Diary of an Unsmug Married

by Polly James

  I don’t even have time to express my gratitude for that, as then Josh goes out, leaving his geriatric parents to their usual exciting Friday night, during which Max has several glasses of wine, and I have one – in a misguided attempt to set an example. Then I sit and contemplate the side of Max’s head while he snores on the sofa.

  This goes on until just before 11:00pm, when his mobile starts to ring. He continues to sleep while I try to work out how to answer the damned thing – but, finally, I manage it.

  ‘Mum,’ says Josh. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Asleep,’ I say. ‘Why? Are you okay? You sound peculiar.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he says. ‘Okay, I mean. Can you get Dad to come and pick me up from Pizza Express? Holly’s gone off in a huff, I haven’t got any money left, and I can’t walk properly.’

  ‘Why? Now what’s happened?’ I say, trying to wake Max at the same time by prodding him with my foot. Unsuccessfully.

  ‘I think I’ve dislocated my knee again. Smacked it on the table when I got up, and it’s agony. Just like when that skateboard ramp collapsed under me last year.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Josh. Okay – but Dad won’t be able to come. He’s had too much wine to drive,’ I say. ‘Stay put until I get there.’

  Honestly, we might as well get a season ticket for A&E, and it’s going to be like a war zone in there at this time on a Friday night. That’ll teach me to view a quiet night in as boring.

  I fish the keys out of Max’s pocket, grab my coat and bag and power walk to the car – but it isn’t there. I run up and down our road a few times, then check the side streets in case Max has had to park further afield than usual, but there’s still no sign of it anywhere. Bloody, bloody hell.

  There’s nothing for it but to go back home.

  ‘Max. Max! Wake up! The car’s been stolen and I need to get Josh to A&E,’ I say, dialling for a cab.

  He finally starts to stir when I phone Josh to warn him that I’ll have to pick him up in a taxi because the car is missing. By the time I’ve finished explaining that, the cab’s outside.

  ‘Max – you’ll have to phone the police and report the theft,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Um,’ he says. ‘Yes, um.’

  ‘Yes, um, what? Hurry up – the meter’s running!’

  ‘Well, the car hasn’t exactly been stolen,’ he says. He won’t meet my eyes when I ask what he means, so I repeat the question, rather louder this time. He’s still staring very hard at the floor when he answers: ‘I may have lent it to someone for the weekend.’

  ‘Who?’ I say, as the taxi driver beeps his horn for about the hundredth time.

  ‘Ellen,’ he says.

  I slam the door so hard on my way out, it’s a miracle I don’t shatter the glass.

  SATURDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER

  I am knackered after last night’s stint in casualty, though I’d really like some of their zero tolerance posters for use in the office. We could exclude at least a quarter of our constituents if we implemented those.

  Tolerance is definitely close to zero at home today, though I’m not sure who’s the grumpiest: me or Josh. He’s worried that Holly’s going to finish with him if he doesn’t stop being so accident-prone, and is disgusted that he has to wear a brace to support his kneecap, particularly as it won’t fit under his skinny jeans.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re moaning about,’ I say. ‘Wearing them was probably what caused your kneecap to dislocate. They’re ridiculously tight.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Mum,’ he says. ‘They’re probably better than a brace – seeing as they cover the whole of my leg.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t do as the doctor told you and it dislocates again, you’ll have to hop back to the hospital. I can’t afford any more taxi trips this month.’

  Max looks very uncomfortable when I say this, but he still hasn’t volunteered how Ellen happens to have been lent our car without me even knowing about it. He always leaves it to me to broach contentious subjects.

  When I do, it turns out that her car has broken down and that Max offered to lend her ours so that she could visit her mother for the weekend.

  ‘But why didn’t you consult me first?’ I say. ‘It is our car, after all. And I am your wife – or I was, the last time I looked.’

  ‘There wasn’t time,’ he says. ‘Ellen was supposed to get to a family party by 8:00pm, and didn’t realise her car was buggered until nearly 5:30pm. You weren’t even home, so I couldn’t ask you if you minded.’

  ‘Ever heard of Alexander Graham Bell?’ I say. ‘He came up with an answer to that.’

  Max glares at me, before going on the offensive. ‘I knew you’d be awkward about it if I asked you, anyway,’ he says. ‘I was just trying to be neighbourly.’

  ‘I’d only have been awkward if our neighbour had been naked when she asked you,’ I say. ‘As she so often seems to be. And being husbandly would make a change.’

  Josh says, ‘Ooh!’ which doesn’t help at all, so I stomp off into the living room, and turn on the TV. Sod my rule about never watching it in the daytime, to avoid brain death: I’d quite like to stop thinking for a bit. Max follows me into the room, though, and makes himself comfortable on the sofa, as if preparing to continue the conversation. Some people just can’t take a hint.

  When I press play on an old recording of an episode of Swedish Wallander, he gets up and walks out again.

  ‘Bloody subtitles,’ he says.

  Now he knows how it feels to have no idea what is going on, for once.

  SUNDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER

  I am knackered. I know I’ve said it before but, honestly, snoring really should be grounds for divorce. I finally drag myself out of bed, mid-morning, but can’t be bothered to get dressed.

  So at lunchtime I’m still sitting around in one of Connie’s old nighties – attractively topped off with Max’s dressing gown – when the doorbell rings. There’s the sound of muffled conversation for a while, and then Max invites Ellen to come in, the idiot.

  I glare at him, while she produces a gift-wrapped plant pot and hands it to me. ‘This is for you, Molly,’ she says. ‘To thank you for the loan of the car.’

  I’m not exactly sure what comes out of my mouth next, but it’s something along the lines of, ‘Humph.’

  Gracious is obviously my middle name where nymphomaniac neighbours are concerned, and I don’t like cactuses anyway. They never flower, just sit there promising much and delivering very little. A bit like certain MPs I could name.

  My lack of enthusiasm must be obvious, because then Ellen says, ‘Max says you weren’t very happy about him lending it to me – but it was all my fault. You mustn’t blame him, you really mustn’t.’

  She pats Max on the arm at the same time, and it’s all I can do not to swat her hand away. And what gives her the right to tell me not to be cross with my own husband? He deserves it. Probably.

  ‘Humph,’ I say, again, while Max looks at Ellen apologetically and then shrugs, as if powerless to control a lunatic.

  I don’t know why he thinks ‘Humph’ is so embarrassing. It seems pretty restrained to me, and I’d say a lot worse than that if I had any definitive proof that he’s sleeping with Ellen. The trouble is, I don’t, so I try to pull myself together, which is challenging in an outfit like this.

  ‘Coffee?’ I say, in a way that suggests the right answer is, ‘No.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ says Ellen, on cue for once. ‘I need to do some food shopping. I’ve got nothing in the house to eat.’

  Then she gives the car keys back to Max, apologises again to me, and takes her leave.

  Max goes to show her out while I unwrap the cactus and put it on the table, and then I start to feel a bit guilty for being so rude to her, even though it really is a rubbish plant. What if she isn’t up to anything with Max?

  I should probably apologise to her, just in case.

  ‘God, Molly, did you have to be like that to Ellen?’ says Max
, coming back into the room and throwing the car keys onto the table. ‘There was no need for it.’

  Now I’m definitely not going to say I’m sorry.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I say. ‘And I hate cactuses, anyway.’

  ‘But this one’s been cultivated to remove its prickles,’ says Max, as if it would be very good news, were the same thing to be done to me.

  MONDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER

  It’s Josh’s interview at the cinema today so, soon, I may be the mother of a paid-up member of the working class.

  Then he can fund his own taxis but, in the meantime, I have to pay for another one as he can’t possibly get there on foot, and neither Max nor I can get the time off work to drive him there. He’s still hobbling like Hopalong Cassidy, even with the dubious bracing effect of those stupid jeans.

  ‘It’ll be worth the money, if he gets the job,’ I say to Max. ‘And, anyway, we should reward him for getting an interview on the back of his first-ever application. That’s a hell of an achievement in itself.’

  I’m not quite so convinced of that when, afterwards, Josh tells me that the Jobcentre sent eighty candidates along to the cinema. Pre-selected, my arse.

  Anyway, they were split into two groups, and then set some of the most ridiculous tasks that even I can imagine (and The Boss is really good at thinking of those). Josh says that, first, they were given an exercise in recalling and repeating everything the previous ten people had said, and then each candidate had to name their favourite film.

  ‘What did you choose?’ I say to Josh, expecting something horrifically violent and full of swearing.

  ‘Mrs Doubtfire,’ he says. ‘I think that made me stand out from the crowd.’

  Next, they were each paired up with another applicant to act out dialogue from various film scripts, before being asked the pièce de résistance: ‘If you were a fruit, which one would you be?’

  ‘I definitely nailed it on that one,’ says Josh. ‘Everyone else chose a vegetable.’

  He finds out some time in the next two days if he’s been successful. It’ll be very worrying if he hasn’t.

  Max and I are still laughing about the fruit and vegetable thing when I open my laptop to email Connie about it – only to discover that I’ve got a message from Dad. The text is brief, as usual: ‘I’m sending you these photos so you will understand why I had to come back to Thailand.’

  I think we already know the reason for that, actually – even without the clue afforded by the Thai bride’s name.

  Oh, bloody hell. There are three picture attachments, and I really, really don’t want to open those. God knows what they contain. Probably gynaecological shots. I make Josh open them instead, while I stand behind him peering through my fingers at the screen. (I know it’s irresponsible – it’s in the genes.)

  ‘Mum, what are you on about?’ Josh says. ‘There are no naked women in these pictures, at all.’

  Does he have to sound so disappointed? I give him a warning look, then realise that he’s right.

  Photo number one is of Dad, who appears to have grown a very dodgy-looking moustache and is kitted out in what must surely be a set of new clothes. He looks exactly like a pub landlord, circa 1975. He’s wearing grey slip-on shoes, and what on earth is that around his neck?

  ‘God,’ says Josh. ‘Where the hell did he get those horrible shoes?’

  ‘Same place he got the medallion, I should think,’ says Max, who’s also come to have a look.

  Photo number two is of a group of unidentified old Thai people, and number three shows four young Thai children. All are fully dressed, and there is no sign of the Thai bride at all.

  ‘Who are these people?’ I ask Josh.

  ‘Probably Grandad’s new family,’ he says. ‘The ones he’s keeping with your inheritance. Either that or he’s got amnesia and thinks he’s Thai himself. Maybe you should ask him what sort of fruit he is, when you get the chance.’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ I say. ‘The answer to that would obviously be cake.’

  TUESDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER

  God, talk about cock-ups. It turns out that Marie-Louise hasn’t booked me and The Boss into a hotel for the Party conference yet, and now she’s struggling to find us rooms anywhere in Manchester.

  She claims she thought that I was doing it – as if I haven’t had enough to do during Recess, while she and Carlotta have been taking holidays and swanning around Westminster as if they owned the place.

  ‘I’m not going,’ she says, ‘so why should I book the rooms?’

  ‘Because you are Andrew’s Diary Secretary,’ I say. ‘And I have been otherwise occupied, managing him. That’s considerably more difficult.’

  I’m not sure, but I think Marie-Louise says something abusive in French in reply, so I try to recall the phrase Dad learned from a Breton fisherman, and which he always shouts at motorists when they drive too slowly, but it’s hopeless. I can’t remember it. My brain’s still in a post-Recess fug.

  I suppose I could email Dad and ask him, but he’s probably busy learning the Thai for ‘Bring me my slippers’fn1 now, anyway, and will have abandoned any interest in French. There must be another way to deal with Marie-Louise, if I put my mind to it.

  When I have found a copy of her contract and faxed it through to her, we finally reach agreement on whose job it is to make The Boss’ hotel arrangements. Hers, of course. I think I manage to hide my satisfaction fairly well, though Greg accuses me of ‘sounding smug without saying a single word’, which he describes as ‘an enviable skill’.

  At lunchtime, Max phones to tell me that he’s just spoken to David and has mentioned that I don’t quite seem myself. I don’t know what makes Max think that he’s himself, but avoid saying so.

  ‘David says we can have the cottage for the weekend after this,’ he says. ‘So we can spend some quality time together, and you can calm down a bit. He also said to remind you that, if you weren’t so averse to capitalism, you could get a job that paid well enough to buy your own place in the country.’

  Ha, ha, ha. David could be a comedian, if he was ever capable of being funny. Anyway, maybe Josh will become a cinema owner, over the course of a stellar career in the film industry, and then he’ll be able to keep me in the style to which I’d like to become accustomed.

  Or maybe not. He phones mid-afternoon to tell me that he got the job. I’m thrilled, but he doesn’t sound very pleased at all.

  ‘What’s the matter, Josh?’ I say. ‘You don’t sound as chuffed as I thought you’d be.’

  ‘Well, I’m a bit pissed off, actually, Mum,’ he says. ‘You know how they said it was a full-time job?’

  ‘Yes. I thought that’s what you wanted?’

  It’s certainly what he needs, if he’s to stand any chance of keeping me in luxury in my old age.

  ‘Well, it sounds as if that was a bit of a con,’ Josh says. ‘They only give you a four-hour contract.’

  ‘What?’ I can’t believe it. ‘Four hours – at minimum wage? How are you supposed to support yourself on that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Josh. ‘Holly’s not impressed. She says now it’ll be ages before I move out.’

  She’s got a point. At this rate, Max will beat him to it – seeing as he’ll only be moving next door.

  WEDNESDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER

  I am a nervous wreck – and an idiot. I have just worked out that, as I haven’t told anyone about my plan to meet up with Johnny tomorrow, he could kidnap and murder me, without anyone even suspecting him.

  This is very stupid behaviour indeed – the sort of thing I’d expect from a teenager let loose on the net for the first time, not from someone responsible like me. Supposedly.

  ‘Can you open today’s mail?’ I say to Greg. ‘I’ve got something urgent to sort out. It shouldn’t take a minute.’

  It doesn’t. It takes hours before I come up with a plan: to write a letter addressed, ‘To whom it may concern, in the event of my disappearance and/or death’. It will d
etail who I am meeting and where – and will be secreted in the top drawer of my desk. The only one with a working lock.

  This plan is aborted before I’ve even written the note, for a number of compelling reasons.

  Firstly, I’m sure The Boss has a duplicate key to the drawer – seeing as there were definitely more packets of Fruit Pastilles in there before the start of Recess, and I haven’t eaten them – and it’d be just my luck if he decided to snoop around when he gets back from London tomorrow night, before I can retrieve the note on Friday morning. If I’m still alive by then.

  Then Andrew would be bound to tell Max that I’m having an affair – if only to prove that he can be right about something, occasionally. (Occasionally being the operative word.) So I’d have survived a potentially murderous encounter, only for my marriage to fall apart.

  Secondly, if Andrew doesn’t have a key, then no one will find the note anyway, or not until it’s far too late to do me any good. Back to the bloody drawing board.

  Another hour passes before I come up with Plan B, which is much more straightforward than its predecessor. Tell someone I can trust. This rules out ninety-nine per cent of the people I know, and the remaining one per cent all think Max is wonderful, and would be absolutely horrified by what I’m up to. I’m pretty horrified myself.

  I can’t think of a Plan C, so I resort to staring hopelessly into the middle distance and eating a whole packet of sweets instead. When my eyes regain focus, there is the answer, staring me in the face. Or, rather, doing sit-ups in the doorway between our offices.

  ‘Greg,’ I say. ‘I need to tell you something. In confidence.’

  ‘Not now, you fool,’ he says. ‘Can’t you see I am working out?’

  Oh, honestly. I’ll change my mind about telling him in a minute if he doesn’t hurry up.

  ‘This is much more important than that,’ I say. ‘It could be a matter of life and death.’

  ‘If I don’t lose this bloody flab, it’ll be my love-life that’s dead. Stop distracting me.’