The Bad Mother's Handbook

by Kate Long

  Of course, Chrissy could be a bloke. Or a friend. No need to panic yet.

  *

  I WANTED TO get back so I could read the letter again, just in case I’d missed something, because I still hadn’t decided what to do. But shopping with Nan takes forever because we have to stop and chat to all and sundry. Forty-five minutes it took us to walk back up from the butcher’s; we could have done it in ten, and all the while the blood seeping out of the cold chops and pooling in the corner of the plastic bag. Little Jim by the Post Office, with his flat cap and muffler, wanted to know how Reenie Mather’s operation had gone (‘She were the colour of this envelope when th’ ambulance men carried her out, she were, honest’). Then he detailed his own ailments for us (why should he think I want to know about his prostate? Nan was all ears, though).

  Next it was Skippy, our local tramp, so called because he spends a lot of time ferreting about on the Corporation tip. He was turning on his heel outside the library, blagging change and spitting on the pavement.

  ‘Awreet?’ Nan asks, cheerful as anything. I can never tell what Skippy says, so I left them to it and went in to see if the new Mary Wesley was in (it wasn’t). When I came out Skippy was on his hands and knees making a sort of yipping noise and Nan was two-double, Christ knows what was going on there. I didn’t stop to ask, just dragged Nan away. ‘Eeh, he’s a rum ’un,’ she said, wiping her eyes with a hanky. ‘Filthy old deviant, more like,’ I muttered, but she was blowing her nose and didn’t hear.

  Then, when we were on the home stretch, up pops Mr Rowland, the newish vicar. Don’t know what it is about vicars, they always make me feel guilty, then annoyed with myself for feeling guilty. I mean, I know I don’t go to church but on the other hand, I’m not especially sinful either. Not on the world scale of evil, anyway.

  ‘Lovely to see you,’ he calls across the road like he means it. Nan beams, and he bounds over and starts to describe at length how the vicarage is shaping up and how Mrs Rowland’s knee has been poorly because she fell off a stepladder trying to get to a cobweb and it’s started an old hockey injury off again. Nan tuts and shakes her head sympathetically while I lean on the wall and look over his shoulder. Hanging baskets are going up in the High Street; they’ll last all of two minutes.

  He finally remembers some appointment and dashes off (where does he get his energy from? God, presumably). Nan watches him go fondly. ‘Now he’s a good man. Not like that Mr Shankland, playing guitars and tambourines, what have you. I’m not surprised he didn’t last long. Clapping in church! He went off somewhere foreign i’ th’ end, didn’t he?’

  ‘Surrey, Mum. Mr Shankland went to form a Charismatic group in Farnham. You told me that.’

  ‘Nay, I never did. Are you sure? Well, who was it went to Japan?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ I bundled her up the step and shut the door. I felt like I’d run the London Marathon. ‘I’ll get the kettle on. Give us your coat.’

  I pulled the letter out of the table drawer and took it into the kitchen to scan it again while the water boiled.

  In the past it was thought best for all concerned that an adopted child’s break with his birth family should be total. Parents who placed a child for adoption were generally told that a child would not have access to his birth record. The current legislation reflects increased understanding of the wishes and needs of adopted people. It recognises that although adoption makes a child a full member of a new family, information about his or her origins may still be important to an adopted person.

  People adopted before 12 November 1975 are required to see a counsellor before they can be given access to their records because in the years before 1975, some parents and adopters may have been led to believe that the children being adopted would never be able to find out their original names or the names of their parents. These arrangements were made in good faith and it is important that adopted people who want to find out more about their origins should understand what it may mean for them and others.

  This means that if you were adopted before12 November 1975, you will have to see an experienced social worker called a counsellor before you can obtain further information from your original birth record.

  There was something in the phrasing that had made me pause. What might it mean for me? And who else was it going to affect if I began my search properly? The Adoption Contact Register had drawn a blank. All they’d said was that ‘my details had been entered in Section 1’, so that must mean there was nothing in Section 2 which matched up. But Jessie Pilkington probably didn’t know the Register existed: why should she? She’d been told nobody could trace anybody, when she handed me over That was That. However you looked at it, I was going to be a bolt from the blue. Best not to over-analyse the situation, really. I mean, if you went through life examining the minute consequences of everything you were about to do, you’d end up so bloody paranoid you’d do nothing. We might as well all live under the table.

  I shut the letter inside a Trex cookbook and shoved it to the back of the cupboard.

  ‘Phyllis Heaton’s had a hysterectomy, did I tell you?’ Nan was playing with a piece of toast left over from breakfast; God knows where she’d stowed it.

  ‘No, Mum. No, she hasn’t. She’s gone ex-directory. You mis-heard.’

  ‘And she can’t accept it.’ Nan carried on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘If you ask her, she denies it. Eeh, it’s a shame for some folk. We don’t know as what we’ll come to, any on us.’ She gnawed at the toast like a terrier.

  It was then I noticed the amaryllis.

  ‘God, Mum, what’s happened to my flower?’

  Instead of two brilliant red trumpets, a naked green spike rose two feet into the air, and stopped. The pot had been pushed back to the left of the windowsill, behind the curtain, so I knew who’d done it. I leaned across the table and slid it back out.

  ‘Mum? Mum, look at me. Mum, what happened to the flowers on the end? Where have they gone?’

  Nan laughed uncomfortably. ‘I were closing t’ curtains and I must have caught it. It came away in my hand. It’ll be all right.’

  ‘How can it be all right when you’ve knocked its head off? Honestly! I can’t keep anything nice in this house, if it’s not you it’s Charlotte with her magazines and clothes all over the floor, I ask her and ask her to tidy them up but she takes no notice, neither of you do. What’s the point of me reading Homes and bloody Gardens when you’re busy mutilating my plants and hiding bits of food around the place?’

  Nan glanced guiltily at the sofa.

  ‘Oh, hell, you’ve not got butter on the cushions, have you?’ I flipped them up angrily, one after the other. But it wasn’t toast, it was the amaryllis, tattered and flaccid like a burst balloon, and sporting a little Sellotape collar round the base. I held it up, speechless.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ said Nan. ‘We’ll just stick it back on. It’ll be all right.’ But she didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘No, Mum. It won’t be all right.’ The flower heads came apart and I squashed them up hard in my palms, feeling the cool petals bruise and smear. When I opened my hands it was like the stigmata. Nan stared. I looked over to where the letter was hidden, waiting. ‘There are some things you can’t mend.’

  *

  There is no privacy in this house. My mum, probably just to spite me, has the phone wall-mounted in the hall, which is just about big enough for two medium-sized people to stand chest to chest. Since there is no room even for a chair, let alone those swanky telephone seats she drools over in the catalogues, I have to sit on the stairs to have a conversation. It’s bloody freezing, too, I don’t know why we bother having a fridge. We could just keep the milk on the doormat. The letter box doesn’t fit properly and she’s never got round to fixing it (waiting for a man to sort it for her, dream on, Ma), so it blows open at the slightest breeze. You can, of course, hear everything that’s going on in the next room and vice versa. So all in all, it’s pretty crap. I’m definitely having a mobile
for my birthday.

  I could have sneaked out to the public phone box, but knowing my luck my money would jam or run out, or there’d be some pervo outside listening in. I needed this call to go well, I had to be on top of it. I didn’t want to lay my heart on the line in a stinky glass box.

  As I dialled the number I could hear Mum picking on Nan again, something to do with some stupid flower. Like it matters. I pulled Nan’s scarf down from the hook above and wound it round my neck. It smelt of Coty L’Aimant.

  Ringing. Ringing. Click.

  Paul: Hello?

  Me: Hello.

  Paul: Hello?

  Me: It’s me, Charlotte. I was—

  Paul: Oh yeah, right, Charlotte—

  Me: Yeah . . .

  Paul: I was going to give you a ring.

  Me: Did you get what you were after?

  Paul: You what?

  Me: Your video. Your dad said you’d gone into Bolton.

  Paul: Oh yeah, oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, England’s Pride, top twenty goals of the decade. Narrated by David Beckham. I’ve not watched it yet.

  Me: Sounds fantastic. Look, when you do, can I be the first to borrow it?

  Paul: Ha bloody ha. It’s better than a video on, I dunno, make-up or summat, girly stuff.

  Me: Sod off. Look, did you want to meet up for a drink some time? Only . . .

  Paul: Oh, yeah, right, that would be great. Em, yeah. I’ll give you a ring . . . we’ll get summat sorted. Maybe next week. If it’s not too busy. All right?

  Me: Yeah. All right. Well . . .

  Paul: I’ll call you.

  Me: Paul?

  Paul: What?

  Me: Who’s Chrissy?

  Pause, click, dialling tone.

  The door to the lounge opened and Nan wandered out. There were crumbs all down her front.

  ‘Phyllis Heaton’s had a hysterectomy,’ she said sadly, and sat down on the step next to me.

  I unwound the scarf and draped it round us both. I wanted to cry.

  ‘There’s some things as can’t be mended,’ she whispered.

  *

  ‘WELL, YOU WOULDN’T catch me even thinking about it,’ said Sylv, swinging her knees to and fro on her swivel chair like she does; she’ll come a cropper one of these days and unswivel herself completely. I was sitting in the office to cut out my thirty daffodil shapes because Year 6 were watching a science programme on TV and the classroom was too dark to see what I was doing, not that it was exactly taxing stuff. Sylv, however, had been delighted to see me. ‘I mean, what if they want your bone marrow?’

  ‘You what?’

  Sylv looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘Don’t you watch the news? When these long-lost relatives meet up there’s always someone wanting your bone marrow, or your kidneys or what have you, and then if you don’t give it to them you’re the villain. It’s not on. I was reading about a case in Woman’s Own last week. This woman didn’t even know she had a twin brother until he turned up on the doorstep wanting her organs. It’s a hell of a risk. No, Karen, I wouldn’t touch it in your shoes.’

  Thanks, Sylv, I thought, these heart-to-hearts we have are invaluable. You’ve helped me make up my mind. I’m going to find my birth mother if it kills me.

  Just then the Head came into the office with a letter for typing. Sylv quivered like a pointer.

  ‘What do you think, Mr Fairbrother?’ She ignored my desperate expression and plunged on. ‘Do you think Karen should try to find her natural parents?’

  Give him his due, Mr F didn’t bat an eyelid. I suppose he’s used to it, he sees Sylv all the time whereas the rest of us only consort with her at break times.

  ‘I really couldn’t give an opinion,’ he said and put the letter down on the desk. ‘Can you get this out to Gavin Crossley’s parents by the end of the day? We’ll have to have them in, it’s no good. Daryl Makinson’s had to have stitches.’ Then he turned to me. ‘A difficult decision for you. Not one I should like to be faced with.’ He gave me a nice smile and left us to it.

  ‘Such a shame,’ said Sylv as soon as the door was shut. She means because he’s past forty, possibly fifty, and still single, and used to live with his parents till they both died and now he lives on his own in that big house up Castleton Road, he must rattle around in it, why he doesn’t buy a little bungalow, and maybe he’s homosexual but doesn’t realize it, not that it matters in this day and age. And he’s losing his hair, poor chap. I’ve heard Sylv’s musings on the subject more times than I can count. But he’s actually a pleasant man and really quite OK as a boss, especially when you think the staff are all women: you’d think we’d drive him mad. He’s great when I need to take time off for Nan, and he buys us all Christmas presents; just bits and pieces, but it’s the thought. This year it was cacti. Sylv got a squat, spiky number. Mine was tall and sort of hairy, as if a gang of spiders had run amok over it. I don’t like them as plants, I tend to think they’re a bit common. You never see cacti on ‘Inspector Morse’. So I put Mr F’s effort on the back kitchen windowsill, behind the terracotta garlic jar, but I didn’t throw it out, that would have been ungrateful.

  The bell was about to go for break so Sylv tottered off to the ladies’ to re-do her lipstick and rearrange her underskirt, and I gathered up my daffodils and set off for the classroom. As I got to the corner some of them began to escape and flutter to the floor. Any minute now and they’d be stampeded by a bunch of ten-year-olds, so I put the rest of the pile on the Nature Table and got down on my hands and knees and began swishing up the little paper shapes with my hands.

  ‘Let me help.’ Mr F, with his clipboard and stock cupboard invoices under one arm, was stooping to pick at a lone petal which had welded itself to the grey vinyl floor tiles. ‘Tricky customers, aren’t they? Look, I’m sorry about earlier.’

  I must have looked blank.

  ‘In the office. Sylv.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Sometimes her enthusiasm to, ahm, help gets the better of her.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, you’ve nothing to apologize for.’

  ‘Well. Rest assured, it won’t go any further.’ He handed me my daffodil. ‘And if you’d like someone to talk it through with sometime, someone objective . . . I can see it must be a difficult situation, with your mother being as she is . . . Anyway, I’m usually in the Feathers of a Sunday lunchtime, the Fourgates Ramblers meet there. It’s quite a nice atmosphere, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in. No jukebox, which is a rarity these days.’

  Before I had time to do anything other than smile vaguely we heard the click of heels behind us. Sylv’s face, newly drawn on, was eager with news. ‘You might like to know we’re running short of paper towel in the ladies’,’ she said as she drew level. Mr F gave a small salute and walked off towards his room. ‘He’s very much on the short side for a headmaster, isn’t he?’

  *

  My dad always says, ‘As one door shuts, another one slams in your face.’ Mind you, he’s not nearly as bitter as my mum, because according to her, he didn’t have anything like as much to lose. He was an apprentice with British Aerospace when she got caught, and he just carried on, finished his training and got a full-time job there. He’s still on the machines, despite waves of redundancies and his appallingly casual attitude. ‘He thinks it’s beneath him,’ my mum often says, and we know who to blame for that idea. A blue-collar worker? Nah. She wanted to land a professional, a doctor or a lawyer, that sort of league.

  Anyway, he’s wrong. About the doors. I was asked out by someone else the very next week.

  I was in the senior library, because I often am. I love it in there. It smells of furniture polish, and the wicker-bottom chairs creak under you as you lean back against the radiator to chew your pen and think. On sunny days the light makes beams of sparkly dust that drifts like random thoughts. The calm is intoxicating. It’s about as unlike our house as you can get.

  The one thing my mum can’t get at me for is, I do work. I’m after four As, mainly to get me aw
ay from her. Don’t know if I’ll get the grades, but it won’t be for want of trying. There was another module coming up and an essay to get out of the way (what I want to know is, why can’t teachers communicate with each other so you don’t get about twenty deadlines at once?).

  So I had my Keats out and my Brodie’s Notes and my Oxford pad and I was just getting into my spider diagram when someone put an illegal cup of hot chocolate down on the desk next to me.

  ‘Absolutely NO food and drink to be consumed in the library,’ said Daniel Gale brightly. ‘It’s OK, the librarian’s outside arguing with Mr Stevens over the budget. She’ll be there for the duration. Cheers.’ He produced a KitKat and snapped it in half. ‘There you go. Eat up.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw two Year 11 girls half turn to gawp.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  He ran his hand through his wiry hair like he does and pushed his glasses against the bridge of his nose. ‘You looked in need.’

  ‘Of what, exactly?’

  ‘Chocolate.’

  ‘I think you ought to know I never accept sweets from strangers.’ I bit into the KitKat and felt better. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My big sister always swore by chocolate. Contains iron and antioxidants, boosts your immune system, relaxes your arterial walls making strokes less likely. Really. It ought to live in the medicine cabinet. And, most importantly, it lifts your mood through the mystic power of everyone’s favourite chemical neurotransmitter, ta-daah, serotonin.’

  The Year 11s were hunching their shoulders suspiciously and nudging each other. Girls that age are so immature.

  ‘Right. Do I look like a miserable bugger, then?’

  He had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘I overheard Julia telling Anya that you’d split with your boyfriend. Although, and I know I’m almost certainly going to regret saying this, he was somewhat lacking in sartorial discretion.’ Daniel sat down opposite me and leaned forward across the desk. ‘He dressed like a tosser.’