by Anna Maxted
I say before I can stop myself: ‘Michelle, I know that shirt and it was a present from Marcus’s mother who bought it from Bhs. And Tom is not a jerk and anyway, I’m not with him.’
Ker-ching! Michelle’s ears prick up like a Dingo’s. ‘Oh?’ she says, ‘Why so?’
Me and my yapping mouth. I say shortly, ‘It didn’t work out.’ The carcass of my ill-fated romance is not going to be picked over by the spindly fingers of Ivana the Terrible.
‘No way! Why?’ she demands.
‘Michelle!’ I squawk, ‘I’m not discussing it.’
She huffs down the phone, ‘Okay, chill!’ There is a pause before she asks in a whisper, ‘Did he beat you?’
I shout ‘Beat me! Are you mad? He’s a vet!’
Michelle is put out. ‘What happened then?’ she wheedles. The tenacity of the woman! She’s like a bloodhound sniffing at a crotch.
‘I said,’ I say in a hard voice, ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
Michelle snaps, ‘There’s obviously something you’re not telling me!’
I grimace and say slyly, ‘So has Marcus given you an engagement ring?’
She replies joyfully, ‘I’m taking him, I mean, he’s taking me to Tiffany’s this afternoon.’ I smile as I imagine a house falling on Marcus’s wallet.
‘Ooh,’ I say, ‘lucky you.’ The scenario reminds me of my father’s favourite joke: the one where Mrs Goldblatt gets on a plane and the man sitting next to her admires her enormous diamond ring. Yes it is beautiful, says Mrs Goldblatt, but sadly this beautiful diamond ring comes with a curse. Mr Goldblatt. Personally, I never thought it was funny, but now it seems apt. I know Michelle will take this question the wrong way, but I still ask: ‘Michelle, are you in love with Marcus?’
Silence. Then a tinkle of merry laughter and the gloating words, ‘You’re jealous!’
I say evenly, ‘Not really,’ but Michelle insists and I’m too indifferent to argue so I let it be.
‘You could always go back to Jason,’ she says gloatingly.
‘Jasper!’ I gasp – my goat finally gotten – ‘Michelle, I am not going back in that muddy puddle. Give me credit! Anyway I’m fine by myself.’
Michelle brands me a liar and adds that the wedding will be a ‘select affair’ so if I don’t receive an invitation I shouldn’t be offended.
‘Michelle,’ I say – before cutting this cancer off and out of my life for ever – ‘let’s end it there.’ I complete the purge with a double espresso.
None of the four estate agents I called has got back to me. This isn’t a huge surprise. When I rang JI & Sons in Kentish Town the yob at the end of the line said, ‘So what you looking up to?’ I told him and he said, ‘Have you tried our Surrey Quays office?’ The response from Wideboy Estates was: ‘The cheapest we’ve got at the moment is two hundred thousand,’ and Gitfinger Properties enquired, ‘Is that per week for letting? Oh! To buy!’ By far the most courteous was Snatchit & Co. who declared, ‘Let me put you through to my colleague who deals with flats – I only deal with properties over three hundred thou,’ then put me on hold until the line went dead.
So when Lizzy – who was on a shoot all day yesterday and is ‘bursting’ to hear my ‘news’ – suggests I join her for lunch I grab the excuse to postpone flat hunting. Only after accepting the invitation do I realise I don’t feel like talking.
‘Tell me everything!’ demands Lizzy. ‘No skipping!’
I pick at my lip. ‘You’re going to be disappointed,’ I say.
Her face drops. ‘Why?’ she cries, brimming with genuine concern.
I wrinkle my nose and say, ‘Tom and I had an argument and I shouted at him. Really shouted.’ I cringe, remembering my frenzied rage.
Lizzy blurts, ‘Oh no! Why? What about?’
I tell her. Or rather, I tell her the bits I want her to know. I don’t tell her about the woe-splattered gunk that spewed from me like blood from a slashed artery. I’d prefer not to believe in it until it fades away. So I gut and dissect the truth and present Lizzy with the leftovers. Lizzy is torn. Partly, because she can’t bear to speak ill of anyone. But also because I give Tom a lousy write-up.
Eventually, she says sorrowfully, ‘What a terrible shame. He seemed so nice. Maybe he didn’t mean to interfere. Although I must say, it’s not nice to criticise someone else’s parent. Especially as your father was such a nice man.’
My conscience – which spends most of its life asleep – pokes me at this point and I mutter, ‘It wasn’t all Tom’s fault. I did moan about Dad. Not very loyal of me, was it?’
Lizzy brushes away my gloom with an airy, ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself! Everyone complains about their parents occasionally – I know I do all the time!’ (Lizzy only ever speaks of her mother and father in glorious glowing hyperbole.)
I sigh. ‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘You don’t tell people what to do. It’s intrusive.’
Lizzy – scrabbling desperately for a happy ending – says, ‘Are you sure he wasn’t just interested?’
I recall Tom’s snub over the flat and I’m too mortified to confide in my close friend.
‘Positive!’ I growl.
Lizzy is silent. ‘Are you sure you can’t patch it up?’ she says.
I reply, ‘This wasn’t a silly little tiff, Lizzy, it was a serious disagreement.’
She says dejectedly, ‘Maybe it’s best to leave it for a while then.’
I nod, keen to switch subject before Lizzy assails me with further questions. But every topic I consider is barred by a large ‘Don’t Go There’ sign. I’m loath to discuss living in Muswell Hill because it may lead to smithereen grandfathers or psychiatric nurses. I’m reluctant to ask about Brian because we may edge back to Tom again. I’d prefer not to mention Michelle because my skin crawls when I think of Marcus and the phantom father syndrome. My head is one huge roadblock. I blurt, ‘Liz, do you think I smother my mother?’
Instead of answering Lizzy clutches my arm – I assume to show me my question is on hold – and cries, ‘Tina! Tina!’ I follow her gaze and see Tina ducking into a shoe shop. ‘Let’s ask her to have lunch with us!’ exclaims Lizzy, skipping after her.
If only the Faraway Tree was real, I think. Sugarspun Lizzy would fit in so well. ‘I’ll wait outside,’ I say. Seconds later Lizzy emerges with Tina in an armlock.
‘Jesus! What happened to your nose?’ I gasp.
Lizzy answers for Tina: ‘She was getting a tin of baked beans off the top shelf and it fell on her. Poor thing!’
I say, ‘Does it hurt?’
Tina shakes her head. I sense that she isn’t overjoyed to be having lunch with us. Lizzy also feels uncomfortable because she tries to lighten the mood by joking, ‘Well, it just proves that tinned food is bad for you!’
No one laughs. And from this low point the mood goes into free fall. Tina appears to have taken a vow of silence, and I am nervous to ask Lizzy about her weekend in case she boomerangs it back to mine. So – foolishly – I whip a shred of beetroot from Lizzy’s plate, stick it across the bridge of my nose, and say, ‘Who’s this!’ Lizzy is quiet. Tina looks at me. I stare back and I’m shocked at the revolt in her eyes. I remove the beetroot from my nose and mutter, ‘Bad joke, sorry.’
Tina says coldly, ‘You always say that but you never change, do you? You’re like a fucking broken record.’
My mouth drops open. ‘Shit!’ I squeak. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it, okay? What is it with you? You’re so aggressive. I can’t say anything any more without you leaping down my throat.’ Tina’s expression is molten rage but I rant on: ‘Ever since darling Adrian came on the scene – Adrian! Adrian! – we’re not good enough for you now!’
Tina bangs her fist down on the metal table making Lizzy and the plates jump. ‘You, girl, are out of line!’ she snarls. ‘Vicious! What is it this time? Tom? Jasper? Marcus? Oh sorry, I lose track.’
I feel hot with anger and I spit, ‘No actually, it’s not about a man. It’s my fath
er.’ For once I am telling the absolute truth.
I expect it to silence her but she snarls, ‘And the rest!’ Then she jumps up and hisses, ‘Don’t use your dad as an emotional crowbar on me, Helen. You never liked him! You’ve strung it out long enough! Have some respect – let the bloke rest in peace!’
This is without doubt the nastiest thing anyone has ever said to me in my life. Michelle, in her wildest dreams, hasn’t come close. Marcus calling me a slut – chickenfeed! The fury is so fierce I want to hit Tina in the face. Luckily for her she flees the café before I’ve organised my fist. I’m so aghast I can’t look at Lizzy. I sit trembling. I crush my napkin into a tight ball, and wonder how it came to this. I suck in huge gulps of air but find it impossible to catch my breath. Eventually, I feel a soft touch on my back and Lizzy says gently, ‘Are you okay?’ I nod and shake off her hand. She whispers, ‘Tina didn’t mean it.’
This rouses me from petrification and I snap, ‘She did though. And she needn’t think I’m running after her this time because I bloody am not. That’s it with her and me.’ The unwelcome thought occurs to me that I’m shedding friends and acquaintances at a rate of four a week – and there’s Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday still to go.
Lizzy takes a breath. Then she says, ‘I don’t think Tina’s happy. Despite Adrian. Or I can’t believe she would have said those things.’
I shrug, ‘Whatever.’
Lizzy perseveres: ‘About what she said about your dad, well, firstly – it’s your right to feel what you feel. Even if you weren’t that close, which I can’t believe. And, er, secondly, well maybe reiki could help?’
I giggle. And I wonder, if a madman hacked off my leg with an axe, would Lizzy offer to kiss it better? I force brightness into my voice and say, ‘Lizzy, you know I dislike people fiddling with me.’
Lizzy replies, ‘Well, I don’t know . . .’
She is reminiscent of myself tempting Fatboy out of the boiler cavity with a bowl of tuna juice. And I must say, it’s working. I feel one degree calmer. I mutter, ‘I just said the dad thing to make Tina feel bad. She’s right. I’m in a foul mood.’
Lizzy sighs and says, ‘Why though? If it’s not your dad, is it Tom?’
I knew this lunch was a bad idea. I throw my napkin on the table and say, ‘Tom puts his hand up dogs’ bottoms and his car is worse than mine. It isn’t Tom.’
Lizzy says crossly: ‘Helen, you don’t give a fig about cars! And he gets paid to put his hand up dogs’ bottoms!’
I mumble, ‘What – and that’s supposed to make me feel better?’
Lizzy purses her lips and says, ‘Maybe it’ll be good for you to be on your own for a bit.’
I tut loudly and say in a bored tone, ‘Why?’
Lizzy dabs her mouth with her napkin (her perfect lipstick remains perfect) and like an archbishop delivering the punchline to a televised sermon declares: ‘You’ve got to be happy alone before you can be happy with someone.’
I sit back, fold my arms and try to look agnostic. ‘Liz,’ I say, ‘Did you read that in Girltime?’
‘I might have done,’ says Lizzy airily. ‘So?’
I reply sternly: ‘I wrote it.’
Chapter 31
IT TAKES TWO hundred thousand frowns to etch a line on your forehead. I look at the deep furrows on my mother’s brow and wonder how many of those 200,000 sorrows and puzzlements were down to me. I’m doing my best to be impassive so I’m not pitying – just curious. I can’t think of anything more stressful than being a parent. It must be even worse than having Laetitia for a boss.
Being responsible for the health and happiness of a live person. Scary. I spent forty-five quid on cat books and another fifty on cat tat before I dared purchase the orange orphan from Battersea, and I still regard his lardy survival as a miracle. All the plants I’ve ever bought have perished within a fortnight, even the cactus. My mother is the same. There’s no greenery in her house and never has been. She buys flowers for herself but that’s different – they’re expected to die after a week. So how she managed a smelly, crotchety baby I don’t know. Actually I do – she hired an au pair.
Isabella was scared of the vacuum cleaner and wore fabulous white stilettoes that made grooves in my mother’s polished wood floor. I liked her very much. Once, at the skinny age of five, I moaned to Isabella that I was fat because I’d heard Vivienne moan it to my mother. Isabella hoicked up her orange T-shirt to reveal bunched up rolls of brown flesh and declared happily, ‘You not fat! Zees eez fat!’ I was mesmerised and after that, fat was no longer something to be feared. Thank God for Isabella. She saved me. Without Isabella and her cack-handed exuberance – ‘I look Helen, Meeseez Bradshaw, you go shop!’ – I think my mother would have suffered a breakdown. And possibly I would have done too.
As it was, thirty pounds a week plus meals (which probably made it up to £130) released my mother from the slave labour of parenthood and she fled it. So her attempt to sidle back up to it twenty-six years on is amusing. Bless her, but she’s rubbish at it. I slink in from work and she hijacks me in the hall. The first thing she says is ‘Florence wants to move out!’ and the second is ‘I’m losing all my family!’ and the third is ‘I’ve made you tea!’ I drop my bag on the floor and try not to look alarmed. I also try to respond fairly to all her statements.
‘Is Nana moving out because of me?’ I say.
My mother flaps her hands as if to ward off the idea. ‘Sort of,’ she says.
I knew it. I bleat, ‘I didn’t think! Christ, where is she, I’ll go and explain!’
My mother looks confused. She says, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! It was the sardine pilfering!’
I squeak, ‘What sardine pilfering?’
It emerges that this morning Nana placed her favourite lunch – three sardines and a slice of white bread – on the side to ‘air’. Ten minutes later she discovered Fatboy, whose motto is ‘Finders Keepers’, crouched next to the plate chewing at his third sardine. This confirmed her every prejudice about living under the same roof as ‘vermin’ and as a direct result, Nana is returning to her stringbeans first thing tomorrow morning.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter, ‘I’ll try and stop her if you want.’
My mother shakes her head and says cheerfully, ‘She’s in her room, packing! Don’t bother! You’re here now! And I’ve made you tea!’
‘But I don’t drink t—’ I begin as I walk into the kitchen. To my surprise and dismay the table is heaped, heaped, with sandwiches and little cakes – concoctions I didn’t think existed any more like chocolate Wagon Wheels and pink and yellow Fondant Fancies. There is even a Battenburg Cake.
‘I made it for you!’ she repeats, like a six-year-old who has fashioned a monstrous pom-pom at school with card and wool and expects her mother to attach it to her smartest hat.
‘That’s er, very kind of you,’ I say as I sink into the chair she yanks out for me.
She sits down excitedly and watches eagle-eyed as I reach for a Marmite sandwich. I hate Marmite. I take a small bite and wonder what the hell’s going on. ‘How are you?’ asks my mother.
‘Fine,’ I say, trying to swallow the sandwich without retching.
She sighs pointedly as if this is the wrong answer and snaps, ‘No, how are you feeling?’
I hear this sentence and it all becomes clear. The dastardly Cliff!
‘Mummy,’ I growl, ‘what has Cliff been saying to you?’
She looks guilty and says sulkily, ‘Nothing! Nothing at all!’
I point a finger. ‘You never ask how I’m feeling! He must have said something! What did you discuss this morning?’
She wriggles crossly in her seat and says, ‘That I don’t like going to the clinic because everyone in the waiting room is mad!’
I allow myself to be sidetracked. ‘Oh! How come?’
My mother leans forward and shrieks, ‘It was positively Kafkaesque, I’ve never seen anything like it! Psychotic, the lot of them! I co
uldn’t believe I was there! So drab! And dirty! It was disgusting! Worse than school! This woman, this woman wearing a plastic bag on her head, mumbling to herself and shouting at the ceiling, her bag was full of carrots and she, she, she asked me for money!’
Poor thing. To be mentally ill enough to think that my mother – with her neat bob and tightly clasped handbag – would relinquish even fifty pence without receipt of a cut-glass ‘Please.’ I say, ‘She was probably desperate, Mummy. I hope you gave her something?’
My mother shakes her head and says, ‘I told her to go away and leave me alone. She smelt funny.’ I sigh. To think that the moral education of thirty impressionable children is in this woman’s soft yet brutish hands. And they consider her their best teacher!
‘So what else did you talk about with Cliff?’ I demand.
‘He wasn’t so nice this time,’ she replies. ‘I didn’t like him as much.’
I place my Marmite sandwich on my plate. ‘Mum,’ I say, ‘the clinic is not a dating agency. You don’t have to like him. So what did he say?’
But my mother is determined not to tell and becomes agitated. ‘It doesn’t matter!’ she insists. ‘Just tell me how you feel! And don’t stop eating!’
I grab a Fondant Fancy, peel away the pink icing, and lick a glob of cream off its top. If my mother is treating me like a toddler I might as well make the most of it. ‘How I feel about what?’ I gasp, as the nerves in my teeth revolt against the sugar.
‘I don’t know!’ she cries. ‘Everything!’
I take a sip of lemonade (she’s bought that too) and try to think. What can I say that won’t upset her? That I don’t mind about Christmas? That the additives are delicious? That she shouldn’t worry about Nana Flo? That I won’t move out until she wants me to? That I’m glad she’s returning to school in January? All these thoughts are anodyne, inoffensive, and safe. Feelings are trickier. But feelings are what she wants. And if I don’t tell her, she’ll never learn. She has no imagination and if this silly tea is anything to go by, no common sense. Fine. She asked. I realise my mother is staring at me at the same time I realise I’m rocking in my chair and nodding like a little old lady. But it’s hard to speak. I am terrified that the ache I want to think of as a fading bruise will be diagnosed as gangrene.
