Single Mother on the Verge

by Maria Roberts

  I’ve spent the Christmas period in and out of an intensive-care unit, waiting for my younger cousin to die. He knows I’ve done nothing but cry for days. I need to feel loved and I need this man, in whom I’ve invested too much emotion for years, to care for me. Just for tonight, I don’t want to feel that I’m striding through life alone. What I want more than anything, and what I need, is a man to depend on, someone to trust. I don’t want adult fun.

  ‘You’re not coming to my house, getting what you want and then leaving. No. That is not acceptable and it’s not polite.’ I place my glass down on the table and pull my handbag towards me, searching for my purse. The restaurant manager must have noticed the change in mood because a waitress hastily brings the bill. I take a look at it and throw some notes on the table.

  ‘Don’t be like that. I never said I’d stay,’ says Toga.

  ‘You did. You texted it.’

  ‘I didn’t say specifically I would stay.’

  ‘I said, “Stay over,” and you said, “Yes, that should be fine.”’

  He’s going to play with words here: ‘should be’ being his get-out clause.

  ‘I’m going home tonight.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Your choice.’

  ‘Don’t be like this. Don’t behave like this. I knew if I mentioned it early on you’d be like this.’

  ‘I’ll behave as I see fit. You disrespect me by ignoring my calls, then suggest coming to my house for a bit of fun and leaving. You take me for a fool.’ I grab my things and storm off towards the exit. I’m slowed down because I have to wait for the maître d’ to bring my coat. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The meal was fantastic. Thank you.’

  I step out of the restaurant and into Lincoln Square. Toga follows me. ‘Have you any cigarettes?’ he calls gently. Which stalls me because I’m about to cut and run.

  ‘Yes.’ I rummage in my bag for a packet, then pull out one for him and another for me. I spend too long hunting for a lighter. Toga lightly strokes the nape of my neck. I lean against the wall and stretch out my hand to light his cigarette.

  He gazes down at me and plays with my hair. ‘Don’t be angry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know it would be such an issue.’

  I think about how brave Jack was with Ellie. If I love Toga, then – ‘I’m in love with you,’ I tell him.

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course I am. I’ve always been in love with you.’

  I met Toga at a friend’s house many years ago. The doorbell rang when she was busy in the kitchen so I answered it, and there stood Toga.

  ‘It doesn’t happen like that,’ he replies.

  ‘I’ve been in love with you since the minute I met you,’ I tell him.

  Toga made me feel special. In the beginning he took me for champagne cocktails and fancy meals, but recently he’s made endless promises that he hasn’t kept. The thing we had – it always felt so real, so full of something.

  Toga listens to me, and looks amused rather than flattered. Now I’m stricken with terror that for the last few years I’ve had it all wrong. I’ve been building sandcastles in the sea.

  ‘You told me you were happy, that you loved Rhodri.’

  ‘I did love Rhodri very much. But you’re single, and now I’m single. All I ask is that we try dating,’ I add quietly. ‘Let’s see where it takes us.’

  ‘We can’t go from this to dating,’ he says abruptly. ‘It would be too weird.’

  I begin to walk away from him in the direction of Albert Square. I look across at the clock on the town hall – it’s almost ten. I stand gazing at the lights on the Christmas tree until he catches up with me.

  My phone rings. It’s Nancy so I pick up.

  ‘Hi, darling, you having a good evening?’

  ‘It’s not quite going to plan,’ I say. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘We’re still in Odder on Oxford Road. Prince is here with Zelda and Sybil. Emmeline’s gone to another bar. Why don’t you join us?’

  ‘I’ll be with you in five minutes,’ I say.

  I turn to Toga. He’s looming over me, smiling, which in the past has always been enough for me to agree to do anything.

  ‘I can’t do this. If you aren’t going to be with me –’

  ‘I don’t love anybody and I don’t love you,’ he replies. He teases his fingers through my hair.

  I long for him to say something different. Everything he does seems to me to be at odds with what he’s saying. I could just walk to another bar with him and take him home at midnight. We could forget this conversation and carry on as we did before. ‘You don’t love me even a little bit?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  What he means is that he doesn’t want me. Then I think, I thought I wanted him, but now when I’m with him I feel worthless. I’ve felt worthless for years and I don’t want to be that person any more. I don’t want to spend the last two hours of my twenties with someone who only wants me for ‘adult fun’. I deserve more than that. I glance at the line of black cabs at the edge of Albert Square. ‘It’s everything or nothing, Toga. No emails. No contact. Nothing. This has to end.’ I stand on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Toga.’

  ‘You’re going?’

  ‘My friends are waiting for me,’ I tell him.

  Then I run as fast as I can across the road. I don’t know what I’m doing or why: all I know is that I if I don’t run from Toga now, I never will.

  ‘Oxford Road,’ I instruct the cabbie. I fasten my seatbelt. He pulls off quickly. And I’m out of there.

  Epilogue

  It’s a hot summer’s day when Zelda and I crash through the long thick weeds on my overgrown allotment. ‘Look here,’ I call to her. ‘This is where Rhodri made the first seed-bed.’

  I push back the long grass and point to the branches pegged to the ground. Rhodri grew potatoes there. I remember the day we made this seed-bed together. He had collected windfall branches from the park and dragged them onto his bicycle trailer, which he pedalled here because, of course, he wouldn’t use the car. He handed me the mallet, held the wood firmly and told me to whack the peg down with all my might. It was a sunny day. I suppose the past seems brighter now that it’s further away.

  I fight my way from one side of the allotment to the other. At the far end I wait under the elder tree and look across the plot. I can just about see the compost heap where Rhodri and Jack peed high into the air – ‘Wee accelerates the compost,’ they insisted, but when I pulled my knickers down to join in they complained: ‘It doesn’t work if girls do it.’ Everything on the allotment is tangled. I can’t find what I’m looking for.

  ‘Are you going to keep the allotment?’ asks Zelda.

  ‘The council have taken it from me – I had a letter yesterday. I didn’t know it looked so bad.’ I scuff my feet through the undergrowth, hoping to spot some stray onions, but it’s too dense. ‘I couldn’t come here once Rhodri left,’ I tell her. ‘It’s been abandoned for months.’

  Back home we sit with our legs dangling out of the patio doors, drinking coffee. I gaze out over the garden, thinking of all the things I could do if I were to stay in this house. I’d grow red roses up and over the shed and plant a cherry tree by the gate. I hear a neighbour screeching and swearing at her daughter, then a loud argument breaking out with her boyfriend. Josie’s dogs bark and sniff by the fence in search of the rabbits… They’d spent a few nights in their new hutch – and disappeared. We got down one morning to find the hutch door open and the rabbits gone.

  ‘You won’t miss this estate,’ says Zelda.

  ‘God, no.’

  We roam my house looking for things I may have forgotten. Jack and I have thrown a small lifetime of belongings into bin-bags to be recycled. Carloads of junk have been deposited at the tip. What could be reused was sent to charity shops. I distributed Jack’s old toys to neighbours and friends’ children by the sackload. I finally emptied
the attic of babywear and gave it to an expectant friend of Emmeline’s.

  When I had stripped our lives of possessions, I could see some truth in what Rhodri believes, that we don’t need to keep accumulating new belongings. Now that we own almost nothing, I feel happier than I’ve ever felt. Jack said, ‘Let’s just go with our bags, we don’t need anything else. We can start again.’

  Start again. Yes, please.

  Zelda turns to me. ‘If you think he might change his mind when you move to London, well, he might not,’ she says seriously.

  ‘I’m not moving to London because of him, I’m moving despite him.’

  Toga called me a few days ago, around midnight, drunk. He slurred, ‘I’ve something to tell you. I’m going to be a father.’ I think I heard my heart crack.

  ‘I’m moving,’ I tell Zelda, ‘because ever since Damien, I’ve been waiting for someone to transport me and Jack to a different life. But that’s never going to happen, is it? The only person who can change our lives is me.’

  When Zelda finally leaves, we share a tearful farewell on the doorstep. It’s early evening and the sun is low in the sky, casting long shadows across the communal gardens.

  Not long now.

  When Rhodri came to say goodbye, he said, ‘You should use a ceramic pot to keep your food cool instead of a fridge. It’s better for the environment.’

  ‘Do you use a ceramic pot to keep your food cool?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think the others would agree to it.’

  Rhodri is still living in a shared vegan house. When I asked what he’d been doing, he told me he’d been on a protest at a biodiesel plant.

  ‘But I thought biodiesel was good?’ I asked.

  ‘So did I,’ he said, ‘but now it’s causing world food shortages.’

  I know he’s right. I saw pictures of children in Haiti, stomachs swollen, eating mud cakes because crops are being grown to fuel trendy cars, disrupting food production.

  In a few hours, Jack and I will leave this place for ever. Things had just started looking up: at last I’d made a mum friend at school – the photographer. One day in January, when I’d almost given up hope of befriending another mum, she invited me over to hers for coffee, and ever since then we’ve met up for chats about simple things, like bringing up boys and school work. Jack’s first brush with love is over. On Valentine’s Day he cried a small storm of tears for Ellie when she handed him back his homemade card, and now, thankfully, he’s into football and not girls. And from what I’ve been told, Damien is making great efforts with his new family. I hope it works out for them. I do.

  When we leave this house, another single mother will be moving in. She will rent the house from me. Fingers crossed, she’ll have better luck here than we did. We’re going to live in London with other single parents and their kids in a large old semi-detached with a big garden. We met on the Internet.

  I never thought I’d say this but we’ve formed a communal single-parent household, which we fondly call The Big Mother House. Rhodri had more of an impact on us than I’d thought.

  After my father has loaded what little we’re taking to London in the car, I hold on tightly to Jack’s hand as we run from room to room. ‘Goodbye, bathroom,’ we call. ‘Goodbye, my bedroom,’ I sing.

  ‘Goodbye, my bedroom,’ shouts Jack.

  ‘Goodbye, landing.’

  ‘Goodbye, stairs,’ shouts Jack.

  ‘Goodbye, kitchen.’

  Jack groans. ‘Mum, you can’t love the kitchen! Come on. We’re leaving it.’

  I stroke the double-glazing. ‘Goodbye, windows,’ I tease.

  ‘Muuuuuuuum.’

  ‘Goodbye, living room,’ we both call.

  We run out into the hall and stand on the step and shout, ‘Goodbye, house! ’

  We knock on Josie’s door: ‘We’re going now,’ I say, hugging her. ‘Thanks for being a good neighbour.’

  ‘Good luck,’ she says. ‘I’ll miss you being here.’

  Then we run to Philomena’s house, rap on the letterbox and wait. But she isn’t there. The other day I told her husband, Alf, that we are leaving. He said, ‘That’s a real blow. I mean it. You were one of the good ones. We’ll miss seeing you around here.’

  And I thought: Why didn’t you ever say that before?

  ‘I won’t see Scarlet ever again,’ whispers Jack sadly. Which is true: Scarlet and Anna have been taken by Social Services and put into care. Their mother never did leave her violent boyfriend.

  We dash across to Albert’s house. It’s almost ten o’clock. He opens his door and stumbles out in his shorts and vest. He doesn’t have his teeth in and smiles a wide, gummy smile. ‘Where you going?’ He laughs, all broken and hoarse.

  ‘We’re leaving Albert,’ I call. ‘You look after yourself, yes?’

  I’ll miss Albert. And Josie. And Scarlet. I’ll miss those three the most.

  We say two more goodbyes, hop into the car and meet my dad by the garages.

  ‘Are you ready now?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  Then we pull out of the estate.

  As the car picks up speed on the motorway, Jack says, ‘I have the perfect song. Can I wind the window down and play it loudly?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He blasts out ‘The Great Escape’ from his mobile phone. At first he whistles, but then he hangs his arms and head out of the car and screams and shouts and shouts. I draw my window down too, until we’re both shouting at the top of our voices.

  ‘I never thought it would feel so good to leave that house.’ I beam at Jack.

  ‘Neither did I !’ he bellows.

  ‘We’re going to have an adventure, Jack.’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouts, at the top of his voice.

  As we drive towards our new lives, I know that everything will be okay. I can sense it. Something good is going to happen when we move to London. I’m certain of it.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to PTCR, for making me laugh; and to Rhodri, for our crackpot romance. Also to Mum, Dad, Rufus, Eleanor and the boys, Margarets 2 and 3, Eddie and Josephine. To Pete, Zoe, Emma, Nicola and Sarah for much-needed good words and wine, cheers. And to Anne, RP, Morton and Toga too. Duncan, for your weekly guru tasks – send me a (very small teeny-weeny) bill.

  Super thanks also to special agent Patrick, editor Katy, to Hazel for her sharp eye, Nicola and Katya.

  For help during the dark years, my big thanks to the team at Refuge, plus AS, RK and Ms Lester.

  And for help during the light years, SA.