Mummy Said the F-Word (36 page)

Stranded at Batters Corner. Brilliant. Angrily, I snatch my phone from my bag and call Rachel’s mobile.

‘Cait, hi,’ she exclaims. ‘Everyone’s fine – you needn’t worry. Just enjoy your evening.’

To my shame, it hadn’t occurred to me to enquire after my offspring’s well-being. ‘Rachel,’ I say, ‘my, um, friend hasn’t shown up. I was wondering if he’d sent me an email or anything.’

‘An email? Wouldn’t he have called?’

‘He doesn’t have my number.’

‘Well, couldn’t you call him?’

This is getting worse. I can’t tell her the truth – not after the ticking-off she gave me in Leoni’s. ‘I … don’t have his number either. I, um … I met him online,’ I babble feebly.

A pause. ‘You’ve been dabbling with those Internet dating sites?’

‘Yes.’

She chuckles. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I suppose it’s sensible, really, for someone in your situation, though I’m sure you could meet someone in a more
normal
way—’

‘Rachel,’ I cut in, ‘could you log on to my computer and check my inbox? It wouldn’t take a minute.’

‘Oh, I’m not very techy, Cait. Hang on …’ The cordless phone crackles as she crosses the kitchen. I hear a sharp tapping noise. What’s she doing, trying to turn it on at the keyboard?

‘There’s a button,’ I say, desperation creeping into my voice, ‘on the big black box under my desk.’

‘What? Ew, there’s a banana skin here. Let’s get rid of that … Right. Shall I … press it?’

This woman is capable of fashioning ravioli pillows stuffed with puréed pumpkin, yet is nervous about pressing a button. Does she think it’ll blow up in her face?

‘Yes,’ I breathe, my eyes darting this way and that in case R should appear, awash with apologies.

‘Right,’ Rachel says. ‘It’s on.’ A trace of confidence has crept into her voice. ‘What now?’

Now you have to climb on to the little hamster wheel at the back and start running to power it up. ‘Type in my password,’ I tell her. ‘It’s, um …’

‘Didn’t catch that. Are you next to a busy road or something? Where
are
you?’

‘Fuckwit,’ I say.

‘Sorry?’

‘That’s my password. Fuckwit. I’ve used it since Martin left.’ I snigger awkwardly. ‘I suppose it helped me vent my anger or something. Type it in lower case.’

‘Right.’ I hear her typing it in.

No wonder Jake has a tendency to misuse magnetic letters when his mother displays such a tragic level of immaturity.

Patiently, and still glancing around for R, I explain how to access my email account. You’d think I was a surgeon talking her through a complex roadside operation after an accident.

‘There’s one email,’ she announces.

‘Who’s it from?’

‘Um, let’s see … It says, “Big Roger.” Shall I open it?’

‘Yes, please.’ My heart lollops against my ribcage.

‘Hang on … Here it is … “Worried you loss erection? Safe secure Viagra hundred and fifteen dollar special price.” God, Cait, who sends this stuff? You’re not on some kind of … medication, are you?’ She dissolves into giggles.

‘Um, no,’ I manage, gazing bleakly at the flaking Batters Corner sign.

Then I hear it, a voice calling, ‘Caitlin!’ across the street. The tall, lean figure waits for a gap in the traffic before hurrying towards me.

It’s Darren. No, not just Darren. He’s with the PA girl, the one with golden streaks in her chestnut hair from the pub. ‘Sorry, Rachel, got to go,’ I blurt out.

‘Is that him? The friend you’re meeting?’

‘Yes,’ I say, finishing the call.

Darren and the girl fling each other an amused glance as they approach – a glance that says, ‘Look, it’s her, the one who keeps bugs in jars and wore the orange nylon raincoat thingy.’

‘Hey, how are you?’ he says with a smirk.

‘Fine, great.’ I grin tersely and check my watch.

‘Waiting for someone, Caitlin?’ the girl asks.

‘No, um, yes. But we’ve changed plans.’ A kind of snort-laugh comes out. ‘And I’m running late, I’d really better go …’

I leg it down the street, Darren’s mocking laughter echoing in my burning ears.

I can’t go home and face Rachel. I don’t know where else to go. The thought of sitting in some pub nursing a drink on my own is beyond tragic, but how else can I fill the evening? See a film? Sitting in a cinema is as appealing right now as spending the dog-end of Friday evening on a park bench being accosted by crazies. I could go home, sneak into our back garden and lurk about for a bit. Give Mrs Catchpole a fright.

Bloody R. Millie, Rachel, Sam – everyone was right. Fabulous recent dating history, Cait! Prance around in a Pac-a-Mac, shag the ex, spend forty minutes at Batters Corner with ‘
STOOD UP
’ plastered all over your face.

I march on, seething, not thinking where I’m going, and I wind up in the next street to Mimosa House. I could pop in to see Mommy dearest. She doesn’t like me especially, and will probably reprimand me for failing to achieve a Kate Moss-like physique, but at least she knows me.

At least, she once did.

‘Cait, before you see your mum, there’s something I want to show you.’ Helena beckons me into the manager’s office, indicating a dog-eared book on the desk. It’s called
Forgotten Glasgow
and is one of those black-and-white photographic books in which you know you’ll find pictures of shipyards and street kids and old-fashioned dance halls.

I pick it up and flip the pages randomly. ‘Is it Mum’s?’

Helena smiles. ‘We were having a second-hand book sale to raise funds for outings. This came in with a load of other stuff. I showed it to Jeannie … and something happened, Caitlin.
Something
clicked in her. It was incredible, as if she remembered a little of who she was … who she
is
.’

I frown, studying photos of children playing on rubble and kicking a football across barren ground.

‘Page seventy-two,’ Helena murmurs.

I turn to it, and it’s a shot of a shipyard in the 1950s, captioned ‘The Melting Room’. There’s a furnace, its heat escaping in a gasp of white light, and several workers lined up in dark overalls. The picture’s so smudgy and grainy it’s impossible to pick out the workers’ faces. All I can tell is that they’re women.

Helena leans over me, indicating a slight, skinny figure at the end of the line, standing a little apart from the others. ‘Your mum says that’s her. She says lots of women worked in the shipyard during the war, but by the 1950s it was rare, and a newspaper photographer came to take a picture of them. She remembered the day quite clearly.’

I squint at the photo, trying to bring the face into focus. ‘D’you think it’s really her?’

She laughs. ‘Well, your mum’s convinced. And yesterday, when we discovered the book, she had a group of residents gathered round while she gave a little talk about it. It was fascinating, Caitlin. She knew just about every place in the photos, and how the metal was melted in the furnace and then shaped and—’ Helena catches herself and grins. ‘I’m not answering your question, am I? Do I think it’s really her?’ She closes the book and hands it to me. ‘I don’t think it matters,’ she says.

Mum is crunching a sweet and has a crocheted blanket spread over her bony knees when I find her in the day room. She’s the only one here. The other residents will have been taken to their rooms for the night, but Mum’s internal clock has become so cock-eyed that bedtime means nothing to her.

‘It’s you again,’ she grumbles, and a fragment of boiled sweet pings on to her lap.

What a lovely surprise, darling daughter! Yes, I really am the
same
dear old lady who enthrals all these old folk with tales from my youth.

‘Just thought I’d pop in to see you, Mum.’ I take the seat beside her.

‘That’s Florrie’s seat. You can’t sit there.’

‘Florrie’s gone to bed.’

‘Where are you taking me?’ she snaps.

‘I’m not taking you anywhere.’ Honestly, in the thirty seconds I’ve been in this room, I have aged a decade.

‘What d’you want then?’ Jeannie growls.

‘Look, Mum. Helena showed me this book.’ I hold its front cover before her, and she squints at it suspiciously. ‘It’s all about Glasgow,’ I add. ‘The places you knew when you were young. I thought we could look through it together.’

‘Oh, that.’ She cackles, and her freshly permed curls bob around her face.

I flick to the page showing the melting room. ‘Helena says that’s you. Is that right, Mum?’

We both peer at it.

‘Of course it is,’ she says gruffly.

I glance back at the page, and my heart quickens. The girl’s face is no longer a smudge, but a real person with deep-set dark eyes and an upturned nose, just like Lola’s. She has Lola’s hair, too – thick, unruly waves – which Mum had tried, unsuccessfully, to stuff under a cap. ‘I never believed you,’ I murmur.

She chuckles and snatches the book from my grasp. ‘Always think you know best, don’t you? Little Miss Know-All. Look …’ She turns the pages slowly. ‘This is the market at the end of our street, and this is sports day, which they had every year in the park over the road.’ Dishevelled children are having a sack race across a patch of scrubby ground. None look like Mum, but by now she believes that every female in the photos is her. Only Jeannie would assume that there could be three of her in one shot. ‘I used to win every race going,’ she exclaims. ‘Mind you, I was athletic. Built for speed. Not like you.’

The smile plays on my lips as we study page after page. Mum
has
shuffled closer – so close I can smell Fox’s Glacier Mints on her breath. Being stranded at Batters Corner seems a lifetime away as she chatters on in her wavery bedtime-story voice, as if I am her little girl again.

All weekend I keep checking my emails, not because I wish to be dragged into further correspondence with R, but for the pleasure of deleting his grovelling apology.

It doesn’t materialise. All our chats, our shared confidences and confessions – they’ve meant nothing to him. R for Arsehole indeed. Sam infiltrates my mind – and I can’t forget the sparkly toothbrush left on prominent display in his bathroom. It might as well trill, ‘Look at me! I live here now,’ like the singing toothbrush that Travis nagged me to buy. In the chemist’s on Saturday, on an emergency Calpol run for Lola, I avert my eyes from the oral-hygiene display.

On Sunday afternoon, we pop in to see Mum. It’s a confusing visit. We leaf through the Glasgow book, and Mum points at the woman at the end of the line in the melting room. ‘That’s you,’ she declares, jabbing her granddaughter’s chest. No amount of protest can persuade her that, in 1957, Lola didn’t exist.

By Monday morning, now that R no longer features in my life, I feel freer to get on with other things – like polish off leftover cold noodles from the fridge and crack on with a feature Millie asked me to write. It’s about spotting the danger signs that one is ‘lacking in self-esteem’ and ‘letting oneself go’, which, in
Bambino
-land, is a crime punishable by a custodial sentence at the very least.

I write:

Do you find yourself re-heating coffee in the microwave because you think you don’t deserve a freshly made cup?

Do you gobble wrinkled fruit from the bowl that no one else would dream of eating?

Do you wait for forty minutes at Batters Corner for someone who doesn’t show up?

I stop typing, figuring that perhaps I’m not the ideal person to write this feature. Virtually every coffee I consume has been microwaved to a highly carcinogenic state. For breakfast, I wolfed a banana that was so ancient I’d practically had to pour it into my mouth.

I turn my attention instead to the pressing matter of the ‘problem cupboard’ in the hall.

It’s stuffed with readers’ letters – the ones I haven’t got around to answering, yet can’t bear to throw away – and symbolises all that I despise about myself: my tendency to put off the inevitable, my lack of direction and courage. Should a clutter counsellor come to our house – Rachel informed me that such people exist, perhaps hinting that I urgently require their services – they would shine a torch into the cupboard and look extremely worried. ‘Hmm,’ they’d say, ‘I can see there’s quite a problem here.’ They’d diagnose several personality defects, which have resulted in this sorry state of affairs, not to mention the breakdown of my marriage.

Something must be done. I have already found Lola prying in the cupboard, on the verge of showing Eve a handful of random letters. Affairs, divorces, lamentable sex lives – it’s hardly suitable reading material for six- and seven-year-olds. I mean, it’s hardly
The BFG
. I fetch a bin liner, stuff all the letters into it and haul it down to the kitchen, where, fuelled by an urge to Be Organised, I tip them out on to the table.

Bing! An incoming email. I tear to my desk like a whippet. It’s from R and is headed: ‘So Sorry.’

Cait,

What can I say? So much has happened over the past few days, yet nothing makes up for the fact that I stood you up on Friday night. I’m so sorry. In a nutshell, here’s what happened.

I’d dropped Billy at Jacqui’s as it was her turn to have him for the weekend. Everything seemed fine. Her lover-boy, Kyle, was his usual oily, charmless self. I came home and
was
getting ready to meet you when she called, in a terrible state: Kyle had smacked Billy, for nothing really – just trailing mud in from the garden across the kitchen floor. When I say smacked, Cait, I mean really walloped him across the back of the legs – I could hear him sobbing while she was on the phone. Kyle had stormed out, accusing Jacqui of being incapable of controlling her son, and that it was typical behaviour from a boy who was being brought up by his hopeless dad.

Well, never mind what he thinks about me. I was livid that he’d hit Billy and so drove over right away. All I could think about was how I’d like to punch his lights out.

I comforted Billy, and once he’d gone to bed, Jacqui and I sat up talking. It came out that Kyle has hit her too. A slap in the face during a row, that kind of thing. However bad things have been between Jacqui and me, I couldn’t bear to hear of her being treated like that. So I stayed the night, in case he came back. Kipped on the sofa, honest – I still have the cricked neck to prove it.