It’s not quite a wacky, Amelie-style ‘Je suis une cute kooky French girl’ one, thank God, but definitely well shy of her eyebrows. On the plus side, we can see her eyes without having to bend down and peer up at them as if reaching under a sink to examine a U-bend.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘You look like a 1940s film star.’
‘Er, thanks!’
‘Where did you go?’
‘What d’you mean? Nowhere.’
‘For the fringe. You did it yourself?’
A bit defensively:
‘Yeah.’
Because they do care what you think.
‘Wow. Well done: it looks great.’
She looks genuinely pleased.
Her hair is still slightly reddish from being coloured months ago, and she reminds me a little of Rita Hayworth, my father’s favourite star, and then I start thinking about him, and how he never got to meet his granddaughter – or either of them for that matter, and how pleased he would have been.
Sob!
It was not that long ago I packed her off to a friend’s ‘Hollywood’ party in a checked suit I found in a charity shop as Lauren Bacall – specifically, Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not.
And I don’t know how I got away with it, because not only did I make her watch the ‘You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?’ scene on YouTube several times – ‘The suit’s almost an exact match, look!’– I also forced her to go in my actual 1940s shoes – ‘Omigod d’you realize they were made the same year as the film?!’ – which are really not that comfortable. Then she waved her own hair, which looked totally authentic, and submitted to having her picture taken, leaning forward with one shoulder just like Bacall in the publicity stills for the film.
And now, seeing the fringe, I realize that was probably the last time I will have had an influence on the way she looked. Maybe we should have marked it with some kind of ceremony.
And I suppose, after the numerous Clothes Wars over the years, it seems only fair that she should now ignore my preference, take the initiative and cut herself a fringe.
‘Are you going somewhere nice to show it off?’
‘Katarina’s. I’m going to help her reconfigure some shelves.’
‘Here you go.’
Peter comes in with a set of Allen keys, a drill and a saw.
Katarina has moved to a new flat, only a twenty-minute walk away. Peter’s desperate for Brexit to be overturned so she’ll give up any idea of ever returning to Slovakia.
It’s so near Lydia can stroll over there easily, show her the new fringe and imbibe a shot of her sparkling can-do energy while they do the shelves.
But it’s on the way to getting dark, and I can feel my head starting to fill up with all the disasters that could possibly befall a physically fit, capable eighteen-year-old on a twenty minute walk in an area she knows well. As they get older I’m managing to worry a bit less; Lawrence is surviving in Manchester, after all, without me sleeping on his floor. But I wonder if that only puts a heavier burden on his sister.
‘So . . . just text when you’re leaving,’ I say casually.
‘What do you mean?’
She hasn’t left yet, so that would mean texting me from the hall in about five minutes.
‘I mean, text me when you leave Katarina’s, later. You know. So we know when to expect you.’
‘Why? What’s the point?’
‘So . . . If you don’t turn up, we’ll go out and look for you.’
‘If I get mugged it’s not going to make any difference!’
‘Well, yeah, but – there are these men in cars . . .’
In my own defence this is true: among the more recent attempted abductions in our area, a man got out of a green Vauxhall and tried to grab a three-year-old off his bike, and a man in a red car followed a fourteen-year-old two streets from here; she hid in one of the front gardens until he’d gone.
‘Fourteen,’ said one of the neighbours. ‘So at least he wasn’t a paedophile.’
But even the failed ones can haunt you. Given how rare these incidents are, it seems a bit unfair that we’ve ended up in some kind of sex offender hotspot.
She puts down her bag and looks at me with her patient face.
‘I’m eighteen: I’ve done this loads of times already, and I’m going to be doing it loads more in the future.’
‘I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll walk away from the roadside, OK? Now can I go?’
I consider repeating the advice I first gave her and Lawrence when they were small – to scream, kick, get their DNA etc. – but this time, I manage to hold back.
She picks up her backpack and puts in the bottle of wine from us to Katarina with the drill, the saw and the Allen keys. And the front door swings shut.
‘Isn’t it great to see her going off, with her saw and her Allen keys?’ says Peter.
He sees my expression.
‘What? You OK?’
‘Mm. Yeah.’
I don’t want him to know I’m worrying instead of applauding her confidence. He’s right: it is great. And I try to remember there hasn’t been an incident for a few years now. Also, I realize how much she’s his daughter as well as mine: self-possessed, fast on her feet, and now really quite handy with a saw.
Exit Group
I’m going to meet Peter at our friends Tim and Sheila’s for dinner, about forty minutes across town.
Peter’s coming from somewhere else, and I set off in the car in plenty of time. I know most of the route by heart and will just use the phone for the last bit. I get most of the way with no problems, and once I’m quite near I stop and get out the phone. But the map won’t load.
So I pull over beside a man in a parked car and gesture politely to get his attention. Then I add an extra friendly smile. But he won’t respond or roll down the window, just starts trying to pull out round me to drive away – which he can’t. I continue gesturing; how many reasons could a fairly sane-looking female in a car have for stopping beside a man? Does he think I’m soliciting? Unusual, if good for tax deductible mileage and extra seat covers. A mugger? I’d have to get out and walk round to get anywhere near his wallet. Eventually, realizing he can’t pull out until I’ve gone, he reluctantly puts down the window and pretends to be amazed when I ask for directions.
‘Oh! Yes, it’s right then left, then right: off the main road, which is just up there.’
I want to say: Well, what did you think I wanted? But I thank him and continue on my way. Then I realize I don’t know which end of the main road I need, and it’s a T-junction. Again, the map won’t load. So I flag down a young woman with a phone.
‘Have you got satnav?’ she asks.
‘Yes, but it won’t load.’
‘Bless!’
She actually says this.
So, in the space of ten minutes I’ve been perceived as both threatening and past it. Surely they should cancel each other out?
And I hate the fact that if the device fails, it’s the human that’s at fault.
The next day Lawrence is home again, gazing into a bowl of last night’s mashed potato like a medium whose ectoplasm has unexpectedly hardened before take-off.
‘I might do hash browns,’ he says thoughtfully.
‘With the mash? Isn’t that meant to be with chopped or diced?’
‘No it isn’t. It’s meant to be with mash.’
The ‘you are mad’ look flickers across his face.
It’s 10.30 and he hasn’t had breakfast yet, which is the equivalent of about two days without eating for a normal person. For us, one hour is like six. If either of us has low blood sugar, a row can erupt from nought to meltdown in five seconds. If neither of us has eaten, Peter and Lydia tend to grab their magazines and flee upstairs, like the drinkers in a Western saloon when the bad guys ride in. Luckily I’ve had a boiled egg.
‘Well, when I first had them, in New York – where I think they probably invented them �
� the potato was diced. With onion. It was delicious actually—’
‘And how many centuries ago was that?’
‘Er . . .’
A smile threatens to break out so I look down.
‘And had the potato masher been invented? Or did they have to tread the potatoes?’
He demonstrates, stepping up and down exaggeratedly behind the counter. Lydia looks up from the sketches for her bed design, and says:
‘They used to do the laundry at the same time: just rinse off the potatoes.’
‘Ha!’
In a sequence that is now familiar and predictable, this has ceased being about how you make hash browns and become their rolling version of the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch, their supposedly hilarious fantasy idea of my past, where children Went Up the Chimney and Down the Mine and there was no pop music or television, only huge wirelesses driven by steam. Admittedly, I probably brought this on myself by telling them that when we were quite small, my sister and I once asked our dad: ‘What was it like when you were alive?’
Lawrence looks up hash browns on his phone.
‘You can use mashed, diced, chopped, riced –’
‘Like the Swiss dish rosti,’ I say.
‘Yes, like the Swiss dish rosti – or “any type of cooked potato”.’
He emphasizes ‘cooked potato’ as if he is Walter Raleigh explaining the exotic root vegetable to the Tudors for the first time.
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘Just as I said.’
He looks at me, rolls his eyes again and says,
‘I think I’ll have avocado on toast.’
‘Sorry, no bread.’
‘Then I’ll just have to spread it on my hand.’
‘Like we used to do, in the time before bread. Or,’ I say, ‘I could make you some poached eggs.’
This is one of the few things left that I make better than him, or it was – until I rashly told him the magic ingredient is vinegar.
‘So you don’t really need me to make them any more.’
‘I knew that already, though.’
‘Oh. Then my time on earth is done.’
‘But that sounds really good. Yeah, poached eggs on . . .’
‘A – plate.’
He smiles.
I put on the kettle.
‘It really does seem to be costing us far too much.’
He gives me the ‘you are mad’ look again.
‘To boil the kettle.’
At the weekend I cut out a table of energy usage from the paper and stuck it on the cupboard door above the tea and coffee area, where it raises my anxiety levels to no good purpose.
In order to reduce our electricity costs I’ve been trying to interest Peter in a kettle you boil once in the morning that stays hot for four hours, but, as people once did with the telephone, he wants to wait a while – say ten years, and see if it catches on. By which time the microchips in our brains will probably be able to give us the refreshing sensation of having had a cup of tea, with no boiling or drinking required, just like Total Recall – or perhaps Total Reboil.
‘It’d pay for itself in a month,’ I say. ‘I mean, look at how often we boil the bloody thing – at least six times a day, and with you lot here—’
‘Sorry,’ says Lawrence.
‘No, you know I don’t mean that – I’m just saying it’s often, that’s all. And when friends come round . . .’
Lawrence opens his mouth.
‘And don’t apologize for having friends.’
As is the typical reaction around here when I complain about something, no one appears to take any notice, but for the rest of the day, Lawrence responds in his customary ‘amusing’ way.
‘Do you want pasta for lunch, with home-made pesto? Oh no, wait: it involves boiling the kettle.’
Then he stands beside it, with a kind of helpless, winsome expression presumably meant to be charmingly satirical.
‘Just put it on,’ I say.
‘If you’re sure . . .’
Just before supper time, he looks closely at the energy usage table and says:
‘I know you’re really concerned about saving money at the moment, but it really doesn’t seem that much.’
‘What? £1.39?!’
‘Er no: 1.39p. Quite cheap, I’d say.’
‘What?’
I can’t see Peter, but I feel him smirking behind me.
‘It’s just that £1.39 isn’t generally written as 1.39p. So . . . I think to boil the kettle actually costs less than one and a half pence. Which, you know, doesn’t seem that bad.’
A pause.
Of the two parents in this house, I’m the numerate one. I’ve arranged all our mortgages. I sold Peter’s family home after his stepmother died, and sold my father’s house and business, then my mother’s. I’ve completed four entire probate applications, for God’s sake!
‘Well,’ I say cheerily. ‘You’re the one doing the Maths degree, so I suppose you must be right.’
He raises an eyebrow.
But I don’t feel cheery at all. I feel like Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady when she’s no longer prime minister and has to learn how to go to a shop and buy milk.
I’m quite disturbed by this. But if I freak out about it, as the children still like to say, it will be much, much worse. The one thing more awful than declining in front of your children is being distressed by it. The only way is to brush it off – make sure they understand it’s only happened because you’re distracted by more important matters.
‘I’ve been a bit distracted,’ I say, ‘since Mum died.’
And he puts a comforting arm round me.
‘I know.’
Phew. I lean my face against his chest. Then he adds,
‘You just sit down over there, and I’ll get on with making dinner. You don’t want to overstrain yourself now, do you?’
What a relief: he isn’t worried or he wouldn’t be taking the piss.
I make myself a drink and settle down to check my messages, but my phone is dead and I can’t find the charger.
‘My charger is missing,’ I tell Lawrence. ‘Anyone seen it?’
He looks mildly incredulous.
‘Er, believe me: no one wants to steal your charger.’
He was fine about the kettle; why is he reacting to a simple enquiry as though I’m accusing my carers of stealing my clothes?
‘It’s a perfectly reasonable question,’ I say. ‘People take other people’s chargers all the time.’
‘Er, they really don’t.’
That’s it: he really is making me sound paranoid now. But I know if I say that, it will only make it worse. So I stamp upstairs and find it plugged into a socket on the landing, definitely not by me; I know, because I never leave it at floor level, where I have to bend down to get it.
On the phone is a message from the WhatsApp group I recently started for a bunch of us freelancers who meet for coffee every month or so in our local cafe. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Wayhey! I am now – to use an old-fashioned term – bang up to date. I reply ‘Yes’ to our next meet, and at the end, click on Exit Group.
Ah. Possibly that was the wrong thing. I just meant to close it. I try to go back in to rectify it.
It says: You are no longer a participant in this group.
I text my sister, who is even more useless than me, but whose thirteen-year-old son Leo is good at solving problems like this. However, he is at school, selfishly paying attention to his lessons.
I text our friend Patrick.
Rather embarrassing. Have accidentally locked myself out of our Cafe Group. Can you readmit me?
Can’t seem to do it. Sorry.
The children appear.
‘How do I put myself back into a WhatsApp group?’ I ask them.
‘No idea,’ says Lawrence. ‘Google it.’
‘Is that your answer to everything?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘For God’s sake . . . L
ydia?’
‘Yeah. Google it.’
They’re the first generation not to have a shared skills pool. If they don’t need it, they don’t learn it. They don’t use WhatsApp, so I may as well ask them how to build a dry-stone wall. It’s ridiculous. I don’t take milk but I still know how to pour it for other people.
To be fair, we’re only able to watch Netflix because Lydia’s still mediating the precarious relationship between the TV and the iPad, at least until she moves out. The ultra-temperamental HDMI cable that holds them together flickers off if we do so much as press pause, and only she has the magic touch. And the remote – Stone Age technology which has worked fine for about twelve years – is for some reason suddenly only effective when pointed at a certain angle at the bottom left-hand corner of the TV – by her. It’s like Richard Pryor’s description of the way to the female orgasm – so nuanced as to be beyond man, literally.
‘Why does nothing in this house work properly?’ says Lawrence as he drifts unhelpfully past; almost the exact same thing I used to say to my mother, except at her place it was true.
‘Of course, you know you bought the wrong telly,’ adds Lydia, as she goes off to repaint another doll.
Where are the superfast techie teenagers we were promised? These only go at half the speed, and often provide no service at all.
While I wait for Netflix to get in the mood I Google ‘How to rejoin a WhatsApp group’. It says: Contact the Group Admin.
I feel like the ill-fated hero of a novel I read once, who, during a particularly cold winter, accidentally locks himself out of the house and tries to get back in via the cat flap – as you do – and gets his head stuck but can’t reverse out again either, and freezes to death on his own porch.
The next day I’m in our local M&S, passing my ‘belly button’ pasta across the scanner, and the Voice says:
‘Have you scanned your Sparks card?’
And I think:
‘FFS! Can’t you wait until I’ve finished? That is So Annoying.’
I can’t stand self-checkouts; they cut jobs and there’s nowhere to put anything down. And I’m irritated by the Sparks card and its ridiculously narrow special offers, like: ‘20% off pineapple desserts and size 16 nude shapewear’ – which you also have to go online and click on. Could they make it any more of a pain? I always bring it, though.
Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years Page 20
