by Fiona Perrin
‘Just come and stay with us,’ she begged.
‘I can’t – Finn’s got twenty kids coming for a party,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure Liv will help…’
‘I thought Liv hated children.’
‘She does,’ I said, ‘but all she has to do is dole out jelly.’
Liv promised to turn up, ‘As long as I can have a job that doesn’t involve kids.’
I cried on the way to work, ignoring anyone on the Tube who stared at me, and cried on the way home too, and somehow it was fine to sob in front of strangers. I tried very hard to appear cheerful in front of the kids and managed it mostly, despite my red eyes.
Luba said that Lars called one afternoon after the children got home from school and spoke to them each for five minutes. He sent me a terse text on Friday morning saying that he would come to ‘the house’ on Saturday afternoon at around 5 p.m. when his plane landed to ‘see Finn and Tessa’. This meant therefore that he was definitely not coming to Finn’s birthday party, which was due to finish at 4 p.m. He hadn’t changed his mind.
I typed out a response with multiple swear words in it and then deleted it. Then I typed one where I said it didn’t matter, and we should sit down and work out how to stay together and that I loved him deeply, but I deleted that too. Instead I simply put:
I need to talk to you.
It took half an hour for him to reply.
We can talk on Saturday evening.
He didn’t put a kiss at the end but then neither had I.
I bought a bag of balloons and spent a good hour pumping them up; made a pass the parcel where my tears made the paper soggy; made a cake that vaguely resembled a spider; and all week tried to join in with Finn’s growing excitement.
When Saturday finally arrived, Nadine was the first to arrive with Jemima; she sailed up the steps in a flowing sludge-green outfit of what I was sure was ethically sourced cotton.
Finn came running out into the hallway. ‘Happy Burfday to me, happy burfday to me,’ he sang. ‘Oh, Jemima, come and see the animals. There’s no tiger, but there’s a ferret.’
‘Ferrets?’ asked Nadine. ‘Are you sure they’re not endangered?’ As well as proper parenting in a conflict-free environment, Nadine strived to protect the world’s species. ‘Now, Jemima, have a lovely time.’
‘I’m sure Jemima will be fine.’
Nadine also talked about sex as other people talked about the weather. ‘It’s excellent timing – a party this afternoon,’ she leant forward and whispered. ‘I’m right at the peak of my ovulation cycle and I need to go home and have a lovely sexy time with Freddie.’
‘Have a fantastic shag, then, Nadine,’ I said a little more loudly than was strictly necessary, just as two sets of other parents delivered boys called Noah and Abraham. In liberal north London, lots of parents called their children biblical names even though they were atheists or Buddhists. Nadine scuttled off down the steps while the other parents smirked and handed over presents.
‘I love birthday parties when they’re nothing to do with me,’ said Julia as she delivered her boys, Toby and Brad, and Parminder’s daughter, Priti. She went off to get whatever hair it was groomed.
I shepherded the children into the sitting room where the Animal Man had set up an entertainment post, behind which sat a series of cages containing budgies, guinea pigs, a couple of toothy ferrets and an old snowy owl with feathers missing. Small children bashed each other with plastic toys. Luba, her hair still damp and hanging to her waist, stared around her in horror while Jemima screamed over the hullabaloo that she ‘just wanted her mummy’. The Animal Man seemed to have disappeared.
‘Mummy’s shagging Daddy, darling,’ I said under my breath then set about restoring order by bellowing, ‘Everyone, please sit down.’
All the children sat down on the floor, crossed their legs and went silent. ‘Now Luba’s going to play Pass the Parcel with you while I go and find the Animal Man,’ I told their expectant faces.
Where the hell was he? He’d arrived with his cages half an hour earlier, sporting a very seventies moustache.
‘Hello,’ he’d said, passing me a stinking cage. ‘Right, let’s get the fuckers inside.’ I’d obediently started to walk towards the door – where Tessa and Finn had been jumping up and down with excitement – just as he’d added, ‘No, I was talking about your kids, Mrs Fitch – they’re right in the way there and we’ve got a good few cages to unload.’
Now, I searched until I found him in the garden, shivering behind one of the bushes and smoking a roll-up. ‘Yer au pair gave it to me,’ he told me.
‘Can you please come inside and entertain the children?’ I said. ‘It’s chaos in there.’
‘All right, I’m sorry. It’s my nerves, you see, what with the kids and everything.’
‘Why are you doing this job, then?’
‘Me dad died and left me this business and I thought I’d give it a go.’
‘Well, you get inside and start entertaining.’ I put my hands on my hips. ‘It’s my son’s birthday and you’re not going to let him down.’
It was only as he nodded in a beaten fashion that I smelt a tang in the air. ‘Are you sure that’s not grass?’ I asked his retreating back. The entertainer was on drugs.
‘What? No – it’s got a terrible taste though,’ said the Animal Man, starting to wobble down the garden path. ‘You ought to tell that foreigner of yours to buy some proper Golden Virginia.’
But he started giggling as he went back through the kitchen. ‘You know what, kids might not be such hard work today…’
I shrugged – even if he’d been having a spliff he was probably going to be more cheerful for it. Indeed, back in the sitting room the Animal Man had donned a velvet magician’s hat and was rubbing his hands together in glee.
‘Right, kiddies,’ he roared and then giggled all over again. ‘Who wants to see some animals?’
Only the animals didn’t look impressed by this idea. All the children shouted, ‘Meeeeee!’ in return.
The doorbell rang again. I opened the door with a big fake smile and then turned it into a real one at the sight of a trembling Liv. ‘Thank God it’s you.’
‘We’ll probably need this,’ said Liv, brandishing a bottle of Pol Roger. ‘I nicked it from a party. How is it going?’
We went and peered through the door of the sitting room where Finn held a ferret, while the Animal Man told the children that he would have educated them all about ferrets but for some reason he couldn’t remember a word of it.
‘He looks like Geppetto from the old Pinocchio cartoons,’ said Liv.
‘I think he might be stoned. I caught him in the garden and it smelt of grass. He told me Luba gave it to him.’
‘Well, it would be handy if you could score off the au pair,’ Liv said. ‘No sign of Lars, then?’
‘No.’ I bit my lip. ‘No, no sign of Lars.’
For about half an hour, the Animal Man pulled it off. We sat at the back of the sitting room and took some footage of the kids with the grumpy owl rested on their arms; then the ferret preened himself while everyone had a good stroke.
As the children went to wash their hands for tea, the Animal Man started to put the ferrets and the owl back into their respective cages; if I’d looked at him I might have said he did look pale. Liv, Luba and I put all the food into the middle of a giant animal-printed tablecloth on the floor and they all dived in. I picked up the camera again.
‘Do ferrets normally eat jelly?’ Tessa said.
‘Well, I think tame ones eat dog food or something like that, but in the wild—’
‘This one quite likes jelly,’ said Tessa then, quite calmly, ‘and nuggets.’
It was as I looked round to find out just what my daughter was talking about that Liv started screaming. ‘Ami, there’s something in the middle of the picnic… Oh, my God!’ Several children started to shout.
A ferret and a couple of guinea pigs were marauding their
way through the food.
‘Waaaaaahhhhh,’ screamed Priti. I leant forward to try and catch the ferret, which quickly slid out of my hand and raced towards the open kitchen door.
‘They’re escaping,’ I yelled, knee deep in small children spraying splats of jelly in all directions. I tried to close the door as a guinea pig raced out too. ‘Someone get the Animal Man.’ I grabbed the other one by the fur at the back of its neck.
‘I think he’s asleep,’ said Tessa, coming back into the kitchen. ‘Or he might be dead. I kicked him but he didn’t move.’
‘Liv! Get all the kids into the playroom.’
I raced into the hallway, where the owl was flapping above my head. I turned into the sitting room only to confirm that Tessa was right and the Animal Man was well and truly passed out on the floor, yards away from a series of open cages. I threw the guinea pig into one of them and slammed the door shut.
‘Oh, no.’ I gave him a quick kick. He turned over and started to moan, his face behind his moustache a shade of grey that seemed only to offer the promise of certain vomit to come.
I shot back into the kitchen in time to see the second ferret escaping into the garden. I shut the outside door and flew into the playroom, where all the children were now gathered.
‘The Animal Man is passed out in the sitting room,’ I whispered to Liv. ‘Could you please phone 999 while I try and catch the owl?’
I went into the hallway to plead with the bedraggled white owl, which had taken up residency on the picture rail. ‘Woo,’ the owl said, its giant eyes now looking more chirpy.
I heard my mobile ringing from where I had tossed it, among coats and gloves by the door. The number was not one I recognised – probably one of the parents.
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Ami?’ said a northern drawl.
‘Speaking,’ I said, and backed away from the noise of the playroom. ‘Hello? I can’t really hear you – it’s my son’s birthday party. Can I call you back?’
‘This is Ben Jones,’ the voice went on. ‘You were so businesslike the other day, I thought I ought to be the one to make the social call.’
Oh, God. It was the flirty man from Campury.
‘Ah,’ I said, just as the owl started flapping noisily around the ceiling again. ‘I didn’t know there was going to be a social call.’
‘Wasn’t that the reason you were phoning the other day?’ His voice took on a warmer tone.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was phoning about the pitch… Oh, my God!’ The owl had taken a swooping dive in the narrow hallway straight at my head.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ The owl took a perch back on the rail. ‘Look, can I please call you back? It’s my son’s birthday and… Did you get my number from your assistant?’ I’d given her all my contact details when I made the appointment.
‘No…’ Ben started to say, then the owl let out a giant and very loud twit-t-woo. ‘What the hell was that?’ he said instead. ‘Are you OK?’
‘It’s an escaped owl,’ I told him with a sigh.
‘A what?’
‘It’s a very long story,’ I said.
‘You’d better call me back. I wanted to know if you were free for lunch – maybe Monday?’
‘No,’ I said, distractedly flapping at the owl. ‘Oh, my God, it’s crapping on my wall!’ A trickle of dirty white liquid descended down the hall paintwork. Its circular eyes widened to take up even more of its face as it did it.
The man at the end of the phone erupted. ‘What a hoot.’
‘Look, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to talk to you like this, what with the pitch going on and everything.’
‘But Liv said—’
‘Liv?’ I was completely confused.
‘Yes, when I met her at our launch the other night. She told me all about you and how you were newly single and – listen, I don’t normally do things like this, but it did sound like we had a lot in common and—’
I went ice-cold and swung in the direction of the door to the playroom. ‘She did what? She said what?’
‘I thought she’d told you.’
Liv came out into the hallway. ‘One of the little bastards’ nose is bleeding,’ she said. ‘What do I do?’
‘Is that Liv?’ Ben asked.
‘Wipe up the blood, quick, before his parents arrive,’ I said. I gesticulated to her that I was going to cut her throat and she looked back at me wide-eyed. ‘Yes, yes, it is. Look, she should never have done that.’
Liv’s mouth went into a grimace. ‘Is that the man from the other night?’ she whispered. ‘I knew there was something I needed to tell you.’
I made more signs of imminent murder and she disappeared back into the kitchen.
‘And then you called me straight away and I thought…’ Ben went on.
‘It’s all a massive mistake,’ I said, trying to stay calm. ‘Look, I really can’t talk now. I’ll call you and explain later.’
‘OK, goodbye.’
I clicked my phone off and threw it onto the hall table.
‘He was quite good-looking if I remember rightly.’ Liv reappeared with a stack of napkins.
‘I’m going to kill you.’ I picked up the child with the bleeding nose and carried him into the kitchen. ‘Abraham, it’s only a little bit of blood. We don’t need to tell Mummy about it, do we?’
I mopped him as Liv told me that a paramedic was on its way but it might be some time as someone passed out and snoring wasn’t an emergency. I chased the owl into the sitting room with a broom, where it sat scowling on the mantelpiece, while the Animal Man snored underneath it.
‘Shit on him,’ I told the owl, shutting the door firmly so that the chaos was hidden from view.
We gave out birthday cake to the kids and smiled while fathers and mothers collected their offspring.
‘That was the best party I’ve ever been to,’ I heard Jemima tell Nadine as they went down the path.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, but Mummy, what’s shagging?’
Julia turned up then with new highlights and looked questioningly at me. ‘I’ll tell you all about it on Monday,’ I said, winking. ‘Your hair looks fab. Hope the date goes well.’ As far as I could work out, Julia’s dates always seemed to be with blokes who sounded promising but turned out to have mother issues, be scared of children or have very small penises.
I turned back to face the chaos of my household, putting a sleepy-looking Finn and his sister in front of a DVD, and then I went to find Liv.
‘Now you’d better explain,’ I said, ‘what you’re doing messing with my professional life.’
Liv sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I was going to tell you, it’s just that you were a bit upset this week and frankly… well, frankly… I was so drunk that I can only remember bits and pieces. It was a terrible party – really pretentious – and there was absolutely no food, just loads of free champagne. What’s wrong with fashion people, by the way? Why can’t they eat? They could always throw it up later.’
‘Stop talking rubbish at me,’ I said, violently scrubbing at the blobs of jelly that were all over the kitchen cupboards. ‘What exactly did you do?’
‘I was just chatting to him…’
‘And you asked him if he wanted to go out with your just-getting-divorced saddo friend?’
‘No, it wasn’t like that. He told me he was in the same sort of industry as you, has got a couple of kids of his own, just like you, and… of course he had a massive advertising budget. I was trying to help.’ Liv met my eyes.
‘And that’s just it, Liv. I found out about his account being up for grabs and, get this, I rang him on Wednesday to make an appointment.’
‘You see,’ said Liv. ‘It’s serendipity.’
‘It’s a massive fuck-up! We really need to win his account and it would really save my company. And when I rang him he wasn’t surprised at all but he didn’t say he had met you… but when I very profession
ally asked him for an appointment, he made out he was expecting me to call and now he is going to think I am some divorcee begging for a date. How much more humiliating can my life get?’
‘Now, hang on,’ Liv tried. ‘Get some perspective, just a bit of—’
‘He was flirting with me.’
‘Good,’ said Liv. ‘What that means is he likes what I told him and he wants to meet you. It’s a great situation and you’re just making a big fuss about it.’
‘But I’m only interested in his business, Liv. This is my actual life we’re talking about here.’
‘It’s all fine. I talked to him for quite a long while if I remember rightly – not that I remember much. I told him what you’d done with all those projects you do. Now have a drink and calm down.’ Liv went to the fridge and then struggled to open the bottle of Pol Roger.
I started to giggle. ‘Oh, my God,’ I said, as the chuckles grew into gut-wrenching laughter and the champagne went pop. ‘And there’s still a passed-out man in my sitting room… ha, ha, ha…’
Liv smiled too. ‘I must say the party was much more interesting than I thought it’d be.’
It was then that the doorbell rang. Behind the stained glass I could make out the tall, nervous shape of Lars shifting from foot to foot.
4
2007
Lars was hard to miss when he moved into a flat above the Bloomsbury basement Liv and I rented in our twenties. His length and colour made him stand out like a single dandelion in an acre of gravel.
‘Really quite gorgeous, if you like blonds,’ Liv said. She had a string of beaux at that time, all of whom she happily spent hours tying into knots of despair. I was dating a geek called Archibus from the British Museum. His fondness for ancient times extended into the bedroom where he was fond of tantric sex – I came out feeling more as if I’d had a game of Twister than got laid.
