The Mum Who Got Her Life Back

by Fiona Gibson

  I feign enthusiasm over slabs of off-white matter, their brand names giving no hint as to what they actually are. ‘I suppose you can get used to this stuff,’ I say cheerfully, ‘and stop even wanting normal cheese.’

  Alfie gives me the side-eye. ‘Could you stop saying “normal”?’

  I frown. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ he says as we wander onwards, ‘you’re implying that eating animal products is normal and choosing not to is not …’

  ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

  ‘It’s your generation,’ he adds loftily. ‘You’re the ones who still think there has to be meat on a plate for it to be a proper meal.’

  ‘Alfie, that’s so not true!’ I say, trying not to laugh because, really, has he forgotten how, just a few short months ago, he and his friends used to shun hummus? ‘Fart paste’, they called it, backing away fearfully whenever I offered them some, as if I were about to splat it in their faces. Greasy burgers and fried chicken were more their kind of fare; until fairly recently, my son could be found chomping on some kind of animal part at least twice a day. That was before Camilla, of course – pre Alfie’s reinvention as a chickpea devotee.

  Now three tubs of hummus are loaded into his basket. ‘I guess that’s good for protein,’ I remark.

  ‘That protein thing,’ Alfie remarks, a trace of amusement in his voice.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘That’s what everyone says.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘“How d’you get your protein?”’

  ‘Well, how do you get it?’

  ‘Protein’s so over-rated …’

  ‘Alfie, how can you say that?’ I say, laughing. ‘It’s essential for building your hair, your nails, repairing your skin cells – everything really. We’re made from it.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re overplaying its importance,’ he retorts.

  Overplaying it? I only asked where he was getting it from! It’s not as if I’ve tried to force-feed him a pork chop. But then, I’m determined for us to enjoy our time together, especially after him spying my sex-knickers lying on the living room floor. Yep, silly old protein. Pesky amino acids. It’s all about flax seeds now.

  At the checkout, I manage not to choke when the total appears on the till. Never mind, I decide, as we load our bags of produce into the boot of my car. The afternoon has brightened, and Alfie is sitting beside me, noisily wolfing some kind of savoury snacks. The mood has definitely lifted, and I glance at my boy who was once devoted to Prawn Cocktail Quavers, and is now snacking happily on shards of baked beetroot from a brown paper bag.

  ‘I’m glad you’re getting into healthy food,’ I remark as we drive home.

  ‘Yeah, it’s really important, I think,’ he muses, still crunching away.

  I give him a quick glance, relieved that my transgression seems to have been forgiven, that he has apparently recovered from that awkward exchange with Jack yesterday. Who knows, maybe the two of them will get along after all? There’s no reason why they won’t. Jack’s hardly allergic to young people; he’s a wonderful dad to Lori, and if things are going to change slightly for a while, with Alfie and Molly being around, then maybe it’s for the best. For the past few months, Jack and I have existed in a kind of blissed-out bubble. But we can’t continue like that, and being a mum is a huge part of who I am. I smile, looking forward now to a few days together with both of my kids around – such a rarity these days – before Alfie sets off with his girlfriend for a thrilling summer of adventures.

  Lucky bugger, being nineteen. Well, Jack and I are going away too, I reflect; a week in Barcelona awaits us. It’s a city I’ve never been to, and of course, the ‘research’ thing was just an excuse. I’ve illustrated numerous maps before, using existing city maps as my guide, plus Google Images, with no reason to venture further than my studio.

  Back home now, although it’s only just gone four and I’m not especially hungry, I give Alfie free rein to make dinner for us. He is keen to show off his newly acquired vegan cheffing skills, and also ‘starving’, apparently. Generally, having been chief cook around here for nineteen years, I regard watching someone else engaged in food preparation as a fantastic treat. Like with Jack, for instance. The first time he invited me round for dinner, my expectations weren’t high. Single guy, living mostly alone – shamefully, I’d anticipated a few random items chucked into a wok. A stir-fry kind of man, I’d surmised; quite wrongly, as it turned out. As I perched on a stool in his well-ordered kitchen, I was quietly impressed as he chopped and stirred, all the while chatting away and topping up my wine glass while he knocked up an impressive prawn curry.

  It was obvious, too, that he hadn’t put on a show to impress me, that he wasn’t trying to seduce me by way of his herb-chopping skills. You can always tell by the way a person handles themselves in the kitchen whether they are comfortable with being there. And Jack clearly was, in the way he’d made the fragrant paste, and cleared up after each stage; I was wildly impressed.

  Watching my son cooking is a different experience. For one thing, there’s no sipping of wine as he attacks a beef tomato with a serrated knife. I wouldn’t dream of drinking alcohol right now, in case I am required to apply a tourniquet, or drive him to A&E.

  ‘What are you making?’ I ask.

  ‘A Lebanese thing,’ he says airily, in a tone that suggests, You wouldn’t have heard of it, Mother. I’ve noticed this loftiness creeping in since Alfie started university: he’s assumed a sort of ‘I am the brainy one’ attitude, explaining basic politics to me whenever we watch the news together, and using the phrase ‘your generation’ a lot, the implication being that ‘we’ (i.e. the old duffers) are solely responsible for Brexit, Trump, rising child poverty, the bigger gaps in Toblerone and pretty much everything else that’s gone wrong with the world. Basically, I am helping to fund my son through further education so he can patronise me.

  However, I am prepared to tolerate all of this because he is young, and right now I am gripped by the spectacle of him preparing a meal. For instance: who knew that a single tomato could emit so much juice? I’d almost forgotten the god-awful mess he’d make whilst baking, but it’s all flooding back to me now. A puddle of tomato juice has formed on the worktop, and it’s dripping slowly down a cupboard door. Meanwhile, Alfie rummages around for other ingredients and utensils. I watch him, unsettled by his haphazard approach as he opens drawers and bangs them shut, perhaps intent on breaking our kitchen, and burrows in cupboards as if he’s not my son, who should be utterly familiar with our flat – having lived here from the age of two to eighteen – but a police officer searching for stolen goods.

  Without wiping them first, he starts to chop our Planet Earth mushrooms, each as costly as a natural pearl, then a red pepper, green beans and a ton of other vegetables. Frankly, it’s rather alarming, watching him battering away with various knives – but I’m so stunned to see him interacting with an aubergine that I can’t bring myself to interfere.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t need any help?’ I ask.

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ He tips a jar of passata into a pan, and the chopped vegetables into another. With what feels like unnecessary clattering he manages to locate the grater in a cupboard and starts to grate a small pile of carrots vigorously, straight onto the worktop. Steeling myself, I resist the urge to warn him not to grate his fingers.

  Now various packets are being torn open, with tofu sliced haphazardly and fried in a pan. A fistful of saffron is added. This had better be good. I’d estimate that the ingredients used so far have cost in the region of £675.

  ‘Can you handle one of these?’ He waggles a fat red chilli in my face as if I have never encountered one before.

  ‘Of course I can, Alf. I’m fifty-one, not seven …’ My phone rings and I pick it up. It’s Jack, who I’d love to speak to, but not right now as a minor emergency seems to have occurred.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ he starts.

  ‘Hi—’

  �
��My eye!’ Alfie yells. ‘Agh, Mum—’

  ‘Jack, sorry, there’s something happening …’

  ‘Agh, my fucking eye!’

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Jack asks, sounding concerned.

  ‘Yes, it’s just …’ I’m distracted by Alfie, who is hopping around me, left eye bloodshot and streaming.

  ‘I have to go,’ I say quickly. ‘Alfie’s managed to get chilli in his eye—’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jack mutters. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so …’

  ‘Can he slosh some water in from the cold tap?’

  ‘Erm, I’m not sure …’

  ‘No,’ Jack corrects himself, ‘it shouldn’t be water. Tell him to get some milk …’

  ‘Milk?’ I repeat, more sharply than I intended.

  ‘Yes, milk. This happened to Lori once. Tell him to get some kitchen paper or a tea towel, wet it with milk, use it as a pad to—’

  ‘Alfie,’ I cut in. ‘Jack says wet a towel with milk, dab it on your—’

  ‘What?’ he snaps, clearly unkeen on taking advice from my boyfriend.

  ‘Here, I’ll get it …’ Still clutching my phone, I lurch for the fridge.

  ‘I don’t have dairy,’ Alfie barks.

  ‘We can use plant milk then …’ Christ, there’d never have been this kind of drama if he’d settled for a baked potato …

  ‘I think it should be cow’s milk,’ Jack says. ‘It’s to do with the proteins. They neutralise the chilli oil—’

  ‘Please stop mansplaining,’ I say, regretting it instantly as Jack replies, ‘Okay, sorry – I’ll leave you to it.’ And then he’s gone.

  As I tend to Alfie’s eye, I start to wonder how things will pan out with my son and boyfriend. Perhaps they just need time to get to know each other when we’re all relaxed and uninjured. But maybe now’s not the time, with Alfie just having arrived home, with things clearly not quite right in his own life.

  ‘That better?’ I murmur.

  ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  I pour a little more oat milk onto the kitchen roll and hold it gently over the affected area.

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ he mumbles.

  ‘That’s okay, love.’ Filled with a surge of affection for him, I tell myself that everything will work out okay. After all, normal service will be restored soon. Camilla will arrive – that’ll cheer him up – and off they’ll trot on their European tour.

  Is it wrong of me to want to know precisely when my son will be leaving the country?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alfie’s Lebanese Thing isn’t too shabby at all, for a pile of variously raw and over-cooked veg, plus fried tofu, all splattered – apparently from a great height – with runny tomato sauce. Okay, if you were served it in a restaurant and had the balls to do so, you might send it back. But our son made it, so we are all tucking in enthusiastically.

  Yes, our son. Danny showed up, with Kiki in tow, just as Alfie’s eye had stopped weeping and he was able to dish up. Alfie had texted his dad to announce his arrival – which was fine, of course. But due to all the cheffy activity he had neglected to read Danny’s response, which was to say that ‘they’ would pop right over to say hi.

  ‘They’ are parked at my kitchen table now, enthusing that the meal is ‘sensational’ (Danny) and ‘an unusual combination of flavours and textures’ (Kiki).

  ‘It’s great, Alf,’ I agree, finishing up my small heap (as we’ve had to stretch it to feed four, there hasn’t been much to go round).

  ‘Glad to see you’ve learnt something in a year at uni,’ Danny chuckles, scraping his plate clean.

  ‘So it’s not all Pot Noodles then,’ chips in Kiki, her fine copper hair flowing around her tiny freckled face, her skin perfectly smooth and apparently pore-less. At forty-two, she is only nine years younger than me, but she could easily pass for mid-thirties.

  ‘Haha, nah,’ Alfie says good-naturedly. I know I should be pleased that he puts on a good show for his dad’s girlfriend; that he has manners and welcomed her with a hug. However, given the events here over the past twenty-four hours, I can’t help feeling a little short-changed.

  ‘So, have you made plenty of friends at uni?’ Kiki asks.

  ‘Yeah, quite a few,’ he replies.

  ‘A right motley bunch from what I’ve seen,’ Danny adds with a grin.

  I blink at him. ‘Who have you met, then?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t met them,’ he explains. ‘Just seen them on Facebook.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I cut in, glancing from my son to his father. ‘You mean you two are Facebook friends?’

  ‘Yeah. So I get to see all those pictures of them out on the lash, clinging to each other, glitter all over their faces,’ Danny continues, chuckling.

  I realise I am staring at Danny now, across the table. Danny, whom Alfie has friended on Facebook. When I asked why he hadn’t accepted my friend request, Alfie guffawed as if I had requested to move into his halls to keep an eye on him. Yet it would seem that his father is privy to his every antic and piss-up.

  ‘I bet your uni mates will be friends for life,’ Kiki observes as I get up to make coffee for everyone.

  ‘Yeah, they’re a good lot,’ Alfie says, like a proper mature person.

  ‘Oh to be young and free and surrounded by like-minded people.’ She beams at Danny. ‘Does it make you jealous, hon?’

  ‘Seethingly,’ he remarks with a smirk.

  ‘Me too,’ she says, laughing indulgently. I grit my teeth, observing my destroyed kitchen post Alfie’s dinner preparation, knowing I shouldn’t feel rattled by how jolly they’re all being (no toe-curling debate about Aberdeen’s rainfall this time!). And I despise myself even more for minding that the cooker hob is liberally sprayed with red juice and slimy bits, as if a violent crime has taken place, and that the tofu packet is lying on the floor.

  ‘Coffee?’ I say brightly, to which everyone says yes, but rather distractedly, as they are engaged in a proper conversation about Kiki’s job.

  ‘Are you working a lot?’ Alfie asks.

  ‘Oh God, yeah – too much,’ she says with a self-deprecating chuckle.

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ my son remarks, actually taking an interest in the life of an adult. The working life, even. The career. When I landed a commission to illustrate a prestigious series of travel guides, he merely enquired, ‘How much are you getting for that, then?’

  As I hand out coffees, which are barely registered amongst the congenial chatter, I reflect for about the billionth time how attractive Kiki is. Granted, it’s a handy quality to have when you’re a ‘skincare guru’ (that’s what her website says; I think it’s a posh term for a beauty therapist). Maybe that’s something else I could try, as a sideline, given my success as a moisturiser pusher at Lush. However, unlike Kiki, who has the glowy freshness of the child-free, I doubt if I’d replicate her success.

  She and Danny have been together for six years, and he seems to be a totally different kind of partner to her than he was with me. Although he was always a kind, sweet dad – brilliant at reading bedtime stories, with all the funny voices – he was pretty useless on the practical side. It sounds a little pathetic now, but I stopped asking him to pick up milk or bread when he was out; when I had, he’d come back with a packet of cigs and a newspaper (‘Sorry, love – I forgot’). And he’d have died if I’d ever suggested having a dinner party. Yet he and Kiki seem to ‘entertain’ regularly; she has him charging all over town, not just for forgotten essentials (potatoes, tonic water) but more exotic ingredients such as sorrel and blackstrap molasses. If I’d asked him for blackstrap molasses he’d have sniggered that he didn’t have time to find a sex shop. Although I don’t envy Kiki – I mean, why would I covet her taut stomach and toned thighs? – it still galls me slightly that Danny has morphed into being Mr Perfect with her. But then, Danny and Kiki have only existed as a couple unencumbered by small people and their endless demands. Perhaps that’s why Alfie and Molly a
ccepted her so readily (not that they shouldn’t, of course): she has never been a tired, grouchy mum.

  ‘So, how’s your work going, Nadia?’ Kiki asks, turning to me now.

  ‘Really well, thanks,’ I reply. ‘I’ve been asked to do a series of maps for—’

  ‘Oh, you work so hard,’ she interrupts. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done it, fitting it in around the family all these years …’

  ‘You just get on with it, I suppose,’ I remark.

  Kiki smiles. ‘You look a bit stressed, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘Do I?’ I say lightly. ‘Oh, I’m not really. Just, you know, busy … but I have a trip coming up.’ I look at Alfie. ‘I’ve booked a week away in Barcelona with Jack, love.’

  ‘Oh, that’s good,’ he says distractedly.

  ‘You and Jack are going away?’ Danny asks, finding this amusing for some reason – but of course, I have only holidayed with my female friends, plus Gus, in all the years since we broke up. It’s unheard of for me to have a boyfriend to go away with.

  ‘Just for a week,’ I say, wondering now what possessed me to tell Alfie when Danny and Kiki are here. I look around the table. Alfie shuffles in his chair and pushes back his unkempt dark hair.

  ‘You okay, darling?’ I ask, at which he nods.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ A silence descends. Surely he’s not upset by the thought of me and Jack having a few days away?

  ‘Alf?’ Danny prompts him. ‘What’s up?’

  Alfie looks down and picks at his nails. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What is it, love?’ I ask with a frown. He looks around at us, mouth pressed tightly shut. My heart seems to have speeded up alarmingly. It can’t be anything major, I reassure myself, or he’d tell me – and his dad – in private. He wouldn’t come out with it with Kiki sitting here, gazing at him—

  ‘You’re going away this summer, aren’t you, Alfie?’ Kiki asks pleasantly. ‘Your dad mentioned …’

  ‘Actually, I’m not,’ Alfie blurts out.