Maggsie McNaughton's Second Chance

by Frances Maynard

  Ruby came in. Must have heard the kettle. She kept a carton of milk – well, soya milk – in the fridge. None of us touched it.

  ‘Hello, sweetie.’ Ruby bent down to Audrey. She got out her own teabags. Or-gan-ic, it said on the label. Kept meaning to look it up.

  I’d surprised myself by actually using TJ’s dictionary. Looked up at least one word I struggled with every day, no matter how long it took me to find it. Alastair would want me to keep going with my reading.

  Ruby said her boyfriend, Will, had given her something for Audrey. I looked up, fishing out my teabag (Co-op Simply Value). Uh-oh, I thought. I knew he was a vegan, which was worse than a vegetarian. Didn’t eat meat, not even bacon. Primrose said there were a lot of vegans at Scanda. Expect they were all over London. Will’s ‘something’ was chickpeas rolled around in a smear of Marmite. I didn’t burst out laughing, which was self-control, but I turned away to roll my eyes.

  Ruby looked a bit embarrassed putting down the plastic bowl. Must have been keen on him. Audrey came running, then backed away sharpish. Looked horrified. Anybody would have. I had to give her a whole slice of roast beef from my sandwich to stop her going back under the shed.

  Juice ploughed her way through her cauliflower cheese and then mooched off to watch TV with Big Shirl. Something soppy with women in long dresses. Big Shirl must have seen men at their worst and Juice had just told me about her poxy ex. They knew what men were like. So why they got a kick out of watching a bunch of them strutting round poncy great houses in long jackets and tight trousers, God only knows.

  Audrey stuck up a back leg to wash her belly. Ruby sat down and asked me how things were going. Nodded like one of those toy dogs you used to see in the backs of cars. The ones with heads on springs. Mentioned TJ. ‘Your friend,’ she called him. We were colleagues, not even mates. No way was I going to get tangled up with a man. A great hulking one with a face like a potato and bristly hair. A married one.

  I put the brakes on that one sharpish. ‘We work on our English together.’ Came out stilted rather than swotty. (Shirl would have cackled, Well, that’s one way of putting it.) Ruby’s mind didn’t work like that. It was on posher things like em-power-ment and e-quality and just-ice. Words I could just about say but which I’d never be able to spell in a million years.

  Seeing as Ruby was smiling, I asked her to help me get the adoption people’s address. Months and months before the year was up, but I just wanted to have it ready. Ruby was into long-term thinking. Planning. She’d like me thinking ahead.

  First time I’d spoken about Alastair in years. Weird hearing his name out loud. I swung my legs just saying it.

  Ruby stopped smiling and put her mug on the table. She was choosing what to say. I’d seen a lot of that over the years.

  ‘That’s a big step to take, Maggsie. Are you sure you’re ready? Have you thought about the other people involved?’

  Audrey put her leg down and stared at Ruby.

  Someone ruddy had to. It hadn’t been easy telling her about Alastair. ‘I told you. Next year. I ain’t ready to do nothing about it now.’ Audrey jumped out of her box, clawed the kitchen door open and vanished.

  For two pins I’d have slammed out in the yard with her. You probably haven’t got anger issues. But trust me, staying put is self-control. I jiggled my feet up and down and breathed out slow.

  Ruby looked at me. Sighed. Said maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, seeing as it would give me time to ‘consider the issues involved’. Went off to set up the computer in the office.

  I clenched my hands. More or less what I’d said, only put into social-worker speak.

  I printed out some pages from the website Ruby’d found. Took them upstairs. There were a lot of long words: ‘Intermediary Agency’, ‘Registrar General’, that kind of thing. Took me ages to look them up. Seemed I’d have to send in my details first. Then the adoption agency would check their records. I’d have to meet someone to discuss stuff. Prove I was who I said I was. Application forms and that as well. Quite a palaver to it.

  You might think I should leave well alone. But all I wanted to do was see Alastair was OK. He might be wondering about me, see. Might want to find out who he was. You do when you’re eighteen. Blood and that. Genes. Not things his adoptive mum could give him.

  On the other hand he might be the sort of lad who wouldn’t ever want to meet someone like me. But not after I’d done a year of living respectable, though, surely? After a year I’d be like anyone else.

  I put the printouts in my holdall. Picked up this week’s Woman’s World and turned to the problem page.

  Problems! Half of them didn’t know they were born. The agony aunt took half a page to answer their poncy little troubles when she could have done it in one sentence. Two or three words, even: Ditch him! Or Don’t believe him.

  Useful to copy out as practice, though. It took a long time. I had to keep looking back at the magazine. Bits of words vanished on their way from my brain to the paper. Other bits turned themselves around.

  It didn’t look too bad, written out in my notebook. But when I wrote to Alastair, wrote my own letter, it wouldn’t be anything like a problem page one. It would be the complete opposite. It would be one of the agony auntie’s favourite words: positive. Full of the joys of spring.

  17

  Woman’s World, 21 March 2018

  Ditch Those Negative Friendships – We Show You How!

  I was on my way home from the Co-op Sunday. Looking at the till receipt. I could read it easy, seeing as it was all about the stuff I’d just bought. Surprising how much information there is on a till receipt. You might only have ever checked the figures. Three soups, four tins of pilchards, milk, a new eyebrow pencil. A lighter brown one that Woman’s World said was good. Ginger eyebrows don’t have much definition. And it’s too easy to overdo it with a dark one. Just look at Big Shirl.

  Plus I’d bought a mug with a picture of the film star Audrey on it. I’d recognized her because of her eyes looking like my Audrey’s. She had a cigarette holder in her hand. I took to her, knowing she was a smoker. That’s why I’d splashed out £4.99.

  The streets were empty and I was still looking at the till receipt. I wasn’t concentrating on what was going on around me. That’s what a quiet Sunday afternoon can do to you if you’re not careful.

  Nearly jumped out of my skin turning into our road. Kasia’s pimp, boyfriend, whatever he was, stepped out sudden from the doorway of the block of flats opposite our house. Stood right in front of me. Taller than ever. No one else around although this was London. I rolled my shoulders. Stared up at him with a scowl on. No circumstances on this earth when it’s a good idea to look vulnerable. He came right up close. Spoke through his teeth, all ‘s’s, like a snake: ‘You shout at Kasia. Smash her gherkins.’ His breath stank of garlic. He was foreign like TJ, but not his manners.

  My heart was going. That was nature taking over. It didn’t mean I was scared. Didn’t the stupid pillock know Kasia and I had sorted things out? Only yesterday she’d admired Nan’s earrings. She’d got some similar. I breathed in deep. Pushed past him. Then I turned. Hissed, I mean actually hissed, like he’d done: ‘Sssssss.’ I said some bad words as well but you may not want to hear them. There was a special word for what he was, someone who lived off someone else. Para . . . something.

  My chest was really banging now. I got back to the house double quick. Some people might have called it running. Ruddy great knob, throwing his weight around. Dad and Dougie were the same. No bloody big low-life was going to drag me back down. Say if Alastair, or Jack, had seen us together? I went up the steps two at a time. A bit of a stretch for my legs. Was that poxy sod going to have a go at me every time I walked down the ruddy street? I wasn’t having that.

  I had a fag and an extra-strong cup of tea. Used my new mug. Nice to drink out of something classy. But my chest was still tight and there was a pounding in my head. I unpacked my shopping. Labelled the tins of soup with m
y initials. Wrote ‘Audrey’ on her tins of pilchards. I was glad, now, she had that classy name. Ruby had written it out for me. It was OK to ask how you spelt a name. It was only when you asked how to write words like because or there, people looked at you funny.

  I put the tins away in the cupboard. I had the bottom shelf. It wasn’t because I was short, it was because Big Shirl had trouble bending. I could still smell that skanky sod’s garlicky breath. Do you know what? If I wasn’t careful I was going to let him ruin my Sunday. So I went up and had a shower. Let the water pour over me.

  I came back down in my pyjamas. They were fleecy ones. Little hearts all over. They’d been Mum’s, but she’d grown out of them. She preferred nighties anyway. Black, loads of lace. You know the type.

  Kasia was in the kitchen. Had a saucepan of stew going. ‘Hi.’ I put the kettle on. Fluffed out my hair to dry it. Deep breath in and out. You just got to go for things in this life. Hanging about only prolongs the agony. So I told her about her rat-arse of a pimp making a scene. My heart was going in case she kicked off. Bound to be me who’d get reported, lose my place here. Her stew smelt of aniseed. Granda had had a jar of aniseed balls on the lounge mantelpiece. Nan had kept moving it back to the kitchen because it wasn’t an ornament.

  Kasia’s narrow eyes got narrower. ‘I told him you OK.’ She slammed the lid down on her saucepan. Said something fierce in her language. Said, ‘stupid’, ‘lazy’, ‘never found no customers’ in English.

  She reached for her phone. Her jeans were so tight she struggled to get it out of her pocket. ‘He no good. I tell him. I tell him now!’ Torrent of foreign abuse on the phone. I had to stir the stew for her. She threw her phone down on the table. ‘Is finished.’

  I kept my mouth shut. Blimey, don’t get on the wrong side of Kasia. Just as well I’d given her that sandwich after the gherkins kerfuffle.

  ‘I am tired of this work.’ Kasia tossed some rice into another saucepan. ‘Is dirty. I want one man only. One man to look after me. Rich man.’ She leant against the cooker. Heaved out a sigh. Turned one of her gold chains round and round.

  ‘Yeah, one’s plenty.’ I got out a mug for her and used my Audrey one again. No need for my initials on it. Made us a cup of tea. Good luck with finding a man to look after you, I thought.

  I ticked off my calendar. Swooshed the pen up with a flourish. I’d helped give an arsehole his comeuppance. Without using violence. Sorted things out with Kasia without losing my cool. Or her losing hers. I was really settling down.

  18

  Woman’s World, 4 April 2018

  How to Get the Best Out of Your Cat

  Audrey was getting bolder. I swear she could tell the time, or else she knew my footsteps, because she’d be out the front, waiting when I came home from work. And she’d found her voice now. Miaowed her head off at any opportunity. Making up for lost time.

  ‘You’re supposed to be a stray, remember.’ I opened a new tin. ‘Supposed to be frightened of people.’ She went in and out my ankles, like she was trying to trip me up. Get her jaws round the pilchard quicker.

  She’d started following me upstairs. I could hear her coming. There was a stair that creaked and she’d filled out so much she set it off. It took her a few days to come right up to the top, mind. She’d kept looking behind her, all paranoid, running back down. Then she’d peep into my room, long as the door was wide open. Another week and she was marching in like she owned the place. Then she was on my bed. White paws going in and out, claws getting caught in the candlewick bedcover. Audrey was one of the things I’d done right. Jack was the other thing.

  Once Audrey started to come upstairs, blow me down if Trudie didn’t start leaving her door open. Displaying all her old junk: incense burners, a sparkly vase in the shape of a cat, a statue with loads of arms.

  Audrey getting tamer meant a trip to the vet’s to have done what the cat charity hadn’t managed. I winced at her having her insides tied up, or taken away, or whatever they did, but Ruby wouldn’t listen. Audrey was going between the pair of us in the kitchen, purring, her tail with its pale tip stuck up. She usually understood what I said to her, but not now.

  All it took to get her into a cat basket was a pilchard at the other end. I felt bad about it, but Ruby was quite brisk.

  Ruby’s boyfriend had lent her his tiny car. The seat belt wouldn’t do up round the basket so we had to put it on the back seat, loose. I hadn’t thought about him having a car. I’d thought a vegan would just have a bike. There was yowling when we got going. Audrey’s eyes like torch beams through the little window in the basket.

  Ruby drove slowly. Cars I’d been in before had been speeding. Speeding away. There was always traffic and hooting in London. I couldn’t drive, but if I did I’d be breathing four, four, s-i-x, all the time. And if anyone hooted at me, they’d regret it . . .

  Funny, because in the end I lost it anyway. In spite of not being able to drive.

  A cyclist, in skin-tight black clothes, like he was going swimming, flashed in front of us. Ruby had to brake sudden. The driver behind, in one of those poxy Land Rover-type cars that are all for show and no ruddy good in London, came too close. Not concentrating. Only went into the back of us, didn’t he? There was a horrible grating sound and a yowl as Audrey’s basket crashed to the floor.

  Didn’t have no time to breathe, let alone breathe slowly.

  Anger burns you up inside. You get hotter and hotter. Your heart races. You’re powerful. Wonder Woman.

  I was out of the car. Marching up to the one behind. Instinct, see. I was defending my cat.

  The car had tinted windows and music blaring. How could you see? And how the piddling poxy hell could you concentrate with a racket like that going on?

  The driver jumped out before I could get to his door. Eyebrows all drooping and sorrowful. Phone in his hand and his arms in the air like I’d said Stick ’em up!

  Easy to punch him because of that. I landed him a good one in his big soft belly. Easy for me to reach that, being short.

  ‘That’s for my cat!’ I stomped back to the car.

  Audrey was miaowing – at least she still could miaow. I spoke to her soothing. Put her basket back on the seat and dusted off my hands. Rubbed the knuckles where I’d punched him. Wonder Woman. The Mighty Atom. That’ll learn him, I was going to say to Ruby. Till I saw she had her head in her hands.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ It came out muffled.

  ‘He went into us! Knocked Audrey down.’ I leant back, crossed my arms. There was a tiny sinking feeling in my stomach area. But I had to show him, didn’t I? That’s what do-gooders never understand.

  ‘It was an accident. Bad driving. You’re not the police, Maggsie. Far from it.’ Ruby got out of the car.

  I wasn’t keen on the police. That weary look they usually put on when they saw me. I shifted in my seat. My stomach was working its way down lower.

  Ruby was talking to the loser behind. He didn’t say much, because of being winded. She got back in. Said she’d had to calm him down to stop him phoning the police. The only thing holding him back was the thought of his mates taking the mick at him getting beaten up by a woman so tiny she was practically a dwarf. Ruby didn’t say that last word. ‘Dw . . .’ she began. But I knew what he’d said. He was just the type. Didn’t make me warm to him. Bet it wasn’t the thought of his mates. Losers like him didn’t have no mates. Bet it was because of Ruby being young and having a fresh complexion and talking to him sympathetic.

  Ruby started the car. She didn’t look at me. ‘He could have hit you back, Maggsie. A little thing like you wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

  ‘Size ain’t everything. I’m light on my feet. He’d have to land one first.’

  ‘If he’d called the police you’d have been back inside before your feet could touch the ground.’

  That had happened to me once, actually. Two policemen, one each side, my legs kicking the air.

  ‘It came over me sudden
,’ I muttered.

  Ruby sighed. ‘I’m angry. Will might lose his no-claims bonus. He didn’t want me to borrow his car in the first place.’

  ‘Couldn’t I have even shouted?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ Ruby shook her head, earrings flying like one of them fairground rides where the chairs swing out. ‘Things escalate.’

  My stomach was down at my ankles now. My Wonder Woman headband had slipped off. I thought of the gherkin episode. Saw the broken glass on the floor, smelt the vinegar. Saw Jack, with Alastair in his arms. Them shaking their heads – even though Alastair was only thirty-five hours old and couldn’t hardly move, only wave his little arms and squirm a bit.

  I stared out of the car window. Hard when you knew the other person was in the right and you had to sit strapped up in their boyfriend’s car, a vegan, listening to it all.

  We had a clear stretch of road. I checked on Audrey in the back. She was crouched low, eyes big and dark. My heart speeded up again at what she’d gone through. And she hadn’t even got to the vet’s yet.

  Soon as I turned round Ruby was on my case again. ‘Maggsie, we’ve spoken before about managing your anger.’

  ‘Yeah, but . . . couldn’t have power-walked in a car, could I?’

  She sighed again. ‘What about seeing anger as something separate from you, then. Something you can control.’

  Social workers’ gobbledegook. She was new to the job, see, had these new ideas. London ideas. How getting angry, but seeing it as me not doing it, would work, I couldn’t imagine.

  I didn’t tick the calendar. I kept seeing Alastair’s little fist, losing its grip on my finger.

  I spent all evening copying out an article from this week’s Woman’s World: ‘Six Different Ways to Tie a Scarf!’ One they didn’t mention was how to knot it round your Staffie’s neck so he didn’t rip it off. Another was the best knot to use for strangling cat-abusers.

  I looked up the word knot. I ask you, who makes up these spellings? There’s probably more angry people in England than anywhere else in the world, because of the spelling. It’s not just me. I concentrated on keeping my handwriting on the line and it all facing the same direction. It didn’t look so bad when I’d finished. I sat back. Felt better now I’d done something to improve myself. Something positive.