Souper Mum

by Kristen Bailey

  ‘Hon, we all do that. We’ve all got a Richie. I always say it’s healthy – past relationships are what shape you, what move you along. You’d be crazy not to think about them occasionally.’

  I smile at her, knowing all too well who her Richie is. She gives me a look that suggests it needs to stay secret for now. I raise my glass to her as she smiles and downs the red wine in hers.

  Donna pipes in. ‘Freddie Lyle. Squaddie who went off to Afghanistan. Wrote him a letter every week when he was gone but turned out he’d been shagging my cousin Felicia the whole time.’

  Luella nods along, glad someone’s half reinforced her point. Annie nods her head slowly.

  ‘Mark Cadbury.’

  I grab Annie’s hand. Tall lawyer who rowed boats and had blond, floppy hair like a golden retriever. Broke her heart to search out the more dynamic social/work scene in Hong Kong where he ‘needed to be single’ but got there and married a society girl called Pearl Amoy within four months. She grabs back.

  ‘There’s always that one who gets under your skin. But you and Matt are solid, right?’

  Solid in a sort of dependable, unmovable way. Like an Ashford and Simpson song, solid like a dependable, if rather uneventful, rock. I bob my head about to Donna’s unease.

  ‘Hold on, I saw that bloke in the papers. Matt’s much better looking than him.’

  Luella grabs her iPad and starts typing. Suddenly my Facebook page opens and she scrolls down to find Richie’s name on my friends list. Profile open, everyone ogles the page – Annie bursting into hysterics.

  ‘Jesus Christ, he got old. Is that a paunch?’

  I ache to see his picture again. A sort of ache like a blinding migraine – that maybe if I see his picture again it might hypnotize me into thinking things I shouldn’t about a man I don’t really give a monkeys about.

  ‘He’s balding, Jools. That’s not good hair genes,’ adds Luella. Donna continues to scroll through the pictures.

  ‘Good lay?’

  ‘My first.’

  Everyone turns to face me. I think back to walls covered in posters of Lamborghinis and teen girl insecurities. Everything was done under the duvet so we spent the first half hour thinking we’d had it down when really he’d been dry-humping my inner thigh. The ladies realise what this means. Yep, along with Matt, I’ve only ever slept with two men. My frame of reference is sorely lacking compared to the double digits I suspect at least two people around this table are on. Donna continues.

  ‘So pretty shit then?’

  I laugh and raise my eyebrows. Not that it got better, being turned over like a side of meat when he wanted a change of position, looking over a bony shoulder as it jutted into your cheek. He was young, my pleasure was a mere afterthought, oral was misaimed and lasted as long as he could be bothered, orgasms were what I read about in magazines. Then Matt came and changed everything. I mean, it didn’t go all Fifty Shades crazy but he’d look into my eyes and would spoon me and cup my face like it meant something. When did we last have sex? Maybe a month ago, before all of this happened; I was paranoid that Millie would hear everything so we did it in the bathtub which proved a good move given we could clear up much easier afterwards. And it was the sort of sex we had become used to. One could say it scratched an itch. He was satisfied, so was I. We held each other for thirty seconds after with the I love yous then smiled at each other through the mirror as we brushed our teeth. It was and always is with Matt, we get the job done.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  We all laugh, when suddenly a text box pops up in the corner of my computer.

  R: Hey hon. We must have got cut off the other day?

  How’s it going?

  Donna’s eyes open up into Frisbee-sized saucers and she grabs the screen. To say I freak out is a slight understatement. I grab the computer in time to read:

  J: Husband and his big cock lured me to bed.

  Luella is in fits of hysterics as Annie goes ashen to read it.

  R: Ummm, OK. RU drunk?

  I am. We all are. But I have enough sense to know that this sort of talk should not be encouraged. I try and grab at the screen but I must be drunker than I thought as I end up grabbing at air.

  J: Pissed up on Cristal. That’s wot I drink now I’m famous.

  R: Ummm, is this you, Jools? The Jools I knew would prefer to get pissed on tequila shots.

  I let go of the glass in my hand as Donna taps the screen to make sure it’s not attached to some sort of webcam. I grab the screen from Donna.

  J: Yeah, it’s me. Sorry that was a friend messing about.

  R: Thought as much. You never guess who I bumped into yesterday. Pete from A Level Biology ;) ;)

  Three pairs of eyes glare at me to explain the winky emojis.

  ‘It’s just from something he mentioned the other day.’

  This is not enough.

  ‘We had sex in a lab at school. He just …’

  Annie’s face goes from ashen to cadaver white. Donna laughs while Luella seems to eye me curiously over how that might have come up in conversation.

  ‘Were you sexting each other?’ asks Donna.

  ‘Christ, no!’

  My fingers move over the keypad with impressive speed.

  J: Yes, it was highly inappropriate. I’m married.

  R: To Mafia Matt.

  Annie sucks air through her pouted mouth while Donna grabs the screen back from me.

  J: 2 some1 without a jalfrezi gut nd who still has all his hair.

  Luella laughs, slightly inebriated, slightly goading Donna on in a rabid mob way. Annie smiles. I grab the screen back.

  J: To someone I love very much.

  R: Your mate again?

  J: Maybe.

  R: Tell her this is none of her business.

  Ooops. This is enough to set Donna off. She jumps out of the kitchen chair trying to grab at me. Luella and Annie are in hysterics.

  ‘Come here! Fricking needle pricked, up his own arse wanker – none of my business? Give me that iPad.’

  The kitchen door swings open as Donna half mounts my back and Matt appears with a pair of wet pyjamas and Millie cradled in his arms.

  ‘Ladies, I see we’re feeling a bit better about things?’

  Donna straightens herself out and I stand to attention, half guilty, half with an ache in my back that makes me think my body is too broken to give a grown woman a piggy back ride. Luella smiles to see Matt, given he’s all trendy in his old Ramones T-shirt and frayed jeans, like to question a relationship with someone so fashion forward is insane. Annie decides to escape the awkwardness of knowing we’ve just been talking about Richie by grabbing the baby. Do I feel a bit better about things? I feel drunk, that’s for sure.

  ‘So who’s a needle prick?’

  The room freezes. A lump forges itself in my throat like a golf ball.

  ‘Who else? McCoy!’ says Luella. I look over and see how easy it is for her to lie. I, on the other hand, am going a light, sun blushed tomato red.

  Matt shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘Well, maybe next time Jools can feel his crotch up and find out.’

  And everyone laughs except me as the iPad glows in the corner of my eye and Richie’s picture looks up at me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Hannah and I look down at the cupcakes on the counter and she pats me on the back like we might be looking at the carcass of roadkill. If there’s any moment where one feels they’ve failed as a mother, it’s when the cooking goes awry. Because it should be so simple. It’s raw ingredients and, most of the time, you are just applying heat to them and changing their physical state. You chop, you stir, you mix and when in doubt, you add a stock cube. But no. Every so often, these simple laws of home economics fail you. Beautiful, raw ingredients that animals suffered for, that were destined for greater things, become sorry pitiful sights that even the neighbour’s cats reject. And you will have failed. People will go hungry, time and money would have been wasted, you will have
doubled your washing up quota for the evening. Worse still is the look your daughter will give you. You are my mother. I am thankful for that and every effort you make to care for me. But please, please don’t make me take these to school.

  ‘Maybe we can pick the tops off and smother the tops with Nutella and Smarties.’

  Another look. Even Millie looks over from her high-chair, unimpressed by my baking efforts. It’s the Year 3 cake sale today and expectations are high for the new ‘celebrity chef’ at Clifton Primary. I was excited to be given the chance to prove myself to the mummy masses. Because I can do cakes in every sense of the word; from the eating to the making and creating foamy dollops of buttery goodness, cake is generally something that is very right with the world. That is until a teething toddler means you don’t get round to making them until 10.30 p.m. And then you set the oven to grill so said cupcakes, which should be lovely, tanned, and wearing little icing turbans, are charred, black, and looking like my sink ever since I tried to set my Tommy McCoy cookbooks alight.

  ‘Or we could dust icing sugar Batman motifs on them?’

  I may have got a smidgeon of a smile. That will do. She sits down and reaches for the Weetabix, breaking out two biscuits and painting happy faces on them with honey like she always does. Millie, meanwhile, smothers hers in her hair, down her pyjamas, along the bottom side of the table, and across the newspaper on the table folded back at an article droning on about McCoy’s new quest to try and revolutionise the bread industry. Never mind rogue bankers, coalition governments, and no money in the NHS, it was crappy bread that was bringing this country to its knees. To prove his point, my picture is there and probably the worst thing that’s ever been written about me. Jools Campbell, 31. Yes, I’ve aged two years in a matter of mere months. I sigh to see it again and Millie flings more Weetabix over it. That’s my gal. Try working some of that magic on these sad looking cupcakes too.

  ‘What are these?’ Gia shuffles behind me in her slippers, her eyes drawn curiously to the cupcakes on the kitchen table. I won’t lie, I like the way she wears velour in the morning, looking all toasty and regal. The looks of disdain I can do without. ‘I tell you, let me help you. But no, Juliet.’ She picks up a cupcake and sniffs it curiously then flicks her finger over the top. I half expect them to echo. Then she turns her nose up and looks at me. What gene are you missing that means you cannot bake? She shakes her head, shuffling over to the counter to retrieve a tin hidden behind the microwave.

  ‘Hannah, bella. Here, you take these. Chocolate biscotti. I think you can sell at your cake sale.’

  Hannah’s eyes speak relief. Gia’s speak that she may have made this under the cover of night just to cover my back. I am part grateful, part embarrassed, maybe a little peeved she knew I was destined to fail so had hidden baked goods waiting in the side-lines.

  ‘Thank you, Gia.’ She doesn’t respond but nods quietly at me like her work is done, before looking at Millie and tutting that I maybe should have stepped in before allowing Weetabix Armageddon to have happened.

  My cupcake failure and being usurped by the baking goddess continues to haunt me at the school gate as I see my little people jog into their classrooms, Hannah clutching her cake tin like a trophy. Gia’s presence has, no doubt, been helpful in our current predicament, yet she still seems to have her beady eye over my shoulder, watching, maybe judging, definitely beating me hands down in the cooking stakes. She’s also a reminder that as I try to become this media incarnation of the all-cooking wonder-mother, there was always someone who would trump me in that department. It makes my shoulders slump slightly. Maybe I need to buy a Paul Hollywood book. Maybe I need to buy something in velour.

  ‘Mrs Campbell. Morning, can we have a chat? It’s about Jake.’

  I stand to attention and take a huge breath.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Whittaker. Is this about Saturday? I had hoped it wouldn’t cause too much disruption, at least not like last time.’

  She ruffles her brows at me. I guess she didn’t see it, guess she’d be more of a Countryfile sort.

  ‘Oh no, it’s just due to health and safety regulations we would like Jake to come into school wearing underwear.’

  My mouth drops open a little. Look at this woman, revelling in her newfound celebrity so much she forgets to put pants on her son!

  ‘Oh! Sure. I will talk to Jake.’

  She nods her head, not in judgement but in expectance. This was the woman who appeared on the television and most of the national press without a bra, maybe it’s a strange family aversion to undergarments.

  ‘And one more thing, Mr Pringle was hoping to have a chat. He’s through by the office.’

  I smile and nod again. Hannah. The thought that I haven’t had our ‘little talk’ yet comes into mind and I wonder what emotional distress may have carried itself into her schoolwork. I picture Key Stage tests completely failed, artwork drenched in grey, black, and blood red.

  I like Mr Pringle. Not in the way most of the mothers do, the ones who look on fluttering their fingers and walk past him with their shoulders out to boost their flagging bosoms. It’s just outside of school, he might be a little trendy and in class he’d be the sort to perch himself on the edge of a desk and roll his sleeves up. Case in point as I find him signing registers, a Crumpler bag slung over his shoulder, wearing a big, billowing shirt that makes the lower half of his back look inflatable. He tells me to have a seat at the main reception area on the giant orange sofas then brings Hannah out. She stares at me intently and I freeze. Is this about me?

  ‘So how are you, Mrs Campbell?’

  I don’t know how to answer. I’m having a bizarre celebrity food feud with Tommy McCoy, the ghosts of my mother/ex-lover are back in my life, and most nights, I get about five hours sleep, proven by the dark circles under my eyes and my electric honey frizz. I go for the safe, ‘I’m-in-front-of-my-child’ option.

  ‘I’m OK.’ Hannah comes and sits on a child-sized chair, hooking her arms underneath my knees. Mr Pringle smiles.

  ‘Is everything all right? I understand the past fortnight has been pretty hectic and I did speak to Mrs Whittaker about it.’

  He smiles his orthodontically stunning smile and shakes his head.

  ‘Oh, that. It’s fine. I guess. It’s just … I wanted to talk to you about Hannah.’

  I sit up straight in the chair for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. That it might make me look like a more morally upstanding parental type, perhaps.

  ‘It’s just … this is awkward. I mean, has Hannah started menstruating yet?’

  He blushes. I blush. I open my mouth in horror, like I can suck enough air in to rid the room of oxygen. Why are you saying this in front of my daughter? I want to put my hands over her ears. She looks at me, confused.

  ‘God, no. I don’t think so. I think she would have said something. Definitely.’

  I think about that sentence again. Have Hannah and I drifted apart so much that in her hour of womanly need when she would have been scared and confused, she’d not been able to tell me? She was eight, for god’s sake. Although I’d read enough parenting/trashy magazines to know this was not an impossibility, there was no way she’d have been able to cope seeing blood in the gusset of her knickers without freaking out. Definitely. Hannah still looks confused. Mr Pringle blushes from his cheeks to the backs of his ears.

  ‘It’s just … the other day she brought a box of tampons into school and was giving them out to her friends.’

  ‘Like presents?’ I stare at Hannah. You give out stickers, you give out sweets. Not my sanitary wear.

  ‘I wasn’t entirely sure. But I don’t think she was doing anything malicious.’

  Hannah, who has sat there looking like we might have been talking another language, pipes in. ‘It was Billy Tate.’

  Billy Tate’s started his period? Mr Pringle and I look at each other. ‘Billy said his mum didn’t use tampons and he wanted to see some so I brought some in.’

 
I nod my head. OK, that’s not terrible. That’s not handing out something like cigarettes or a crack pipe. Worse, it could be condoms. Still, my aghast face speaks volumes. Mr Pringle looks just as embarrassed with having to look me in the face and talk about the fact he knows I use super flow Lil-Lets and Fiona Tate doesn’t.

  ‘Ummm, well … maybe next time, just the one – you don’t have to take the whole box.’

  Mr Pringle nods, as does Hannah. Awkward conversation over!

  ‘Obviously, we are very sorry. I guess it was just curiosity and I will have a chat to Hannah about well, keeping such … products at home from now on.’

  I’m not sure where else this discussion needs to go. ‘I didn’t give them all out. Harriet didn’t take one. She told me dolphins can choke on tampons so her mum uses a mental cup.’ Well, there, obviously. I try to stifle my giggles. Mr Pringle looks at me for back-up as his eyes glaze over.

  ‘You mean a menstrual cup?’

  Hannah nods and lays her head across my knees. Mr Pringle looks at us, relieved, slightly thankful, and smiles. Hannah just picks at threads in my jeans. How long before she stops doing this? Sitting intently, letting life-changing information just pass her by. I wince a little to think of her being older, some moody, pre-menstrual teen that hates and blames me for her female circumstance. She pipes in again.

  ‘You’re talking about periods, right?’

  ‘And you know what periods are?’ Mr Pringle asks.

  ‘Some girls in Year 6 told me. My mum tried to explain it to me once. It’s kind of gross but I get it.’

  Is it terrible to think I can’t for the life of me remember what I told her? From the corner of my eye, I see Mr Pringle nod in agreement. Yes, I agree they are gross. But you also appear to have some level of knowledge on the matter. No harm done. Hannah just smiles, looking over to her classroom to see what she might be missing. I brim with what could be relief but what I think might be pride.