-covered Georgie.

‘Katie, it’s fine. It’s only food. He doesn’t mind that he’s running the risk of nits, worms and other school child afflictions.’

‘Would you like to have a bath with a doubly incontinent, slobbering mess?’ Henry asked me, pointedly. I chewed my lip and thought frantically of a suitable response. An image of my Great Aunt in her rest home sprang to mind. He had a point. 

Two separate baths later and I heard the tinkling tones of Sylvia, my female boss.

‘How are my babies?’

‘Mummy!’ screamed the two youngest, thundering down the hallway.

Two hugs and one ‘don’t touch me’ later, Sylvia opened a bottle of wine and poured herself a large glass. 

‘What a day, Lucy,’ she sighed. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are being here all day. Oh, you do remember you’re babysitting tonight, don’t you?’

I looked up sharply. Never! There is no way I’d agree to a Friday night’s babysitting – or any night for that matter – unless I was really, and I mean
really
, broke.

‘Oh, Lucy,’ she said exasperatedly. ‘We arranged it weeks ago. It’s on the calendar.’ She waggled a finger knowingly at me.

I walked to the calendar. “Friday 16
^th
of December. Lucy babysitting”. I felt smugness emanate from behind me and I turned to look at her.

‘See?’ she smiled, triumphantly.

I ran my finger over “Lucy babysitting”. It smudged.

‘Oh my God! You just
wrote
that.’ I swung round in disbelief.

‘Oh Lucy, please,’ Sylvia pleaded. ‘I totally forgot we have a dinner party with Simon’s boss and he’ll kill me if I’ve forgotten to book a babysitter.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help. I have plans for this evening.’ I put on my coat without looking at her, shouted goodbye to the kids, and left.

By now, Mike is desperate to get me off the subject of my job. He confesses that he’s always wanted to work overseas in his own bar. Preferably Greece or Spain. I emphatically agree and we decide that once I have done a cookery course we will open a place together: Mike on the bar, me in the kitchen, Sam giving massages on the beach – and with my rich husband-to-be funding the whole thing. We continue chatting away amicably for the duration of the journey and swap numbers at the stop before mine for a New Year catch-up – and so that Sam can fix my Denis Healey’s, as my eyebrows are now referred to. I do the obligatory call home, so Mum can have a glass of wine poured and tea in the microwave. I wish Mike a happy and relatively painless time at home and brace myself for the biting North Sea air.

                                                     
Chapter Two       

I battle with my case and backpack up one flight of stairs and down the second set at Arbroath station. I spot my sister leaning against her car, smoking a roll-up and observing my struggle with an amused expression. Seemingly oblivious to the fact that all hell has been let loose in the back seat of her car, as her young daughter and son scream at each other over a packet of sweets.
 ‘Hi sis, are they all right in there?’ I envelope her in a nicotine-clouded hug, plucking the roll-up from her fingers, and inhaling several lungfuls before she snatches it back.
 ‘Good to see you, doll. Don’t worry about them. We’ve been at Mum’s all day, wrapping and hiding
your
presents,’ she accuses. ‘They’re on a Haribo high, it should pass in an hour or so. I’m dropping them at home to their Dad now, so we can party.’          

Mary is one year younger than me, but has always been the more mature one. She always   seemed to know where she was going in life while I, in comparison, seemed to be the only one with no direction and no clue. We are also a complete contrast to each other; physically, Mary takes after our Mum’s side of the family, while I take after Dad’s. She has gorgeous red curls that everyone admires, but she hates them. God invented hair straighteners just for her, she claims. Mary had married young. Too young, she now says. Bill had been her first love and they were completely smitten with each other. Walking round High School holding hands and not caring who laughed. Neither had any aspirations to go to Uni. Bill started an apprenticeship as an electrician for the same company his Dad worked for; Mary took a job in our town’s one and only department store, later changing to a different in-store shop when she got bored. They married two years later. 

 ‘I wish I’d held off ‘til I had a bit of dress sense – and until they invented straighteners,’ she later told me, putting down her wedding picture with a wistful sigh. A mass of red curls and a huge puffball dress was not, in her opinion, such a good look. We suggested she get married again in a blessing ceremony when the kids were born, with her new updated look. 

‘Do you really think I’d be stupid enough to marry him twice?’ was her incredulous reply.

They did, however, hold off having kids until they were both thirty. Before they decided to start a family they took off for a late gap year around Australia and Asia; Mary came back already pregnant and, shocked beyond belief, tearfully asking me what the hell you do for nine months with no fags and booze? It was beyond me. She’s the only person I know who had pre-natal depression.

It wasn’t until Mary had Josh and Jess that things really started to sour with Bill. He did   nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, unless you count the fact that he gambled, drank too much and ignored her requests that he smoke outside away from her babies. 

Mary decided to discuss it with her mother-in-law, Joan.  

‘He’s just like his bloody father,’ snapped Joan, bitterly. ‘If I haven’t been able to do anything with Bill senior in 35 years, then I don’t rate your chances with Bill junior.’ They gripped their coffee cups with clenched fists and stared into space. Identical pained expressions on their faces.        

We drop off the now sleeping children with their very reluctant father. 

‘Unbelievable that just fifteen minutes before they were screaming like banshees,’ I observe.
Mary had informed me that she might have to stay at home as it could be a two-man job. So, we had driven around for an extra twenty minutes to send them off to sleep. We each struggle up the garden path, which was littered with roller skates, bikes and a football, under the heavy weight of a soundly sleeping child. Bill watches us mutely from the door with a can of lager in one hand and a fag in the other, looking as unattractive as ever in greying socks and boxer shorts. A fetching curry stain on his once white T-shirt. Mary informs Bill that he can stop looking at her with that combination of shock and disgust. She couldn’t drink for the best part of two years while she carried Josh and Jess; one night of sobriety and being the responsible adult was not going to kill him. That said, we head down to Mum’s. On arrival, Mum gives me a big hug and tells me I’m getting far too skinny, as she does every time I see her, despite my almost eleven-stone bulk. She places a huge plateful of sausage, mash and gravy in front of me – heart disease is one of the main hazards of having a Scottish mother.
‘I know it’s a lot, but it’s the Taurean need-to-feed. It’s out of my control,’ she explains.
 

We have a lovely evening of festive TV. Normally, we would never dream of watching a church service but, as ex-choir girls, Mum and I love it. Despite thinking she could give Celine Dion a run for her money, Mary’s singing – bless her – conjures up images involving a bag of cats, bricks and a river. There is something warm and comforting about a carol concert. We screech out hymns as if we still had fresh, non-nicotine addicted lungs.
           

Within hours, the evening spirals downward into debauchery with a hilarious game of
Cataroo
. Think of the childhood game,
Buckaroo
, but on a live, sleeping cat. Mary goes first with a carefully placed gift tag. Poopsy, so named due to her aversion for the litter tray, snoozes on oblivious. I go next with a candy stick plucked off the tree. Mum tuts and fusses, declaring the game cruel and unnecessary, then wanders over with a bauble, also from the tree. By this stage we are all convulsed with silent laughter, apart from the odd snort or whimper. Two minutes later Poopsy has the addition of a Twiglet, a pickled onion, a mobile phone, one of my nephew’s Power Rangers and then, the
piece de resistance
from Mary, a remote control is heading Poopsy’s way.
With an expectant ‘Oooh’ from Mum and me, Mary gently places the remote on Poopsy’s rump. It’s too much. The cat stands, shakes and strops off, much to the amusement of Mum and I. Mary rants that our ‘Oooh’ disturbed the cat and therefore cost her the game. We end the evening with a ready-prepared buffet that, courtesy of Mum, appears from the never-ending fridge, and one more drink. The kind of house measure that’d see Geoff Capes off.               

I come round briefly an hour later to the mutterings of my sister manoeuvring me into bed,
sans
boots, socks and anything I could inhale or choke on through the night in my inebriated state. My mother takes her role as a Health and Safety Officer very seriously.
 ‘If she pisses the bed, don’t expect me to sort it,’ declares Mary. ‘I do it at least twice a week as it is. And then there’s the kids too!’

‘Oh no, has Bill done it again?’ Mum wearily enquires.

Just to add to his charms, Mary’s wayward husband suffers from alcohol-induced enuresis. Actually, to be honest, Bill has enuresis – it’s Mary who suffers from it. At least it’s generally reserved for the hall cupboard and, luckily, has only ever been ‘number ones’. Mary was on her third hoover purchase this year. Mum had informed her under no circumstances to plug it in. Mary did once and it stank of wee, but it didn’t blow up like Mum had said it would.   

Unbeknown to Mary, she had a new hoover from Mum as a Christmas present – something I had tried to talk her out of in Curry’s when I was home in August.
‘Who wants a Christmas present of a new hoover just in case your husband pisses on the   current one in the next year?’ She shot me the death stare for swearing in public.
‘Mu-uum! It’s right up there with a Lily of the Valley gift set,’ I attempted to explain, to no avail. Ever practical, Mum won with a steely glare at me for my trouble and I stood  there for another twenty minutes while she argued with herself whether an upright (kinder on the back) was better than a pull-along ‘jobby’ (better for stairs). Eventually, I headed to the hardware department to buy Mary a padlock for the cupboard as a reinforcement – and to make sure that she never gets a hoover again for Christmas. Mum gives me a suspicious look, as if I am trying to out-do her gift with a £3.99 lock.