Adults

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  ‘Well, it was your abortable bunch of cells.’

  ‘If it’s abortable you can’t care about it, can you?’

  Kelly frowns.

  ‘I don’t know how to feel about anything any more, Kelly.’ I start to cry. ‘It would have been the size of a strawberry.’ She puts her arms around me. ‘I didn’t see it come out. Just pieces of what looked like raw liver. I don’t know why I’m crying.’

  ‘You’re grieving,’ she says quietly.

  ‘But what am I grieving for? Because I didn’t love it. I didn’t love being pregnant. I felt like a success and a failure all at once. I felt simultaneously progressive and devolved. I was ambivalent about it.’

  ‘Maybe you loved the possibility of a future life? Or a better love, with Art?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How was Art about it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t really know. He walked out of the hospital like a free agent.’

  ‘He left you in there?’

  ‘I let him leave me.’

  ‘Fucking bell-end.’

  I sigh deeply. ‘I guess he was going through something, too. And it’s like Dorothy Parker said: Serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.’

  Kelly laughs. After a moment she says, ‘What died that day was your relationship with him.’

  I smile. ‘If only it was that neat. But it was much more than that. Until that moment, I didn’t know what I was.’

  ‘And what are you?’

  ‘This, and only this.’

  She points up and down me. ‘This isn’t so bad.’

  ‘It fucked up. My body fucked up.’

  ‘How do you know that? It could have been his faulty sperm. It just happened to happen inside your body.’

  ‘I wish I could get out of it.’

  ‘You know what I read the other day? The egg is an aggressive cell. The sperm isn’t the only one with a mission. Women’s bodies have a plan. They just get called crazy for it.’

  ‘I think I probably have quite aggressive eggs.’

  ‘I definitely have aggressive eggs.’

  ‘But I have no integrity, so it’s no surprise it didn’t stick.’

  ‘You’re being too hard on yourself.’ She swallows. ‘I take it back,’ she says after a moment, ‘you’re not a child. You grew up while the man you were with didn’t have to.’

  ‘Maybe. To be honest, I still feel like a child pretending to be an adult.’

  ‘And your best friend didn’t know what you were going through because you were doing your “I’m fine” dance all over town.’

  I sense Kelly searching for the next question. I think this is how it will be between us now, for a while and maybe forever. Careful, not careless.

  ‘How’s it going with your mum?’ she asks.

  ‘Okay. Thanks for getting together with her, for me.’ She blushes a bit. I sit up in my seat. ‘I’m writing about her, actually.’

  ‘I saw. Does she know?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. She owes me, anyway.’

  Kelly looks unconvinced. ‘The eternal debt.’

  ‘She’s been texting Art. It’s too dire to go into.’

  ‘She does care about you, you know.’

  I glance at my watch. Our fifty-five minutes is almost up.

  ‘We should do this every week, at least once,’ I say. ‘Let’s make a regular arrangement and honour that. Have a think about when would suit you best and we’ll try and coordinate our diaries.’

  Kelly laughs. ‘Sounds very formal.’

  ‘Maybe it needs to be. Maybe if it isn’t it won’t survive these next years of our lives.’

  Kelly says: ‘Why don’t you and Carmen come over for a roast on Sunday. Sonny would like to see you. He says to tell you he’s created a gif of your song and it’s doing really well.’

  ‘Tell him that is very comforting. That knowledge bathes me in comfort.’

  Kelly puts on her coat. She sighs. ‘I was very hard on you.’ She sighs again and blows the air out through pursed lips. ‘On reflection, I don’t know where quite all of it came from. I suppose I am a bit jealous sometimes about your freedom to give a shit about the meaningless things. I have to plan everything I give a shit about. Very little of it is accidental.’

  I hug her. She hugs me back.

  ‘Oh, before I forget, Sonny says can you bring his present.’

  ‘Tell him no.’

  ‘Okayyy,’ she says, confused. She leaves. I watch her go.

  #FROTHEH

  The next evening I’m in bed after my column has gone up. I’m watching the comments and the likes. I’ve really sent her up in this one. I’ve even got a codename for her now. ‘Frotheh’. Or should I say, #Frotheh. After the way she pronounces ‘frotheh coffeh’. I felt mean coming up with that but then I thought about how embarrassed she makes me feel, and those texts, and I thought, she deserves it, and more. Anyway, it’s entertainment. I’ve written about how she was in Corrie and had one line and repeats it regularly after a few drinks – as well as all the impromptu singing she does in public, on the street, especially now in the run-up to Christmas.

  Someone has commented:

  She’s fucking insane

  And I have liked it.

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door. She comes in with a G&T. ‘Here you go, darling. Evening shade.’

  I angle my phone away as I take the drink. ‘Thanks.’

  She looks curiously at the phone and I can see the screen lighting up with more comments. I sip my drink and wait for her to leave the room. She gets the hint.

  I look at the space she has been standing in and feel like I want to call her back. Her expectant face …

  How dare she be expectant with me? It’s not fair.

  She turns at the door. ‘These columns,’ she says. My stomach plummets. ‘Someone told me that the last one was … um, was about me?’

  Like she hasn’t read it.

  ‘Possibly,’ I say. ‘Inspired by.’

  ‘I think we need to have a chat about what constitutes reality and what is fair and what is not fair.’

  I feel positively cruel, then. Also incensed. ‘It’s the way it works. It can’t just be real because real isn’t enough to keep people reading. I only exaggerate for dramatic effect. You know about that. We aren’t so different, you and I.’

  ‘Mmmmmmm.’

  ‘You have no idea how hard I work.’

  She looks on the verge of tears. I can’t bear it.

  ‘Look.’ I get out my laptop. I show her. ‘They’re a hit. There’s a comment here from a man who says you sound hilarious.’

  She looks for a while. She scrolls. ‘Okay,’ she concludes. Her face brightens.

  ‘And,’ I say. She looks at me. ‘I know you were texting Art.’

  She looks ashamed. ‘Truce?’ She sticks her hand out.

  ‘Truce,’ I say, shaking her hand.

  ‘I’ll never text Art again about you,’ she says. ‘I can promise you that wholeheartedly.’

  ‘Good.’

  She sits down next to me on the bed and leans around my laptop.

  ‘Now if these highly successful things about me are going to continue, I want to have some say in my character development …’

  MY MOTHER SAYS

  ‘I think if I was going to live anywhere in London, it would be Crystal Palace, just for the name. Just so I could say it, every day, several times.’

  ‘Can you turn down the New Age for just an hour? The air is purple and sparkly.’

  We get out of the cab. Kelly answers the door in a pinny that says LICENCE TO GRILL on it. I instantly want to photograph it, but I resist.

  We go in. Kelly’s flat is laid out in almost a square of corridors, with French windows opening to a large sunny (was it always sunny here? It felt like it) garden at the back.

  I go to use the loo. I love Kelly’s bathroom. It has a teen feel: bath salts, Body Shop products, cotton-wool-ball dispensers. The sink i
s too small, one of those sideways ones you usually get in nail salons, but it’s just big enough for washing your hands and it makes you really concentrate when you’re brushing your teeth. On the back of the toilet door, for ten years, there has been a child’s drawing of a Dalek with a speech bubble saying: Are you my daddy? I used to look at it and think: Same.

  When I get back to the kitchen, Kelly is tending to something in the oven. My mother has found a gin balloon from somewhere and filled it with gin and tonic. They are laughing, like old pals. I wonder whether Kelly is doing that thing where you’re nice to someone’s family as a way of bashfully showing you care, like when Mr Darcy helps Lydia but really it’s just so Elizabeth knows he’s a powerful man hot for her pants. I’ll take it.

  ‘Breastfeeding, though!’

  ‘Oh, it’s INHUMANE.’

  ‘Until they get those artificial wombs developed there’s no hope of equality for the human race. I’m coming back as a male seahorse.’

  ‘Good choice.’

  ‘It’s a bit sexual, too, right?’ says Kelly. ‘Breastfeeding.’

  ‘WHAT?’ I say. ‘Desist, before I become unwell.’

  ‘Well, it is. Of course it’s massively fucking taboo to talk about any of this. Any combo of sex and children is like such a no-no. But it’s complex. It’s human. Oh god, you’re both looking at me funny. I can’t talk about this.’

  ‘No, I know what you mean,’ my mother says. ‘Jenny used to be sexual. Before she became this clinical little insect.’

  ‘SHUT UP.’

  They both laugh.

  ‘Please, stop. I didn’t bring you here to mortify me. Get your cards out. Anything.’

  ‘Jenny would only feed from my left breast.’

  ‘I’m going outside,’ I said, ‘to play football with Sonny.’

  ‘Good luck with that. He’s not played football for about three years,’ says Kelly.

  ‘What does he do now?’

  ‘Watches porn on his phone.’

  ‘WHAT?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sorry, I think that was just my worst fear that came out of my mouth.’

  My mother pours herself another gin.

  ‘I’ll join you,’ says Kelly.

  ‘Single or double?’

  ‘Single. And then I can have one more, and that’s it. I’ve realised that I’ve spent my whole life chasing the two-drink high.’

  ‘Two drinks?’ my mother says. ‘Dear god. That’s when I just start feeling good.’

  ‘What have you been up to in London, Carmen?’ Kelly asks.

  ‘Oh, I did a bit of a course. A few other little things. I’d love to get back into acting while I’ve still got my looks. And I’ve started online dating.’

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘We agreed to discuss this.’

  ‘No we didn’t,’ says my mother. ‘I am a grown woman. I’ve been chatting to a few nice men on there.’

  ‘They’re all at least ten years older than they say. Just so you know.’

  ‘One of them was helping his mother lay a patio, so he can’t be that old.’

  ‘Is that his dating chat? Laying a patio? Jesus.’

  ‘Come on, then,’ Kelly says. ‘Show us some of these fellas.’

  My mother gets her profile up. We crowd around her phone. She clicks open her matches.

  Dino, 66 – I try to be the change I want to see in the world. I am my own future. I know who I am and what I like. I support equality and became aware of my genital privilege decades ago.

  Wimpywilly, 51 – Looking for someone who would enjoy making fun of a guy with a small one. Someone who would enjoy making me feel even less of a man than I do already. More than happy to try n make up for my size with my tongue x

  ‘Saints alive!’ I say.

  Kelly is on the floor, laughing.

  ‘You’re crazed!’ I say. ‘You have to promise me you’ll never meet any of them. These men are clearly psychopaths of the most dangerous order.’

  ‘There’s someone else,’ my mother says. ‘But he’s not on a dating app. He’s on Twitter. We just got chatting on there because I signed up to his mailshots.’

  I do not like the idea of my mother signing up for someone’s ‘mailshots’.

  ‘He’s a lifestyle guru,’ my mother continues. ‘I’m interested in what he’s doing. I think he has some good advice. I respect his output and his utils.’

  ‘His what and his what?’

  She gets him up.

  Dan Mosel

  Life guru. CEO of Becoming Who You Are. Daily #LifeTips

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he looks like a man unmolested by the rumblings of a soul,’ I say.

  ‘You’re harsh, Jenny.’

  ‘He has two hundred thousand followers on Twitter. That should impress even you.’

  ‘But how many people is he following? Probably two hundred and ninety-nine thousand. You can’t trust the follower count. It’s all about the ratio.’

  ‘Well, no look, see, he’s only following two thousand and thirty-eight.’

  ‘Ah, then he’s probably one of those awful types who follows and unfollows. He’ll follow tons of people and then sneakily unfollow them once they’ve started following him back.’

  ‘I need a manual for this.’

  ‘How much are you communicating with him? Direct messages, is that it?’

  ‘We message each other daily and we’ve shared a few pictures.’

  I look at Kelly. ‘Oh my god. Pictures of what?’

  ‘Relax. I am a pretty good judge of character, remember. I have inside info.’

  I look at Dan Mosel’s picture. He has sparkly eyes and is grinning with all his teeth. He is also possibly wearing eyeliner.

  ‘He looks like a naughty king from the Bible.’

  ‘I like naughty kings.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Does my mother fancy him? If she has a ‘type’, does he – could he – look anything like my … you know?

  ‘I can’t see myself getting back into dating any time soon,’ says Kelly. ‘I don’t see the point, really.’

  Because you’ve done the procreation thing? I think, helplessly. This brain!

  ‘Do you think you’ll have any more?’ asks my mother.

  I laugh in shock. ‘Mum, you can’t ask that question. It’s off-limits. You can never ask a woman about her plans to have or not have children, or more children. You just don’t know where she might be at with it all.’

  ‘I’d like another,’ Kelly says.

  ‘What?’ I sit down. ‘I can’t cope with today.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to have two, haven’t you?’ Kelly continues. ‘In case one dies.’

  My mother cackles.

  ‘This is news,’ I say. ‘How would you do it?’

  ‘Artificial insemination. I’ve got the names sorted and everything. Helvetica for a girl and Kale for a boy.’

  ‘Gorgeous,’ I say. ‘And so modern.’

  ‘I don’t know whether you’re being serious or not now,’ says my mother.

  ‘I am about the baby part,’ says Kelly. ‘But I’d have a C-section and I’d want savings in place for more childcare.’

  ‘I just wouldn’t do it at all,’ my mother says. ‘I wouldn’t have gone through with it, if I’d known how hard it would be. It’s nothing personal, darling.’

  ‘No,’ says Kelly, ‘you can’t say that in front of Jenny. You have to wait until she’s in the garden. That’s the rule.’

  ‘I’m really going!’ I walk towards the French windows, out to the garden. ‘There, now you can let loose.’

  As I walk outside, I hear Kelly get her guitar and strike up the first few bars of ‘Love Is Like a Butterfly’. My mother will do the harmonies, no doubt.

  I want to see Sonny anyway.

  THE HEART CROSSES IT

  When I reached Kelly with two-year-old Sonny in my arms, he scrambled to get to her and I got that shameful feeling I always got – immaturely, stupidly – whe
n babies and children preferred other people, even their mothers, to me. Kelly hugged him hard. Her chin wobbled.

  ‘I just nipped to the loo,’ she said. Her Northern accent hit me like a warm breeze. I wanted to say: Do they understand you when you ask for nuts in a pub? Because they don’t understand me. ‘I was away for thirty seconds. I normally take him with me, but he was watching telly and – I had no idea he could do handles.’

  ‘It happens,’ I said, as though I knew what I was talking about.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I’ll never be able to thank you enough. Do you want to come in for a drink?’

  On the way to the house, she showed me the back gate. ‘I don’t know who left that open. Fucking numbskulls round here. Where are you from?’

  ‘Manchester. Originally. Near there, anyway. How about you?’

  ‘Huddersfield.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘I miss my mum.’

  ‘Were you never tempted to move back?’

  ‘Nah. I don’t miss her that much. I see her often enough. And Sonny’s dad’s up there and he’s pulled a few stunts. And I like my job. I’m just a receptionist but it’s easy and they’re really flexible.’

  We drank wine in her living room. There were posters from festivals up – Green Man, End of the Road – alongside shamanic art. My wine glass was chunky and dark green. Kelly’s was different. Pink, maybe. Sonny banged his toys together on the rug. After an hour or so, she put Sonny to bed. I heard the sound of a lullaby tinkling from his bedroom as she shushed him.

  When Kelly came back in, it was with another bottle of wine.

  Out of nowhere I said: ‘My mum was a single mum.’

  What was I aiming for? Bonding? Some intimation that I understood her life? I get an anxiety shard when I think of myself saying that, now. The LOVE ME LOVE ME factory setting of my lost little heart.

  Kelly didn’t prolong the moment for me. ‘Where does she live?’ she said.

  ‘Still up near Manchester.’

  ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘I never knew him. My mother barely did, by all accounts.’

  Kelly smiled. ‘What’s your mum like? I bet she’s a glamour puss.’