The Single Mums' Mansion

by Janet Hoggarth

  ‘You can’t stop visitation rights, though,’ I explained. ‘That’s also not right. You need to go about this the right way if you’re going to get your money.’

  ‘Fuck that! I can’t afford to do that. He has all my money. I’m going to go and change the locks on the house and hold it hostage.’

  ‘Ali! That’s also illegal! You have to be the bigger person here because he never will be. I know it’s unfair, but the last thing you need now is to make it worse by keying his car or posting a turd through his letter box. Revenge is a dish best served cold.’

  ‘How about eggs, though? I could throw them at his car?’

  ‘No! Imagine white light round you to try and calm down.’

  ‘Fuck white light! I need to break something!’

  ‘In that case I have something that might help...’

  ‘How come you have these?’ Jacqui asked as we stood facing the fence that adjoined next-door’s back garden. Grace was tucked away in the safety of the kitchen in her bouncy chair looking through the glass doors, and Joe and Sonny had commenced a marathon TV session watching a digger DVD.

  ‘When I was terrified of giving birth to Sonny, I went to see a hypnotist. Meg’s birth had been so awful I didn’t think I would cope at home again, so sought some help to rise above the pain.’

  ‘You are mental, you know that,’ Jacqui laughed. ‘You could have just gone to hospital and had an epidural.’

  ‘I hate hospitals. I wanted to be at home.’

  Ali rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t get what sponges have to do with pain. Were they for mopping your brow?’ she asked. ‘Why would you need ten?’

  ‘No, nothing to do with birth. After we went through hypnobirthing techniques I confessed that I thought I was a shit mum ’cos I shouted so much.’

  ‘You don’t!’ Ali dutifully protested.

  ‘I do! You always miss it because you’re upstairs and can’t hear it. It’s like an airlock up there. Isla once drew a picture of me and I was an angry sneer, no arms or legs, just a red screaming face. I felt shit. So instead of shouting, the hypno lady said I could get these sponges, soak them with water and throw them at the fence.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I didn’t have time to fill up a fucking bucket, cart it out here and throw sponges. I would only have to clear them up and that added another chore on the ever-present to-do list. I just carried on shouting and hating myself even more.’

  ‘Useful technique then!’ Jacqui remarked. ‘So, shall we give it a go?’

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t key Jim’s car. But this just feels silly.’

  ‘The rage will still be there. Best get it out.’

  ‘OK.’ Ali threw the sponge like a total wimp and it fell short of the fence, landing with a pathetic plop on the grass.

  ‘That was rubbish! Try harder. Jim traded you in for a younger model, remember, lied to you, is selling the house from underneath you and won’t pay you proper maintenance.’

  ‘Thanks. He’s vile. I HATE YOU, Jim Bradfield, you fucking cock!’ The sponge soared through the air and smacked against the fence, making it shudder, water exploding from it in a satisfying cascade.

  ‘I want to do it again!’ Ali bent down into the bucket and retrieved another sponge. ‘This is for shagging that slag Hattie Sloan!’

  I dipped my hand into the icy-cold water, dug my fingers into a floppy sponge and whipped it out. Who was it for? What was it for? Ali stared at me, eyebrows raised, a smirk skimming the corner of her lips.

  ‘This is for leaving your kids, lying to me, running off with a fifties throwback, killing my sex drive, and forcing me to be a single parent. I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS SHIT!’ Whooomph!

  ‘Yeah!’ Jacqui cried, clapping her hands in glee. ‘You tell him! Can I do one?’ She delved into the bucket of truth for her sponge. ‘This is for shagging your PA and breaking my heart, ruining our lives and trying to take my money! You won’t win, motherfucker! See you in court!’ Splat!

  ‘Holy fuck, Jacqui! You’re going to court?’ Ali gasped.

  ‘Yes, in a few months.’

  ‘Shit, that’s awful.’

  ‘My lawyer says it’ll be OK, so I’m not worried. Moving on. Who’s next?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Our neighbour, Philippa, poked her head over the garden fence.

  ‘Sticking it to the men!’ Ali said jubilantly.

  ‘Oh, what a good idea! I wish I had thought of that years ago. Go on, do another one. Don’t mind me. It can be like some sort of observational study for my course.’ Philippa was one of those neighbours that made you feel like you had won life’s lottery. Neighbours can make or break your life when you live cheek by jowl, so having ‘normal’ ones should actually add to your resale value.

  Estate agent: ‘Yes, we have four bedrooms, two bathrooms, south-facing garden, through lounge and kitchen-diner. But the pièce de résistance are the neighbours. Here’s the printout about them; as you can see they’re normal…’

  It was yet another example of the universe working its creative magic and softening the blow for my journey into single parenthood. I knew that if the shit hit the fan, Philippa was always next door as back-up. She had recently started training to be a psychotherapist. There was every chance I was a useful unofficial case study, proof that the universe was a two-way street.

  ‘This is for making me go back to work when I was still bleeding!’ Ali let rip with a roar when she sent that one flying. ‘And this is for telling me crying made me ugly.’

  ‘Tosser!’ I yelled as the sponge pugnaciously slapped the fence.

  ‘I think I need to do one!’ Philippa cried through the fence. ‘Pass me one, please. I can throw it at my side.’

  Ali handed her a sopping sponge. We all squeezed together so we could see through the hole in the trellis.

  Philippa drew her arm back slowly like a baseball pitcher and carefully aimed to the left of our faces.

  ‘That’s for all the untold hurt you selfish men-children cause when you leave women and kids to pursue your own happiness. Makes my blood boil! Argh!’ Whoomp!

  ‘Go, Philippa!’ we cried in unison.

  ‘Oh, that felt cleansing!’ She retrieved the sponge and handed it back. ‘You girls are amazing, you know that, don’t you? You’re doing such a hard job. Never forget that. I don’t know how you do it. I only have one and that’s hard enough. These kids need you to be OK. I’m going to suggest Sponge Therapy as a viable option for anger management. Could be the next big thing.’

  10

  Blast from the Past

  March arrived on a bitter easterly wind and instead of delivering Mary Poppins to our door, Jim’s treacherous lawyer’s letter landed hand in hand with my showdown at mediation. Like Ishmael hunting down the giant whale, I felt I was stalking my anger with a single weary harpoon. I was angry at everything. Jim for shitting all over Ali, leaving her depleted and with no fight left. Sam for abandoning me with our three offspring to bring up pretty much on my own, then in mediation saying I contributed nothing financially for our entire marriage, baiting me like an injured bear. I bought half the house, you fucking dickwipe! I screamed silently in my head while I clenched the blue celestite crystal Mel had posted to aid my rudimentary negotiation skills.

  However, his below-the-belt tactics touched a nerve. I was cross at myself for not returning to work properly after having the kids so I wouldn’t be reliant solely on maintenance payments to bolster my paltry earnings. I could go on for days aiming that harpoon, but deep down I knew it wasn’t constructive and I was extremely lucky to have a roof over my head after mediation.

  Sonny had started at a child minder one day a week, paid for by tax credits, and I spent that time staring into space and trying to keep my flame of inspiration alive for the book idea as well as editing the odd manuscript old freelance contacts threw my way. I needed another job…

  ‘What about DJ-ing?’ Ali said one day, when she found me, head in
hands at the living-room table, writer’s block forcing my recalcitrant brain into headless chicken mode. ‘You and Amy are so good at it.’

  They broke the mould when they created Amy. She invented quirky, with her bright red hair tumbling down to her waist, a sly shaved strip round one ear preventing the style appearing conventional. Her clothes were mercurial thrift-shop finds teamed with vintage Topshop, some of the pieces thirty years old. She had a good eye for the unusual. No leggings and baggy jumpers for her.

  ‘I haven’t done that for years.’ I gestured to my dejected turntables buried under haphazard piles of paper, left to gather dust when once they’d gathered disco sparkle. ‘Who is going to want an almost forty-year-old female DJ when everything is computerised and played by kids who don’t even know what a record is?’

  ‘Vinyl is cool again – it says so in all the magazines. You would be retro in a hipster way. I’d love you to DJ for my birthday. Please? I’m going to have it at that place where I had it last year.’

  *

  ‘Will you play some Spice Girls for me?’ Jacqui begged before the party officially started.

  ‘No!’ both Amy and I cried in unison. Sam and I had ventured out here a few times on the rare occasions we had managed to escape the house before Sonny was born. It had been a lively new opening on the Nappy Valley high street, a refreshing change from the gastro pubs and throngs of curry houses. It promised trendy salmagundi mezze platters and exotic cocktails created by expert mixologists, while on the decks DJs spun their own brand of musical magic, all the while attempting to seduce the punters into believing they had jetted off to New York for the evening to party in a boxy warehouse with fake Eames chairs, black-and-white hip hop pictures plastering the walls, and smooth concrete floors to dance upon. The veneer cracked as soon as the bar staff opened their mouths and their south-east London twang spilled forth.

  Ali looked spectacular in a little black dress and gold sparkling heels. Jacqui wore an alluring clinging red dress, her blond hair blow dried so perfectly she looked like a box-fresh Girl’s World.

  ‘Who’s babysitting?’ Amy asked Ali.

  ‘Babs, Freya’s old nanny, agreed to do it. She’s the only person I would trust with Grace, apart from you lot, but you’re all here!’ It was the first time Ali had been out without Grace since she had been born. Isla, Meg and Sonny were with Sam.

  I introduced Jacqui to Ursula, Ali’s oldest friend, whilst Amy played the first record. As I was doing the rounds an unsettling feeling stole up behind me, prickling the back of my neck and shoulders. My palms began tingling with Reiki, like some sort of Beardy Weirdy warning signal. I tentatively looked round and my heart bounced right up into my throat. Woody was here.

  I slipped urgently behind the decks, putting a physical barrier between us. I had no idea how to talk to him. How was he even here? Well, I knew how he’d got an invite – Ali or some of her other friends would have brought him with them – but I thought he was abroad.

  ‘Have you seen—’

  ‘Yes.’ I cut Amy off.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I did know, though. It had been the day of my wedding. That was the last time I had properly seen him. After that, fleetingly at other weddings with one of his many girlfriends, watching him self-destruct with drink and drugs. My friend Rob didn’t like him, even though he wasn’t averse to snaffling pills and dancing all night in gay clubs himself. I idly wondered if he’d already spotted him from among his cluster of flamboyant friends hiding out by the sofas at the back.

  ‘It’s his attitude. He would laugh while watching Rome burn.’ I knew what Rob meant, having witnessed Woody stealing a golf buggy at one wedding when Isla was three months old. He drove it over the golf course next to the hotel where everyone was staying and crashed it into the pond at one in the morning, abandoning it there. We all knew he had done it, but he somehow managed to evade any kind of official reprimand, just like he always did.

  Tall and good-looking in a matinée idol kind of way, with dark shaggy hair, bleached at the tips from sailing, and perfectly white teeth, he could have been an actor, or someone famous just for being themselves. He had that magnetic quality that made people stop what they were doing and stare. But the sheen that radiated off him had definitely dulled over the years as the constant partying chipped away at it, so that now he was a faded pastiche of his former glory.

  ‘I wonder where he’s been,’ Amy said in between records. We’d found our groove and even though it was early on in the evening, people were dragging each other into the space in front of the decks that sufficed as a dance floor, whenever a tune caught them.

  ‘Hopefully, rehab!’ I laughed, trying to disguise my unease at his appearance here tonight.

  ‘Well, yeah, you would hope so! I still would, though!’

  As the evening wore on and the tempo picked up Amy and I didn’t have time to gossip. People thrust drinks at us and we gladly accepted them though we didn’t have time to get drunk. The bar manager came over at one point.

  ‘You ladies are great. Do you do this often?’

  ‘Yes, and we’re looking for a residency,’ Amy enthused, silencing my protests with a sharp kick of her green wedge heel.

  ‘Good stuff. Well, come and chat after.’

  ‘Amy!’

  ‘Amanda!’

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘Because it would be fun. And you need a distraction. You said after mediation that you needed a job.’

  ‘But not this!’

  ‘Why not? You have every other weekend off!’

  I couldn’t think of an answer, so I chastised her another way.

  ‘Hurry, we need to find Salt-N-Pepa!’

  Jacqui had acquired an admirer, a nice-looking young guy out with a group of friends who were all dancing and giving Amy and me the thumbs up every time a floor filler blasted out. Ali was enjoying being the centre of attention, dancing in a massive mêlée of friends and hulking boys who all looked like they had been bussed in from the local rugby club. The evening was flowing nicely until I felt a light tap on my elbow while bending down over my record box at the side of the decks. I stood up clutching a copy of Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’. Exceedingly apt.

  ‘How have you been doing?’ Woody asked me, raising his voice above the music. He kept his hands jammed in his pockets. I took in his clothes – nice jeans, a navy shirt, work boots.

  ‘OK. How are you?’

  ‘I was really sorry to hear about you and Sam. I was very shocked. Everyone was, is.’

  ‘Yeah, well, so was I. It’s been shit.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. How are the kids? How old is the little one now?’

  ‘Sonny? He’s going to be two in a few weeks’ time.’

  ‘Wow. Are they OK?’

  ‘Not really, no. They don’t really understand.’

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  I gestured towards the full bottle of wine underneath the table and the queue of other drinks lined up patiently beside it.

  ‘Ah. OK.’ He didn’t know what to say after that.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go. It’s all kicking off on the dance floor.’

  ‘Sure. Great job, by the way. You always were good on those wheels of steel!’

  I watched him retreat back into the crowd and Ali hugged him, welcoming him into the inner circle buzzing round her. His best friend, Will, was there with his wife, Sarah, all friends of Ali and Sam’s from way back. Will thrust a beer at him and he drained it in one go. I sighed.

  ‘Quick, we need Britney!’ Amy shouted, and I jumped to it, ripping the twelve inch out of its sleeve and jigging it onto the spindle, plopping the needle down gently and listening in the headphones for the beginning of the track. Britney echoed out of the speakers and onto the dance floor as more people barged in from the bar area at the front, drunkenly singing the words and sloshing wine down unsuspecting people’s backs.

>   Confusion reigned at the end of the night. The bar emptied its revellers onto the street, bouncers in long black overcoats shepherded the crowds out like sheep, drinks forlornly abandoned only to be scooped up by efficient bar staff desperate to get home to bed or take the party elsewhere.

  ‘Those girls are with me!’ I cried to the lady bouncer and she stepped back, allowing Jacqui and Ali to stay. Jacqui was still dancing in a corner, the nice boy nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked as Amy packed up the records and unplugged the iPod.

  ‘What? Me? I’m fab!’ Jacqui laughed. ‘What we doing next? I love you gals, you’re the best. I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know that? No one else understands my life.’

  ‘Did someone give you something?’ I asked, the absence of irises giving rise to suspicion.

  ‘What? Nooooooooo!’ she cooed theatrically.

  ‘Ali? What’s going on?’ Ali’s eyeballs were popping alarmingly out of her head, too. ‘Did you both have drugs?’ I hissed.

  Ali started laughing. ‘Maybe’

  ‘Oh, shit. Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes. I want to dance, though. Can we have a party back at the house?’

  ‘I’m going to kill Woody.’ I ran out onto the pavement. Everyone was still milling around, smoking and chatting, ignoring the bouncers, who kept trying to move them on. As the cold air hit me, the drinks I had speed drunk at the end of the evening fired up in my blood stream, walloping me flat in the face. I spotted Woody having a fag with Will, Sarah nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Can I have a word?’ I slurred quite badly, blinking to keep my eyes straight.

  Woody looked down at me quizzically. ‘Sure, what’s got your goat?’

  ‘Have you given Ali and my friend Jacqui pills? They’re both wasted.’

  ‘You look quite wasted yourself.’

  ‘I’m not!’ I protested indignantly, treading on the back of my dress whilst trying to steady myself.

  ‘They’re big girls,’ Woody said laughing. ‘Surely they can look after themselves.’

  ‘Oh, whatever. You’re right, none of my business. Have a great night!’ And I huffed off back towards the bar to order a cab back home.