Not the End of the World

by Kate Atkinson

Pam had never really thought of Simon as capable of independent life (Mum, can you cut me a piece of bread?). In fact, if she was honest, she thought of him as being mildly handicapped. Perhaps it was all those years of listening to Rebecca name-calling him (spaz, mong, retard). The idea of him living in halls of residence was alarming—he could barely manage to pour boiling water onto Pot Noodles. Would he be able to buy Pot Noodles for himself? (Yeah, yeah, campus supermarket, I understand.) He’d never even learned how to open a tin of beans (and God knows, it wasn’t for lack of trying to teach him on her part). She must buy him a cookery book, something simple, Delia’s How to Cook. Just the first one. She wished there wasn’t a vending machine almost outside the door to his room (Oh, wow—sweet or what?).

  Pam had hoped that Simon might at least have waved her off but the thought obviously didn’t occur to him and she’d driven away in a wash of tears so wet that, without thinking, she’d put the windscreen wipers on and had almost landed up in the artificial loch. For heaven’s sake, wasn’t there enough water in Scotland without having to create it? And now she must have taken a wrong turning because she seemed to be in the middle of a golf course. What kind of a university had a golf course? Was it to attract foreign students and their money, which was all the government was interested in, of course? She knew for a fact that there weren’t enough tied books in the library and that all the money went into sports science, whatever that was.

  She knew this from Brian (Beardy Brian) because she’d bumped into him in a pub on an English Department night out and when she told him that Simon was coming here he’d said, all casual, “Oh yes, my girlfriend’s son is doing media studies there.” And the way he’d said “girlfriend” had made her want to punch him. Pam didn’t think that was how he’d referred to her when they’d been going out together. She supposed she was too old now ever to be called a “girlfriend” again. Ever to be a girlfriend.

  There were acres of campus. If the university owned so much land, why did they make the students’ bedrooms so tiny? It was like making someone live in a shoe box in the middle of a field. She halted for a pair of ducks waddling across the road. She’d only just started moving again when a rabbit appeared and hopped lazily along in front of the car. Was it blind? (Did they still have myxomatosis?)

  There was more wildlife than students. Simon had always despised the Scottish countryside (Why would I want to go for a walk—what’s the point?) and now he’d chosen a university where he was going to be stuck in the middle of it—nothing but scenery as far as the eye could see. Not that he’d chosen it exactly, it had been religious studies here or hospitality management at Abertay, equally ludicrous choices for Simon whichever way you looked at it. At least with religious studies (Pam had been assured by the religious studies teacher at her school) you didn’t really have to know anything about the subject. And you didn’t have to be religious, in fact it helped if you weren’t, apparently.

  It wasn’t the religious studies that worried her, it was the fact that he had to do another two subjects in first year. She’d explained this patiently to him several times but she still wasn’t sure he had grasped it. If he could hardly scrape through his Highers, how would he deal with the academic challenges of university? If he hadn’t gone to a good school, if he’d gone to the school she taught at (bottom-feeders), where would he be now?

  Left to his own devices, Simon would never have gone to university. Left to his own devices, he would probably never have left his room. Part of Pam (the bad mother part, she supposed) wished he could just stay in his room forever and then she’d always have someone to look after and would never be on her own.

  She’d never lived on her own before. She’d gone from home to university halls of residence, to a flatshare with other girls, to marriage to Alistair. Hardly time to take a breath and now look at her. She’d been the eldest of four and she’d always thought there would be family around her forever. She’d grown up thinking her parents were immortal, which didn’t look like it was going to be the case. And now she hardly ever saw her brothers (whom she didn’t like anyway), and her sister, Susan, was so used to being the baby of the family (she was forty now, for God’s sake) that it never crossed her mind that Pam might not be coping. But she was coping, wasn’t she? She was too much of a bloody stoic not to cope. Maybe she should try falling to pieces, see if anyone noticed. Of course, they’d just give her Prozac again and tell her she was in a period of transition. Life, life was a period of transition. Birth to death. Nothing before, nothing after.

  When she was at university in Aberdeen, her halls hadn’t been anything like Simon’s mixed-sex, shared-kitchen, anything-goes place. In Pam’s (girls only) halls the cleaners came in every morning and there’d been three meals a day (plus afternoon tea in “the lounge”). She’d never appreciated it at the time—too conventional. Now she’d quite like to move back in. A ready-made life. It would be sheltered housing next. She was probably old enough for it already. Those times in halls were the last time she’d had any fun. If she’d realized the fun was going to run out so soon she’d have enjoyed it more. Was that a fox?

  It started to rain for real. Horizontal Scottish rain. It was taking her all her time to negotiate her way off campus. How would Simon ever manage to find his way around? His halls of residence were so far from the lecture theaters and seminar rooms that he’d probably never bother to go. Was he supposed to walk all this way? Didn’t they have minibuses? Should she buy him a bike? Would he ever use it?

  She drove past a tree beneath which rested some wilted bunches of flowers. She flinched. She didn’t want to think what it meant. This place had one of the highest suicide rates in Britain, a fact Simon had gleaned from the Internet (Cool).

  No, not cool, not cool at all. Would he phone her if he got depressed? Or would he just jump in the lake? (Would he keep his phone charged?) Brian had recited a litany of campus-based disasters to her—the suicides, the accidents, assaults, fires. The ghosts of dead students were everywhere. Or maybe they just transmuted into wildlife. Transmigration of the soul. Metempsychosis. Pam thought of Simon in his tiny cell-like room (did it really meet regulations?) surrounded by cardboard boxes, his stereo, his PlayStation, the guitar he’d never learned to play (Lessons? Only wankers take lessons). He looked so vulnerable, like an oversize, ill-made child. He was a child, he was only seventeen, for God’s sake. What idiot thought seventeen was old enough to go to university?

  It took nearly two hours to drive home. On the M9 she passed one incident of road rage and two car crashes, one of which had a fatal look about it. Grim-faced traffic police standing guard like fluorescent-jacketed mutes. She wished Alistair hadn’t paid for Rebecca to have driving lessons. What if Rebecca bought a car? She’d only be able to afford a wreck, with no safety features and bald tires and failing brakes. Alistair kept his precious new family in a tanklike Volvo. They were obviously more important than his discarded offspring. Driving through Fairmile-head, past stone-built villas, their curtains drawn, their lamps lit, how warm and safe other people’s houses looked. Her house probably looked like that to strangers. Was Rebecca ever going to stop being a stroppy adolescent? She was twenty and she still despised Pam (Christ, Mum, listen to yourself). The thought of Rebecca gave Pam a permanent heartburn. Your children were like a knot of fear that you carried around inside you all the time.

  The house already felt unlived in. Pam went straight up to Simon’s room and lay down on his bed and inhaled the disgusting perfume of his sheets. She burst into the kind of tears she would have been too embarrassed to cry if there’d been anyone to hear her (was that an advantage to living alone? Surely not). The cat came and sat on Simon’s pillow and regarded Pam with curiosity but when she tried to hug it for comfort like a soft toy, it shrugged her off.

  She woke up with a start and had no idea where she was for a few seconds. The house was cold and it could have been any time, day or night, because Simon didn’t possess a clock. For the first three y
ears of his life the rosy-fingered dawn had woken him up and he’d toddled through to their bedroom (had she really shared a double bed with Alistair? Did he ever miss her?) as chirpy as the garden birds (Mummee!). That sunny boy disappeared at four years old and Pam had had to shake him awake every morning since, more aggressively as each year went by (Go away). She put “alarm clock” on the mental list she was making of things that Simon needed—she was going to have to phone him every morning to wake him up (Go away).

  She made a cup of chamomile tea and took it into the living room, where she found a Post-it note stuck to the television screen and for a second her spirits lifted at the idea that Simon had written something for her. She put her spectacles on and read, Remember to tape Buffy for me. Would his lecturers be able to read his handwriting? Why hadn’t he learned to type? Would he ever actually write an essay?

  She took the tea up the stairs. She opened the door to Rebecca’s bedroom and glanced in, as she did every evening. Everything looked like it did before she moved out (It’s like a bloody shrine in here). Rebecca had slept here only three times in the last two years (I’m studying medicine—do you have any idea how much work I have to do?). Once, Pam had had a dream where she had looked into the room and found Rebecca sitting up in bed, a child again, playing with her toys, and the dream had been so real that it woke Pam up and she found that she was crying. There was another Post-it on her own bedroom door, Don’t forget to tape Buffy and in the bathroom one (Buffy!) on the mirror.

  She climbed into bed, feeling bruised all over as if she’d been in an accident. She thought about the car wreck on the M9. Was someone’s life over, had they been driving along, wondering what to cook for tea, whether to put on a wash when they got home, reminding themselves to buy a card for someone’s birthday—and then nothing? It was a miracle that people ever did anything when it could all be over in a second. What was Simon doing? Hopefully, he was asleep and not drinking in the union bar. Or crying from loneliness and fear in his breeze-block prison. She didn’t even want to think about what Rebecca was doing. Something sexual, no doubt, with Hamish, that awful, upper-class twit of a boy that she lived with. You could forget this was still a class-ridden society until you met people like Hamish. (You’re such a bloody inverted snob.) Tomorrow she’d put together a food parcel for Simon. Would she ever sleep again?

  “AND AS FOR bomboniere,” Maggie, Pam’s friend, was saying eagerly, “there’s goodness knows how many ways you can make them up.”

  “Bomboniere?”

  “It’s an Italian word, Pam, or bonbonniéres, if you prefer the French. We could do them in white lace-edged nets with white flowers and pearls, square ivory lace nets with ivory flowers and pearls, purple shadow net with purple heather, Old Gold zigzag nets with gold flowers, pink shadow crystal net with red ribbon roses—the combinations are endless. And I’ve thought of a name for us—Heather ‘n’ Lace—what do you think?”

  Early retirement. It was all to do with money. Sacrifice her “valued” experience and expertise and hire a younger, cheaper teacher. Maggie, a home economics teacher, was cast aside as well. “Look at it as an opportunity, Pam,” Maggie said enthusiastically at break in the staff room, drinking her Gold Blend from a mug that said “World’s Greatest Mum” in large, ugly capital letters. Pam thought of a picture she’d seen of Madonna wearing a T-shirt that said “Mother” on the front and “Fucker” on the back. How old was Madonna? Probably not much younger than they were.

  “No more nose to the grindstone.” Maggie was laughing. “No more nine to five, no more revolting kids—think about it, Pam—all those things we’re always saying we wish we had time to do—theater, cinema, yoga, learn Italian, join a wine-tasting class—culture!” Pam didn’t remember ever wanting to join a wine-tasting class.

  “And my Hannah and your Simon are starting uni,” Maggie rattled on. “We’ll have no jobs, no kids—we’ll be free as birds!” A bell rang for the next period, thank God. No job, no kids—what kind of a life was that?

  A pension, early or not, wasn’t going to be enough to finance this free and easy lifestyle and it was Maggie who came up with the idea of setting up a business. “Something creative, something we’ll enjoy. We’ll be starting all over again—new lives!” Pam didn’t want a new life, she wanted the old one over again so she could do it better, so she could feed her children organic food and give them a Montessori education and do erotic things to her husband—although she couldn’t quite imagine what—after listening patiently while he talked about the finer points of Scottish conveyancing law and insisting he relax and drink a large malt whiskey while doing so instead of helping her prepare dinner and listen to the tribulations of teaching in a third-rate, underfunded, unappreciative school, except that in this new, revised version of her life she wasn’t a teacher—she was a classical violinist. With thin ankles.

  And now she was going into business with Maggie, although she really couldn’t remember at which point in the conversation she had agreed to this venture.

  “Wedding favors,” Maggie said. “It’s a real growth industry. Little gifts for the guests to show how much they’re appreciated. Shall we treat ourselves to cake? What’s life without cake? Lemon or chocolate fudge?” They were in one of the many Starbucks on George Street. Given their exponential rate of growth it would only be a matter of months before Edinburgh was composed entirely of Starbucks—Pam knew they shouldn’t be in there, global capitalism and everything, but really life was difficult enough without having to carry world trade on her shoulders as well as everything else and, anyway, Jenners’ Café was full.

  “We’re the oldest people in here,” Maggie said, taking a huge bite of cake. “Mm, this is yummy.” Pam thought she was more likely to kill Maggie than ever make a successful bomboniera.

  “They’re foreign, it’s a symbolic gift,” Maggie explained, her mouth full of cake. “Each bomboniera contains five sugared almonds, five because it’s a prime number that can’t be divided, just like the bride and groom. Each almond signifies something—happiness, health, wealth, fertility, and long life.”

  What nonsense. How could a sugared almond signify anything, let alone happiness? Especially happiness. People would be buying them by the sackful if that was the case.

  “The nice thing, Pam, is that you can coordinate the color of the almonds to the nets—pink, blue, lemon, etcetera. But the bomboniere are only a part of it, obviously, there’s all kinds of other favors.” Maggie reached into her capacious bag and pulled out a cheap-looking brochure. “Look, little baskets filled with foil-wrapped chocolate hearts, miniature rolling pins decorated with bells or white heather—I’m thinking artificial—dried flower cones, clown boxes, personalized minihats, decorated fans (heather), decorated shoes (heather again)—and everything accessorized with little bows of tartan ribbon—dress Black Watch, I thought, because it’s the most sophisticated.”

  She felt sick. She didn’t know if it was the cake or Maggie.

  “Mini–brass horseshoes, filled brandy glasses, filled flower-pots, minitrugs filled with heather, mouse boxes filled with chocolates, then, of course, there are the centerpieces for the tables—potpourri rings filled with dried flowers, white lace crackers filled with chocolate hearts and decorated with little silver horseshoes, tartan ribbon and heather—”

  “And we make all this stuff? Ourselves?” And what on earth was a mouse box when it was at home?

  There’s a games room and a TV room in halls, how’s that? And last night we got totally trousered on diesel and white lightning and this guy Will killed a duck down by the lake so we’re going to cook it tonight—how’s that for a laugh, we’re going to try for a squirrel tomorrow—

  “Killed a duck?”

  Yeah, but it was an accident—

  “What kind of an accident?”

  I don’t know, an accident, anyway tonight’s metal night in the union so that’s going to be fucking brilliant—we’re going to get so mashed—

&
nbsp; “Shouldn’t you be doing some work, Simon?”

  Work? It’s Freshers’ Week, Mum.

  Well, at least he wasn’t sitting in his room on his own.

  Pam struggled from the car, laden down with pastel nets (no Old Gold, there’d been “a run on it” according to the assistant in John Lewis’s dressmaking department—the mind boggled) plus ribbon roses and dried flowers and glue and ribbon and God only knows what other stuff from Haberdashery (where did that word come from?). Who would have thought this was what the gods had in store for her? The mortise lock wasn’t on. She turned the Yale key cautiously. Was there a burglar in the house? There was a rustling noise coming from the dining room, the sound of drawers being opened and closed. Should she fetch a hammer, or the big Maglite from under her bed—would she get upstairs without the burglars hearing her?

  “Becca!”

  Oh, hi.

  (Why was she always so offhand?) “You gave me a fright.”

  Yeah? What’s that stuff?

  “Net.”

  Gross.

  “Are you looking for something?”

  Yeah. You usually have cash in the sideboard drawer.

  What on earth was she doing rooting around for money like that? Was she on hard drugs? It was easy enough for medics to get hooked on drugs.

  “You could have asked.”

  You weren’t here.

  “Would you like something to eat? Or to drink?”

  I’ve got to go. Have you got any money?

  “What do you need it for?”

  I’ve got to get something to wear for Dad’s wedding.

  “Wedding?”

  For God’s sake, don’t get all upset—he’s got two kids by Jenny, it’s hardly a surprise.

  But it was a surprise.

  Jenny’s all right, you know.

  “So am I.”

  I have to do three subjects! Three fucking subjects—why didn’t you tell me? English and philosophy—how totally fucking crap is that? And I’ve got two essays due in at the end of the week. What a bag of shite. And this is continuous assessment. Do you know what that means?