How Not to Be a Loser

by Beth Moran

  I threw down my paper napkin and ran off to the bathroom.

  When I came back, twenty minutes later, having cleaned myself up and changed into sweatpants and a hoodie, Sean hadn’t moved.

  I sat down opposite him, feeling more alone, more terrified, more desperate than ever before. ‘There’s cake if you want it,’ I squeaked out.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, his lips barely moving, eyes fixed rigidly on my stomach.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How the shitting hell did this happen?’

  I took a deep breath. He was shocked, of course he was. I had been, too.

  ‘I don’t know. I guess nothing’s foolproof.’

  ‘Especially when someone behaves foolishly.’

  ‘What?’ I sat back, stunned.

  ‘Have you been taking the pill properly?’

  ‘Well. Yes. I mean, I might have forgotten the odd one or two, on the days when I wasn’t feeling well. But that shouldn’t have been enough to stop them working.’

  He held up his hand, in a ‘stop’ gesture. ‘I have one more question.’

  I propped my head on my hands, in a futile attempt to stop it from spinning.

  ‘Did you do this on purpose?’

  ‘How could you even ask that?’

  ‘Oh, come off it, it’s the age-old desperate woman’s trick.’

  ‘I don’t need to trick you, we’re together! You love me!’

  ‘You still haven’t answered the question.’

  No, I hadn’t. Because I knew that, right then, waiting for the answer was the only thing keeping him there.

  I closed my eyes, tried to claw back my body from the brink of panic. When I opened them again, he had gone.

  He came back, of course, two days later. We had one conversation about ‘my choices’, and their bearing on ‘our future’.

  Another three weeks of long silences punctuated by rigid small talk followed. I slept, wept, threw up, stocked up on folic acid and lost half a stone in weight. Sean hid at the office, the pub, behind a frozen mask. Four times he stayed out all night.

  Then came the day he packed his bags. ‘I’ve got a transfer.’

  ‘What? To where?’

  ‘Colorado.’

  ‘When do we go?’ I asked the question, even though I knew the answer.

  ‘I’m going tomorrow. Alone. We both know this isn’t working. And if you’re going to keep the baby, it’d be better off not growing up in a home where its parents can’t stand each other.’

  Can’t stand each other? When did that happen?

  ‘If I go now, it’ll never miss me. We can have a fresh start.’

  ‘Sean. What? What am I supposed to do? We’re three months behind on the rent. I can’t live here by myself. What about when the baby comes?’ I bent double, clamouring for air, the pain ripping through my guts like a meathook.

  ‘Here.’ He tossed a wad of notes onto the table. ‘That’ll help get you started. Get to Citizens Advice, or whatever. There’s good benefits these days for single mums. I’m sure your parents will help. They’d probably be pleased to know they’re going to have a grandchild.’

  I was aghast, speechless.

  ‘This is your decision, Amy. You took risks with your contraception. You decided not to work. You chose to keep a baby. I’m just not ready for this. I can’t be a parent at my age and I’m not going to spend the next eighteen years paying for your mistake.’

  ‘YOU’RE not ready?’ I screech-wheezed, finding some kind of voice at last. ‘I’M NINETEEN!’

  ‘Like I said, your choice.’ He swung his bag over his shoulder. ‘I wish you all the best.’

  And that was the last time I saw the scumbag wastrel otherwise known as Sean Mansfield.

  The version I gave Joey was somewhat sanitised. Somewhat. I would do whatever I could to spare my son a twinge more pain than was necessary, but at the same time, my sore heart felt little obligation to protect the man who’d left me alone, broke and pregnant, and in doing so, leave Joey unprepared. And how do you pretty up, ‘yes, he knew I was pregnant when he left, and, no, he made no contact with me to ask about my child until now’?

  ‘You still want to go ahead with this?’ I asked.

  Joey nodded, his frown uncharacteristically grave. ‘Warning noted. Dad was once a loser – but, hey, we know better than anyone that losers can change, right?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Right.’

  I kept the email short, simple:

  Sean,

  I am considering your request. Can you please provide more details about what level of contact you had in mind, and what you hope to achieve? Clearly, my first priority is protecting my child.

  Amelia

  Three minutes later, as Joey pretended to watch TV in the living room and I sat at my desk watching videos of pandas rolling down hills to calm myself down, a reply pinged through:

  Amy,

  Thank you so much for getting back to me. I can’t tell you how much this means. I totally understand you want to protect Joseph. I’m happy to proceed as you see fit and take it as slow as necessary to rebuild trust. My aim is simply to get to know my son, to do whatever I can to make up for not being there. I know there’s nothing that can replace the years he had to go without a father, but he doesn’t have to go the rest of his life without one. If he doesn’t want that, I get it. All I’m asking for at this stage is the chance to say how sorry I am, and to at least try.

  Sean

  ‘That FUDGING CUSTARD!’ I growled, while noting, with a sense of pride, my impressive self-control in neither swearing when my thirteen-year-old son was in the next room or hurling my laptop out of the window.

  How the FUDGE did he know my son’s name? And, actually, he chooses to be called JOEY.

  How DARE he imply that somehow Joey missed out from not having that worthless piece of SHITAKE MUSHROOM in his life?

  He doesn’t have to go the rest of his life… like it was some CHUFFING accident or unpreventable tragedy that stopped him from picking up the phone or sending an email up until now.

  Like I wasn’t enough?

  Like he had the power to make Joey’s life better?

  I wanted to yank out every single one of my eyelashes with frustration, because even in my blinding rage and soaring anxiety, I knew that it might be true: having a father, a parent without a squillion freakoid big-bad-world-out-there issues, could make Joey’s life better.

  However, I knew that having Sean Mansfield step in to try playing Daddy could also make our lives a whole lot worse.

  Blugh. Even the baby panda going down the slide in a straw hat wasn’t enough at this point.

  I shut down the laptop and dragged my stressed-out bones to bed.

  31

  Stop Being a Loser Programme

  Day Seventy-Three

  The following morning, unable to bear thrashing around under my duvet torturing myself with increasingly disturbing potential Sean-scenarios for one more minute, I set off extra early to meet the Larks.

  I decided to kill a bit of time with a dawdled detour along Foxglove Lane, past a row of decrepit cottages and a brand-new barn conversion. At the barn driveway, I paused to ogle the huge window spanning both storeys of the building. There was a light on, and I have to confess to a teensy bit of nosying at the gallery balcony inside, admiring the beautiful furnishings and rustic-yet-contemporary kitchen. I mean, if you’re going to put in an enormous window, and no blinds, you have to expect passers-by to take a sneaky peak. You probably want people to appreciate your magazine-worthy interior. So, when the front door swung open, accompanied by several exterior lights flashing on, there wasn’t really any reason for me to jump behind the nearest bush.

  Having found myself there, however, when footsteps began scrunching down the gravel drive towards me, I realised that reappearing out from behind the undergrowth now would require some sort of explanation for why I was lurking behind a bush right outside their house at six in the freezing co
ld morning. Either that or I’d have to run away, and despite recent improvements, my current fitness levels could in no way guarantee the footsteps wouldn’t catch up with me.

  I edged deeper into the foliage as a horror-show flickered through my head, involving being restrained by the house owner until the police arrived, Moira Vanderbeek hot on their tail, swiftly followed by a front-page exposé on Amelia Piper’s descent into a life of petty crime.

  The footsteps crunched closer. I held my breath, my anxiety rendered speechless for once.

  And then they rounded the corner of the bushes, straight into the glow from the nearest lamp post.

  Well.

  All the pent-up air burst out of my lungs, immediately followed by a strangled wheeze-in to compensate.

  The person wheeled round in my direction, the radiant grin which had meant it took a couple of seconds to recognise her instantly replaced with a wary scowl.

  ‘Who’s there?’ she stammered.

  I should have run. There was no way Audrey would have caught up with me. Especially not in those heels.

  ‘I know someone’s in the bush,’ Audrey said. ‘The leaves are rustling.’

  Well, perhaps it’s a squirrel, up early to gather nuts. Or a wood pigeon? A badger? Come on, Audrey, use your imagination.

  ‘I can see the reflective stripes on your trousers!’

  Darn Joey’s health and safety obsession! A woman can’t get any decent privacy any more.

  ‘Audrey? Darling?’ a man’s voice wafted down the drive.

  Darling? My ears must have grown a good few millimetres, they were straining so hard. More crunching footsteps.

  ‘Is everything all right? You need to get home before your mother wakes up.’ Through the bushes, I saw the man come to stand by Audrey, placing one hand on her shoulder. He had white hair, a bushy beard, and appeared to be wearing a dressing gown and wellington boots. Was this Audrey’s dad? I knew Selena was divorced – maybe it had been so acrimonious that Audrey had to visit him in secret. Slightly strange, visiting before six in the morning. But perhaps she’d ended up falling asleep on the sofa last night, and, well, I could understand Audrey going to extreme lengths to avoid yet more hassle from her mum.

  ‘There’s someone hiding in that bush.’

  ‘What?’ The man whirled round to face me, peering closer. ‘Who is it?’ he demanded. ‘Come out at once or I’ll call the police.’

  Oh, no, please… an innocent peep at some nice decor was spiralling into a nightmare.

  ‘Be careful,’ Audrey rubbed her dad’s (grandad’s?) hunched shoulder. ‘Don’t provoke them. Think about your heart.’

  I braced, tried to force my legs to move out into the open, but they had frozen stiff like two stripy glow-in-the-dark ice pops.

  ‘You get on home, darling. I’ll call 999. No one needs to know you were here.’

  ‘Except the peeping Tom. I’m not going anywhere, what if something happens to you?’ Audrey replied.

  And at that point – ooh, I really hoped this was not one of Audrey’s relatives – she flung both arms around his neck, plastered her mouth against his, and judging by the writhing and moaning, stuck her tongue halfway down his wattled throat.

  I was about to make a break for it, when she abruptly pulled away. ‘Ooh, Graham, I love it when you act the hero. Remember the power cut?’

  ‘Oh, sugar-pumpkin,’ he breathed, tugging her back towards him with stiff arms. ‘How could I forget? Come here!’

  ‘Hello!’ I called out, the consequences of being exposed waaaaaay preferable to witnessing the aftermath of Audrey undoing Graham’s dressing gown cord.

  They abruptly broke apart, Audrey steadying her lover as he wobbled.

  ‘It’s you!’ Audrey’s eyes reflected the glow of the lamp post like a white-hot laser beam. ‘Were you spying on me?’

  ‘You know this woman?’ Graham asked. ‘Shall I call the police?’

  Audrey shook her head in resignation. ‘No. She’s harmless. Weird, but harmless.’

  I was aware I should probably say something.

  ‘Um, your dressing gown.’ I waved feebly in the general direction while trying to keep my eyes a good foot above the strip of bare Graham where the gown was flapping open.

  ‘You keep your eyes off him!’ Audrey snarled. Believe me, I was trying. That was a lot of bare belly to avoid.

  ‘Never mind that, darling. If she was sneaking a look at us in flagrante delicto, it wouldn’t be the first time my potent virility has driven a woman to break the law.’

  ‘That is not what I was doing.’

  ‘Oh no? So why were you hiding in Graham’s bushes in the dark?’ Audrey retorted, sounding uncannily like her mother.

  ‘It’s stupid, honestly. I was on my way to meet the Larks, and I happened to glance in your very large window and notice your gorgeous interior as I walked past.’

  ‘Oho, so that’s what the kids are calling it these days,’ Graham chortled.

  Swallowing back the urge to barf, I ploughed on. ‘I need to redecorate my living room, so I was just admiring your colour scheme when the door opened and I panicked.’

  ‘She does do that a lot,’ Audrey said, lasers boring into my skull.

  ‘I have an anxiety condition,’ I replied, flapping my hands in a ‘Duh, what a silly-billy!’ kind of way.

  Graham didn’t look convinced.

  ‘I do strange things to cope. But, honestly, I really couldn’t see much at all from back here. And I certainly couldn’t see you two. The only light on was in the big window.’ I forced out a smile.

  ‘That is true.’ He nodded, considering.

  ‘Look, this really is much ado about nothing, and I don’t want to miss the run, so, um, sorry again for scaring you, Audrey, and I’ll see you later.’

  And on that note, I broke all of Nathan’s warm-up rules and sprinted the heck out of there.

  Arriving just in time to join the Larks jogging out of the car park, I seamlessly inserted myself about halfway down the pack, beside Dani. Less than a dozen steps later, our coach caught up with me.

  ‘You need to stop and warm-up before going any further. Club rules. Warm-ups are not optional.’

  ‘What if I’m not running with the club today, I just happened to be going in the same direction at the same time?’ I puffed. ‘Are you going to stop me running along a public road?’

  ‘If you’re not running with the Larks, you need to remove your T-shirt,’ Nathan replied, his smooth strides barely breaking past a walk.

  I nearly stumbled head over heels into an oncoming dustbin lorry.

  ‘You can change in the cabin.’ He gestured across the road to the village park, where a rusted, graffiti-riddled door was swinging off the female loos from one hinge. ‘Zip your jacket up and no one will know.’

  ‘Or, I could zip up my jacket anyway, covering up my T-shirt without having to remove it.’

  ‘One, it’s not your T-shirt, you are hereby suspended from the Larks running club until complying with the rules and regulations. Two, when you have to call an ambulance because your knee ligament is ripped to shreds, the Larks T-shirt will make me liable, damaging my reputation and harming my business.’

  ‘Nathan, it’s a warm-up. I’ve been running now for at least three minutes, look at my face. I’m warm.’

  ‘Three. I’d be gutted if you injured yourself and had to stop running with us. Or needed to postpone the Sort Nathan’s Obsessive Control Issues plan. Or suffered any unnecessary pain. Especially when I could have prevented it.’

  ‘Okay. Right. Well. I actually warmed up before I got here.’ What impressive technique I maintained, keeping my eyes straight ahead, not even twitching my neck an inch to look at Nathan and try to figure out if there was any hidden meaning behind that comment.

  ‘Stretches?’

  Did squatting in a bush count?

  ‘Stretches. Now go and bother someone else, I know how to train properly.’

  Plus,
that stuff about me suffering had successfully stolen the miniscule amount of extra breath enabling me to continue the conversation. I put my head down and tried to focus on putting one step in front of the other, not infuriating emails or flapping dressing-gowns or personal trainers who made me want to get personal. And I almost managed it. My champion’s brain was shaking herself awake and remembering how to do this. How not to be a loser.

  I finished sixth.

  Now, that deserved a hot chocolate to go alongside my French toast.

  I took a seat with Mel and Bronwyn, able to avoid hunching beside Audrey for once as she hadn’t turned up, having told Selena she had a migraine. I also felt a scrambled mix of relieved and disappointed that Nathan wasn’t there, having gone to take a call from a client. Mel was explaining how the latest change in the benefits system meant that she couldn’t afford to take Tate to his hydrotherapy sessions at the fancy pool on the other side of Nottingham.

  ‘They reckon we can manage fine on the bus, no need for a taxi.’ She shook her head in disgust. ‘I told ’em, it’s two buses, with a twenty-minute wait in between and over half-hour pushing a pushchair and carryin’ all his stuff. The pool’s busy all the time with lessons for normal kids, who can lift themselves in and out the water. Or them Gladiators are hogging it. It’s only available nine-thirty in the mornin’ – which means somehow dropping the kids at school and catching a bus in town at the same time – or Monday and Thursday evening. I said to ’em, “Have you even read his notes? Seen where the specialist doctor who’s been caring for my son for the past three years says he can’t be outside for any length o’ time in the winter, because of a severely elevated risk of pneumonia. Let alone when ’e’s just come outta soppin’ wet swimming pool.”

  ‘I pointed to it on the page, with both hands, just in case they’d missed that, with all the other pages of notes about my son’s extensive disabilities and life-limiting conditions. I asked ’em, “Perhaps I read it wrong, do please tell me what the world-renowned expert Dr Wu wrote’ll happen if Tate catches pneumonia? Because I thought that on page four, paragraph two, it said there’s a significant risk of death.”’ Mel tossed her raspberry red hair extension over one shoulder. ‘And I sat there waitin’ until they confirmed that, yes, through a process of logical deductions, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Tate catching the bus to access the hydrotherapy that will help keep him alive could end up killing him.’