‘Where’s that from?’
‘The planet Zog where I am king.’
Yes, of course it is. I begin singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in Spanish. It’s the only Spanish song I can remember although I have a degree in Spanish and studied the language for more than a decade. Soon we’re making a right racket.
‘Are you certain you’re going the right way?’ asks Rhodri.
‘Sí. That means “yes”,’ I tell him, ‘in Spanish.’
He rolls his eyes at me. ‘I know that. Are you going the right way? It doesn’t look familiar.’
‘Sí, guapo, that means “yes, fit-bit”.’ He rolls his eyes at me again.
‘Di zwacky blod?’ asks Jack, in some crazy garble that could be Albanian, Cypriot or Polish. ‘That means,’ he elucidates, ‘“Are we going the right way?” in Zog.’
I look at the surroundings as we zoom past a small town, then peer hard at a big blue motorway sign. ‘Ish blob slon blop.’
‘What does that mean?’ squeals Jack, leaning forward so his head touches the driver’s seat.
‘“We are definitely not going the right way” in Zog.’
‘That’s not Zog language,’ he says seriously, slumping back into his seat. ‘You just made that up.’
Eh? Isn’t that what he was doing?
‘We’re heading north,’ I tell Rhodri. ‘Have been for just over an hour.’
‘Which way are we supposed to be going?’ He laughs.
‘South?’
‘Yes, Maria.’ Rhodri grins. ‘Wales is south of Manchester. South.’
Ah, so it is. So it is.
We pull in at the next service station so Rhodri can hop into the driving seat.
I unstick my legs from the dashboard, stretch out my arms and yawn loudly. ‘Crikey, where are we?’
‘Almost there.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Three thirty.’
There is a bright smudge in the sky where the sun is rising. I turn to look at Jack. He is fast asleep, his head resting on his seatbelt.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I was supposed to be navigating, wasn’t I?’
‘I know the way.’
‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘About two hours.’
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ I say woozily, looking out at the horizon.
Rhodri smiles. He’s happiest here among the unspoiled landscape of the Snowdonia National Park, beneath the looming shadows of the mountains. Instantly he’s easier with me. I pat his knee gently. I kiss the tips of my fingers and place them on his lips – he bites the kiss off. ‘Lovely,’ says Rhodri. One hand on the steering-wheel, he absently strokes my cheek.
I gaze out of the window, immersing myself in the moment. After this week together, I’ll love Rhodri more. I know it.
*
It’s night, and dark, by the time we have finally unpacked and are sitting down for dinner. Rhodri’s father spoons onion soup into his mouth. He loads more salt into his bowl, then sneaks a peculiar glance at Rhodri. ‘So, how did you make this soup?’ his father asks me.
‘I boiled some onions in water.’
‘Anything else?’ asks Rhodri’s father.
‘No. Just onions in water.’
‘So it’s onion water,’ remarks Rhodri.
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ I laugh.
‘Onion water?’ Jack laughs too. Then we’re all laughing at my quite disgusting soup.
I hadn’t expected Rhodri’s father to be staying at Cobble Cottage because Rhodri had assured me we’d be alone. His dad is funny, though. He recites silly limericks to Jack across the table, talks about dead poets to me, and belts out classical music on the old piano. And when all that’s done, he sings opera very loudly. Quite eccentric. Quite charming.
When Jack has darted from the table to play in the next room, Rhodri’s father tells us a cautionary tale. ‘You can hear every sound in this house, every squeak, it’s not soundproofed at all… yes… so… hm… yes.’
‘Oh,’ I say, making a hasty exit from the dinner table. ‘Don’t worry we’ll do the dishes.’ I grab Rhodri by the arm and drag him to the sink.
He shrugs his shoulders and smirks. ‘I think what he was trying to say was, “Don’t have noisy sex while I’m here.”’
‘How long will that be for?’
‘Few days… and…’ Rhodri hesitates, then adds, ‘Jack will be sleeping on a camp-bed in our room.’
I groan. I can’t help it. It’s not Jack that’s the problem, it’s Rhodri and me. ‘We’ll have to go to a field or something,’ I suggest. ‘Ask your dad to babysit Jack one night so we can go out for a shag.’ Obviously we can’t tell his dad what we plan to do – we’ll say that we’re going for a romantic walk under the stars.
Rhodri looks at me as if to say: ‘Are you for fucking real?’
‘Yes,’ I say, reading his mind. ‘Seriously, Rhodri, this is important.’ I can’t believe that at twenty-nine my sole quest in life is to secure the ultimate legover. ‘We’ll take a blanket with us,’ I add. ‘We can lie on that hill near the abandoned farmhouse. Or under the bridge by the canal.’
The bridge by the canal sells it. ‘That could be fun,’ he says, already imagining some seedy role-play where he can rub my arse up against a damp, earthy wall.
On day one we were up at eight for breakfast and to make a picnic for our long hike up Bera Bach, followed by a drop-in at the local pool for a swim. It was in a small country town, so we had it to ourselves and thrashed about silly. After dinner the three of us stole off into a farmer’s field to play baseball.
Yesterday afternoon we cycled down the country lanes to the shops at Bala. On the way Rhodri showed us the most enormous bull, which huffed and puffed at Jack as we poked our heads over the wall. Jack laughed when the bull turned around displaying its dirty bottom. ‘The bull is having a poo!’ he shrieked, holding his nose. ‘Eeeew.’
Today we have decamped to a mossy glade, the most enchanted spot: harsh bracken scratches up against soft green ferns. Jack and I would never have experienced the great outdoors if we hadn’t met Rhodri. I used to take Jack to places like museums and libraries and bookshops. I’ve always been too scared to take him somewhere isolated on my own.
Streams cut through the land. We leap over them, slapping down in sodden ground. We climb over rocks, hunting for small animals. Jack finds a sheep’s skull, which he urges me to stuff into my bag so that he can take it home. When rain breaks heavily we rush frantically, gathering whatever detritus we can find to make a shelter and before long we have built a den from leaves, fallen branches and ferns.
In our makeshift shelter we huddle together, pretending to keep dry. It’s Jack’s house. Rhodri and I are the scouts he sends out to find yet more materials to fill the holes in the roof.
I don’t care that Rhodri and I aren’t on holiday alone any more, or that at the weekend the house will be full to bursting with his family, because we’re having fun, and when I look at Jack, he seems truly happy.
Five days into the holiday already – it’s passing too quickly. I so rarely take a holiday I’d forgotten how enjoyable they can be.
‘Everything okay?’ I whisper to Rhodri. It’s gone nine in the morning and we’re lazing in bed as quietly as possible, careful that any sudden movement could wake Jack. More guests have arrived. Beneath our room, Rhodri’s brother Brad, his girlfriend and Rhodri’s parents are clattering about in the kitchen. ‘Do you think your mother’s making pancakes?’ I whisper. ‘I love her pancakes. Jack does too. We should wake him before we miss them.’
‘Leave him to sleep. There’ll be plenty of pancakes to go around. Let’s have a lie-in.’
‘You’re very quiet. You all right?’
‘Yes. But…’
‘What?’
‘Well… it’s quite tiring, isn’t it? Being on holiday with you and Jack, it’s not like being on my own.’
‘Aren’t you having fun?’
‘I am, but –’
‘I’m having a good time.’ I stroke Rhodri’s cheek, hoping to erase whatever he might say next. ‘Jack is.’
‘I’m having fun,’ he says, moving on top of me. ‘I am. I’m having fun.’
It’s dusk when we set off for Manchester. We spent our last day of the holiday with Rhodri’s old schoolfriend, Maddog. Jack is sleeping contentedly in the back of the car, worn out from playing pirates all afternoon. Seven days on holiday together and our lives feel back on track. All we needed was to spend time with one another. Bolting about working is necessary, but Rhodri is right: money isn’t important, love is.
I’ll try not to work so much. Perhaps there are ways we could cut down. Or I could raise the male-escort idea again. Though now it’s April the party season’s over so demand might be lower.
‘I had such a wonderful day today,’ I say, as I drive.
Rhodri fidgets with the electric windows, drawing them up and down. I’m cheery and full of hope, doubtless irritating the hell out of my darling man.
‘Your friends are lovely to be around. They’re so happy and the baby is adorable. I like spending time with couples, don’t you? It fuels my belief in romance.’
Rhodri’s friend, Maddog, married his childhood sweetheart and they’ve just had their first child. Maddog loves his family deeply. It’s evident in everything he does, from the way he folds the laundry, to how he mows the lawn, to how he holds his son in his arms. They have a stunning family home.
‘It didn’t make me feel like that,’ Rhodri mutters. ‘I’m sad.’
‘How can you be? We’ve just had dinner with the loveliest family in the world.’
‘I know I don’t want that. I’m not going to become a male escort, Maria. And I don’t want to work hard for a nice family home.’
Suddenly my head hurts. I glance at Jack’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. I feel queasy, unsettled and sick. If Rhodri won’t try to earn more money, then I’ll have to look for other freelance projects to take on to support the three of us. I don’t want us to live on that council estate for the rest of our lives. I need to move from there before Jack becomes a teenager in case he gets in with the wrong crowd.
‘I don’t want marriage,’ continues Rhodri. ‘I don’t want any of those things.’
‘Well, what do you want?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rhodri says. ‘But not that.’
*
The next morning it’s back to the grindstone. I text Athens to let him know that I’ll be working from home. Rhodri enters the kitchen/diner, which triples as my office. I watch him graze through the cupboards. He seems content enough. He doesn’t look as if he’s going to pack his bags and leave me. Jack went off to school singing about saucepans. So two out of three on the jubilation scale isn’t bad.
When Rhodri has settled by me with the newspaper, I ask, ‘You didn’t mean it, did you, that you don’t want all of this?’
‘What?’
‘You know, what you said about Maddog and a family and a house?’
‘I don’t want that, no, because I couldn’t be involved in tackling climate change if I worked full time. But I wasn’t in a good mood that day. The night before you took me to see a public toilet in Weston-super-Mare.’
‘I wanted to see where my stepbrother died.’
Since that day Lucy made psychic contact with my dead stepbrother, I’ve thought about him more. It was years ago when a stranger found him in the men’s toilets at the Winter Gardens. He’d overdosed on heroin and died there. As we were on holiday, I wanted to leave flowers at the spot but it all got a bit peculiar because Rhodri had to keep watch while I went into a cubicle, and Jack started asking questions: ‘Mum, why are you leaving flowers by the men’s urinals? Mum, why are you crying?’ And so on.
I’m glad I went. The public toilet was on the seafront and there was a landscaped garden behind it with flowerbeds and a pond. We sat on a bench beneath the pergola watching skateboarders spin by. I had imagined the place to be far bleaker. Then we all ate piping hot chips. It wasn’t the day-trip of a lifetime, but it could have been worse.
‘What you said upset me,’ I tell him. ‘It made me think, if that’s the case, what are you doing with us?’ Rhodri and I dated for two years before he moved in. I thought that meant we were now a family.
‘I didn’t think about what I was saying.’
‘Well…’ I pause, searching for the right words ‘… That’s all right, then.’
I carry on working. Rhodri flicks through the newspaper aimlessly. The best course of action, I think, is not to ask anything else.
19
A few days later, I return home from a day at work with a little present for Rhodri. I’m certain he’ll absolutely love it. ‘Look what I found,’ I say.
Rhodri pulls off one sock and throws it across the bedroom. It lands on the radiator. He removes the other sock and flings that too. It lands in the corner on the fax machine. Then he climbs into bed next to me. ‘Go on. What have you found?’
‘Viagra.’ This is such good luck. I was working at an office in Manchester and a solitary Viagra tablet practically threw itself at me. I have no idea who it once belonged to. I found it in the toilets at some offices where I had attended a meeting. It was longing to be discovered by me, and definitely planted there by my guardian angel. To clear up the safety issues, it’s in an unopened official-looking packet that has ‘Viagra’ written all over it. And I Googled the side-effects just to check that we’re not going to die.
‘I’m not taking that,’ barks Rhodri. ‘I’m not putting chemicals in my body when I don’t need to.’ Not that I’m surprised. Rhodri won’t consume anything that isn’t grown in organic soil.
It would be a terrible waste for this Viagra to go unused. Should I take it, the possibilities will be endless. So I pop it into a pretty box I keep by the bed until I think of a plan.
*
The following Tuesday I have to travel to London for work, and because I’m in town, Toga has invited me to dinner at his house, which he has never done in all the years we’ve fooled around with one another. I couldn’t say no. Maybe he’s starting to consider the relationship between us more seriously.
I must be back at Piccadilly Circus by around eleven o’clock this evening to meet Athens and company at the hotel to plan our work schedule for tomorrow. I call Toga to make sure we’re still on. ‘Hello, Bear.’
‘I’m busy,’ he says, ‘just going into a meeting. I’ll see you at six.’ Then the phone cuts off because the train shoots under a bridge.
Later, standing in Toga’s kitchen, I feel awkward. His flat is large for someone without any children. Prints hang casually and DVD box sets are stacked against exposed brick walls: definitely no kids here. In the corners I see tokens of a Toga I’d never known about. Like the tennis rackets: I never knew he played tennis. And the Neil Diamond CD: I never knew he liked Neil Diamond. An old postcard from his mother is propped up against the kitchen window. I never knew… I did know that he has a mother.
He’s making a pasta dish. ‘Hello, you,’ he says. He hooks his arm around my waist but I pull away, awkwardly rejecting his kisses. It all seems too easy now I’m here, and because Rhodri says I can do what I want, I know I will. ‘What are you making?’
‘Creamy mushroom sauce.’ He stirs the pan for effect. ‘You like it?’
I rarely eat cream because Rhodri, Jack and I inhabit a dairy-free house, but I won’t tell Toga that. ‘Love it.’ I perch on a breakfast stool and admire him. If Toga were a tropical fruit he’d be a ripe mango, if he were an animal he’d be a yeti, if he were…
‘What are you doing?’
‘Watching you.’
‘You’re scaring me.’
He’s such a weirdo. I turn to the counter and flick through an arcane copy of Time Out. ‘I thought you said you had a cleaner.’
‘I do.’
‘It’s not very tidy, is it?’
�
��Cheeky.’ He turns the pan down and slots himself between my legs. We kiss gently.
Maybe I could skip dinner and just have Toga. I head to his bathroom with my bags where I spy a range of skincare products to surpass even my friend Emmeline’s collection, and she has enough to start her own beauty spa. Good grief, Toga’s one of those London metro-sexuals I’ve read about in the weekend supplements. With all that crap, he’s single-handedly polluting the South East’s waterways.
‘What are you doing in there?’ he calls.
‘Out in a minute,’ I say, rummaging through my makeup bag. I’m sure I put the Viagra in here. I’m certain of it.
7.02 p.m.
I step into the kitchen in a sheer black dressing-gown and hold-ups. ‘Look what I’ve got,’ I whisper. In an attempt to look like a burlesque dancer I rummage in my bra and eventually pull out the Viagra tablet. I wave it in the air, then place it dramatically on the counter.
Toga looks at it, then at me.
‘Viagra,’ I say, dropping the dressing-gown to reveal the lingerie he bought me one Valentine’s Day, years before I met Rhodri. The thong and camisole set is red, lacy… and definitely not doing the trick. ‘ Toga –’
‘I’m not doing it.’
7.12 p.m.
‘Oh, Toga… ’
I’m draped across his bed in a rather fetching tight black lace Maria Grachvogel slip. It has sexy string straps that stop just above my breasts. I think I look hot. And it only cost me five quid in the sales a decade ago. It doesn’t often make an appearance, only on special occasions like this…
He stamps into the bedroom. ‘No. I am not taking Viagra.’
7.22 p.m.
‘Oh, Toga… ’ I’m kneeling on the bed wearing a black raw-silk chemise with a delicate white trim. I bought it in the sales four years ago for eight quid. It doesn’t often make an appearance, only on…
‘I’ve told you, I’m not taking Viagra. Don’t look at me like that.’
7.32 p.m.
‘Oh, Toga… ’ A new approach is needed so I’m sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper and wearing the ivory satin this-is-what-I-might-look-like-on-my-wedding-night-should-you-ever-wish-to-marry-me slip.
Single Mother on the Verge Page 14
