by Polly James
WEDNESDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER
I have never felt such an idiot in my life. And I am never going to Ann Summers again. What on earth are you supposed to do with some of that stuff?
It’s all Greg’s fault. His conference song’s becoming really tedious now, so when he asks me to go to the pub at lunchtime, ‘to wash away the sound of Mr Meeeeurghn’s malodorous voice’, I refuse. Greg’s singing is way more annoying than Mr Meeeeurghn’s screech.
‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to go shopping.’ I don’t say for what.
I’m not too sure myself, but I need to do something to get things back on the right track with Max, and to stop these bloody hiccups. I get them every time Johnny sends me an email now.
I’ve never been in Ann Summers before. I know Ellen has, because she says it’s ‘crap compared to Sinsins’, wherever that is. I couldn’t find it on the Lichford retail map.
Anyway, I stand outside the shop for a while, plucking up courage, and then dive in through the door when no one’s looking. I have a near-miss with a rotating display and have to stand still again for a moment to calm myself down. Then I start to look around.
Everything’s made of luminous plastic, like those horrible toys the kids used to insist on putting on their Christmas lists. I always ignored them and got something wooden and tasteful from the Early Learning Centre instead, but I’m not sure what the Brio equivalent of a sex toy is.
There’s tons of stuff for sale, too. So much that I get quite dizzy trying to take it all in. No wonder psychologists say we’re becoming stressed by having too much choice, not to mention a shortage of clear instructions.
Don’t get me wrong – not everything is a complete mystery. I’m not totally stupid, and anyway some of the things are self-explanatory, but I’ve no idea what others are for. Or where they’re supposed to go. I used to have my finger on the pulse!
Might as well face up to it: I’ll have to ask someone for assistance. Maybe I can pretend to be foreign, and say I’m having trouble reading the labels.
‘Bonjour,’ I say, as I approach the counter. ‘Je m’appelle Marie-Louise. Pouvez-vous m’aider, s’il vous plaît?’fn2
‘Why you talkin’ like that, love?’ says an all-too-familiar and excessively loud voice. ‘You’re Mr Sinclair’s secretary, aren’t you? Mrs Bennett?’
Oh, Jesus Christ. It’s Mr Beales. Oh, and Mrs Beales, too. How lovely. Their Ann Summers bags are full to bursting.
I have no idea what to do next, except run away – so that’s exactly what I do.
THURSDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER
I’m still getting over yesterday’s trauma when Josh ruins another shopping trip. Honestly, my son poses a serious danger to the general public. Or at least to certain people’s mental health – including mine. God knows what Holly sees in him.
Max and I decide to do this week’s food shop straight after work – at the Asda near the cinema, instead of our local branch of Sainsbury’s. I have decided that going further afield will lessen my chances of being spotted and harassed by constituents, and save me having to wear a disguise. Now I wish we hadn’t bothered.
‘We’ll pick Josh up once he finishes work, and then shop together as a family,’ says Max. ‘Then no one can argue about what we have for dinner.’
This sounds reasonable, but the trouble starts when Josh doesn’t finish work on time and, then, when he does finally get into the car, he claims that he’s far too exhausted to traipse round a supermarket.
‘It’s tiring, standing around for four-and-a-half hours, bored out of your head,’ he says. ‘And with people being rude to you.’
Apart from the fact that I’m full-time and sit down to work, after today I know exactly how he feels, and I can’t face doing the shopping either. It’s quite snuggly here in the car, with the seat reclined – and peaceful, too.
‘I suppose I’ll have to go in by myself, then,’ says Max. ‘While you two lazy buggers stay in the car and lounge about.’
I feel a bit guilty, but still very snuggly – until Josh suddenly opens the car door and lets in a gust of cold air.
‘Shut the door, Josh. It’s freezing,’ I say, then, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Ssh,’ he says, then rushes over to the photo booth machine that’s situated just outside the shop.
I watch as he fumbles around in the slot where the photos come out, before he comes running back to the car, yanks the door open and throws himself headlong onto the back seat.
‘Got it,’ he says. ‘He can’t outwit me by changing his schedule.’
Before I can ask what he’s got, or who he’s talking about, I see a man pull back the curtain of the booth and step out onto the pavement. He goes to the slot and removes what is presumably a set of photos, looks down at them, then jerks his head up and starts scanning the car park. He doesn’t look very happy at all.
‘Who is that man, and what’s he doing, Josh?’ I say.
‘Shut up, Mum, and tell me when he’s gone.’ Josh seems to be fumbling about and trying to put something into his wallet.
‘What have you got there?’ I say, at the same time as I make a grab for it. Call it maternal instinct, but I know when Josh is up to something.
I turn on the interior light, to find myself looking at a photograph of a man. The same man that I can see out of the car window. It’s a single photograph, not the usual set of four, and has two very neatly torn edges.
‘Josh,’ I say. ‘What is this? Why have you got a photograph of that man over there?’
‘He’s the photo booth repair man,’ says Josh. ‘I just really like his funny face.’
‘Why?’ I say. The man doesn’t look like a bundle of laughs to me. In fact, he looks very grumpy indeed.
Josh explains that he and his new work colleagues are regulars at Asda, where they buy their snacks after work. (Josh says only idiots pay cinema prices for food.) Then they hang around in the car park outside, eating and gossiping, and watching the man who services the photo booth. This man.
‘He comes quite often,’ says Josh. ‘I suspect he thinks there’s a major problem with the workings of the booth.’
‘Why are you giggling, Josh?’ I say. I can’t see anything amusing about a man who’s just trying to do his job, against all odds. I know exactly how he feels.
‘I’m trying to tell you,’ says Josh, who’s still laughing, ‘if you’ll just shut up for a minute. He gets into the photo booth, starts fiddling around with the machinery, and then he takes some photos of himself.’
Josh pauses while he sits up cautiously, peers out of the window, then ducks down again, very fast. The man is still standing where he was five minutes ago, still looking around him for something or other. He still doesn’t look very funny, either.
Josh wriggles around on the back seat, trying to find somewhere to put his legs, and kicks me with the foot of his dodgy one.
‘Ow,’ I say. ‘That hurt. Stop fidgeting, and sit up sensibly. You shouldn’t be bending your damaged knee like that.’
‘Can’t sit up,’ says Josh. ‘Sorry, Mum. I might be seen, but there’s no room to lie properly flat in here. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. So, then he carries on working inside the booth for a while – with the curtain still drawn across the front. When he’s finished, he comes out, and picks up his photos, to check whether they’ve printed out okay.’
‘And your involvement in this is …?’ I say, though now I’m not sure that I want to know.
‘Well, as soon as the photos come out, one of us rushes over, and grabs them out of the machine,’ says Josh. ‘While the man’s still inside the booth.’
‘You take his photos?’ I say, appalled. ‘That’s theft, you know.’
‘Not all of them,’ says Josh. ‘We just tear one off, and then we put the others back into the slot. Really confuses him.’
‘Give me your wallet,’ I say. ‘Now, or you’re grounded. Hand it over!’
‘Killjoy,’ says Jo
sh, glaring at me, as he does as he’s told.
‘Joshua,’ I say, looking inside it in disbelief. ‘There are twelve different photos in here. How long has this been going on?’
‘A few weeks,’ says Josh. ‘Ever since I started work. He’s getting crosser every time it happens.’
I don’t blame the poor guy. I am, quite clearly, the parent of a juvenile delinquent.
FRIDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER
The Boss graciously allows me to do surgery with him today, as Greg is otherwise engaged in frantically trying to make last-minute changes to Andrew’s schedule for the Party conference, for which Marie-Louise has now abdicated all responsibility. You’d swear she knew I’d implicated her in the Ann Summers incident.
‘Greg will need to know where Andrew is supposed to be when he’s in Manchester, more than I will,’ she says, when I phone her to ask why she’s not handling the conference diary. ‘And I hear he is going instead of you, this year – c’est vrai?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it is true. Greg is the new Goldenballs – but you should still have warned him not to let The Boss make any entries into the diary himself, for God’s sake. Now Andrew’s double-booked all over the place.’
I’m pretty sure Marie-Louise stifles a laugh when she says, ‘Mon Dieu!’
Greg’s language skills are limited to saying, ‘Shit!’ and ‘F*ck’s sake!’ for most of the day, as he tries to re-schedule all the appointments that Andrew claims to have already ‘arranged’. The stress seems to have made him forget all about his attempt to expand the nation’s vocabulary.
‘The Boss probably caused all this confusion on purpose, so that he can lose me once we get there,’ he says. ‘Seeing as he didn’t want a minder interfering with his plans.’
‘Maybe we could fit him with a GPS tracker,’ I say. ‘Perhaps Officer Sexy could help with that?’
‘Too late now,’ says Greg, ‘I’ll just have to stay on duty twenty-four hours a day. It’s going to be hell.’
His mock-despair is totally unconvincing, as he’s still really over-excited about conference, and I’m tired of it now. Especially as he’s cost me and Max our chance of a hotel room à deux.
‘It’s not going to be that much fun at conference, Greg,’ I say, in another mean-spirited effort to rain on his parade (which is where that stupid hat he’s still wearing looks as if it belongs).
Greg disagrees, and then says that he’s decided to stay teetotal throughout so that he can keep his wits about him. I assume that this is because he wants to stand the best possible chance of keeping up a politically correct facade, but he says that’s not the reason.
‘I don’t want to put the ladies off, by getting in a state,’ he says. ‘Not while I am in such great physical shape, thanks to my programme of exercise.’
Then he jogs off to the bus stop, and I walk home, in the opposite direction.
I’m quite out of breath when I get there, as I tried a quick bit of jogging en route, just in case it does help your sex-life, so now I’d better put my feet up for the next hour or so, and phone Connie for an update on Dr Snuffleopagus.
I need to take much better care of myself, seeing as I have such a stressful job – especially as I’ve just remembered that I’ve forgotten to make an appointment with the GP about my blood pressure, which I’m positive isn’t going down.
Josh’s is probably even higher than mine, though – and his face is green when he finally comes in from work, close to midnight.
‘Good God,’ I say. ‘What on earth’s the matter, Josh? You look terrible.’
‘I feel terrible,’ he says. ‘You won’t believe what I found, when I was on clearing tonight.’
‘Clearing?’ I say. It must be a technical cinematography term.
‘Cleaning up after all the punters have left,’ says Josh. ‘I picked up a large Coke cup from under one of the seats and – oh – my – God.’
‘What’s so bad about a Coke cup?’ I say. ‘Am I missing something?’
‘I wished I’d missed the bloody thing,’ says Josh. ‘There was a huge poo inside it.’ He adds that, when he told his manager about it, she didn’t even seem surprised.
‘She just told me to get rid of it,’ he says. ‘Behaved as if it was perfectly normal, so God knows how often the same thing’s going to happen.’
I get up from the sofa to give him a sympathetic hug, but he shakes me off and says, ‘’Night, Mum. I’m going to bed, as soon as I’ve had a shower. Probably using bleach or something. Don’t tell Holly about this, will you? She’s bound to dump me if she finds out I’m handling faeces for a living.’
Max wakes up at that point, so I tell him instead. He is less than sympathetic. ‘Bet they didn’t warn Josh about that in Film Studies,’ he says.
I am going to write to the manager of the cinema and suggest that they allocate customers’ names and addresses to specific seats, like airlines do. Then, if customers leave anything behind when they leave, the cinema staff can post it back to them.
Greg would probably offer to hand-deliver it, now I come to think of it. He is an expert in the field.
SATURDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER
Sam’s here for the weekend again. Well, he’s here in person, but I’m not at all sure where his head is. Somewhere in the Isle of Skye, I think – home to his latest conquest, courtesy of the internet dating site.
Her name is Shona, and she has six children. Six – imagine that! Six boys who could all turn out like Josh. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
‘I didn’t know you even liked kids,’ I say.
‘Depends if I like their mothers or not,’ says Sam. He spends the afternoon making us look at all the photos that Shona has sent him, on his laptop. I can’t see them properly though, as I’m standing at completely the wrong angle to the screen, probably because Max has elbowed me out of the way.
He’s only supposed to be faking interest out of politeness, but then I catch a glimpse of Shona and realise why he’s paying such close attention. I wouldn’t have thought you could buy underwear like that in the wilds of Scotland. They must have a branch of Ann Summers on Skye.
‘I’ll be seeing that in the flesh next week,’ says Sam, with what can only be described as a leer.
‘Huh,’ I say. ‘Not if she’s got six children, you won’t.’ Does he know nothing about teenagers at all?
‘It’s the week they’re at their dad’s,’ says Sam. ‘So we all know what that means, don’t we? We can have sex all over the house, if we like.’
I scowl in envy, at the same time as Max decides to go and make a coffee. He’s got a very thoughtful expression on his face, though God knows what he’s thinking about.
While he crashes cups and spoons around – rather more noisily than is necessary – I wonder how long Sam thinks that a love affair with someone who lives on Skye is going to last. About the same time as a ‘relationship’ with someone who lives in Russia, I should imagine – despite Johnny’s claim that distance makes the heart grow fonder. (That’s certainly not why Igor’s so desperate to get permission for his wife to join him in the UK. He’s just worried about what she gets up to in Moscow now that he’s not there to keep an eye on her.)
Anyway, there must be a nice girl closer to home who would suit Sam just as well as Shona – and if we leave ‘nice’ out of the equation, I have the perfect solution.
‘Well, if you don’t mind kids part-time, Sam,’ I say, ‘why don’t you ask Ellen out on a date? Lichford’s a hell of a lot nearer to where you live than the Isle of Skye.’
Such a cunning plan, devised on the spur of the moment – and which would kill two birds with one perfectly rounded stone. I am such a creative thinker when under pressure. Some of the time.
‘I don’t like Ellen,’ says Sam, unhelpfully.
‘Bugger,’ I say, at the same time as Max says, ‘Why on earth not?’
The answer to that question should be obvious, as far as I’m concerned.
‘You said she mak
es a lot of noise during sex,’ says Sam. ‘I can’t be doing with all that. Whatever would my lodgers think?’
‘Same as me, probably,’ I say. ‘That she protests too much.’
‘Are you questioning my sexual capabilities?’ says Sam, missing the point as only someone with a penis can.
Now he sounds just like Dad, who – coincidentally – phones very shortly afterwards.
‘I’m knackered,’ he says, by way of introduction. ‘Dinah’s been here all day, getting in my way. I’m trying to do some DIY.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘Why?’
‘Why what?’ says Dad.
I don’t blame him. My syntax has gone to pot, following the abject failure of the Sam and Ellen project.
‘Why both, I suppose,’ I say. ‘Why was Dinah there, and why are you doing DIY?’
‘Dinah was snooping,’ says Dad, ‘and I’m doing DIY because the house is looking tatty. I’ve spent too much time abroad this last few months. Need to get back on top of things.’
There’s a lewd joke there, but Dad would usually be the one to make it. Oddly, he doesn’t.
‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘Enough about me. How are you?’
‘Fed up,’ I say, once I’ve got over the shock of being asked. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘You need a holiday,’ says Dad. ‘And some excitement in your life. I feel twenty years younger these days.’
‘Ah,’ I say, thinking of all the fun Dad would normally have had with that comment, too. He’s not his usual self at all.
Maybe he had a revelation while he was away, and realised he needed to give his life a bigger purpose? Perhaps he’s going to volunteer for Oxfam, or become a goodwill ambassador with the United Nations, doing his bit to increase understanding between people from different cultures?
‘So,’ I say, ‘are you planning on going back to Thailand, then, if you reckon it does you so much good? Or have you got something else in mind? You did say you were bored, last time you went.’
‘I was,’ says Dad. ‘Everyone there speaks bloody pidgin.’
SUNDAY, 26 SEPTEMBER
Honestly, I might just as well have gone to conference. Greg’s been on the phone all day about one thing or another. He’s still texting me now, completely distraught, even though I keep replying that I am asleep.
