by Sue Margolis
Charlie shook his head. “Bucket!”
Bucket was their code name for sweets. It had started last Christmas. One of Val’s more modest presents to Charlie had been a load of mini chocolate bars that came in a small plastic bucket.
“Listen,” Amy said, “you threw up last night because you ate too many sweets. You had pizza for supper. Your body needs a rest from junk. Now, how about I slice you up a pear and a banana?”
“K.” He wasn’t pleased, but he didn’t try to argue.
She went to fetch a plate and a knife. When she came back, she sat down at the table opposite her son and began peeling the pear. “Poppet, there’s something I need to tell you.”
He looked up from his drawing—an impressive purple shark with a fiendish green eye and red teeth.
“It’s about Michelangelo. I’m not sure those tablets the vet gave us are working.”
Charlie nodded. “Is he going to die?”
She reached out and put her hand on her son’s. “I think he might.”
“K.”
“That’s very sad, isn’t it?” He didn’t say anything. She kept her hand on his and waited for the tears. But none came. Instead, there was just a shrug.
“He’s boring,” he said, taking his hand out from under his mother’s. “All he does is go around on his wheel. You can’t play with him.” He went back to his drawing and added a huge fang. She sat watching him color in the fang, unsure whether she was relieved or disturbed by his reaction.
“Well, anyway,” she pressed on, “I want you to know that if Michelangelo dies, he won’t be in pain anymore and he’ll go to hamster heaven. He’ll be with all the other hamsters, who will help God look after him. And maybe we could bury him under the apple tree in the garden. Perhaps you could make up a special prayer.”
“Mum?” He was still coloring in the fang.
“What, darling?”
“When Michelangelo dies, can we get a snake?” He was looking at her now, his eyes darting with excitement.
Amy shivered. She’d had a thing about snakes ever since she was a child and a neighbor’s pet python escaped. One night she overheard her parents discussing how it might find its way into the sewers. Twenty-five years later, there were still times when she was sitting on the toilet and found herself thinking about the never-recovered Spike and how even after all these years the gaping-jawed creature could have found his way to Debtford and be lurking in the waste pipe, poised to rise up into the toilet pan. “What? No. I’m not having a snake in the house.”
“Oh, please. Tom in my class says you can get these small ones that eat real live mice and stuff. He knows ’cos his brother’s got one.”
“Charlie, we are not getting a snake and particularly not one that gets fed live food. That is disgusting.”
“Okay, what about one that eats dead food?”
“No, not even one that eats dead food. Maybe we should think about terrapins.”
“Bor-ring.” He paused. “So is that man from last night coming to our house again?”
Ah, so Duncan was playing on his mind. She wasn’t surprised. Seeing her kissing him last night must have stirred up all kinds of emotions. She needed to reassure her son that he was still number one in her life.
“Actually, I won’t be seeing him again. We’re not going to be friends anymore.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Why?”
“Okay, I decided I didn’t really like him, after all.”
“I don’t like Katie Miller anymore. She’s in my class, and she smells. All girls smell. Did Duncan smell?”
She thought about her response. “You know what,” she said, her face breaking into a grin, “he sort of did smell.”
“Of poo?”
“Well, not exactly …”
“Pooey Duncan!” Charlie squealed with laughter.
She waited for him to stop. “Charlie, do you want to talk about how it felt when you saw me kissing Duncan? I know it must have seemed a bit weird, but I just want you to know how much I love you and how important you are and how I will always be here.”
“Can I watch my Shrek DVD?”
Amy blinked. “Sure. So there’s nothing troubling you? There’s nothing you want to talk about?”
“Just the snake. Maybe we could go and see one in the pet shop. Please?”
“Charlie, I’ve explained to you that we’re not having a snake.”
“You are so mean.”
“Oh, and I’ve moved Michelangelo into my room so that I can keep an eye on him in the night.”
“K.”
With that he jumped down from the chair and stomped off into the living room.
“IT’S LIKE he can’t wait for Michelangelo to die,” Amy said to Bel a couple of hours later, “so that we can get a snake.” Bel had popped around, bearing Sauvignon and Sonic Sour Cream Doritos to celebrate landing the “attention this vehicle is reversing” gig. Her high spirits didn’t last long, though. After a couple of glasses of wine, she became positively maudlin and started bemoaning the fact that she hadn’t had a “proper” acting job in months, not since she’d played Third Crone in Macbeth. “I just don’t know where my life’s going. Maybe I should accept that I’m never going to hit the big time and get a real job.”
“Like what?” Bel wasn’t the type who could cope with having a boss. She had “authority” issues and could be lippy to people who tried to give her orders. Plus, her London bus red hair and piercings—ears, nose, and navel—and her current penchant for superskinny drainpipes and four-inch platforms meant she couldn’t exactly walk into a job in the average HR department.
“I suppose I could always move to the country and open a post office. I love the outdoors.”
“Since when?” Amy said. “For you the outdoors is the bit you have to pass through to get from your place to the nearest Mac concession.”
“Maybe I should change my image,” she said, looking down at her nails, which were coated in black polish. “You know, lose the hair color. Develop a more sophisticated look. Or maybe I should think about changing agents.”
In the end, they both agreed she should carry on as she was and hope that her big break would come sooner rather than later.
Bemoaning over, they spent the next ten or fifteen minutes discussing Brian and Bean Machine. Finally they got around to Charlie and the snake. “And he wants to watch it eat live mice,” Amy continued. “You could practically see his mouth watering. Meet my son, the six-year-old psychopath.” She picked the wine bottle up from the kitchen table and topped up their glasses.
Bel started laughing. “Oh, come on, you’ve read the child development books. All six-year-olds are psychopaths.”
“Yeah, I know,” Amy said. “They haven’t yet developed the imagination to appreciate suffering in others.”
“Of course it’s worse in boys. My brother Gavin was still pulling the wings off flies when he was sixteen.”
They decided to take their drinks into the living room, as it would be more comfortable. As they passed Charlie’s room, they could hear his gentle snoring. Bel insisted on taking a peek at her favorite (and only) godson, whom she hadn’t seen in all of three days. The two women stood at the end of Charlie’s bed. His fringe was damp with sweat and stuck to his forehead. As usual, his blankie was on the floor. Amy picked it up and put it next to him in the bed and went to open the window a crack.
“Aw, look at him,” Bel whispered. “That cute little face has barely changed since the day he was born. And look how he still sucks those same two fingers.”
Charlie loved Bel because she possessed a childish, playful streak. When they bounced together on the garden trampoline, there was so much whooping and squealing that it was hard to tell which of them was enjoying it more. Bel could sit on the floor with him for hours building Legos and get really enthused about what they were building. When she read to him, the actor in her created voices that charmed a
nd transported him.
Bel often said how she couldn’t wait to become a mum. Her problem was finding the right man. She tried to deny it, but her friends all agreed that she wasn’t the world’s best picker.
They sat on the white IKEA sofa, which—courtesy of Charlie clambering over it in his sneakers all the time—was considerably less white than it had been three months ago when Amy bought it.
Amy put her wineglass to her lips. “Omigod, I cannot believe I haven’t told you my big news. What with all the Bean Machine stuff, I actually managed to forget … I dumped Duncan.”
“What? But when I rang last night, you seemed to be going at it like a pair of stoats. What happened?”
Amy explained.
“He wanted to farm Charlie out every weekend, just so’s he could get laid? What a piece of work.” Bel gave a shudder. Then she took her friend’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Ames, I’m so sorry. This is really crappy—just when you thought you’d found a decent bloke … but you have to hang in there. Your time will come.”
Amy gave a doubtful smile. “That’s what Brian said.”
“Well, he’s right … What pisses me off most about this whole Duncan thing is the way men can be so selfish and not see anything wrong with it.” She took a glug of wine.
“So you’ll be wanting to put your boyfriend’s dirty laundry in my machine, then,” Amy said, grinning at her clever and insightful segue. But Bel failed to pick up on it.
“Yeah, do you mind? My machine’s on the blink again. I’m waiting for the bloke to come and fix it.”
As well as bringing wine and Doritos, Bel had lugged around two carrier bags of washing. Mark, whom she had been seeing for a couple of months, apparently saw nothing wrong in dumping his laundry on his girlfriend. Bel owned a washing machine, he didn’t. QED. When Amy suggested to Bel that Mark take his smelly socks and underwear to the Laundromat, she made excuses about his crazy work schedule and how the poor soul simply didn’t have time. She used the same excuse to justify schlepping across town to his place most nights and cooking for him.
Bel often talked about how much she enjoyed “looking after” Mark. She would come over and plan dinner menus or try to convince Amy that ironing a man’s shirts and underwear was a gesture of love and affection. As she listened, Amy started to feel as if she’d slipped through a gap in the space-time continuum. She half expected Bel to morph into one of the stiff-skirted, chain-smoking wives in Mad Men and start discussing Tupperware and Avon ladies.
Amy’s silence must have betrayed her thoughts.
“Look,” Bel was saying, “I am not some surrendered girlfriend, okay? I like doing things for him, that’s all.”
Amy held up her hands in defense. “I never said a word.”
If appearances were anything to go by, Bel couldn’t have looked less like a surrendered girlfriend. As well as the London bus red, chin-length bob and the nose and ear studs, she was wearing chunky ethnic bangles and rings on every finger. At five-ten, with her huge emerald eyes and elfin face, she could carry it off the same way she could carry off the drainpipe jeans and orange patent platforms.
It wasn’t just her looks that made her appear anything but put upon. Bel was one of the most independent and spirited women Amy knew. She allowed nobody to control her or put her down—except her boyfriends.
Raised by her parents in Leeds, she’d left home when she was sixteen. Her father had started hitting the bottle and Bel’s mother. He’d been doing both on and off for years. For years Bel had been begging her mother to leave him, and she had always dithered. When her mother finally refused, Bel decided she’d had enough. She couldn’t stand around watching her mother getting beaten black and blue. If she tried to intervene, her father turned on her. Gavin, her brother, wasn’t able to help as he’d already left home. Bel came to London with a few hundred pounds in savings in her pocket—enough to get her some crappy digs off the Great North Road. A few months later, she applied to drama school and was accepted. She temped or worked in pubs to support herself.
Amy met her when she came to temp at Dunstan Healey Fogg. By then Amy had already been made redundant and was working out her notice. They got to talking a few times at the water cooler and hit it off. She loved Bel’s sense of style, her humor, and the fact that she could be impulsive. One morning she decided to get her head shaved. By the end of her lunch hour it was done. Since Dunstan Healey Fogg prided itself on its cutting-edge image—something that Amy had never quite been able to live up to—nobody batted an eyelid. Another time, she dragged Amy to a vintage dress shop in Islington and persuaded her to buy a purple Marilyn Monroe tea dress and glitzy sunburst orange cocktail ring. “Omigod, with your boobs and tiny waist, it’s perfect.”
When Amy was in her teens, she was hugely conscious of her 34 double-D bust and ample rear. She tried to diet them away with little success. When she lost weight, it was always on her legs or face. It was only when she started university and blokes began hitting on her and girls confessed how much they coveted Amy’s boobs and hips that she stopped trying to diet away her curves. Eventually, she came to love them. She especially liked her breasts, which one boyfriend at uni described as “the most magnificent jugs” on the planet.
One day, Bel got a phone call at work. Her mother had been rushed to the hospital. She had a ruptured spleen. Amy found out later that this had come—surprise, surprise—courtesy of Bel’s drunk of a father. For some reason Bel felt able to confide in Amy, and throughout that summer Amy listened and offered her support. Bel’s mum recovered and was finally persuaded to press charges against her husband, and eventually he went to prison. As Bel’s family crisis subsided, the two young women started going to clubs and gigs and having fun. Slowly, their relationship turned from counselor-patient to a proper even-handed friendship.
Mark—known by everyone apart from Bel as Jurassic Mark because of his Neanderthal attitudes toward women—was a great big muscle-bound Aussie, a himbo fitness trainer with a man tan and a jaw that looked like it had been chiseled by the bloke who’d carved the presidents on Mount Rushmore. He called Bel “babe” and introduced himself with lines like “G’day, I’m Mark. I can bench a hundred and sixty K.” He bought her flowers, perfume, and sexy underwear. She cooked him lasagne from scratch, ironed his track suits, and on one occasion even cleaned and waxed his vintage midnight-blue Jaguar with cream upholstery.
Back in the kitchen, Bel pulled her baggy green “boyfriend” cardigan around her. “Okay, you’re right. You’re always right. I hate it when you’re right.”
“Right about what? I still haven’t said anything.”
“I know, but you’ve said it before. Look, I know Mark’s a sexist control freak, but here’s the thing.” She took another mouthful of wine. “God help me for saying this, but I think a bit of me enjoys being controlled and dominated by men. I think it has to do with seeing how my dad treated my mother.”
“I think you might be right.”
“Sometimes I think about leaving Mark, but then we make love and … what can I say? That man controls me like I’m some racing car, engine all revved up to go, but he holds me back. He has this way of bringing me to the brink of an orgasm and then taking his foot off the throttle and holding me there. I just lie there gasping and pleading, and then finally … when he’s ready … Oh … my … God. I’m addicted. I just don’t know how to wean myself off him. I wake up planning to ignore all his calls and go cold turkey, then by the evening I’m in bed with him and back in horny heaven. In that postcoital glow he asks me to collect his dry cleaning or trim his nose hair and I’m helpless to resist.”
Just then the door buzzer rang. Amy frowned a question. She went over to the intercom. “Hi, it’s me.” It was Brian. She buzzed him in and went back into the living room. “It’s Bri—probably wants a shoulder to cry on.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Go easy on him tonight,” Amy said. “He’s a bit fragile. Don’t start winding
him up.”
“What do you mean, ‘don’t start winding him up’? I never wind him up. He’s always the one that starts it.”
They heard the front door close. Brian plodded into the living room, looking pretty forlorn. His sweatshirt hood was up. Amy noticed that it was covered in raindrops. “Starting to chuck it down out there,” he said by way of general greeting. Soon his eyes were fixed on Bel. His expression began to change. A smile hovered on his lips. “I see you’ve come as a traffic light.” He was clearly referring to her red hair and green cardigan combo.
Bel didn’t miss a beat. “And you’ve come as a mugger.”
Brian pulled off his wet hood. Bel’s eyes went straight to his hair. “Ooh, and the ferret family rang. They want their nest back.” She was on a roll and, judging by her grin, delighted to be beating him.
“Well, the pedestrian crossing rang, and it wants you back.”
“Okay, kids,” Amy butted in. “Enough. If you don’t stop scrapping, I’m going to turn this car around and neither of you will get ice cream.”
“But he started it,” Bel protested, doing an excellent imitation of a whining seven-year-old. “He called me a traffic light.”
Amy had often thought slash hoped that Bel and Brian’s mutual teasing disguised a sexual tension between them, but in the half dozen or so years they’d known each other, nothing—at least nothing that she knew of—had happened between them. Amy couldn’t help being disappointed. She was a romantic and would have liked nothing better than for her two best friends to fall in love.
They were both creative, arty types with a left of center worldview. They were surely perfect for each other. When she put this to Brian, he said it wasn’t that he didn’t find Bel attractive. It was just that there was no way he would get into a relationship with a woman as self-obsessed as she was. When Amy asked Bel if there was any way she could see herself falling for Brian, her response wasn’t dissimilar. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I like Brian a lot and he is cute—there’s no getting away from it—but he’s so bloody neurotic. I mean, this thing he has with women and their physical appearance. What is that about? He’d drive me mad.”
