How Not to Be a Loser

by Beth Moran

  How Not To Be a Loser

  Beth Moran

  For my mother, Judith Robbins, a woman of extraordinary courage and wisdom. And in loving memory of Alan Sutherland who showed me that I was only afraid of the fear

  The lark at break of day arising

  From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

  Sonnet 29

  Contents

  1. Stop Being a Loser Plan

  2. Stop Being a Loser Plan

  3. Stop Being a Loser Plan/Programme

  4. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  5. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  6. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  7. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  8. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  9. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  10. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  11. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  12. Stop Being a Loser Programme

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  59. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  60. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  61. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  62. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  63. Stop Being a Loser Programme

  Acknowledgments

  More from Beth Moran

  About the Author

  About Boldwood Books

  1

  Stop Being a Loser Plan

  Day One

  It wasn’t intentional. I didn’t get woken up by my phone alarm blaring, spring out of bed and decide today was the day. I didn’t open up Facebook and one of those irritating quotes – embrace the rain if you want to dance under the rainbow – actually inspired someone for the first time ever to change something. After cajoling my son, Joey, out of bed, I didn’t gaze at his beautiful face as he poured a second giant bowl of cereal, raving about the school football match coming up, and in a surge of love and regret suddenly experience the pivotal moment in a decade of non-moments.

  In fact, apart from the invitation that arrived in the morning post, most of the day went precisely as expected. Which was, in summary, exactly the same as pretty much every other weekday. I waved Joey off to school, reminding him to hand in the form about the meeting that evening and cleared away the breakfast dishes. I worked at my desk in the kitchen, breaking the monotony of writing about corporate social responsibility policies by swanning off to eat lunch in the living room, because that’s the type of wild and crazy woman I am.

  I rescued Joey’s football kit from festering on his bedroom floor and stuck it in the wash, because despite telling myself on a daily basis that it’s time he learnt the hard way, circumstances dictate that I also live with an extra-large pile of parental guilt, so I make life easier for him where I can.

  By the time Joey came home at four, I had spoken to no one since he left, unless you count talking to myself. Oh, and to the enormous spider who appeared out of nowhere and started edging across the kitchen while I debated whether to have another chocolate cookie or the bag of seeds I’d bought precisely to avoid eating a whole packet of cookies.

  ‘I’d get out of here if I were you. While your impressive size might earn you respect in the spider world, my son doesn’t take kindly to home invasions by anything with more legs than him, and he’ll be home any minute. Go on, shoo. Or else I’ll have to squish you.’

  Too late. While the spider was weighing up whether to heed my advice, Joey burst through the front door, in his usual whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm.

  ‘Hey, Mum. I’m starving, are there any of those cookies left?’

  I clicked save and pushed my chair back to face him. ‘Hi, Joey, and yes, I had an okay day, thanks. How was yours?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry, yeah. It was good, actually.’ He paused, mid-search of the snack cupboard, to offer an apologetic smile. ‘We did this experiment in science where we had to heat up this white stuff, and— WHAAAAAAT!?’

  In an instant, my strapping thirteen-year-old reverted to a frightened child, leaping up to sit on the worktop, cookie packet hugged protectively to his chest.

  ‘How long’s that been there?’ he shrieked.

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me the biggest spider in the universe was right behind me?’

  It was a pointless question. We had been through this too many times before. Joey knew that the reason I hadn’t told him was because of what would inevitably happen next.

  And, in line with the rest of the day’s predictability, it did. After a brief negotiation about Joey’s phobia, the value of the spider’s life and what I was willing and able to do about both these things, given that I didn’t think it was quite worthy of calling either the police or pest control, I ended up scooping the monster arachnid in both hands and facing my own worst nightmare.

  ‘Ready?’ Joey looked at me with solemn eyes as he gripped the door handle. He tried to keep his voice steady, but the rise and fall of his chest betrayed his terror.

  I nodded, aware that my own eyes, while the exact same light brown as my son’s – caramel, his dad used to call them – were darting wildly like two wasps caught in a Coke bottle.

  Before I had time to take another wheezing, shallow breath, Joey flung the door open and ducked behind it. I threw myself forwards, crashing against the door frame, eyes now firmly squeezed shut, and flicked my hand outside. A sudden gust of wind sent me reeling back in panic.

  ‘CLOSE THE DOOR!’ I gasped, clutching at my heart as it careened about my ribcage and stumbling back into the middle of the kitchen.

  ‘Is it gone? Are you sure it’s gone?’ Joey garbled back.

  ‘Yes! It’s gone. CLOSE THE
DOOR, JOEY, NOW!’

  I heard the door slam, took another two calming breaths and forced my eyes to take a peek. ‘Oh, please.’

  The spider levelled me an ironic gaze from the welcome mat. It was so humungous I could see the lazy challenge in each of its eight eyes.

  ‘What? What? What is it? Is it still here?’ Joey spoke from where he’d scrambled behind me.

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘WHAT? Where-is-it-what’s-it-doing-is-it-moving-is-it-near-me-how-is-it-still-inside? MUUUUUM!’

  ‘It may have blown back in and now be sitting on the mat.’

  ‘Then throw it out again!’ Joey whined, the good nature that insisted we went through this palaver, rather than simply squashing the spider, hiding behind his fear. ‘Maybe you could lean right out this time, make sure it’s really outside.’

  While I contemplated this impossibility, the spider took a couple of exploratory steps across the mat.

  My teenage son screamed at a pitch that would have been unreachable if his voice wasn’t currently breaking, and before I could react, the spider was pinned to the mat beneath two fork prongs.

  We stared in awed silence for a few seconds. The spider waved one leg, like a feeble farewell.

  ‘Joey, I can’t believe you hit it from that distance. You are one impressive athlete.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt it.’ He grabbed my arm, distraught. ‘It was, like, an automatic reflex thing.’

  ‘It’s pretty cool, though. Maybe you’re actually a superhero and now you’re thirteen your powers are starting to manifest.’

  ‘A superhero wouldn’t murder an innocent life with a fork.’

  ‘They might kill a bug by accident while still learning to control their new capabilities.’ I put one weak arm around him, as the bug in question assumed the classic death curl, as best it could while stabbed in two places.

  ‘You’re still going to put it outside, aren’t you?’

  ‘It’s dead. Can’t it go in the bin?’

  ‘No!’ Joey bumped against me, beseechingly. ‘I’ll know it’s there. What if it’s not really dead, and it recovers enough to crawl back out and drag itself up the stairs while I’m asleep, looking for revenge.’

  ‘What revenge? Poking you with it’s one remaining leg?’

  ‘Mu-uu-uum!’

  ‘I could post it out the letter box?’ I didn’t normally indulge my son like this. But I had my irrational fear, he had his (‘Really, Amy, is it really irrational to be nervous about going into a world where people get run over, mugged, mocked, detained by security when they accidentally steal a packet of tampons?’ my anxiety leered). When it came to patience and understanding, I owed Joey a lifetime debt.

  He took one look at my face, then slumped away from me. ‘It’s fine. I’ll call Cee-Cee.’

  ‘No!’ I fought to wrestle back the returning panic at the mere thought of opening the door again and reminded myself that feeling like I couldn’t suck in enough oxygen to survive didn’t make it true. ‘Give me a minute, and I’ll put a cup over it. Then I’ll throw it out later.’

  What? My anxiety snickered in disbelief. Open the door twice in one day? Are you kidding me? You’d better call Cee-Cee…

  ‘I’ll do it before dinner, and I’ll be in here working until then, so I can promise you it won’t escape. If it tries, I’ll grind it into dust with my bare hands.’

  Joey waited until the crumpled remains of the spider were under a large mug, with a dictionary, Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook and a box of washing-up powder balanced on the top. He backed out of the room, snatching a cereal bar and a banana on his way.

  ‘This whole family is completely unhinged,’ he pronounced, flipping from frightened child to all-knowing, melodramatic teenager the instant the danger was over, before thumping up the stairs.

  I sighed, took another glance at the towering tomb and got back to converting a jumble of notes into something vaguely readable.

  Once upon a time, a good day meant being the best in the world, appearing on television in front of millions of people, celebrating late into the night before catching a plane home to be met by cheering fans.

  A bad day meant coming second.

  Nowadays, a good day meant keeping both eyes open while I chucked a spider out the back door.

  And as for a bad day? A bad day meant that when my son’s greatest fear intruded into his home, the one place on earth where he’s entitled to feel safe, he was confronted with the truth that his own mother could not – or would not – protect him.

  Sometimes it takes just one terrible thing to finally force change after years of enduring the intolerable. For me, that day, it was an invitation, written on official notepaper. Even thinking about it made me feel as though I’d swallowed shards of broken glass.

  I saved the document I was working on and opened up the internet.

  It was time.

  An hour and a half later, I reluctantly shut my laptop and tried to refocus on getting dinner ready. Dropping a handful of broccoli into the steamer, I stuck the lid on and glanced back at the cup. The thought of leaning outside to dispose of a spider corpse made my brain spin inside my skull. Moving the books, I wrapped the spider in a tissue and buried it under some carrot peelings in the kitchen bin. Yes, it was supposed to be ‘time’, but making the decision to research agoraphobia felt like more than enough bravery for one evening. Just reading about it on the internet had mentally exhausted me.

  A minute later, Cee-Cee marched in the front door.

  ‘Blowing up a storm out there. You should be grateful you’re stuck indoors.’

  I stopped, mid-poke of a carrot stick, and looked at the closest thing I had to a friend. Cee-Cee was flicking the rain out of her short grey hair, her down jacket and tracksuit trousers dripping onto the lino.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She shrugged off her coat, dumped it on a chair and glanced around. ‘Where’s this spider then?’

  ‘What? Did Joey message you?’ Annoyance exploded in my chest like an airbag.

  ‘He was worried you’d chicken out and sneak it into the bin.’

  ‘I told him I’d sort it.’ I drained the vegetables, burying my guilty expression in a cloud of steam. ‘Joey!’ I called up the stairs. ‘Dinner’s ready.’

  ‘So?’ Cee-Cee took three plates out of a cupboard and started setting the table. ‘Can I reassure him it’s safely outside or shall I empty the bin first?’

  ‘Safely outside?’ I snapped, just as Joey wandered in. ‘Joey, go and fetch the dirty pots down from your room.’

  ‘But you said it was…’

  ‘Now, please.’

  I closed the kitchen door after him and turned to Cee-Cee, who was lifting a tray of salmon out of the oven.

  ‘I apologise. Poor turn of phrase,’ she said, banging the tray on the table.

  ‘In answer to your question, no you don’t need to empty my bin, and I’m perfectly capable of reassuring my son. I don’t need you acting as a go-between.’

  ‘I’m here to help. Nothing more.’

  ‘Can I come back in now?’ Joey asked from the other side of the door. ‘I don’t want to be late.’

  I blew out a sigh, reminded myself of everything Cee-Cee had done for us, and all that I needed her to keep on doing, and shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. Once again, I appreciate your help.’

  We ate dinner in awkward silence, and Cee-Cee left with Joey. She was taking him to a school start-of-the-year parents’ meeting, because, if it hasn’t already become apparent, I was a woeful failure as a parent. Or so I told myself, as I changed into pyjamas, before crawling under my duvet – the only place I could go to ease the weight of despair, frustration and self-hatred for a while. A failure who needed another woman to care for her child outside of these four walls. A failure who never saw her son grinning as he accepted an athletics award, or riding his bike with his T-shirt flapping behind him, or wide-eyed with wonder as he explored, discovered, embraced this big wide
world I was too scared to be a part of any more. A failure who…

  Ping.

  Phew! My pity fest was interrupted by a message. Expecting Cee-Cee, or Joey – because really, who else would it be? – I fumbled for my phone and was surprised to see an unknown number. Curious, I wriggled out from under the duvet, and read.

  Amelia, I’m sorry for contacting you like this, but you didn’t reply to my email.

  Damn it. How the hell did he get my number?

  I automatically went to click delete. Then, realising that forewarned is forearmed, I ignored my heart, pounding with agitation and alarm, and carried on reading.

  Can we at least just talk? I understand why you might hate me, but our child deserves the chance to know his father. Please don’t punish him because I was an idiot thirteen years ago. I hope very much to hear from you, Sean.

  Okay, so now I could click delete.

  If only I could delete those words so easily from my brain. Along with deleting my number from his phone. This was not good. I threw my phone out of the bed and burrowed back under the covers, fighting an overpowering surge of dread-induced nausea and agonising memories.