From Here To Paternity

by Matt Dunn

  And as I get into my car and start the engine, it occurs to me that unless I start doing something about it right now, that stands a very good chance of being the title of my autobiography.

  Chapter 2

  It’s the following morning and, as is usual every Monday, I’m woken up early by Magda, my cleaner, banging around in the kitchen. I don’t really need a cleaner, especially at twenty pounds an hour–I’m hardly a messy person and, besides, it is only me in the flat–but Magda also does my laundry, and quite frankly I’d pay twice what I do at the moment to get my shirts ironed.

  I reach across and hit the ‘snooze’ button on my alarm clock before it goes off, then get up and pull on a pair of trousers over my boxer shorts, retrieving last night’s T-shirt from the back of the chair, and head bleary-eyed into the kitchen. When I get there, I find Magda down on the floor on her hands and knees, and with her head in the oven.

  ‘Morning, Magda,’ I say, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. ‘Things can’t be that bad, surely?’

  Magda sits back on her heels and frowns up at me. ‘What?’

  She’s dressed in her usual uniform of jeans, trainers, and a T-shirt with one of those phrases printed on the front that doesn’t quite mean anything–today’s says ‘Rifle Sporting Limited’. With her dark, spiky hair, pale skin, and despite almost the entire contents of the Argos jewellery catalogue adorning her ears, she’s pretty in a moody, slightly tomboyish way. I’d guess she’s around twenty-five–if her eyes didn’t seem to be about a decade older than the rest of her. ‘I have seen many things,’ she said once, when I told her she looked older than her years. Although, on reflection, she may have meant in this flat.

  ‘It’s an electric oven, anyway,’ I say. ‘You won’t be able to—’ I stop myself quickly, realizing that making a joke about gassing yourself probably isn’t in the best taste, particularly if, like Magda, you always walk around as though the world’s about to come to an end. Besides, Magda never gets my jokes, and although I like to tell myself that it’s because of the language barrier, while her English has improved considerably over the past couple of years, her appreciation of my sense of humour hasn’t. I suppose we didn’t get off to the best of starts–especially when she first appeared at my door and announced ‘I Polish’, so I fetched her a cloth and a tin of Mister Sheen and pointed her towards the table.

  ‘I don’t know why I clean oven every week,’ she says. ‘You never use.’

  ‘I don’t know why either, Magda,’ I say, although it’s possibly because otherwise she’d struggle to occupy herself over the three hours I pay her for. ‘Maybe one of my neighbours sneaks in when I’m not here and makes themselves something to eat.’

  ‘It is bad not to cook,’ she says, standing up and placing a can of Mister Muscle on the worktop. ‘In Poland, everybody cook. Even boys.’

  I grunt, not wanting to get into another one of Magda’s ‘in Poland’ stories, and help myself to a variety box of Frosties from the cupboard, which I eat straight from the packet, much to Magda’s evident disgust. Magda sometimes feels she’s my surrogate mother, which at times is nice, although not when she marches into my bedroom and starts hoovering round me at seven a.m.–especially when I’m still entertaining from the night before, if you know what I mean.

  I flick on the television and finish my Frosties in front of the breakfast news, then jump into the shower, being careful to lock the door in case Magda decides now is a good time to clean the bathroom, and half an hour later I’m heading out of my front door. I hurry down Richmond Hill and along the high street, past Richmond’s numerous cafés, mobile phone stores and charity shops, aiming for the building overlooking the Green where my office is. It’s a chilly morning, and I’m dreaming of my first cup of coffee of the day, but just as I’m passing the Ann Summers shop on the corner, a girl with dreadlocks and a pierced nostril blocks the pavement in front of me.

  ‘Hi, there. Can I have a minute of your time?’

  Too late, I spot the familiar clipboard and brightly coloured fleece top. I avert my eyes and try to walk on past, but she darts in front of me and starts to walk backwards, talking all the while.

  ‘Can’t you spare just a moment or two? To help old people?’

  This has happened to me often enough recently to know that it’s not a moment or two she wants, actually, but my bank details on a direct debit form. And if I signed up with everyone who accosted me here on the high street, it’d be me who’d be the one in need of charity. Besides, I’ve got things to do today, particularly if I’m going to put my plan into action.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m’–I glance theatrically at my watch–‘late for a meeting. And it’s freezing,’ I add, side-stepping her at the same time, and realizing as soon as I say it that that must be the lamest excuse ever for not donating to charity.

  ‘So are thousands of pensioners,’ she calls after me, making me feel instantly mean. ‘To death. Every day.’

  Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten that the café opposite my office building is closed for refurbishment, and so I have to turn round and furtively walk back past where Miss Dreadlocks is trying to accost someone who looks old enough to benefit from the charity she’s collecting for, and head round the corner into Costa Coffee instead. I buy myself a large cappuccino, dropping my change guiltily into the charity box on the counter, before checking the coast is clear and making the short walk back to my office, where I jump into the lift and ride up to the second floor. As the lift doors open, Jen, the receptionist, puts down her copy of Heat and smiles at me.

  ‘Morning, Will. Good weekend?’

  I shrug. ‘Not bad. Up until I got accosted on the way in this morning.’

  Jen rolls her eyes. ‘Same thing happened to me on Friday. Bloody chuggers.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Chuggers. Charity muggers. There’s a rash of them in Richmond at the moment. What was it for today?’

  ‘I dunno.’ I take a sip of my coffee through the little hole in the lid, nearly scalding my tongue in the process. ‘Help the Aged, or something.’

  ‘That’s ironic.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Asking you for that,’ she says, smiling cheekily at me. ‘You might as well just keep the money.’

  ‘Don’t be so disrespectful,’ I say, trying to glare at her, but unable to stop myself from grinning. Jen’s probably about twenty and, thinking about it, that makes me half as old again. ‘I can have you sacked, you know.’

  She picks up her magazine and pretends to be fascinated by an article about what Posh Spice doesn’t eat for breakfast. ‘I know,’ she says.

  I glare at her some more, then head off down the corridor and into my office. I run a life-coaching consultancy, which sounds very grand but basically means that people whose wives or husbands have become fed up of them moaning come and moan to me instead about how bad their ‘lot’ is. I spend the best part of an hour listening to this, give them a bit of perspective by reminding them that there are starving children in Africa, and then spend the final five minutes trying to get them to focus on the positives–which here in Richmond are usually related to how much money they actually have–before relieving them of some of it.

  I say consultancy, but I employ only one consultant–me. And I’d like to think I’m a fair boss–I give myself the day off whenever I feel like it, and don’t make myself work too late. It’s not the most difficult of jobs, and aside from the fact that it can be a bit soul-destroying to listen to someone who earns slightly less than the GDP of Belgium tell me that his Porsche, five-bedroom house next to Richmond Park, and ski lodge in Val d’Isere don’t quite make him happy, it pays well. In fact, at the risk of mixing my metaphors, it’s the Orient Express of gravy trains. And I shouldn’t really be hypocritical, because it’s rewarding in other ways too. And while I’m different from my clients in that the flat on Richmond Hill and the TVR that they’ve enabled me to buy over the years do actually make me happy�
�to a point–so does the fact that I’m genuinely able to help some of them with their problems.

  All of which is funny because I’m not really ‘qualified’ to do this. Sure, I’ve got a certificate on the wall with my name on it saying that I’m a Fellow, Life Instruction Programme Practitioners And Natural Therapists (which Tom takes great pleasure in pointing out spells ‘flippant’). But while most people study for years for that certificate, I bought mine from eBay.

  I’ve been life coaching for about four years now. And although this line of work was quite unusual when I started the company–which used to be called ‘Get A Life’–now it seems everyone is doing the same thing, so there’s a lot of competition. Here in west London it seems you can’t move nowadays without bumping into a something-or-other coach, so I’ve gone one step ahead and called my method the ‘Life Train’. And why take the life train? Because it gets you there faster than the coach, of course. And how did I get into this? Well, a little by accident, really. I’ve always been someone who other people find it easy to talk to. Or maybe it’s talk at. But either way, people seem to like unburdening themselves to me. And to be honest, I don’t mind, whether it’s over a coffee, a beer, or over the course of sixty minutes.

  Ironically, it’s been these hours and hours of therapy that have made me decide on my own route to happiness. Because no matter who I talk to–the banker with the Ferrari, the bored housewife rattling around the huge London apartment, the ex-premiership footballer coming to terms with the fact that his career is over by the time most of us are just starting to shave, there’s one thing they all take pleasure in. One subject I know I can just get them started on to raise the mood of a particularly depressing session. Their kids.

  For example, Stephen, who’s a trader, complained for an hour and a half to me last week, saying how, after eleven years on the job, he was starting to wonder what it was all about. ‘Well, what did you earn last year?’ I asked him.

  ‘It wasn’t a very good one. Just short of four million, including bonuses,’ he replied, straight-faced, from his position on the couch.

  Well, that’s what it’s all about, I wanted to say, as he looked up at me expectantly. I stared at the notepad in my hand–I always have a pen and paper, though usually just use it to jot down stuff I need to get at the shops on my way home–and made a note that I needed to put up his session fees. But stuck for an answer, I turned the question round, which always works fantastically well. That’s why this therapy lark is so easy: simply repeat the question they’ve just asked you, and you often find they knew the answer all along.

  ‘Well, let me ask you something,’ I said. ‘What do you think it’s all about? What did you do last year that gave you the most satisfaction?’ Again, if you’ve got an hour to kill, asking the same question in several different ways usually goes a long way towards filling it.

  Stephen thought about this for a while, obviously working out which of his deals had been the best, I imagined. But, as it turned out, obviously not.

  ‘I taught my son Ben to ride his bike,’ he replied, a tear rolling down his cheek. This captain of industry. This mover and shaker. This big soppy git, I thought. At the time.

  Because it’s a common sentiment. From housewife to high-flyer, I noticed that more and more of my clients were citing their children as their reason for being. The big thing in their lives. In some cases, the only thing in their lives. Whenever I needed to help them get some perspective, all I had to do was start them talking about their kids.

  I tried it out on Tom too, when he was feeling down one day, and it worked. So I suddenly had a foolproof strategy to help my clients deal with their depression–simply telling them to go home and give their kids a squeeze. But after a while it started to feel a bit hollow, because I didn’t know what it felt like myself.

  And it’s not that I’m unhappy with my lot. I just realize that I could be happier, and becoming a dad is going to help me achieve that. So I’m going to take my own advice, and instead of spending all my time trying to make other people’s lives better, focus on my own for a while.

  I finish my coffee, and stare out of the window, waiting for my nine-thirty to arrive. I say that my office overlooks Richmond Green–perhaps it’s fairer to say that the building my office is in overlooks the Green. My actual office, on the other hand, is on the other side of the building–the side that looks out on to the back of the Ann Summers shop on the high street, which isn’t as exciting as you might think. I could have had a view–a better view than old naked shop dummies and empty Rampant Rabbit crates, that is–but first, it would have been almost twice as expensive and…Well, to be honest, I had thought that I might by some miracle get something slightly racier to look at than just the occasional sullen shop assistant sneaking a crafty cigarette.

  There’re a few other businesses in here too; some graphic designers have the whole of the ground floor, there’s an accountancy firm above them, then my floor is all individual offices rented out to the likes of me–next door to my office is a guy who writes slogans for greetings cards, and along the corridor is a very attractive girl called Kate who’s some sort of management consultant. Upstairs is an import/export business, although none of us are actually sure what it is they import/export, and by the looks of the guys who constantly go in and out, it’s probably best not to ask.

  I hear my phone buzz, and look at my watch. It’s nine-twenty. And when I walk down to reception I see Joanne, one of my oldest clients, waiting for me. As usual, she’s early, and again, as usual, she looks like she’s been crying.

  She’s married to some banker in the city, and a credit to the plastic surgeon’s art: stick thin, Botox-ed up to her eyeballs, and wearing a watch that probably costs more than even my car. And yet she’s still not happy, possibly because the husband who buys her all the aforementioned alterations and adornments spends all his time at the office and not with her–probably because it’s the only way he can afford it all.

  ‘Morning, Joanne,’ I say, steeling myself for fifty-five minutes of Joanne’s usual tirade about just how terrible it is to live in a big house and be the wife of a multimillionaire. ‘And how are you today?’ Unlike most people who ask that question, I really want an honest answer.

  As Jen rolls her eyes at me from behind the reception desk, Joanne gets up from where she’s been flicking through a copy of House and Garden, which quite possibly contains a feature about her house and garden, and follows me down the corridor. ‘Not too good, actually,’ she sniffs.

  I look back towards reception to see Jen miming fitting a noose round her neck. Unlike me, she has little sympathy for some of my clients, particularly those like Joanne who she thinks have more money than sense–and Joanne’s certainly not stupid. She’s been coming to see me since just after I started, and while I’d like to think we’re making progress, in reality every time I try and ‘fix’ an issue with her, she finds something else to feel bad about. In actual fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that she just wants to talk to someone, and I’m quite happy to be that someone, especially for a hundred pounds an hour. Oh yes, and Joanne and her husband don’t have kids.

  For the last few weeks, we’ve been working on Joanne’s relationship with her friends–a similarly turned-out bunch of ladies who lunch, although by the looks of them, ‘lunch’ doesn’t involve the consumption of any actual food. ‘They’re all more beautiful than me,’ she sobs, from her usual position on the couch. ‘And cleverer. And with better-looking husbands. And perfect homes…’

  I reach over and hand her a tissue from the bumper-sized box in my drawer, which Jen has christened ‘Joanne’s Box’. It’s getting worryingly empty, and I don’t have a spare.

  ‘And so would you say that you feel a failure next to them?’

  Joanne nods vigorously, causing her five-hundred-pound haircut to wobble alarmingly. ‘If there was one thing, just one thing where I felt I could compete, even be better at than they are, I’d be able to look them i
n the eye.’

  I shake my head sympathetically. ‘And do you think they’re happy? With their pampered lives and rich husbands who they never see?’

  Joanne nods again. ‘It certainly seems like it. But then, who wouldn’t be, with a lifestyle like that?’ she says, unaware of the irony in her last comment.

  I put on my best, soothing voice. ‘So, if we can identify one thing, any thing, that you can beat them at, that’d make you feel better?’

  Joanne gazes miserably out of the window. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And do you suppose that any of them, these perfect women, have self-esteem issues like you do?’

  ‘Of course not. How could they?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I say, sucking on the end of my Biro. ‘Interesting.’

  Joanne looks up hopefully. ‘What is?’

  ‘Just that, well, and this is a bit of a long shot…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you say that you’ve got a lower self-esteem than any of them?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Which means there is one thing that you beat them at.’

  Joanne frowns at me. Or at least I think she does, as her eyebrows move closer together, although her forehead doesn’t wrinkle. ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘You’ve got the worst self-esteem out of them all,’ I say triumphantly.

  Joanne looks puzzled for a few seconds. ‘And that’s good?’

  ‘Of course it is. You look at all these women and think that you can’t possibly compete. That they outdo you in every respect. Well, here’s one where they don’t. You’re the winner.’

  ‘I don’t really see that as winning,’ she says suspiciously.

  ‘But that’s what I’ve been trying to do for the past few sessions. To teach you to look at yourself differently. You don’t live a normal life, so you can’t look at life normally. You have this…existence that’s so different to the rest of us. You tell me how false it is, and how unfair it is, and how miserable it is’–I’m in full flow now–‘and the fact that you’re unable to deal with it. That it doesn’t sit well with you. That these false friends of yours–and I mean that in both senses of the word–love their lives, whereas you’re completely at odds with yours. Well, surely that’s a good thing? Surely that means you’re a better, more decent human being. That you’re unhappy, and looking for a way to have a better life rather than this constant circle of parties and holidays.’