by Fiona Gibson
‘An agony aunt,’ I repeat. ‘You know, replying to problem letters that people send into magazines …’
‘My God, Cait. That’s hysterical. No offence or anything, but who bothers to write to magazines?’
‘Desperate people who have no one else to turn to.’ The thought of all those Desperates out there is quite terrifying.
Rachel shakes her head, causing her curls to dance around her shiny cheeks.
I don’t expect her to understand. Over the years we’ve knocked around together, she has made it clear that she believes motherhood is something that comes ‘naturally’, and that it’d be a whole lot easier for everyone if mothers would simply stop whingeing and get on with the job. She has Eve, an eerily well-behaved six-year-old only child, plus a doting husband. I live in hope that a smidge of her sortedness will rub off on me.
‘What are you making?’ I ask, to swerve her off the agony-aunt track.
‘Oh, just pasta dough.’
‘Just pasta dough? You make your own pasta?’
‘Yes, it’s really easy. Flour, eggs, water … But never mind that. You, being an agony aunt …’ Her shoulders start quivering again.
I gawp as she rolls out the creamy dough and proceeds to feed it through a steel contraption. Fresh pasta, I ask you. What’s wrong with the dried stuff in packets?
‘Don’t you think we make such a big deal of bringing up children these days?’ she muses.
‘It is a big deal,’ I protest. ‘It’s the biggest deal there is.’
Rachel frowns. ‘We’ve never had any problems with Eve.’
‘What, none at all? Ever?’
‘Um, well, I do get a bit annoyed when she loses her gym shoes.’
Bloody marvellous. In this family, that’s as bad as it gets. A mislaid elastic-fronted plimsoll. Sometimes I wonder if being friends with Rachel is actually good for my psyche.
I tune into the chatter drifting down from Eve’s bedroom. Even Jake seems happy here, pottering about in the garden by himself. There’s a wooden sandpit out there that Guy, Rachel’s husband, knocked together in under an hour. In this family, everything seems to work as it should. Guy might not be the most exciting man on the planet – unlike Martin, he doesn’t cause women’s underwear to ping off as he saunters by – but at least he’s here.
‘You are lucky,’ I say quietly.
Rachel stops turning the pasta-maker handle and tips her head. ‘Oh, Cait. I’m sorry if I sound smug. I think you’re doing a fantastic job, I really do.’ Kindness emanates from her brown eyes. By rights, Rachel should be filling in for Harriet Pike.
‘Thanks,’ I say, unconvinced.
She re-feeds the dough through the machine. This time it comes out tagliatelle-shaped, just like the tagliatelle you can buy at Tesco for 98p. She tosses the anaemic ribbons into a pot of bubbling water. Herby aromas rise from a simmering tomato and basil sauce.
‘How’s Jake been lately?’ she asks.
‘The usual. All mutters and scowls. It’s as if he’s fast-forwarded to adolescence.’
She smiles sympathetically, looking particularly auntie-ish today with her plump face flushed pink from all the winding and simmering. ‘He’s probably still adjusting to you and Martin living apart. It’s nearly nine months since he left, isn’t it? That’s not so long for a child …’
‘Yes, that’s what Sam reckons too.’
Rachel grins mischievously. ‘Been spending a lot of time with Sam, haven’t you?’
‘Don’t you start …’
‘I know you’re just friends, blah, blah, but—’
‘It’s not like that with Sam and me,’ I cut in. ‘There’s no … sexual chemistry. He’s not interested, and I’m not interested, and—’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ She frowns, as if attending to an injured child.
‘Nothing, but …’
‘Shouldn’t you be open to opportunities?’
‘Rachel,’ I explain, as patiently as I can to someone who’s been with her man for 900 years, ‘there aren’t any opportunities.’
She sighs and dishes up the pasta into jaunty striped bowls. ‘Rally the troops, would you? I think we’re ready.’
I call the kids and they clatter downstairs and in from the garden, clamouring around the table with a frantic scraping of chairs. Everyone tucks in without fuss, even though fresh herbs are distinctly visible. (In our house, attempting to sneak greenery into a dish is a crime punishable by death.)
‘So much better than dried pasta, isn’t it?’ Rachel enthuses.
‘Yummy,’ Lola agrees.
‘Lovely,’ I say, thinking: sorry, but it feels like worms.
‘Who are my aunties?’ Lola asks as we walk home.
‘You only have one real one,’ I explain. ‘There’s Auntie Claire, Daddy’s sister. You’ve got your uncle Adam, but he’s not married any more so—’
‘Who’s my agony aunt?’ she cuts in.
I laugh. ‘You don’t have one, sweetheart, and I hope you’ll never need one. It’s not a real aunt. Not someone who’s related to you. It’s a lady who works for a magazine, and if you’ve got problems you can write to her and she’ll try and help.’
‘Oh.’
While Lola clutches my hand, Jake mooches several yards behind as if wishing to minimise the chance of being seen in public with me. Travis stops to examine every chunk of loose plaster in the wall, every crushed chip carton and grubby bottletop on the ground.
‘No, hon, that’s dirty,’ I insist, tugging him away from teeming bacteria.
‘Why do people write to that lady?’ Lola won’t let this one go.
‘Well, an agony aunt’s supposed to be clever and wise and know the answers to lots of things.’ I cringe inwardly.
‘Why?’
‘Sweetie, you’re just saying “why” all the time to keep me talking. You’re not asking real questions.’ It’s Lola’s favourite game: Why? Why? Why?
‘I’m not,’ she huffs. ‘I just don’t understand why they write to that lady …’
‘Maybe they don’t have anyone else to talk to.’
She grins, pulls her hand free and bounds towards our house. ‘I don’t need an agony aunt,’ she yells back, ‘’cause I’ve got you, Mummy.’
I glow all over. Maybe I am doing something right after all.
Later, when everyone’s been shuffled off to bed and I have a few moments to myself in the sitting room, I stumble upon a feature in Bambino that makes me snort with laughter. It’s called ‘Single and Loving it!’ which strikes me as protesting too much. You never see ‘Happily Married and Loving It!’ or ‘In a Fabulous Relationship and Over the Fucking Moon!’ I am compelled to read on.
It’s actually a list of the amazing things a single woman can do when there’s no pesky significant other to wreck her fun. These include:
• Lying diagonally across your bed with no one telling you off for taking up too much space.
Why would I want to do that? It seems extravagant and wasteful. Tragically, I still keep to my side, leaving space for an invisible man.
• Wallowing in a luxurious scented bath at 7.30 p.m.
What, with three children to get suppered, bathed, pyjamaed and storied? Bambino is a parenting magazine. Aren’t they supposed to understand?
• Flirting with a stranger in the park, just for the hell of it.
How does one flirt again? Please remind me. I vaguely recall something about eyelash fluttering. If I tried that, I’d look unhinged. Plus, I’d probably pick on the man who’d club me over the head and drag me into a bush.
• When you’re feeling wobbly, remind yourself of all the things you don’t miss about your partner.
That’s more like it. There’s plenty I don’t miss about Martin. Road rage, for instance. The nerve of it, that anyone had the audacity to drive on the same road as us! In a perfectly normal and responsible manner!
Him: ‘Jesus, look at that – what the hell’s he doing? God, thi
s drives me mad. What’s he PLAYING at? Bloody idiot.’
Me: ‘He’s indicating right, and, look, he’s performing a perfectly safe right turn.’
Him: ‘Fine, OK, so I’m in the wrong, am I?’
Nor do I miss his polite enquiries as to whether we have any milk/loo roll/bacon, being seemingly incapable of checking for himself. I don’t miss his throaty snoring. Or his habit of calling me ‘the wife’, as in, ‘I’d love to come, Damon, but the wife says we need to show our faces at the school car-boot sale. You know how it is …’ As if I’d invented school and its fundraising activities just to spite him.
I curl up on the sofa, wondering why I loved him so overwhelmingly. What had possessed me to send flowers to his office, and buy a hideously expensive gold ring for his little finger? Having children had changed everything. Apparently I’d had no time for Martin any more, the poor neglected cupcake. Imagine: attending to our baby’s dirty nappy rather than massaging his aching back. We’d fluttered like moths in separate parts of the house, coming together – though not literally – for exhausted fortnightly sex.
Ugh, the sex. The faked orgasms, the way he’d roll off with a satisfied grunt and turn his back to me. The lack of any post-coital conversation whatsoever. I hadn’t expected detailed discussions about how it had been for him, but a few words would have been nice. Like, ‘That was lovely,’ or, ‘Goodnight, darling,’ or even, ‘If you’re thinking of going downstairs, honey, would you fetch me a glass of water?’ That’s just common manners, isn’t it? Rachel’s Guy isn’t much in the looks department (mid-brown hair plus ginger gene which has burst out, startlingly, in the form of a carroty beard), but I’ll bet he says sweet things after they’ve done it. Heck, even Millie’s one-night stands lie around chatting afterwards, if her stories are to be believed.
I slam the magazine shut and head down to the kitchen to locate wine. There’s one message on the answerphone; I must have missed a call while I was upstairs reading Titchy-Witch.
‘Hi, Caitlin,’ comes a voice I don’t recognise. ‘It’s, um, Darren. From the TV shop. Hope you don’t mind me calling you …’ Awkward pause. Weird, maybe he works evenings. ‘I, um, wondered if you’d like to go for a drink or something? No problem if not, just thought, yeah, um, thought I’d ask …’
It comes out in a rush. I’m so gobsmacked I don’t even write down his number.
Darren, the TV Doc. A boy, virtually a baby, asking me for a drink. I replay it and he definitely says Caitlin. Caitlin with the laughable antique TV, a three-year-old child and two more that he doesn’t know about. Didn’t he assume I’m married? ‘Best thing you can do with this heap of junk is dump it. Don’t let your husband take it apart and start fiddling with it.’ Cheeky boy. Was he fishing, or do I simply have an air of the dumpee about me?
Embarrassingly, I play his message for a third time, snatching one of Travis’s Chunky Wax Crayons for Little Hands to scribble down his number. What did Rachel say about being open to opportunities? A drink with a cute younger man … why the heck not? What harm could it possibly do?
I’m grinning, and my heart’s thumping in a slightly hysterical manner, as I tap out Darren’s number on our banana-shaped phone.
8
‘What I can’t understand,’ Sam says, poring over the heap of Bambino mail on my kitchen table, ‘is why they’re so different. The awful, tragic letters people send in and the trivial stuff they print in the magazine. The ones about the kid nagging in the chemist’s, or little Popsicle wanting to invite too many kids to her birthday party …’
‘I’ve only ever read one serious letter on Pike’s page,’ I tell him. ‘When Daddy Strays’ pings into my mind.
‘But this lot –’ Sam swoops his hands over the pile – ‘these are people whose lives are falling apart.’
I hand him a mug of coffee and plonk myself on the chair beside him. ‘You know what? I reckon Harriet never bothered answering real letters. She just made up her own. Ones that would be easy to answer. It’s easy to be rude and confrontational when there’s no risk of offending a real person.’
Sam chuckles and peers at Pike’s page. I left the magazine lying open in the hope that inspiration might emanate from her photo. It hadn’t worked. It felt as if she was spying on me, appalled by the pile of muddy wellies by the back door and the murky sea-monkey tank.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Sam declares. ‘There’s something shifty about her.’
‘It’s not a bad idea, is it? I could make up some trivial problems of my own. It’d be easier than grappling with this lot.’
‘What would Millie say?’ he asks.
‘I don’t think she’d mind. Hey, why don’t you help me make some up?’ I dive for the computer, dragging over an extra chair for Sam, poised for fun.
‘Um, I wouldn’t be any good at that.’ Sam stays put at the table.
‘Oh, come on! You’ve got an overactive imagination. What about all those stories you make up for Harvey?’ I pat the chair encouragingly.
He colours slightly. ‘Stories aren’t personal. Men don’t talk about personal stuff.’
‘I don’t mean real problems … Unless you have some? That’d be even better! Tell me something – anything – that’s bothering you and I’ll try to figure out some answers. It’ll be good practice, like mock GCSEs before the real exams.’
Sam’s jaw tightens. ‘Sorry, Cait. I can’t help you with this.’
I frown at him. ‘Really? You don’t have any problems at all?’
‘No,’ he says firmly.
‘Not … not even a tiddly one?’
‘Not a tiddler, no.’
‘Lucky you.’ I laugh uncomfortably.
He shrugs and looks away.
‘Please, Sam, I just need …’ I tail off, realising that he’s willing me to shut up. What the hell have I said? His eyes are guarded. This isn’t like him at all. Something must be worrying him, something I’ve dredged up with my big gob and stupid game. I feel a stab of hurt that he won’t share it with me.
‘You make them up,’ he says, brightening as he ambles towards my desk. ‘I’ll help with the details.’
‘Right,’ I say, less enthusiastically now.
Still, we manage and the mood lightens. With Sam’s help, I concoct five problems that sound feasible and become so immersed in formulating replies that I start to feel sorry for Sally of Lines., whose daughter’s overuse of the F-word is getting her into trouble at school. As for Sickened of Inverness, whose husband insists on two full rounds of golf every weekend, leaving her to ferry their children to a myriad of activities, I could almost bomb up to Scotland and punch him. I try to invent a problem about whether an elderly mother should move into a home, but tail off and look at Sam.
‘Are you sure you feel OK doing this?’ he asks tentatively.
I shift on my chair. ‘No, not really …’
‘Can you imagine making them up week after week? And all those people emailing and writing letters, desperate for help.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ I say, laughing.
Grinning, he checks his watch and gets up from the chair. Harvey is sleeping over in Jake’s fragrant room. Jake begged, and I’m trying to make things better between us.
As Sam leaves, he says, ‘You know what? I think you should forget about that Pike woman and just be yourself. You don’t need to make up the letters, Cait. You can tackle the serious stuff.’
I shiver in the doorway. ‘It’s not that easy …’
‘Don’t people tell you things? What about that cab driver whose wife had cancer?’
‘Yes, but …’
‘And the old lady we met in the park who was gutted because her granddaughter had dropped out of uni – remember her?’
‘That’s different,’ I insist.
He pulls his jacket around himself, shivering. I wish he’d stay longer. Just being around him makes me sense as if my life’s, well, almost normal. Rachel makes me feel so inadequate sometimes. With S
am I feel less alone.
‘People tell you stuff, Cait,’ he adds, ‘because they know you’re interested and will listen.’
The smile warms my face. ‘OK. I’ll give it a go.’
As we say goodbye I realise I haven’t even mentioned my forthcoming casual, doesn’t-mean-anything drink with Darren.
Having reconvened with the sad and the desperate, I settle on five genuine dilemmas. The strange thing is, answering them isn’t as difficult as I’d imagined. I try to picture myself sitting beside each woman in a bar and figure how I’d react if we fell into conversation and she poured out her worries, the way people do sometimes after a few drinks. Lola totters into the kitchen in a half-sleep, and I gently steer her back upstairs to bed. Jake and Harvey have crashed out top to toe beneath a muddle of astronaut duvet. Travis shouts for me on the pretence of wanting a drink, but really, I suspect, because he needs to know that there’s one parent who hasn’t left him.
Back at my desk, ideas start to form. It all falls into place, as if these women and I are really talking, without noticing the hours slipping by. When I’ve finally finished, I check the time. It’s 2.37 a.m. I’m not even tired. It’s been challenging and – dare I say it – fun.
Maybe I can pull this off after all.
Thursday evening, 6.25 p.m. How to de-mother yourself in ten simple steps:
1. Bribe children with trashy dinner scoffed in front of Wallace and Gromit while you bolt yourself in the bathroom to shower and defuzz.
Not because I am anticipating that Darren will glimpse de-fuzzed areas. After all, I shall be returning home to three innocent, sleeping children plus Holly, our peachy-skinned nineteen-year-old babysitter. However, it’s beneficial to the old, battered ego to feel less gorilla-like on such occasions. It seems terribly unfair that while certain areas – e.g. breasts – droop and wither with age, pubic hair exhibits newly abundant growth, as if liberally dosed with hormone-rooting powder.
