‘I’ve only got two minutes to go,’ she puffed, spit hitting her page. ‘Make yourself a tea.’ Ginger the cat was curled up on one of the round bamboo Habitat chairs. He barely acknowledged my arrival.
Sonny ambled in from the living room and stared at me.
‘Hi, Sonny, what you doing?’ He was holding a Lego creation that resembled some vehicle from Star Wars, maybe.
‘Watching Star Wars and playing Lego.’
‘Grace is upstairs.’
‘Does she want to watch Star Wars?’
‘I doubt it. She probably wants to play Barbies with Meg.’
He nodded and returned to the living room and I rooted around the cupboard above the kettle for a mug. Just as the kettle reached its steamy climax, Amanda staggered round the corner from the playroom, wiping her face and groaning.
‘That was hideous. I thought I was going to die. The things we do so we can carry on eating cake.’ She slid on to the floor opposite me and continued to sweat profusely. Just being here five minutes had already slowed the hamster wheel of panic whirring continuously in my belly. ‘How are you? Can you get me a glass of water, please? I don’t think I can stand up.’ I grabbed one and filled it from the water jug and handed it to her.
‘Pretty shit, to be honest,’ I admitted, waiting for the tears to make a reappearance.
‘Oh, no, what’s happened? Has something gone wrong with the intervention at the Mews? Are they forcing you to go to AA as well?’
‘Worse than all of that; I might need AA after today. Alice has gone bankrupt and run off with all my wages, or they’ve been sucked up into the black hole of her debt. Either way, I’m totally fucked.’ My hands started shaking again and I abandoned making tea and collapsed on the floor next to Amanda.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered in shock, ‘that’s appalling. How much did she owe you?’
‘Nearly seven grand. My cards are almost maxed out; I have no savings. I’ve got a few jobs lined up but I don’t know what else she was negotiating.’
‘Probably nothing if she knew this was on its way. I doubt she was thinking ahead of next week. Maybe some of the clients haven’t paid her yet. You should get on the phone and try to stop them. How did you find out?’
‘Hattie rang and told me in Sainsbury’s.’
‘Chris and I can lend you some money to tide you over.’
‘Thanks. I can’t believe this. My life was supposed to turn around when I moved to the Mews, but it’s actually just got worse.’ I tried to breathe deeply, but my throat closed up. What if we ended up homeless again? I would have to go and live with Mum in Gimmerville by the seaside; she only had a small cottage. What if I had to make myself bankrupt because Alice had? What if I got blacklisted by clients? What if I never found work again? What if Jim took me to court to keep Grace permanently because I couldn’t afford to live? What if—
‘Ali! Ali! Take some deep breaths; you’re panicking!’ Amanda soothed, patting my back like I was choking. I could feel my lungs straining for air, sucking uselessly like a broken plastic straw.
‘Close your eyes, and open your mouth wide, now unlock your stomach, let it go, stop tensing.’ I did as I was told. My throat slowly relaxed. ‘Start yoga breathing, like Jacqui taught us, in through the nose, Ujjayi breath.’ Amanda joined in and we remained on the floor for a few minutes, both of us making a noise that sounded like the rushing of the sea into a cliff-side cave. My heart tagged along, linking in with my breath, decelerating.
‘I’m just so sick of always having to scrape by, of always being in charge,’ I said eventually. ‘I’d like someone else to be in charge for a bit. I hate being a single parent.’
‘I know you do, but being with someone just to not be on your own isn’t a good idea either, is it? If you don’t heal from Twat Face, you won’t know who you are and probably end up with another total knob-head. You have enough to deal with right now. I think you should go home and ring all those jobs and see if you can rescue some wages. Leave Grace here and pick her up this afternoon, once you’re sorted.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded.
‘Thanks so much. That’s made me feel marginally better. Can I move back in if everything else fails?’
*
I sat in my living room for two hours, calling up all the jobs I had yet to receive money from, my heart beating wearily in my temples, seeds of a stress headache apprehensively trying to sprout. I could hear the desperation catching in the back of my throat every time I spoke. All the clients apart from two had already paid Alice – she had just been holding on to the cash, ready to take flight. However, there was some good news. Mothercare hadn’t paid yet and neither had Next, and those were two big jobs paying almost half of what I was owed. So at least I had the rent covered and we could afford some food. Maybe I would go back to Sainsbury’s and see if my trolley was still there…
I sat back on the sofa and idly scrolled through Instagram while taking two minutes off from the humiliation of revealing my misfortune. My thumb stopped on an ‘inspirational’ quote some fucking vapid guru person had posted. She always annoyed me with her zen thoughts about how we could all reach Nirvana by being the best versions of ourselves. I followed her because that was the social media game. If you wanted more followers, you had to follow popular people. However, in this one instance maybe I needed to hear what she had to say. Jocasta Smug Bitch Face (not her real name), who always seemed to be lying on an exotic beach lapping up the sun while drinking spirulina smoothies, said in GIANT letters across a soft pink background picture of a white dove: ‘Don’t focus on what went wrong, concentrate on finding a solution and the Universe will conspire to help you.’ Codewords for: Some minion didn’t pack my Melissa Odabash white bikini, so instead of firing them I rang Gucci and got them to courier a gold one instead. Problem and solution sorted – thanks Universe. I wanted to fling my phone at the wall, but she was right, there was no use questioning why I always seemed to pick up the sticky end of the lollipop. I knew what I had to do: I had to be my own agent until I found another one, and the best time to start was now. Half an hour later, as I made a cup of tea after securing another job with Marks and Spencer, the doorbell rang.
‘Hiya!’ Samantha chimed cheerily. ‘Is this a bad time?’
No time was a good time today. ‘Come in. It’s fine.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t as I’m off out to a meeting, but I wanted to see if you were still around Friday. Lila is desperate to meet you and talk about a fashion vlog. I’ve tentatively booked a table at my club. I’ll text you the address.’
‘Oh, yes, I am free.’
‘Brilliant. OK, come at eleven. Maybe this will be the start of a new venture? You never know, we could make some dosh! See you Friday, darling, toodle-oo.’ And she sashayed off in a cloud of Chanel No. 5.
So Jocasta Smug Bitch Face was spot on. I wanted to kiss her.
13
Samantha
‘Is it me, or are all the celebrities getting younger?’ Samantha said aloud to the empty kitchen. She flicked through Hello! magazine while drinking her second milky coffee, feet encased in fluffy leopard-spot slippers she’d bought from Asda in last week’s shop. It was already light outside, but she’d been up since dawn. She enjoyed getting up early, watching all the houses in the Mews gradually spring to life, lights flicking on, doors slamming as people left early for work or school. She caught Clive’s eye in the photo on the window ledge, smiling at her from a Christmas party ten years ago. She sighed and reached over and touched his face, well, the dusty glass of the picture frame, tracing a line with her acrylic French-manicured nail down his ruddy cheek.
‘Six years, Clive. It’s gone quickly.’ She’d never forget the look on Scott’s face as he came downstairs after trying to wake Clive when he’d gone for a lie-down one Sunday afternoon. Finding your dad dead of a heart attack wasn’t on anyone’s bucket list.
Her phone made a chiming sound like a prayer
bell. She picked it up, stretching her arm away from her so she could see who had texted her. Scott.
Morning Mum. Good luck at the meeting later. Hope you get it sorted. It’s hot already here. Got a fresh load of tourists arriving later. No rest for the wicked. Love you xx
Love you, son. Don’t get into any scrapes. Mixing business with pleasure doesn’t usually work out! xx
Samantha laughed to herself; sometimes it felt like yesterday that the boys had been little, running under her feet while she juggled PTA commitments, working in town for William Morris, building the groundwork for her own business as a talent agent. She’d been in and around the scene now for thirty-seven years, starting in the typing pool after she’d dropped out of business college in Wimbledon. She knew back then she didn’t want to work for anyone else. She’d watched her own father bow and scrape to other people and knew that wasn’t for her. And people were so slow, they took so long to make decisions, to find the direct solution to things, creating problems for themselves. So much bullshit, procrastination, the old boys’ network, the four-day week, no electricity, then boom, Margaret Thatcher came into power. Suddenly it wasn’t an anomaly to be unmarried, pursuing a career, taking on the men, busting out of the typing pool. She’d voted for Maggie, even though she wasn’t political, just because she was a woman, because she was sick of men being in charge.
‘I didn’t see you coming, did I?’ she said to Clive. ‘You took me by surprise.’ She’d had her head down, nose to the grindstone, ploughing through the lower tiers, gathering her own clients, making her mark, assuming marriage may happen one day, but not yet. Clive had been an editor at a publisher, ten years older. He’d arranged a meeting with her latest find, some hotshot journalist who was writing an exposé of the music industry. He’d asked her out over the phone after the meeting, his voice shaking. They’d met at the Coach and Horses in Soho and left four hours later to catch the tube home, separately, kissing on the corner of Greek Street near her office. She’d worried someone might spot her, so she’d made him put his umbrella up even though it wasn’t raining. He said later, he knew he wanted to marry her there and then.
She heard a door shut sharply, the letterbox swinging against its metal frame, clanging across the street. She pulled herself away from the past and, gazing out through the kitchen window, watched Alison buckling her little girl into the back booster seat of the Golf, setting off somewhere early. Their meeting wasn’t until later on, but she expected Alison had to drop Grace now so she could make it on time. Alison reminded Samantha of herself – always busy, the main parent and breadwinner for herself and her daughter, just like Samantha had been all those years before. Clive’s wages at the tiny publisher weren’t enough to keep them all afloat for very long when Billy came along in 1986. She had been considered a geriatric mother at thirty-two in those days and wasn’t allowed to give birth at King’s; she’d had to go to a specialist birthing unit in Tooting. Bloody cheek! These days, women were having babies at an age that would be considered outrageous back then, often it seemed because they couldn’t find a man suitable to mate with. How were you supposed to meet anyone when everyone was always checking out who else was available on dating apps. There was always someone with a tighter bottom, firmer boobs, a better job… It was no wonder anxiety was the new buzzword. With choice comes pain – Buddha knew exactly what he was talking about when he coined that phrase.
She’d told her boys to go out and have fun – after all, you only get one life and it was different for boys – they didn’t have a ticking clock. She was glad she didn’t have girls; she wasn’t sure what kind of mummy she would have been for girls…
Samantha had had to let the Soho office go in the end. Rising rents saw to that, and then her carefully stockpiled nest egg had been halved by two bad investments just after Clive died. To top it off, Clive, who had been in charge of all the insurances, hadn’t paid for the last two months on the life policy. The boys didn’t know their parents were in financial difficulty; she’d kept it from them, as well as protecting them from Clive’s failing memory. She’d found her husband wandering outside in the Mews at night a few times with just his pyjama bottoms on. Then there had been an incident when he’d had a panic attack in Sainsbury’s car park and didn’t know where he was. After he died, she found the house insurance had also fallen by the way side and she thanked God that nothing else had happened. Imagine if he’d left something in the oven and forgotten about it…
She filled the kettle for her third coffee of the morning, and fired up her laptop on the kitchen table. The coffee table in the living room usually sufficed as her desk most days, piled high with magazines and her unofficial in-tray spilling out of the Family Circle biscuit tin. However, she was feeling a bit stiff today, her back was giving her a bit of gyp, so she set up shop in here instead, the overhead light on. Twenty new emails, including one from David trying to arrange their monthly catch-up. She also had an invite to the Strictly tour, because Stephan, one of her clients, had appeared on the show last year.
She knew she was lucky. She went out a lot, constantly meeting people, always talking, schmoozing, being wined and dined, but with both boys away working, she sometimes felt lonely. It had been a godsend moving to the Mews a few years before Clive died. Here she had a ready-made support system in place, friends she could rely on, always someone to talk to if she felt the fear.
‘Do you think you’ll retire one day, Mum?’ Billy had asked last year. ‘You don’t need to work any more. The house is all paid for.’
‘One day soon, son. Just a few more years, then I’ll be ready.’ He had no idea that there had been no windfall or that the mortgage still ate into the small wage she paid herself. She knew she would never retire. Work had become her life, her clients like her children. Why else was her diary full until November and it was only April? She just needed one of them to land a massive on-going gig, and her fifteen per cent would smooth over some of the cracks.
‘My girl, will you ever stop?’ Clive had asked shortly before he died.
‘When I’m dead,’ she’d laughed. It didn’t seem funny now.
14
Vlogging
The Arts Club in Dover Street was the embodiment of understated town house glamour and I was glad I had dressed smartly in tailored navy trousers and a red chiffon blouse with a black butterfly print. I needed the confidence that sometimes only stylish clothes could lend after my tumultuous week. My patent leather black and red brogues had been pilfered from a shoe catalogue shoot and they rounded off my look perfectly.
‘Do you want to check your jacket?’ the front-desk lady asked, harbouring faultless tattooed eyebrows beneath her sweeping Flock of Seagulls fringe and pillowy lip fillers. I declined. She led me up the thick carpeted stairs to the first floor where people were holding public meetings, accompanied by tea, fancy drinks and food platters. Some people were brazenly wanting to be seen while others were engrossed in important private conversations. The room was filled with a low-level buzz that was buffered by the plush carpets and heavy damask curtains. This was a nice little holiday from the anxiety conveyor belt that continued to hum along ever since Alice had absconded, and it allowed space for my brain to create one of my much-loved fantasies.
I imagined Hugh Grant waving at me as I wafted past, saying he would call me to arrange a meeting. I spot Meryl Streep and Colin Firth chatting animatedly, they stop mid-laugh and nod at me. I’m brimming with confidence, safe in the knowledge that I can work the entire room, that I am a dynamic clothes maven, assisting the stars with their wardrobe for black-tie events and photo calls, every designer in the fashion sphere at my beck and call. Goodbye Primark, New Look and Peacocks… Before I could wrap up my fantasy, eyebrow lady had delivered me to Samantha’s table by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the street below. Samantha stood up and air-kissed me. She was wearing a stylish black wrap dress that cut across her ample bosom making them look like one of Christo’s fabric-wr
apped artefacts: torpedoes, perhaps.
‘Hello, darling. Thanks for coming. Who has got Grace for you?’
‘Her dad. Where’s Lila?’ I had googled her profusely last night in an effort not to fall into any conversational black holes regarding her career, a practice I had learned when starting out styling OK! and Hello! magazine shoots fifteen years ago. I’ll never forget a glamour model cutting me dead because I’d mistaken her for her nemesis (same plastic face, same blond extensions, same blindingly white teeth). Her management complained to Jim (who was my agent at the time) and I was blacklisted from working with her again. I couldn’t afford that today. So I was now so well informed about Lila Chan’s career and personal life that I could have completed an unblemished round on Mastermind all about her.
‘She’ll be here in about ten minutes. I wanted to brief you first.’ I had to forcibly pull my eyes away from Samantha’s chest. Her boobs were hypnotising me. How did she keep them so upright at her age, which I had now placed at perhaps mid-fifties? Had she had a boob job? I needed scaffolding to keep my own in place. I don’t care what anyone says, big boobs are a hassle. Fine when you’re young – annoying but manageable – but if you fall pregnant, they inflate so out of control that elephant hammocks aren’t sturdy enough to contain them. When I’d finished breastfeeding Grace, they’d deflated like helium balloons and never really recovered. When I bend over now without a bra on, it’s like two marbles swinging in the bottom of two crepey fleshy socks.
‘What do you want to drink? I’ve got a bottle of white on ice, but you have whatever you fancy.’
The Single Mums Move On Page 9