You, Me and Him (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

I think you can always judge a day by the supermarket trolley you choose.

I am late.

I fetch my trolley. When I picked George up from school this afternoon his thin arms were covered in black smudges. Ms Miles, his teacher, had met me at the school gates, saying in a deliberately loud voice that George had stolen her fountain pen in class and flicked ink all over himself and her new skirt. ‘I’ve given him a detention,’ she’d stated, the other mothers staring, ‘and four black clouds.’ If the children are good they get gold stars on the ‘happy side’ of a chart. If naughty, they get black clouds on the ‘sad side’.

I’d smiled, so relieved that it was nothing to do with bullying. ‘Mrs Greenwood,’ she had said with a scowl. I could almost see fire flaring through her nostrils. ‘This kind of behaviour must be taken seriously.’

George runs ahead of me now. ‘No dramas. You can have one toy or sweet, that’s the deal,’ I warn him.

It’s been nearly a week now … It could be stress? The run-up to Christmas is always stressful. I overheard one of the school-run mums saying that she hadn’t made the Christmas cake yet. Last year she’d forgotten to put the brandy in. The best part, she’d claimed with a bark of laughter. Where’s George gone? I look around frantically. Then I hear the curtain of the passport booth being pulled back.

‘George! Come here!’

It could be that I’m anxious about the new headmaster at George’s school? He starts next January. I fret about his teachers, too. If they don’t understand him and his behaviour, it makes life impossible. Everyone is talking about the sudden resignation of Mrs Liddell. She had a nervous breakdown.

I am never late.

I have a
hectic
job. I’m not complaining as I love my work, but it can be demanding at times. I work for a design agency called Gem Communications and my boss is called Ruby Gold, a high-powered, pinstripe-suit-wearer who uses so much face powder that by the evening it has cracked like a clay mask above her top lip. Ruby exudes charm in a voice as smooth as caramel, but I am aware that I only have to put one foot wrong to be looking for another job. I can see her now in her executive leather chair, shiny blonde hair tucked neatly behind diamond-studded ears, telling me that Ruby Gold expects: ‘One hundred and ten per cent
at all times
.’ She has just employed a young South African girl called Natalie. We used to work in Ruby’s home, on the top floor of her spacious minimalist house, but as the company is expanding we need more than one room so we have moved into a modern office block in Hammersmith. If Ruby knew I was pregnant … I can’t think about it.

I am
always
on time. My period strikes as faithfully as Big Ben. I get out my list. ‘I love you if you buy me some tobacco, Jammie D’s and gin,’ Finn wrote on our kitchen blackboard this morning. I want to try and be prepared for Christmas this year. He and I are having all the family in London: my parents, Finn’s mother and her boyfriend, and of course Finn’s granny, so I need to be super-organised like the other mums and make my cake and Christmas pudding a month before. I can remember my mother making a cake every year and the best part was always when she gave me her leather handbag to rummage through and find some five-pence coins to add to the fruit mixture. Her handbag had exciting hiding places for lipsticks and powder compacts, and she always had lots of parking change in the zip compartment of her wallet. Carefully, I’d cover the silver coins in foil whilst saying a prayer that they would all land in my bowl.

‘I want three pounds, Mum.’ George pokes his head out of the booth and sticks his tongue out at me.

‘I want never gets. OUT, George.’

‘Please?’ He continues to pull the pale blue curtain back and forth, scratching the fabric against the rail. Then he sits on the stool and starts pressing the control buttons haphazardly.

I try to manoeuvre the trolley. ‘If you don’t get out now there’ll be no Slush Puppy.’ Finn gave me a book entitled,
If You Behave, So Will Your Child
. The author, her cheery face beaming from the jacket, tells me that I must not use blackmail or bribery in order to make my child behave; I am no better than a child myself if I adopt these methods.

George races past me into the fruit and vegetable aisle.

I push my trolley and it moves like a crab. I have to make a decision. Do I turn round and get another one or do I persevere?

George is now out of sight.

I am never late.

I remember that half-witted conversation I’d had with the receptionist at my GP’s surgery a month ago, just before staying with my parents for the weekend. ‘I’m afraid we have no appointments today, Mrs Greenwood. Please try again tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.’

Obediently I had, only to listen to the engaged tone, over and over again, like a funeral march in my ears. When I’d finally got through at 9.10: ‘I’m afraid the doctor’s full up for this morning. If you ring at …’

‘But I’m leaving today. Can’t he fit me in? I’ve been trying constantly for the past forty minutes.’

‘The surgery has been
exceptionally
busy this morning.’

‘All I need is a prescription signed,’ I’d argued reasonably.

‘If you call at two-thirty he might be able to fit you in this afternoon.’

‘There’s no one else I can see this morning?’

Some tapping on a keyboard. ‘The computer says all booked up. Lots of ’flu bugs around, this time of year.’

‘This is a ridiculous system!’

She’d bristled. ‘Any comments you have, you can place them in the comments box.’

I start to smile, remembering that night at my parents’. Mum, Dad and George had all gone to bed. Finn and I had stayed up talking on the window seat in the kitchen. It’s my favourite place in my parents’ home, somewhere I feel safe. I’d stretched my legs out across his knees and picked up the nearest glossy magazine. Finn swiped it away from my hands. ‘Hey! I was reading that.’

‘How to make the most out of your greenhouse,’ he’d read out to me, and then shut it immediately. ‘Oh come off it, J, we don’t even have one.’ I’d shrugged my shoulders. ‘We’ll get one when we move to the country and I’ll grow cherry tomatoes.’ Finn has always been a city boy; he says he feels lost and confused in front of green spaces and trees.

He’d unzipped my black boots slowly, gently stroking my calves. I was wearing black diamond-patterned tights. He started to massage my feet, raising an eyebrow at me. ‘Carry on,’ I’d insisted, leaning back.

With his hand moving up the inside of my right leg, we heard a door shut upstairs and both drew in our breath and looked at each other like teenagers again. I put a finger to my mouth. We’d listened to the sound of my father’s footsteps coming along the creaky corridor. I knew they were Dad’s because they are heavier and more deliberate than Mum’s. My skirt was inching up my thighs; Finn’s hands were touching my hipbone now and pulling at my tights. I’d wriggled and arched my back to allow him to peel them off. We heard footsteps again. ‘Will you remember to turn off the lights when you come up?’ Dad had called down the stairs.

‘What’s so funny, Mum?’ Now George is tugging my coat.

‘Will do,’ Finn had called back, throwing my tights to the floor with exaggerated abandon.

I laugh out loud, remembering.

‘Mum! What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing. Can you grab some milk with the green top and some of your cheese straw things?’

I remember repositioning myself so that I was sitting facing Finn. I was unbuckling his belt; the leather slipped through the loops of his jeans and on to the floor. I lifted my arms and he’d pulled my jumper over my head. ‘The tights were getting lonely,’ he whispered. He’d looked at my bra then, a slightly faded off-white number that needed replacing. ‘I think you could have dressed up a little more for me. This has to come off …’

George rushes back to me with no milk. Instead he shoves a CD excitedly in my face –
Best of Kylie
. He’s also struggling to hold a Snickers bar, packet of crisps and sherbert dip.

I shake my head. ‘That’s four things. I said one.’

He throws them into the trolley. ‘I want them all!’

I take out the Snickers and Kylie. Although I love Kylie … maybe I can keep her? No, I say to myself. George grabs the CD from me and puts it back into the trolley. ‘No,’ I say, trying to keep my voice low and calm. A man walks past. ‘Children are so spoilt these days,’ I hear him mutter.

‘NO, GEORGE.’

He starts to cry. Anyone would think I had run over Rocky and then reversed to make sure the damage was done. Some more looks askance and murmurs of disapproval.

‘
Start as you mean to go on. If your child starts creating merry hell because they want sweets, don’t give in to them
,’ the cheery woman had advised.

George starts to cry violently now, tears streaming down his face like a sudden rainstorm. ‘I want the Kylie CD. It has the “Locomotion” song.’

‘All right, we’ll keep Kylie, but that means no sweets.’

‘But I want the sherbert dip!’

A woman turns round to stare. George and I halt traffic around us like a car crash. ‘I won’t eat them all in one go,’ he insists with big pleading eyes. ‘MUM, I WANT THEM ALL!’

I’m beginning to feel sick. It’s the smell of coffee. ‘OK, fine, keep them.’ His tears dry instantly and his smile returns as if it has been quickly painted on again with one rushed sweep of the brush.

I continue pushing the trolley. ‘My dad likes Jammie Dodgers,’ George tells one of the shop assistants when we reach the biscuit section. He grabs about five packets and another five fall to the floor. I apologise before yanking him up by the arm and ordering him to take one handle of the trolley. With each breath, I am inhaling the smell of coffee beans and the doughy white warm bread that is coming out of the ovens. I shut my eyes. ‘Mum!’ Our trolley crashes into the sweets section. Pick ’n’ mix. George’s hand dives into each box greedily.

‘Is she all right?’ I hear someone muttering.

I can’t go through it again. I can see George dismantling the cot, his small hands pressing against the bars, screaming as if I have put him into a cage. A prison. I haven’t given birth to a baby, I have a trapped animal that wants to make my life hell. I love George now, but then …

Sometimes I couldn’t even look at him.

Unscrewing the bars.

I can hear sweets being thrown into the trolley. George is like an abstract figure to me now. I try to tell him to stop but no words come out.

Opening windows. Trying to jump out of them.

Emulsion paint all over the new carpet.

I can’t do it again. I won’t. I have a life to lead. A good life! I can’t go back to those days.

‘Your child is making a terrible mess,’ a shopper observes. ‘Can’t you control him?’

Radiators being ripped off the wall; curtains being torn and pulled. Handbrake lifted. Accident. Being locked out of the car.

Calling the police.

‘There’s no discipline these days.’

I lean against the trolley. My head is pounding. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘Someone, call for help!’

‘Mummy! I’m sorry, Mum. I’ll put my sweets back.’ George is scrabbling around on the floor.

I can hear voices but can’t register faces.

My breathing is quickening. I feel hot. Dizzy. Sweat on my forehead.

George crawling; breaking everything in the house.

Finn and me arguing.

Sleepless nights.

Burning his hand on the fire.

Accident and Emergency.

Anti-depressant tablets.

Being told I’m not a good mother.

Thinking I am a terrible one.

Living in a faded red dressing gown.

End of my career.

End of my life.

I gulp hard. There is a hand on my shoulder. A balding man with a large badge on his white shirt hands me a glass of water which I take gratefully. ‘Would you like to sit down?’ he asks. ‘There’s a bench over there, behind the check-out.’

I swallow the water in one go. It’s like Popeye’s spinach. I have to know. I straighten up. ‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘very much, but I’m fine.’ I hand back the glass.

‘You take care,’ he says.

George runs alongside me. He starts to pull something else that we don’t need off the shelf. ‘No more trouble or I’ll tell your father,’ I threaten sternly. ‘
Try not to bring your partner into the argument; it’s always best to deal with the crisis on one’s own to gain your child’s respect
.’ ‘I’ll tell Finn and he’ll stop you from using the computer for a week.’ George pauses as he thinks about all those games of Hangman he’ll miss out on. I head for the pharmacy, an air of purpose to my stride at last.

I pick up a pregnancy testing kit. I decide to buy three.

My trolley tries to meander in a completely different direction as I attempt to steer it safely to the car. I bend down to try and straighten the wheel as it is now totally skew-whiff. I hear a car horn honking ferociously and, without thinking, let go of the trolley. ‘GEORGE!’ I scream, seeing him inches in front of the red bonnet. The driver winds down his window furiously. ‘For God’s sake, woman! Can’t you control your son?’

‘I’m sorry, OK?’ I say, tears stinging my eyes like nettles. My trolley is now in the middle of the lane too, blocking the driver’s exit. ‘George, come here!’ He runs back to me so quickly that one of his shoes scuffs the tarmac and he trips and falls. His knee is grazed and bleeding. I rush over to him as he starts to cry.

‘Jesus Christ!’ the man yells.

I help my son up and dust the dirt from his knee. I find a handkerchief from my bag to mop up the blood.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he insists, tears running down his cheeks. ‘It stings, Mum.’

‘Come on, woman. I don’t have all day.’

Other shoppers pushing their trolleys past stop and stare. ‘Stop shouting,’ I tell the red-faced driver, ‘and stop calling me “woman”.’

I can’t control my own son. I will never be able to. I can’t even control my trolley! I keep a firm grip on George and tell him not to leave my side; for the first time that day he obeys me.

*

‘You must never,
ever
cross the road without looking,’ I tell him when we arrive home. He wouldn’t listen to me in the car. Hands held tightly over his ears, he’d hummed so loudly that I could hardly hear myself speak. ‘You stop. You look right.’ I do the actions. ‘You look left. You look right again, and
then
you decide if it’s safe. I was only cross because I was scared. I love you too much to see you hurt.’ I hold his knee still and manage to get a plaster on the cut and even a quick kiss before he wriggles out of the chair.