Mummy Said the F-Word (38 page)

‘I’ve got a drink, thanks. I’ll bring it over, if it’s OK to join you …’

‘Of course it’s OK,’ he says warmly. I catch him appraising her as she retrieves her glass.

By the time she’s back, Richard has positioned a vacant chair so she’s right next to him, and the pair of them fall into
conversation
instantly. I try not to think about La Rose and wine bottles dribbled with wax.

They don’t talk about crisp varieties. They don’t mention faddy eaters or fixations on giant salamis. They laugh and they chat, and although I try to pitch in occasionally, my heart’s not in it, because it’s snuck off somewhere else.

‘How did you get here so quickly?’ I hiss to Millie when Richard goes to the loo.

‘Couldn’t bear the idea of staying in. What kind of sad fuck stays at home on a Saturday night?’

‘I do,’ I point out.

‘But not tonight. I was halfway over town when I phoned you, and when you said you were meeting your weirdo stranger, I thought I’d come too, just to make sure you were safe.’

‘Liar,’ I say, laughing. ‘You wanted to see what he was like. You couldn’t help yourself.’

She shrugs. ‘Well, yes. He’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’

‘He’s … OK.’

‘Oh, come on.’ Her frown upturns into a beaming smile as Richard returns to our table.

Suddenly, I feel as if I don’t belong here, that being stuck at home with the sea monkeys would be preferable to this. ‘Millie, Richard,’ I announce, ‘I’m going to head off, OK?’

No one looks particularly devastated. Millie is on full-on flirt mode and Richard is lapping it up. There’s so much I don’t know about him, but maybe Millie will fill me in at a later date.

It’s almost as if I have ceased to exist. I hug her goodbye, quickly kiss his cheek and head home, where there’s no one to analyse me, because sea monkeys aren’t capable of that.

So Richard thinks he knows me, and how I feel about Sam? I remember the first email I ever sent to him, which said simply, ‘What the hell do you know about my life?’

As I march home, I figure, Well done, Caitlin Brown. Top marks. Only a seriously deluded twit-head would have assumed that there’d be some spark – something real – between herself and an emailing stranger. I must get a grip. Be a proper grown-up who inhabits the real world. My expectations have burst, like the giant bubbles from Travis’s soap-blower machine.

I’m nearly home when my mobile bleeps. I fish it out of my bag; it’s a text from Sam. Funny, I’d assumed he’d be otherwise occupied right now in La Rose. Unless … he’s texting good news. Like,
GUESS WHAT! WE’RE GETTING MARRIED
. Rather than read it and subject myself to further torment, I stuff my mobile back in my bag and quicken my pace. Right now, I have no wish to be confronted by the gory details.

I let myself into the house. It feels eerily still, as it always does when the kids are at Martin’s. Sometimes I feel as if I’d give anything for a few hours’ peace; yet when the kids are away, I crave noise and commotion.

The thing I do that I have never told anyone – not even R – is check all the kids’ rooms, even though they’re not here. Travis’s bed is unmade, his floor an explosion of Sticklebricks, which I’d loved as a child and had thought were extinct, but which Sam managed to find at a car-boot fair. Lola’s room is unusually tidy, and I wonder if she’s been influenced by her stays at Martin’s. I don’t know if Daisy has gone for good or if Martin will slink back to her now he knows it’s truly over with us. I really don’t care either way.

It really
is
over now, which feels OK. It might seem rather tragic, prowling around an empty house on a Saturday night, but
it’s
far preferable to waking up with Martin’s face on the pillow beside me.

Last of all, I peek into Jake’s room. It’s not a war zone, and not anally tidy either – just lived in, with a selection of books about pirates and Greek myths strewn over the bed, and his art stuff scattered on the carpet. It looks like a kid’s bedroom should be. His football boots lie in a corner, untouched since he came back to me. He now goes to the chess and book clubs at school. Travis is furious that Jake’s boots don’t fit him.

I head down to the kitchen and play my messages. ‘Hi, Cait, it’s me, just wondering how things are, how Mum is …’ Adam. His bi-monthly call to enquire after our mother’s well-being.

Message two: ‘Caitlin, Ross here. Sorry to call you on a Saturday, but I’ve been out of the country setting up a deal, talking to suppliers and such … Wondered if you might be interested in getting involved in a new site we’re setting up? It’s similar to Vitalworld, but we’re aiming for the upper end of the market, your
Bambino
-reader type. Love your page, by the way. I gather you’ve attracted quite a following. Give me a call, would you, when you get a minute? Oh, and your outstanding payment should be with you in a couple of days.’ Back to tongue-scraper world? I don’t think so.

I pull up a chair at my desk to check my emails. Apart from the usual deluge of Viagra-related spam, there’s just one:

Dear Caitlin,

I read your page avidly every week and hope you can help with my problem. I am a single father to a ten-year-old son and have a close female friend who happens to be a single mother to three children. We have hung out together for some months now, and at first it was one of those casual school-gate friendships in which neither of you gives much away. However, our friendship has deepened and we now spend a great deal of time together. We gossip and chat as any friends do, but for me at least there is much more to it than that.

For one thing, she’s gorgeous. (There, I’ve said it.) When she walks into my house, everything feels brighter. I might have had a terrible day, having argued with my son about getting his homework done, or not tidying his bombsite of a bedroom; then in she walks and I feel amazing.

I stop reading for a moment. My heart pounds frantically.

Sometimes I wonder if she might feel something more than friendship for me. At other times, especially recently, she can be rather cold and distant and not return my calls. It’s so hurtful and confusing. I drive myself mad trying to analyse her every move and gesture – the way she looked at me, or didn’t look at me. (I sound worryingly like a fifteen-year-old here. I have to point out that I am old and ugly enough to know better.)

Which brings me to the crux of my problem. Do I come out with how I feel about her, and risk embarrassing her, and myself, and ruining our friendship, or do I carry on the way I am, driving myself demented? Can you perform a risk assessment for me, Caitlin? Or at least tell me to get over myself and get a life?

I’m sure you receive hundreds of emails a day, flooding into your PC, which sits on the desk in your kitchen, next to the sea-monkey tank …

My hand flies to my mouth. Tears spring up instantly.

I had intended to go out to dinner tonight with my ex, but decided that I couldn’t go through with it. I had a hunch of what she was planning and I knew it wasn’t right and never will be. I guess I’m not her favourite person right now. In fact, I suspect that it’s because of this friendship that she was so determined for me and her to try again. Before I met this person, my ex showed no interest in any reconciliation, and she certainly knows how I feel about my friend, although any fool could spot it a mile off.

That is, except her. And that’s why I love her.

Demented, Bethnal Green

My hands are shaking as I type:

Dear Demented,

Your problem is an interesting one, as I have been burdened by similar myself. You see, I have a friend too. A special friend. He has helped me through some extremely difficult times, but our friendship means more to me than that. He is the only person who can make me laugh when seconds before, I was on the verge of slamming my head in a door.

My feelings have caused me much confusion and anguish lately. I can now confess how gutted I was to spot an unfamiliar purple toothbrush in his bathroom and a woman’s scarf draped across a chair. I tried to avert my eyes, but I couldn’t. I hoped my feelings would go away, as to me they seemed foolish and were certainly getting in the way of our friendship. But of course they didn’t.

I have to add that he is also completely gorgeous.

So, Demented, my advice to you is to put some wine to chill in the fridge and see what happens.

C x

I’m about to log off when another email pops in. It’s from R. Richard. I almost don’t read it. I hope he and Millie have arranged to meet again, but my head is too full of other stuff to dwell on that now.

I do open it; I can’t resist.

Hi Cait,

Well, I’m just back from the pub. It was lovely to meet you after all this time. Sorry to write such a brief email, but your friend Millie has decided to come to my place for a coffee and I feel rude clattering away on my keyboard.

So I just wanted to say thanks. For everything. Especially for making me laugh and for allowing me into your life when I was so rude and obnoxious at the start.

You are lovely, Caitlin, and whatever you choose to do next, I hope that all works out for you.

With love,

R x

I know we won’t email again. Once you’ve met someone, everything changes – and, anyway, someone real is waiting for me. I can barely make my fingers behave as I type:

Goodbye, Richard, and thank you for being my own private agony uncle. I wish you luck.

C x

Then I turn off my PC, head upstairs to the hall and pull on my jacket. I check my lipstick in the mirror and quickly run a brush through my hair. I think of Sam, waiting for me.

My heart soars, and I feel as light as dandelion fluff as I set off into the night.

‘Mummy,’ Lola cries, ‘Travis says he’s the best writer in his class. Is it true?’

‘Yes it is,’ I say. ‘Mrs Farnham told me at parents’ evening.’

She frowns, digesting this, and dips a finger into the mixing bowl on the table. I am attempting to make a Victoria sponge for the guess-the-cake’s-weight stand at the PTA summer fête. Bev assigned the task to me. I fear that my creation will sit all alone and stranded, without the security of all the other cakes and cookies on the home-making stall. Actually, I suspect that she asked me as some kind of sick joke.

‘Let me have a go,’ Jake says, marching in from the garden. He grabs the spoon from my grasp. I’m on the verge of telling him to wash his hands first – they’re covered in soil; Bev would have a seizure – but something stops me.

Eighteen months ago, Jake would scrub his hands raw when they came into contact with soil. I watch him beating vigorously, the mixture becoming pale and light as a cloud. I pour the cake into the tin and slip it into the oven.

Sam wanders in clutching a slim glass tank – the wormery he and the kids have been making. I’d been so scared about how the kids would react when Sam and Harvey had moved in. Especially Jake. Even though he and Harvey are still best mates, I wasn’t sure he’d be happy about sharing a bedroom after having his own all these years. And, scarier still, how he’d feel about Sam and me being together. A few months ago, I’d asked, ‘D’you feel OK about Sam and Harvey living here?’

Jake’s eyes had narrowed, and my heart had quickened as I anticipated a growled response. ‘Yeah,’ he said, guardedly, then
broke
into a grin. ‘We’ve got Sam’s TV now. We don’t have to watch that crappy little portable any more.’

Travis, too, is delighted with our new, superior TV – and even more so with the vast tub of magnetic letters that Martin gave him for his fifth birthday last week. He is using them to make words on the fridge. And, yes, he probably is the smartest in reception class, although I won’t do a Marcia and suggest that he’s gifted.

‘He’s written “Sam”,’ Lola reports. ‘And “sea monkey”. But you’ve spelt it wrong, Travis. It’s S-E-A M-O-N—’

‘He’s only five, Lols,’ I chide her.

‘Now he’s written “TV”!’ Harvey announces.

‘That’s only two letters,’ Jake crows. ‘Anyone could do that.’

Sam casts me a look and my mouth curls into a smile. It still works, whenever he looks at me; it warms me all over. Cake smells fill the kitchen. I have actually made a real cake, just like Rachel’s – something Proper Mothers do. I only hope that any soily bits merge in.

A little while later, Sam lifts the cake out of the oven, and it looks pretty damn perfect to me. The table is cluttered with my work things, and Sam’s work things, and he shoves aside a pile of papers for somewhere to put it.

A letter from Mum’s solicitor flutters to the floor and I stuff it into the drawer beneath my desk. Mum passed away last winter – five months ago now – painlessly and in her sleep, having lost her ability to recognise me or even Helena. I’d feared that she was nearing the end when she’d stopped asking when I was going to find a decent man. Although there’d been a glimmer of something – curiosity, perhaps, or more likely relief – when I’d taken Sam to see her.

It’s strange, but after losing Mum I felt somehow freer and I wanted Sam and me to start afresh – not to live in the house where I’d been so lonely. I didn’t want Mrs Catchpole gawping over the fence, wondering why Sam wasn’t that nice man who’d built her flat-pack table. I craved a bedroom where Martin had never slept, and where no one had asked me to do pervy things in a Pac-a-Mac.

Sam’s place is far too small for all of us, so we’re looking for somewhere new, with a bigger garden with plenty of bug-collecting potential, and proper studies for Sam and me.

Sam and me. It feels so right, and I guess it always has.

‘Mum!’ Lola yelps. ‘Travis has written “Harvey”! And he’s spelt it right!’

‘Well done, sweetheart,’ I say. Oh, yes. I can picture the pained look on Marcia’s face when Travis collects his Best Writer Award at prize-giving. It’ll take every ounce of my concentration not to explode with pride.

‘And now,’ Lola says hesitantly, ‘now he’s writing— Mum! Mum, come and see!’

‘What?’ I ask distractedly.

‘He’s … he’s made a
bad word
.’

Sam studies the fridge door, cocks his head and splutters, ‘Well, um, that’s very creative, Travis.’