by Georgie Hall
If I’m honest, I’d trade any televised international tournament for a new Sally Wainwright series. Her characters probably struggle to talk to their teenage daughters too.
*
While @Summer_Time updates her followers with more #womensworldcup thoughts, I compose a hasty text to Miles, but my clumsy fingers and autocorrect conspire against me as usual, turning We need a chat about The Tempest asap, Ex into We need to chat about the tempestuous asp sex.
Before I can tweak it, Summer turns to me, eyebrows strangely off-kilter. ‘Mum, can I talk to you about something?’
Surprised – surely my subtle mentalist hints can’t have paid off? – I absentmindedly press send. ‘Of course, anything.’
She gazes at the screen. ‘Promise you won’t tell Dad what I’m about to tell you?’
The football-and-cake was a ruse, I realise, feeling even more gratified – #mumstheword – although worry grips me. ‘If you don’t want me to.’
She blurts, ‘I have these feelings for somebody and I don’t know what to do?’
‘Romantic feelings?’
She nods, tears rising. ‘We get on so well, laugh all the time, only now I can’t breathe when he’s near me, and I think about him all the time, and I want to die I’m so unhappy because he s-s-says nothing can happen, and now he’s leaving?’ She starts to cry and I cuddle her close. She’s warm and soft and vulnerable, physical contact between us so rare it’s bittersweet.
I am deeply relieved he is leaving, however hard it is to feel her heart breaking against mine. ‘It’s OK, darling. I’m so glad you told me. It’s all going to be all right.’
‘No it’s not! He’s going freelance and global! Look!’ She holds up his Instagram feed, but her thumb’s slipped and I can only see a picture of my own relieved face and numbers counting down to the words You Are Now Live.
‘Is this streaming?’ I ask worriedly.
‘Ooof! Man!’ She cancels it, hugging the phone to her chest, wet eyes huge. ‘What do I do?’
‘Can you delete it?’
‘Not that! Him.’ She leans in against me again.
This, I realise, is something I need to handle very, very gently. Because I know how much it hurts; she’s not the first seventeen-year-old to be gripped by a teacher crush.
‘Summer, I have to ask, how far did things go?’
She sobs harder. I feel deeply darkly anxious.
‘Nothing’s happened between us. We had this super high-key argument last week cos he thinks I’m involved with somebody else who he disapproves of, but I’m not! He says I’m too young for love and I have to concentrate on my A levels?’
I like this boy.
‘And he says he’d be no good for me because he grew up around Salford drug dealers and some of them are still his friends and he swears all the time and wants to screw the art establishment by becoming the digital Banksy, even if that means trolling and getting arrested. His anger is his art? He’ll be iconic, he’s so lit.’
I downgrade like to a respectful desire not to be his mother-in-law.
‘But now he’s firedooring me! Today he messaged saying he’s dropping me from this cutting-edge project he’s got coming up? That I helped organise as part of my coursework? It’s so unfair! He says he doesn’t feel the same way about me, but I know he does? He’s sacrificing us! I can’t let him go, Mum.’ Her voice breaks. ‘It hurts too much.’
Her phone is vibrating between us with notifications of comments and likes. I wrestle it away and place it on the sofa arm beside mine.
‘It’s nothing like it was with Jack,’ she sobs into my arm. (Her only ‘proper’ boyfriend thus far, and amiably diffident.) ‘This is soul-destroying.’
‘It’s totally normal to have a crush like this at your age, darling.’
‘It’s not a crush? It’s LOVE!’
‘The same love that poets have when they create their most beautiful work,’ I reassure her. ‘A love that hurts like a wound but passes with time. The love we call unrequited. That love?’
She cries harder. We stay like this for a long time. Her phone vibrates regularly from the sofa arm.
Eventually she pulls away, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. ‘Don’t tell me I’ll grow out of it,’ she sniffs. ‘Because I won’t?’
‘Maybe not, but you’ll get better at avoiding it.’
‘My friends think I’m completely delusional?’
‘All love is partly delusional,’ I point out. ‘Merely a madness.’
‘Yet I profess curing it by counsel,’ she quotes back, smiling tearfully. ‘You don’t think I’m being an idiot?’
‘There’s more to it than that.’ I take her hand. Summer can be whiney and immature, but she’s fiercely bright beneath the glossy armoury, struggling to match real life up with her expectations. ‘Life is a muddle of near misses and sliding doors, especially early on. It’s human nature to use our imaginations to take every journey. And it hurts, I know. I was in a similar situation to you once.’
‘Trust me, you never felt like this.’ Then she eyes me beneath lowered Nikes. ‘Like, seriously?’
I nod, thinking back to my own teenage obsessions that blistered my heart raw, one in particular, the forbidden low-hanging fruit of a flirty teacher. I’m shocked to find myself mourning the craving I felt for him, its dangerous intensity. I envy Summer her passion, however agonising, and her honesty. At her age I would never have admitted to a living soul – least of all my mother – the slavish devotion I harboured for ‘Mr Vella,’ I say aloud, enjoying the way his name still fires my pulses.
Maxim Vella.
Or was it Maximo?
Ah, that first man crush. Not a popstar pin-up or spotty contemporary, but the older man we lie in bed imagining touching us, teaching us carnal pleasure, like a Jackie Collins’ hero or Johnny in Dirty Dancing. Only real.
Mine was a foreign language student teacher who had my heart completely in his grasp for three terms.
‘He was French,’ I tell Summer. Or was it Spanish? ‘He helped run the choir that I was a part of.’ Or was it a drama club?
Floppy dark hair, olive skin, white smile, passionate about his subject. Did he have an earring? I’m sure he did.
God, but I loved him.
I would have died for him.
His big limpid brown – or possibly blue – eyes looked straight into my soul.
Now, when I try to picture Maxim Vella, I just see George Michael smouldering at me from a poster on my bedroom wall.
‘Mum, you’ve gone sweaty again? Are you having one of your hot moments?’
‘He gave me a lucky silver charm, I remember.’ He gave one to each member of the group in a show we did. I wore mine on a chain and it gave me an allergic rash. ‘He was generous and funny, and loved to make me laugh. He left after a year to take a job overseas.’ I smile sadly across at Summer, acknowledging time’s symmetry. ‘I thought I’d never get over it either.’
She’s affronted. ‘This is different. I won’t get over it. He’ll always be out… there.’ She waves at the television screen, as though Mr Owusu is planning to play international women’s football. ‘On every stream I have? You had no social media back then, no Internet even?’ (She could be saying ‘no electricity and sanitation’.)
‘The dark ages of analogue love,’ I concede, aware that her phone is buzzing away beside me, a self-contained universe of false expectation. ‘There was no button for liking or following or haunting, not even a colour emoji heart to express our anguish. I’m guessing black, am I right?’
She shoots me a dirty look, then cleans it up with a fresh glimmer of interest in my ancient history. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to him?’
‘Not really,’ I lie. I’ve Googled everyone I’ve ever fancied/snogged/dated, but Maxim Vella’s name draws a blank. Now I find myself trying to imagine what he might look like today. To my alarm, it’s restaurateur Matteo’s intense focus that appears in my mind’s ey
e, demands to know why I didn’t recognise him all along? I am your fantasy figure, bellissima. Always, you choose the same type, si? You want more passion, more admiration.
I shake my head to make it go away. ‘I’ve no idea where Matt – I mean Maxim Vella – is.’
‘Well, I’m not going to let that happen? I’m going to become a super-famous influencer?’ Her eyes are bright with defiance. ‘Then Kwaz will photograph me for the cover of Time or Vanity Fair and see the real me, not the schoolgirl? There’ll be no stigma.’
‘When do you plan on this happening?’
‘Maybe in my gap year?’ She looks at me levelly, daring me to question it.
I match her straight face. ‘Think he’ll be shooting Vanity Fair covers by then? How does that fit in with trolling the art establishment?’
‘We flex careers now, Mum. One monetises to facilitate the other. He is the next Tuschman. I just have to be the next…’ She closes one eye, thinking, ‘Emma Watson?’
It could be worse – I thought she might say Zoella or Kim Kardashian – but my heart still sinks. ‘You still want to be an actor?’
‘It’s a family trade.’ She’s defiant. ‘I’ve already got a fan base and screen experience.’
‘That’s not acting.’
‘That’s not the point. Nobody wants you if you’re nobody. Recognition legitimises all art. If you’d made it big and been famous, Mr Velcro might have looked you up.’
‘Vella.’ I hold my indignation in check. ‘And “making it” is not just about celebrity, Summer, it’s also about creative fulfilment.’
‘Reading out rude books for a living?’ she sneers, one Nike tick raised.
‘I won a Narrator of the Year Lippie, I’ll have you know! You can tell that to Vanity bloody Fair when they profile you.’
‘Why would I even mention you? You talk about yourself enough for both of us. Congratulations, mother dearest, yet again you have made this all about YOU. You and your teen crush and your pound-shop acting career and your regrets.’
‘I’m sorry, I was trying to—’
‘I’m not you. I can’t make up for your mistakes, Mum. I know what I want and I’m going to get it! So instead of complaining that you were once all that, why don’t you do something about it? Dare yourself again? Get your own life back! Stop trying to live mine.’
Pop, pop, pop, I hear the anger bubbles rising and boiling. I always fall for it, the Summer stealth attack on my ego. It’s a mother/daughter game we play in which she undermines me to make herself feel better. And I inevitably get pompous and priggish. (I really should remember all this; I did it to my mother after all.)
‘Maybe I WILL!’ I shout. ‘Maybe you can all fuck off and I will do what I WANT for a change: I’ll wear double denim and drink Malibu for breakfast and look up all my exes; I’ll stage a one-woman show called Hot Crush all about Maxim. I’ll get an eighties perm and drive a yellow open-top car and make your father dress like Patrick Swayze and we’ll scorch round Hyde Park Corner with the stereo pumping out M People.’
She’s gaping at me. ‘Mum, what’s got into you?’
‘I am NOT just Mum! I’m Eliza Finch. She’s got into me, Summer. You told her to! This girl I once knew, a girl just like you who was fearless and ambitious and wanted to kiss all the wrong boys. She’s still right here! All the time I’ve missed her, it turns out she was hiding inside me. And even though her hormones are dying, I’m not letting that bitch go. We’re on a comeback tour!’
*
If I’m honest, I faked it a bit with the cricket tea ladies earlier. That red mist was very drama school. I was angry, but not blindly so. Not the sort of angry that says things she’ll regret, Dog Fight angry.
Angry like I am right now. But Summer’s looking at her phone screen, eyes like saucers, finger swiping frantically. ‘NO! I thought I turned live stream off. It’s been streaming EVERYTHING!’
‘To whom?’ I snarl, not really caring.
She’s laughing and squealing. ‘Oh. Em. Gee! It’s already got over five hundred likes! They are pouring in. That’s sick!’
A shadow falls across the sofa. ‘What’s sick?’
It’s Paddy. He must have come in through the back door, far earlier than expected.
‘Is something wrong?’ I ask, pulses still thundering.
‘Opposite.’ His speech sounds normal again. ‘Away team’s batting collapsed before we’d bowled half the overs. What’s sick?’
‘Mum’s stats. She’s been telling my followers about falling in love with her teacher called Max Umbrella and finding her true eighties self again. It’s hilarious!’
‘Maxim Vella,’ I correct, jumping up, ‘and it was over thirty years ago. How’s your face?’
It looks remarkably intact, just a red mark across his cheek, a split eyebrow and hint of a black, swollen eye. He’s far too high from thrashing the opposing village eleven to care. Having batted a personal best, he then helped bowl them out in record time, a man of the match extraordinaire. I even get a kiss, a bit Charles-and-Di polo match, maybe, but it matters. Victory has lent him that extra shot of testosterone wow factor and he fills the room with straightforward masculinity.
Spotting the remainder of the cake, he wolfs it, telling us he’s not stopping, just showering and changing before going for a celebratory curry with the lads.
I watch the cake crumbs on his lips. ‘How do you like our lemon drizzle?’
‘Delicious. Totally wasted on a cricket tea, like all your cakes. And you.’ He gives me a wry look. He knows I’m onto him.
I’m still jittery and it makes me rash. ‘Must have been hungry work running that errand for Simon this morning?’
But Paddy’s gaze has drifted to the female footballers on screen. I want to snap his attention back from all those firm young thighs.
‘What was it? The errand? Paddy?’
‘Nothing important.’ He keeps watching.
Summer’s still scrolling and laughing, ‘This is insane! Hashtag Mummy Hot Mess. They think you’re totally wacko, Mum. In a good way.’
‘They should’ve seen me stabbing a fruitcake and shouting my head off in the cricket pavilion.’ I grit my teeth and watch Paddy for a reaction.
She shoots, she scores. He turns to look at me, incredulous. ‘Nobody said anything.’
‘I’m afraid I might have shocked Dinah and – what’s her name?’
‘Bianca.’ It suits Icepack Blonde perfectly. ‘You’re OK now though?’
‘Fine! Just the usual – what did your follower call me, Summer? Hot mess?’
‘Think chaotic, slightly psycho and a suicidal failure,’ she explains in case I think I’m forgiven for being self-obsessed, ‘but kind of compelling?’
‘And exceptionally good at baking cakes,’ I snap.
Paddy eyes me warily, and I find myself wanting to ask if Icepack will be at the curry night. But that would sound psycho.
‘Is Bianca going on the curry night?’ asks the Hot Mess, not caring.
‘Probably.’ He looks baffled. ‘Why?’
‘Just wondering.’ If he asks me to go along too, I will, I decide. Part of the new, better me. Or old me on her comeback tour?
He doesn’t ask, just casts a final glance at the athletic women celebrating on screen before he leaves the room.
As he pounds upstairs, I hear Summer whoop, ‘OMG Kwasi liked it! He’s literally never liked any of my Insta stuff ever. Man!’ She’s practically crying with joy, gazing at her phone. ‘Seven hundred likes! Maxim Vella is trending. He has a hashtag! There’s a shout out to find him. Our fam livestream is going viral.’
‘Who exactly heard that conversation?’ I ask anxiously.
‘Mostly teeny fans who think it’s sweet that old people still try to remember stuff like that. It’s all good, Mum, look.’ She holds up her phone to show me rows of comments with love hearts, kittens and namastes, grey-haired granny emojis amongst them.
‘I am not sweet or old!’
But to Summer’s followers, everyone above thirty is ‘Over’.
‘You and Mr Paella were like Romeo and Juliet with shoulder pads!’
‘Vossi Bop’ rings out on her phone. In an instant, she swipes to answer it, already on her feet and heading for the door at speed. ‘I know! Yeah, she’s totally extra and up herself but that was fire, facts. Same. Embarrassing, yeah, no cap! Yours too? Yeet! Yes, Leibowitz! No lie! I’m not missing next week by the way, just saying. You owe me this…’ She moves out of earshot.
Most of this is as lost to me as ancient Norse, but if it is Kwasi, I sense I may have pushed forbidden love closer together not further apart by being ‘totally extra’. I close my eyes, wishing I hadn’t made it all about my youth, not her present. When will I stop living in the past? When will now feel as good as it did then?
I love Paddy and our children. That should be enough. It’s not like I have a sex drive to take out on tour any more. Not even a menstrual cycle.
Switching off the television, I slump back down on the sofa, pulling a cushion over my head, longing for blank.
Instead, in my mind’s eye Matteo is swinging his chair around to sit astride it and fix me with his deep velvet gaze. Now you know who I remind you of, eh?
High above, Paddy is singing ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ in the shower.
It seems it has.
14
About Time
My ten o’clock viewing is late.
The flat is in a converted mill overlooking the Avon, a luxury retirement block on Stratford’s Waterside. The wife of the couple living there has passed away recently, her widower moving in with family. It’s full of pictures, knickknacks, mementos, and hundreds of books, all neatly tidied so the space can be inspected.
My all-female estate agency’s mantra is ‘happiness sells houses, cleanliness clinches the deal!’ so I’ve put fresh freesias out in a vase, a squirt of bleach down the loo and opened the doors onto the balcony with its café table and jaunty geraniums perfectly angled. The scene is set. It’s a tempting one, although I don’t yet qualify – the criteria for living in this riverside spot is that buyers must be over fifty-five, the subtext is ‘exclusive and cultured’. Leaseholders can even rent private moorings outside.
