This Holey Life (16 page)

‘No more
Cribs
.’

‘Give me a high five,’ says Steve.

Rachel gives her father an extremely embarrassed high five and blushes the colour of the defrosted raspberries. Her dad, the vicar.

‘If you can do that, Auntie Vicky,’ says Jeremy, bolstered by his cousin and looking to up the ante, ‘then I can give up Pot Noodles.’

Sensing a chink here, I venture: ‘Just Pot Noodles?’

Jeremy sighs. ‘And McDonald’s, I suppose.’

‘Does that mean more expensive pizzas?’ his father asks. I think he’s joking. I hope he’s joking. Surely he doesn’t begrudge his son the odd trip to Pizza
Express?

But Jeremy takes his father seriously, at his word. ‘Not if you sort things out with Mum. Then we can have homemade pizzas. In Dulwich. No offence, Auntie Vicky,’ he adds
quickly.

‘None taken,’ I reassure him. Jeremy can offend me as much as he likes if it enables his family to have another go at being a family, in their own home, a few miles and another world
away from here.

Having wolfed down his pancake, Martin has become twitchy, pulling at his revolting beard and bouncing his leg up and down like a schoolboy in need of the loo. ‘Would you excuse me while I
have a quick shower?’ He addresses this question to Dorota. He’d never normally ask permission to leave the table but he is obviously keen to perpetuate the myth of the charming
gentleman. But I know the truth: he is a coward who will not answer his son’s question. Dorota isn’t quite taken in by his charm but she will forgive him anything because, bizarrely and
like all those deluded souls before her, she thinks he is ‘hunky’.

With Martin conveniently gone, that leaves Olivia and Dorota, who have both been very quiet, to finish what he started.

‘What about you, Olivia?’ asks Rachel. ‘Can you think of anything you can give up for four weeks?’

Olivia thinks about this, twirling her hair around her finger (it’ll need washing tonight). ‘How long is four weeks?’

‘Twenty eight days,’ says Jeremy, pouncing on the question like it’s a quiz.

Olivia considers her cousin’s answer, still twirling. ‘Is that a really, really, really long time?’

‘No, darling,’ says Steve. ‘Though it can seem like it.’

‘Well, then,’ she says, taking a deep breath. ‘My sticky pictures?’

‘Your sticky pictures? But you love doing your sticky pictures,’ Steve says, an expression of amazement on his face that his middle daughter could sacrifice so much.

We all look at her sticky pictures, stuck all over the fridge. My fridge.

‘I do love my sticky pictures,’ she agrees. ‘But they are a bit, um, sticky, aren’t they, Mummy?’She looks at me for verification.

‘Well, yes.’

‘And we don’t like sticky things, do we, Mummy?’

‘Well, no.’

This is the moment when I should be encouraging Olivia’s creativity. But instead I feel relief that we’ll have a break from the barrage of celebrities. So I don’t dissuade her.
Besides, everyone is now waiting expectantly for Dorota who has just poured herself another glass of sherry.

She meets our communal gaze. ‘Okay, okay, I give up the sherry. It won’t bother me at all. Not one little bit.’ Then she downs her glass with a back-flick of her hennaed head,
on the off chance we start Lent right now.

In the silence that follows, ballooning up around us, as we each consider the consequences of what we have put on the line, we can hear Martin overhead, banging about in the bathroom. Martin who
started this off but isn’t here to offer up his own sacrifices. Typical. One rule for him. Still, it would take time for him to pick a vice. There’s such a long list.

And who’s he sprucing himself up for now?

Later Steve tells his mother he’s going out. ‘I’ve got a meeting.’

Dorota says nothing.

‘An Alpha meeting.’

She shrugs her shoulders.

He stoops to kiss her anyway. ‘And maybe you could think about giving Dad a ring?’ He says this gently, a hopeful smile on his slightly harassed face. The smile broadens briefly when
she says: ‘I’ll think about it.’ Then it goes again when she adds: ‘I’ve thought about it and the answer is no.’

I go into the dark garden, all the way up to the end, and take a deep, deep breath. Foxes. Then I howl like a vixen and the scream is caught up by the Sutton train, hauling it off to Kent.

Thoughts for the Day
: If Jesus came back to earth, would he make it into the pages of
Hello
?

I showed Mum the photo. She was repotting a spider plant in the front room and there was soil all over the rug. I wanted to get out the carpet sweeper but I wanted to know
about the photo more.

Who is this with Dad? I asked.

Mum turned away from me and yanked off a brown leaf. I wasn’t sure if she had heard me but then she said it’s Jack. Your Uncle Jack.

I said I didn’t know Dad had a brother. She said not a real brother but like a brother. I asked if we’d met him and she said no. I asked her why not.

She rubbed her hands on her skirt and looked out the window like he might be standing out there in the street waving at her.

I looked too but then I felt silly because she said he’s dead, that’s why.

Chapter Twenty:
Wednesday 6th February Ash Wednesday

My breasts are being attacked with miniature knives dipped in molten lava cutting and scorching every time I even think about moving. I woke this morning, on the floor of
Rachel and Olivia’s room, having started my Lenten fast straightaway last night, to find engorged, twin peaks of burning, curdling milk.

But it’s alright. There’s a plan, carefully constructed last night between Steve and myself to help Imo and me through the first day of Lent and making use of Dorota whose appearance
yesterday, if not exactly welcomed by me, was, according to Steve, another God-incidence. While Steve is at the early Ash Wednesday service, Dorota is on standby, armed with a bottle and an iron
will, so I won’t give in if Imo kicks up a fuss when she realises she has to forgo her morning feed.

As for me, I’m leaving the house, keeping out of the way for the whole morning. Steve is going to work from home, not that he’ll get an awful lot done with Dorota and Imo battling
for his attention. But maybe, hopefully, he’ll get the chance for a heart to heart with his mother. He’ll manage. It’s me I’m worried about. A morning off and for the first
time in a decade I am at a loss. Steve gave me some options, wrote them down on the back of an envelope, in his scrappy, plumber capitals to make them seem more real.

SWIMMING (I’ll never get these breasts into my swimming costume and even if I got that far and eased myself into the baths, I would prove Archimedes theory on water displacement for all to
see.)

SHOPPING (We have no money and window shopping is depressing.)

A WALK (There’s only Penge High Street and the park and I spend most of my life in these places and can’t walk an inch without being spotted so why would I go there of my own
accord?)

VISITING A FRIEND (I no longer have any friends.)

CHURCH (The service is nearly over and if I go down there now I’ll be cornered by well-meaning, nosy, demanding parishioners.)

DAD (I can’t bear to go that far away. When I know Imo can survive a while without me then yes, maybe a day in Worthing on my own, checking up on the tattooed lady, would be possible. Not
that I like to think my baby will be able to survive without me. What mother does like to think that?)

So that leaves the last option:

A CAFE (But where? KFC, Burger King, Southern Fried Chicken. No thanks. Seeing as Steve has kindly offered me the car, I will go to the place I feel most comfortable. Try
something new today.)

Is it really the coffee that drew me here? The ambient lighting? The colour scheme? Or is this the limit of my world?

Today I must drink my machine-dispensed latte alone, reading
St Hilda’s Parish News
as that’s all I had in my bag. Though not quite alone. Here comes Amanda, pushing a
trolley, laden with bread and fish, enough to feed the mouths of Penge, not a cleaning product in sight. Too late to hide under the table.

‘Vicky! What on earth are you doing here? All on your own!’ Customers look up from their eggs and bacon and take in Amanda’s presence. She is not what you’d call
discreet. Not one of those people who blend into the background. But she’s even more conspicuous with the smudgy grey cross on her forehead, the visible reminder that she has done her duty
and gone to the Ash Wednesday service.
Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.
If I didn’t know this I could be forgiven for assuming she was the local mad lady. Or just
dirty – which, of course, she is.

Amanda is used to seeing me with a child attached to my hip, my hand or my skirts or following truculently in my wake. She is not used to the idea of me, Vicky, alone, drinking a latte. At least
the sight of me clutching the
Parish News
must assure her I am not sliding down that slippery slope. But the idea of Vicky, woman in her own right, has thrown her usual composure all over
the floor, which incidentally needs a scrub. There’s a splat of spilt ketchup, like a crime scene.

‘Can I get you a coffee, Amanda?’

She is tempted. For a brief moment. But then she gets a grip and tells me with some determination: ‘I’ve given up coffee for Lent.’

‘Tea, then.’

‘Haven’t got time.’

‘No time for a cup of tea? Really, Amanda, you must make time for yourself every now and then.’

Amanda says nothing. She has never been offered advice by her protégée before and is unsure what is happening to the status quo. The status quo is having a machine-dispensed latte,
reading the
Parish News
. To coin a phrase of Rachel’s: ‘big wow’. But it is a big wow, clearly. Amanda abandons her trolley – if you can’t beat ’em, join
’em – and fetches herself a hot chocolate. It’s what Jesus would have done, I know. I saw her checking her WWJD wristband. I’m not sure he’d be in Sainsbury’s. I
think he’d be where the needy are, at Lidl.

She eases herself onto the plastic chair, jewellery clanging, an assortment of colourful scarves wafting 70s style perfume over me – Tweed or Charlie, something Mum used to wear –
and attacks her hot chocolate with gusto. She proffers me a doughnut. ‘Thought I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’

Not sure that’s the official Church of England view on sin but I let it go.

‘Thanks. I didn’t get round to breakfast.’

She stops chewing, watching me navigate the mound of sugar on my doughnut, waiting for me to elaborate. Which I decide is probably the best thing to do or she’ll never leave me alone and
part of the plan devised by Steve and I was that I would have some time alone. He said it would do me good. This wasn’t what I had in mind. Under different circumstances I would’ve used
that Sanctuary voucher but ironically, at the point when I most need to be pampered, I’m not in a fit state.

‘In a couple of days, she’ll have forgotten all about your breasts.’ She says this very loudly, with dramatic expression that could get her a job on the stage and to the great
amusement of the builders on the next table whose ears prick up at the mention of my breasts.

I slump in my chair, shielding myself from the inevitable checking-out. But Amanda’s words are registering in my pain-addled brain. ‘A couple of days? I can’t disappear for a
couple of days!’

‘Be strong, Vicky. Don’t give in.’ She pats my hand (I knew I’d picked up that tip from somewhere). ‘I’ll pray for you,’ she adds, fiddling with her
WWJD wristband. Then she downs her hot chocolate with amazing speed and leaves me to it, assured of my soul.

The doughnut is doing bad things to my insides so once I’m sure I won’t bump into her again, I make my own departure, picking my way around the young man mopping the floor (I’d
be impressed if I had the energy), heading where, I don’t know. I’d like to go to the loos and try and ease some of the milk out but that will only encourage more in its place. Be
strong. Don’t give in.

As I pass the builders’ table, one of them catches my eye, telling me – as if I’d be grateful for his thoughts on the matter – that he wouldn’t forget my breasts in
a hurry. If only he knew the reason they were this size. Perhaps I should enlighten him, put him off his breakfast. Or perhaps I should give him a swift kick in his double eggs and bacon.

After a random drive, up to Crystal Palace and down again, round in circles and along back-doubles, the pain is too much. I feel hot and flushed, a taste of sick nestling in my
gullet, possibly the onset of mastitis, just to make my day. While I’m debating going to the doctor’s to get this checked out – surely only mothers of newborns have this problem?
– I find the car taking me on its own magical mystery tour, right past the surgery and Eileen and all the possible help in there, help that I do and don’t need, straight past the school
that is educating my daughter and nephew and we, the Espace and I, end up in the car park of St Hilda’s and for once the shoppers of Penge have spared us a place. Hallelujah. After several
moments of careful manoeuvring, I am free of the car, and I let my feet take me onto hallowed ground, not into the church, but round the side, skirting the hall so I have to duck down below window
height in case I am spotted by an eagle-eyed Olivia. Thankfully it’s too drizzly for the children to be out in the yard on scooters and trikes and so I am safe, but I wish I’d brought
my cagoule, not that I’d have won the battle to get it over my towering infernos, and then along a red-bricked path cleared of weeds only yesterday by Miss Brooke, onto the damp grass, past
the headstones and pots of wilting flowers and bare-leaved shrubs, over to the corner where, under the shelter of an ancient Yew, is a small, simple headstone that tries to sum up a short life and
a sudden death. The unknown depths of what it is to be human.

My Thomas.

Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.