The Not So Perfect Mother: A feel good romantic comedy about parenthood

by Kerry Fisher

  Mr Peters reached over and lifted up my glasses. He winced. And I winced at him seeing me in this state. ‘What a bastard, excuse my language. You poor thing,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be nice to me. I’ll cry,’ I said.

  ‘I can cope.’

  I nearly smiled then.

  ‘Have you put anything on it?’ he said.

  ‘A damp tea towel.’ Remembering Harley’s face trying to contain his emotions made mine spill over. I really had to stop spending time with Mr Peters. I bet he called me Crybaby behind my back.

  Mr Peters unclipped his seatbelt, and mine, then pulled me towards him. ‘God, Maia, come here.’ He held me with such tenderness, stroking my back and shushing me so sweetly that the rest of my life seemed even lonelier. When I finally pushed away from him, the concern in his eyes shocked me. The only person who had ever looked that worried about me was Mum, which was the wrong thought to have as it sent a fresh gush of tears flooding out. Very gently he took my sunglasses off.

  ‘Hang on a minute.’

  He got out of the car and went to the boot. He came back a few seconds later with the first aid kit and proceeded to dab antiseptic wipes onto my cut and massage arnica cream into my cheekbone.

  ‘You’re wasted as a teacher,’ I said.

  ‘You’re wasted on Colin.’

  A look, a flash of surprise, ran over his face as though he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Then, once he had, it was as though he’d crossed a boundary and he bent his head and kissed me, a tiny hesitant touch of the lips. He lifted his head up, tracing my lips with his finger, holding my eyes with his, even though I knew I should look away from that dark-green stare drilling into my soul like a tractor beam. He pressed his mouth onto mine again, softly exploring my lips, then my mouth with his tongue until I forgot about my cheek, the cut under my eye and was conscious only of his breathing, my breathing and the sensations streaming through me as though I’d woken up after a long winter of hibernation. After years of Colin going at my body like it was something to be dominated rather than celebrated, I’d forgotten how powerful a kiss could be.

  He pulled away and looked at his watch. ‘I have to go. I’m teaching your son French in precisely twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘Lucky Harley.’

  ‘Maia?’

  ‘Don’t. I don’t know what you’re going to say, or maybe I do, but I’ve got the life I’ve got, you’ve got the life you’ve got and there’s no room for them to overlap.’ I retrieved my sunglasses from the dashboard.

  ‘Listen to me.’

  ‘No. Come on, you need to go.’ I put my seatbelt on.

  ‘Will you listen to me if I tell you how I might be able to help you get the van back?’

  Oh yes. The van. That was several lifetimes ago. He started the car.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘By rights, bailiffs can’t remove anything that is essential for your work. Your van falls into that category. I know someone on the council. I’ll make some phone calls when I get back. Let’s find out where it’s ended up at least, then we can arrange for you to pick it up.’

  ‘I can’t pay.’ Shame was swallowing my voice.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Legally they can’t take anything you need for work.’

  It was all about who you knew. I shoved away my ungrateful thoughts long enough to thank Mr Peters.

  ‘My pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘I s’pose it’s common knowledge round the school now that my husband beats me up?’

  ‘No.’ He sighed.

  ‘I’m assuming your secretary came scuttling in to tell you.’

  ‘Felicity did come “scuttling in” to tell me. I’ve told her not to breathe a word unless she wants to walk away with a P45 in her hand.’

  Despite myself, I couldn’t help grinning at Felicity giving herself indigestion with the effort of not opening her big trap. ‘Oh, to have your magic wand.’

  A cloud settled over his face. ‘I wish. There are some things I can make happen, but far too many I can’t.’

  I wondered if he meant me. I didn’t want to know if he meant me. It didn’t matter anyway.

  He frowned. ‘I suggest you drop the children at the bottom of the drive until your face heals. I’ll arrange for them to wait by the school gates in the evening so you don’t have to come in.’ A man who thinks of everything. I nodded.

  He dropped me at the bus stop. I shuffled about a bit when he stopped the car because I didn’t know how to say goodbye. The moment for kissing was long gone, so I went for a hand pat, the sort you’d give to your Great Uncle Arnold in a nursing home, but he caught my fingers.

  ‘Maia, I’m not a violent man. Not at all. But when Felicity came in to tell me today, I wanted to leap into my car and sort a few things out with your husband. I can’t remember the last time I felt so angry.’ He paused. ‘I just wanted you to know that.’

  I allowed myself to think about him on the bus. Then again on my walk home. It was like having a little treasure box, a tin of memories to open. Those eyes narrowing with annoyance, the way he rubbed his thumbs together when he was thinking, his manner of staring that meant I couldn’t lie. The memory I loved most of all, the one that made my belly hollow out with desire, was of those gentle fingers working circular patterns of cream into my cheek. I thought about that as I walked up to my front door. I focused on that sensation of leaning against someone solid, someone dependable, while I reassured myself that Colin was still out. Then feeling like a traitor to my kids, the prof and Mr Peters, I went to dig out some writing paper and do what I had to do.

  17

  The van came back that afternoon. I didn’t even have to go and pick it up. I watched while a couple of beefy council workers rolled it off their tow truck and clunked it back down onto its ageing axles. One of them came to the door and shoved a form at me to sign.

  ‘You must have some clout. Ain’t very often we deliver things back, ‘specially not the same day. Even if we give them back to people, they have to get them from the depot.’ He wiped his nose on his fluorescent jacket, waiting for an answer. I signed in silence and shut the door on him. I wasn’t about to let him into the secret world of the wonderful Mr Peters. I texted him to let him know that the van was back safe and sound, debated over signing an ‘x’, then left it blank. He’d know who it was.

  I got an immediate response. ‘My pleasure. We need to talk when you are ready.’ No kisses. We need to talk? I didn’t need to make an appointment to be told that snogging Mr Peters was a fat mistake. I could work that one out myself. Presumably he was kicking himself as well as shitting himself. The headmaster would take a ‘very dim view’, I was quite sure. Once I took the children out of school, he’d never have to see me again. I wanted to warn him before I sent the letter, even though I knew he’d try to talk me out of it. I started to look half-heartedly for a stamp, knowing it was the right thing to do but still hoping for a last-minute get-out when Sandy’s coo-eee echoed through the letterbox.

  It was over two weeks since she’d been round, not since Bronte went missing. ‘Hi darling, you all right, love? I was really worried about you this morning. How’s that face of yours? That’s nasty. Colin do that, did he? They’re all the same, aren’t they? I’ve never met a bloke who weren’t handy with his fists at some stage. Never mind. It’ll be gone next week.’

  I led her through into the kitchen and filled her in on the row about the bailiffs. ‘I don’t know why he went for me then, we’d been getting on a bit better lately. He even came to watch Harley in a play at school and managed not to be too sniffy about it.’ I put the kettle on.

  ‘Maybe he’s coming round to the idea of that posh school. Blimey, we’re going to have to watch our Ps and Qs next door with all of you at it.’

  I wanted to change the subject. We were never going to see eye-to-eye about Stirling Hall. I stirred her coffee, trying to remember the name of her bloke. ‘How are you getting on with your new man?’

 
‘Who? Sean? I mean, Shane.’

  ‘Well, is it Sean or Shane? How many men have you got?’

  ‘You know me, don’t like to put all me eggs in one basket. Sean today, Shane tomorrow.’ Sandy grimaced as she took a sip of her drink. ‘Here, you got any sugar?’

  ‘Sorry. You haven’t been round for so long, I’ve forgotten how you take it,’ I said, digging the bag out the cupboard.

  ‘Yeah, I’m normally at work on Friday nights now, down the factory, so I don’t get so much time any more to be lazing about. You still got plenty of jobs going?’

  ‘Still a couple of women I clean for, and the dentists and them offices over by the chippy.’ I just avoided correcting myself to ‘those offices’ in time. ‘I need more. We’re absolutely skint. I’ve just got a job at that new gym, it’s near the school. They pay good money for three hours a day, four shifts a week. I have to get up at the crack of sparrow’s fart, mind, but it gives me free gym membership, so I could get fit too if I find the time to go.’

  ‘Sounds all right to me. Cor, you a gym babe. Colin won’t know what’s hit him, all them pelvic floor muscles giving him what for.’

  ‘Don’t know about that. After today’s handiwork, it’ll be a long time before he gets me in bed again. He hasn’t seemed that interested lately anyway, though the other night he couldn’t get enough of me but I think that was cos he was fantasising about Frederica, you know, the one off Casualty – she was flirting with him at the school play and I think it turned his head.’

  Sandy pursed her lips. ‘He’s a vain one, your Colin. Like a TV star would be interested in him.’

  Sandy was beginning to hack me off. As if all her men were such lookers. Most of them wouldn’t be able to touch their toes for their guts in the way.

  ‘He’s not that bad. You should see some of the dads at school. Half of them look like their children’s grandfathers. Colin hasn’t got a six pack but he’s a lot better than some of the fatso City boys with their great expense account bellies.’ Sandy shrugged. She picked up her fake Gucci handbag. ‘Look, I gotta go to work. You take care of yourself. You put something on that face?’

  ‘Yeah, some antiseptic. And some arnica.’

  ‘Arnie whatsit?’

  ‘Arnica. It’s supposed to stop the bruising, it’s some sort of herbal remedy thing.’

  ‘TCP too common for you now, is it?’ Sandy’s face had gone all narrow-eyed and hard.

  I remembered why I hadn’t seen much of her lately. ‘No. One of the teachers at school gave it to me. He just happened to have some.’

  ‘He? Ooooh, got a little friend, have we? Knight in shining armour come to the rescue? Not the bloke in the swanky car?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. He happened to see me in reception when I took the children in.’ I could feel my face going red. I turned to pick up the mugs off the table. ‘Anyway, I’m sending the kids back to Morlands. We can’t afford to keep them at Stirling Hall.’ I couldn’t believe I’d blurted that out. I hadn’t even discussed it with Colin. Pathetic little me, hoping she’d like me a bit more if I was as hopeless and directionless as she was. ‘Don’t say anything to the kids yet though, cos they don’t know. In fact, don’t mention it to anyone. I haven’t sent the letter yet. I only decided today.’

  ‘That’s a shame. All that cash you’ve wasted on new uniforms. Never mind. They didn’t fit in that good there anyway, did they?’ Sandy said. She looked as though her bonus ball had come up.

  I was back where I belonged.

  18

  Clover threw the door open with great gusto when I arrived for my two hours of hard labour the following day. Cleaning was still a novelty to her. I would have liked the chance for a trust fund to be a novelty for me. The big grin on her face soon faded.

  ‘Fucking hell, Maia. What happened to you?’

  ‘Colin. Discussion over money. Long story. I’m not going up to school at the moment.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Have you had it looked at? What happened?’

  ‘It’s okay, looks worse than it is. Right, where do you want to start today?’

  Clover couldn’t take her eyes off me, so I ignored her and said, ‘How about we start in your bedroom?’

  I’d never seen Clover approaching silent before but my very brief explanation about Colin’s role in turning my face into a plum punnet seemed to shock all the words out of her. She looked as though she had a lot of questions she wanted to ask but I didn’t want to think about the answers. Instead, I followed her up the sort of staircase you imagine floating down in a long dress with a train while someone in a bow tie announces your name. She led me into a huge room with open beams and a vaulted ceiling. An enormous four-poster bed stood against the far wall. Even though Lawrence had been gone for over a fortnight, his jeans and T-shirts were still draped over the end of the bed.

  My eyes flicked over the mass of clothes littered around the room. Coats and jackets were hanging on chairs. Lone shoes dotted the carpet. Carrier bags sprouted in every corner. But it was a life-size nude portrait in charcoal that caught my attention. It was Clover, but thin. Clover with high cheek-bones and eyes that dominated her face. I did a double take. ‘It’s me. Lawrence commissioned it with his first bonus when he was twenty-one. I’m nineteen there. I keep it up there to torture myself into losing weight but it’s not working.’

  ‘Actually, you do look as though you’ve lost weight.’ Her face was definitely thinner. It was difficult to judge her body, which she’d chosen to cover in a CND T-shirt and crimson Ali Baba harem pants.

  ‘Maybe a bit. It’s the husband-buggered-off-and-is-probably-shagging-a-twenty-year-old diet.’

  We got to work. It took some time, but we did manage to find an emerald green chaise longue – the sort you’d see in the fancy mansions of celebrities in Hello! magazine – under pairs of tights, old jeans, jumpers and even a long sequinned evening gown.

  ‘Oh my giddy aunt, I’d forgotten about that dress. I wore it to Lawrence’s Christmas work do. Not last year though. The year before,’ she said.

  I pulled open her wardrobe to hang it up and found a great whirl of sleeves, legs and belts hanging down from the shelves. No wonder she always looked like she’d put on something she’d screwed up and left at the bottom of the ironing pile for six months. I sighed. ‘Come on, let’s pull it all out.’

  We piled it into the middle of the floor, an exotic bonfire of designer labels in sizes Clover would be lucky to get one leg into now. I was trying to work out a way to suggest dumping some of the stuff without actually saying, ‘Now you’re so fat’ when she laughed, one of those bristly, not funny laughs.

  ‘There’s no point in putting any of this away. It’ll never fit me again. Poor old Lawrence. I was a size eight when we met and now look at me. He’ll be divorcing me under the Trade Descriptions Act.’

  ‘Come on, he didn’t marry you because you were thin.’

  ‘It’s part of the package though, isn’t it? A dolly bird wife you can roll out at corporate events. God knows, he can’t stand going as it is. I guess it’s much worse to have everyone pointing at him and saying, “I don’t fancy yours much” behind his back.’ Clover held up a tie-dye T-shirt, stretched it across her boobs and chucked it on the charity pile.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Think of the stick women we know, like Jen1. You’re not telling me he’d be happier married to her.’

  ‘Maybe not Jennifer but not a female sumo wrestler either.’ She blew out her cheeks.

  ‘Why don’t you come to the gym with me? I get free membership now I’ve started cleaning at Browns. We could get fit together.’

  Clover looked about to dismiss the idea, then she shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s worth a try. The children will find it highly amusing, the idea of me getting my fat backside into a tracksuit. How much could I lose in a month? I’d love to unveil the new me at the ball and shock them all.’

  We filled bin bags full of clothes, lots still with labels on, folding and sort
ing until my back was screaming for mercy. Her wardrobe looked like one of those posh clothes shops where you have to ring a bell to get in. There were just a couple of things folded neatly in the middle of the shelves. Clover pulled out a long red fishtail dress. ‘You’d look amazing in this. Try it on. You could wear it to the ball.’

  ‘I’m not going to the ball.’

  ‘You have to. You won tickets at the fete, remember?’

  ‘I know, but I’m not going.’

  ‘Please go, Maia. Lawrence is playing in the band. It might be my only chance to see him. He’s not answering my calls and if I pick up the phone on the rare occasions he rings to speak to the children, he just says he can’t talk to me at the moment. I can’t face going on my own with everyone gossiping about me. You know what the jungle drums are like, I bet everyone knows by now. They’ll all be whispering about “Poor old Clover, did you know her husband’s dumped her? Well, she had rather let herself go . . .” It’ll send the gym memberships soaring round Sandbury. I should charge a commission. Roll up, roll up, get your lard arses through the door or you’ll be left high and dry like Fatty here.’ She stopped shaking out the red dress and flumped down onto the floor.

  ‘Please come with me,’ she said.

  I was trying to harden my heart but she’d been such a good friend to me. I held out my hand for the dress. It seemed prudish to go into the en-suite to change. I turned my back on Clover, feeling self-conscious about the polka dot underwear I got in the Primark sale for 95p. It probably looked tarty to her. I consoled myself that I’d seen her fling a load of grey bras and baggy knickers into her charity sack.

  I was gobsmacked when I saw myself in the mirror. I’d never owned anything of such good quality. Looking gorgeous owed a lot to time and money, though good genes helped.