Bad Mothers United

by Kate Long

  I wonder what the examiner would have said if he’d seen me hurling Mum’s Metro round the back streets of Manchester that afternoon. How I didn’t burst a tyre I’ll never know, I hit that many kerbs. The few occasions I had been out in the car on my own I’d been nervous, but not this time. I had too much on my mind. Get there and get it over with, was all I was thinking.

  I hadn’t even gone back in our house in case Dad asked me what I was up to and that made me lose my nerve. I hadn’t changed my wet clothes, repaired my make-up, pulled a comb through my hair. Because whatever happened between me and Dan now, it wasn’t going to be decided by a slick of lipstick. He could take me as I was or not at all.

  Miraculously there was a parking space along Dan’s street, not too far down from the flat, but it was on the small side. Parking’s the one thing I’m not so confident about, and I never attempt it without first checking to see if anyone’s watching. An audience totally puts me off. I slowed to a halt, had a quick glance round but saw only two figures far, far away at the top of the road. So I went for it, heaving the steering wheel to one side and easing up the clutch, whipping my head from right to left in an attempt not to hit anything during the manoeuvre. First try I connected with the kerb, panicked, revved and shot forward, bumping lightly into the 4×4 in front. I waited for some whooping alarm to start up but luckily nothing happened. Get a grip, Charlie, I told myself. It’s not going to help anyone if you dent Mum’s wing. I took a deep breath and began to back up. But now I was well skewed, the front nearside sticking out and there wasn’t enough room to straighten. I drove the car out and tried again. This time I had the angle better and although I still hit the kerb, I was ready for that and didn’t panic. Instead I heaved the back wheel up onto the pavement, and took a moment’s pause while I got my head back together.

  Idly I glanced into the mirror and noticed that the two people I’d seen at the top of the road were now much closer. I squinted, trying to make out more detail. A pair of women, it was. One was tall and thin with long hair, jeans and a short beige mac, and the other was smaller, slightly broader, in an expensive-looking coat with a fur collar. The tall woman’s mouth was a bright slash of colour against her pale face. That’s when it dawned on me: I was watching Mrs Gale. And her younger friend? No prizes for guessing. Even from this distance you could pick up the glossy sheen of Amelia’s hair, the confidence in her stride.

  ‘Buggeration!’ I said, and promptly stalled the engine.

  I looked again. Had they spotted me? Mrs G was talking animatedly and Amelia was nodding, well immersed in their conversation. I thought, I can duck down and hide till they’ve gone past – but then they’ll be in the flat with Daniel and really I have to speak to him now while my courage is up – or I can make a dash for it and see if I can beat them.

  Although the car was fairly central, it was sitting with its rear end on the footpath, like a dog cocking its leg. Well, sod whether my parking was parallel or not, I no longer cared. I wrenched the gearstick into neutral, yanked at the keys and scrambled out. I didn’t dare check behind me. All I was concerned about was getting to Daniel first.

  I ran full pelt for the flat, throwing myself up the brick path, and was about to ring the bell when I saw someone moving on the other side of the glass. I waved and tapped, and thank-you, God, the door was opened by one of the ground-floor Ukrainians, wearing his coat and obviously on his way out. I just gasped, ‘NeedtoseeDaniel!’ at him and made for the stairs. I expect he thought he’d let in a nutter.

  When I reached the landing I stopped for a second because I felt sick. In the car I’d been trying to keep my head clear and not work myself into a state, even though the first song I heard when I turned on the radio had been bloody ‘Seasons In The Sun’. It gives me the creeps at the best of times, that track. Then, due to the hideous lyrics, I’d had an attack of self-pity and a very short cry. But I’d managed to pull myself together by reciting Walshy’s football version over the top:

  We had goals by the ton, we had Bristol on the run but the fun didn’t last ’cause the bastards ran too fast.

  Now, though, I was beyond terrace chants. It was just me and my fear.

  The door to Dan’s flat was shut, no clues as to whether he was in or not. I began hammering on the wooden panels and calling his name. I thought I could hear voices in the hallway below.

  Suddenly the door swung open and there he was, standing in front of me.

  ‘Charlotte!’

  ‘Quick,’ I said, slipping over the threshold. ‘Close it.’

  He just stood like a lemon. When he didn’t move, I turned and slammed it shut myself.

  ‘They’re coming,’ I said.

  At the same moment I caught sight of myself in the mirror over his fireplace. My eye make-up was melted below my lashes, Alice Cooper-style, and my damp hair looked dark and greasy. I was in the jogging bottoms and hooded sweatshirt I’d been slobbing around in that morning.

  ‘Who’s coming, Charlotte?’

  ‘Your mum! Amelia!’

  God knows what he thought. That I was having some species of breakdown, probably.

  My eyes swept round the room. Everything seemed pretty much as I remembered. Like us, he hadn’t bothered with Christmas decs, though he had gone as far as displaying his cards upright. I checked again: where were the bits and pieces I’d given him over the years? The desk photo of me and Will had gone, I now saw, along with the Magic Eye print I’d bought from Bolton Scope, plus the green eco-gonk for the top of his computer. That hurt. It looked like he’d cleared me out. But no, not quite, because the bullet-shaped fossil I’d found in a charity jumble sale was still sitting under his monitor where I’d planted it last year. A belemnite, he’d called it. A tiny ancient squid. Swum its way through a million billion tides to wash up on a table in Tannerside Scout Hut.

  ‘Daniel,’ I said.

  There was a sharp rap at the door.

  ‘Don’t open it,’ I mouthed. ‘Please.’

  He stayed where he was.

  The knock came again. ‘Daniel? Daniel, are you in there?’ His mother’s voice.

  I smoothed my hair nervously, wondering how long he’d hold out. How long before he’d shrug apologetically and reach past me for the latch.

  ‘Danny?’ This was Amelia. More pleading, less strident.

  ‘Daniel, darling, open the door. We know she’s in there, we saw her run in. You don’t have to deal with it, don’t listen to her sob story. Don’t let yourself be talked round.’

  My jaw dropped. Hell’s bells, there’s nothing like laying your cards on the table, is there? I knew Mrs G didn’t like me, but to be so blatant about it.

  Amelia said, ‘Let us in. This is silly.’

  There was another series of bangs on the door and then silence. We waited, and for a second or two I actually wondered if they might have given up, scuttled off to Mrs G’s flat for a glass of wine and a bitch about me. But no, because next came a scrabbling, metallic noise that made me suck in my breath. Mrs Gale was fitting her key into the lock. She was coming in regardless.

  ‘We’re concerned about you, darling,’ were her first words as she walked into the room. Amelia hovered behind, her eyes fixed on me.

  ‘There’s nothing to be concerned about, Mother.’

  ‘It is over, you know,’ Mrs Gale addressed me. ‘So what do you want? Is it money?’

  Even Daniel flinched at that one. I felt fury boiling up inside me, imagined marching across and shaking her by the shoulders till her teeth rattled in their sockets. I had to clench my fists till the immediate urge passed.

  ‘Can you leave us, please,’ said Daniel.

  ‘No, I shan’t. Not until I hear what’s going on. Didn’t I tell you we hadn’t seen the last of her? Charlotte, you must know you have no right to be here. You haven’t brought the child along, have you? No, good, that’s something. Because it won’t work, this emotional blackmail. Daniel and I have talked it through and I’ve told him, he
has no legal or moral obligation towards you or your son. I think he’s made it quite clear that your romance is over, and I’m afraid you need to move on and accept the situation.’

  My ears were buzzing with the effort of holding in my rage but I thought, Don’t give her the satisfaction. If I lose my temper and start shouting, I’ll just be playing into her hands, so she can say: ‘See, darling, what a gruesome little fishwife she is when you try and cross her.’

  ‘Please,’ said Dan again, quietly. He held his arm out to indicate the door.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going nowhere till she leaves.’

  All this time Amelia’s face was growing more and more fascinated. I don’t know what she’d heard about me, but I think I was worse in the flesh than she’d been expecting. Maybe she’d clocked my hoodie and thought I was going to pull a knife, or at the very least break into some vicious street slang. Maybe she thought I was going to offer her drugs.

  Mrs G stepped forward. ‘All right, let’s get it over with. Say what you need to say, Charlotte, then go.’

  ‘’S’OK,’ whispered Daniel to me.

  Really I needed to sit down because my legs were so shaky, but I didn’t want to put myself on a lower level than everyone else.

  I tried to speak, managed only a rasp, cleared my throat and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ They all just stared at me.

  And now I discovered that the whole speech I’d prepared asking for another chance, assuring him that if he had me back I’d listen more and take more interest and be less spiky and more grateful, had evaporated from my brain. How could I explain, under their critical gaze, the lessons I’d learned over these last months? How meeting Jessie had shown me what wickedness is in the world and the need to close ranks against it. To hold fast that which is good, as Nan would say. How Dad coming a-cropper demonstrated that you never know what’s lying in wait for you on the road ahead. Mostly I’d learned about love watching Mum carefully cut up Dad’s meals into small chunks, or each evening smooth moisturiser into his knobbly old feet. Would I do those things for Daniel if he needed me to? Yes, I would. No hesitation.

  Not that I could say any of this with Witch-features listening in.

  ‘I’m, really, really sorry,’ I said again, my voice very small.

  A snort from the doorway. I looked up expecting to see Mrs Gale sneering, but it was Amelia whose face was twisted in disgust.

  ‘It’s all right being sorry now, Charlotte. You had your chance, and you blew it. Danny deserves better than you. He knows it and you do too. You’re not messing him about any more. I won’t let you.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Mrs Gale, all brisk and buoyant now she could see I was failing. ‘Time for you to go, young lady.’

  But then something wonderful happened. Without looking at me, Daniel reached out sideways and took my hand. I let out a little squeak of surprise.

  ‘Daniel!’ his mother barked.

  When I turned, I could see he was breathing fast and his skin was clammy. I squeezed his fingertips and he squeezed mine back, hard.

  ‘Listen,’ said Mrs G. ‘If you do need cash, we can probably let you have some. Not much, but if that’s what it takes, I’m sure we can come to some arrangement—’

  ‘Move,’ said Daniel, nodding them towards the door.

  Amelia said, ‘Don’t fall for it, Danny. Don’t, because you’ll only end up how you were before. She’ll take you for granted, she won’t appreciate you. She’ll break your heart again.’

  ‘I could probably stretch to a hundred,’ said Mrs Gale.

  Daniel took a deep breath. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘That’s it.’ And he jerked me forward so that we more or less barged the two women aside, pushing them apart, and then we were out onto the landing and running down the stairs, across the hallway, through the front door and down the brick path, still holding hands.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked as we turned out of the gateway and set off up the road.

  He didn’t answer. We passed the badly parked Metro, and a postbox, and the street sign at the corner and a Londis and a hairdresser’s, and then he began to slow down, panting. We didn’t stop, though. Down a ginnel he led me, across a car park, along the edge of a playing-field. Here was a trio of newly planted saplings, two of which had been snapped off and the guard-rail of the other filled with empty bottles and cans. Here was a wire supermarket basket suspended from a spiky fence. A skeletal hedge with an abandoned nest inside, a column of signs for an industrial park. I saw Christmas lights already twinkling against the gloom of the afternoon. These were Dan’s streets, and I didn’t know them because I’d never taken the trouble.

  At the end of the next road was a garage and a bike repair shop, and some concrete steps leading to a flyover.

  ‘Is it much further?’ My lungs were on fire and my knees weren’t much better.

  He pulled me towards the steps and then we were hauling ourselves up a series of zigzag flights marked throughout with graffiti and water-stains and streaks of rust. Every corner and crevice was packed with litter. The traffic from the main road above us roared; I could smell diesel.

  Just as I thought I was going to collapse, we reached the top. I gulped in exhaust fumes and held onto the metal hand-rail for support. Daniel walked on a little distance, then stopped and tipped his head back as if to study the sky. Above us, the clouds thickened. Sleet was on its way here too.

  ‘Why have we come here?’ I shouted. I had to raise my voice because of the lorries and vans thundering past.

  He said something I couldn’t make out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend. She likes to think she is, but she isn’t. I wanted you to know that.’

  ‘Daniel—’

  He held up his palm to stop me.

  Sod this for a game of soldiers, I thought. I tucked my damp hair behind my ears and then strode over to stand in front of him. ‘OK, what do you want, Dan? What do I have to say? Tell me and I’ll say it, and mean it.’

  ‘Is she right?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Amelia.’

  I grasped his biceps, forcing him to look straight at me. ‘No. She isn’t. That’s why I came, because I wanted to tell you we both had it wrong. I do love you enough, I can turn things round. Look, imagine it’s a mathematical model that needed adjusting, if that helps.’

  A blink.

  ‘I can fix it, Dan. How can I prove it to you? I can’t, unless you give me another chance.’

  He seemed about to speak, then he broke free and started walking away again, fast. A truck bibbed its horn roguishly. ‘Oh, up yours!’ I shouted after it. Dan was speeding up and I could barely match his pace.

  ‘I had it all clear in my mind,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Then you turn up.’

  ‘I had to.’

  I thought of the belemnite sitting under his monitor. Thirty pence for that little miracle of evolution. Sometimes it’s hard to know how much things are really worth.

  ‘Amelia has her own agenda. Your mum too. You can see that now, can’t you? All I can do, Daniel, is promise to try harder. That’s all anyone can do. But if I break your heart, I’ll break mine too. I’ve found that out.’

  He halted abruptly and turned, catching me in his arms like a kid playing kiss-chase. His expression was fiercer than I’d ever seen. Slowly he brought up his hands and planted them on my cheeks, but it wasn’t a tender gesture, it was urgent, serious.

  ‘You won’t let me down?’

  ‘Never.’

  A beat.

  ‘Then God help me, Charlotte, I’m not myself without you.’

  And he drew me tight into him so that the breath was nearly squeezed out of me and my lips were squashed up against his collarbone painfully.

  I don’t know how long we stayed holding each other on that ugly city road. The sleet started, bitter against our necks, but he didn’t let me go. Lorry horns honked, a driver shouted something crude. I imagined how we must look to all
those people whizzing past in their warm, dry cabs: like a couple you’d see in a TV drama, some glimpse of careless love. Youngsters enjoying themselves before life becomes too weighted down. Get in there, son.

  And it seemed, as Daniel clung onto me, that he and I were at the still, quiet centre of a mind-boggling whirl of activity, everyone else rushing across the surface of the planet to their grown-up destinations, to jobs and homes and partners. Any day now we’d be flung out to join them. I could almost feel the centripetal pull at my back. Where would we end up? What lay in store for us? The fear was dizzying if you let yourself dwell.

  He was mumbling into my hair, his chest heaving and his arms like a vice around my back.

  ‘Dear God, Charlotte. I thought, I thought—’

  ‘Sssh,’ I said. ‘Later.’

  Sometimes all that matters is the now.

  Snapshots from the future

  In a room with white-painted walls and striplights, Dad stands up. Not on his own, of course. They have this contraption, a kind of harness they strap round his waist and between his legs, and which buckles onto a hoist. The hoist’s on wheels, so once they’ve cranked him upright – and it’s so weird seeing him vertical again after half a year – they can start to move him forward, one step at a time.

  ‘Are you OK?’ the physio asks him. She’s young and blonde and Dad likes her, which helps.

  ‘I dunno, love.’

  He’s shaking, but I don’t know whether that’s with nerves or the effort or because his legs have become so weak. Mum says he’s been doing his exercises religiously, but the muscles are still wasted. Under the baggy tracksuit bottoms you can see that his thighs are like pipe cleaners.

  Another physio, a man, comes and grasps the front of the machine and begins to ease it forwards. Dad takes his first step.

  ‘Hey, Karen, how about that? How about that?’

  He looks over to the corner where Mum has her hand over her mouth, then to me. He’s grinning, the physios are grinning.

  ‘How’s the pain, Mr Cooper?’