I want to shout back to Him. “I was in hospital last night.” I want to scream “Who fucking cares about crumpled fucking sheets!” but, of course, I don’t say any of that. “They are clean,” I say, “I washed all the bedding this morning and I did try to iron them.”
But it just sounds pathetic and I wish I hadn’t said anything at all. He looks at me and spits a sarcastic, “Well as long as you’ve tried, I’m sure your mother won’t mind.” And then He smiles. Does He think it’s funny? Does He think He’s funny? Does He think I am?
I’d like to wrap that sheet around his neck and pull it hard at both ends until He’s the one that’s crumpled and gasping for breath on the floor.
He puts his hand on my shoulder. What if He knows what I’m thinking? He puts his finger under my chin and lifts my face up to look at his.
“We’d better get going,” He says, “we’re going to be late. You look lovely.”
So He can’t see inside my head but He’s right about the time. We are going to be late if we don’t get a move on because He spent so much time in the shower and He insisted on dragging me round the house to double check everything comes up to scratch. I was ready. I was ready early. But somehow, thanks to my shoddy ironing skills, we’re late now.
So we drive in silence again. He takes a strange, long-way-round route to the station. I want to tell Him which way to go to get there quicker but He hates that. He’ll just get angry with me, so I sit there quietly allowing Him to make us even more late by going all around the houses. I look in my bag for some change for the car park.
“What are you doing?” He barks at me. “Don’t distract me while I’m driving.” And when I tell Him that I’m just looking for change for the parking He says, “Don’t be stupid. The one advantage of being late to pick her up is that we won’t have any waiting around. It’s free for the first fifteen minutes and it’ll only take her five to give us a dressing down for not being there when the train arrived.”
But actually, there’s no dressing down at all. We park up and go into the station at a trot to look for her, expecting to find her huffing and puffing and all agitated on the concourse. But instead she’s busy chatting, totally relaxed. She even looks a bit annoyed that we’re here to get her already.
9
I’ve always loved railway stations. They are magical places. Places with endless possibilities. What if you just turned up there with a bag full of your stuff and a few quid in your pocket? What if you just turned up at the station and you’d told no-one where you were going? Maybe you don’t even know where you’re going yourself, but you’ve just jumped on any old train and off you go? Where would it take you? You could just get off anywhere you liked the look of. Just jump off at any station and be whoever you liked when you got there. If I win the lottery that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to put the money in a bank account that no-one knows about and go to the station and just head off somewhere. I won’t even look to see where the train stops; I’ll just get on and get off whenever I feel like it.
Mum usually hates railways stations. She says that they’re filthy places where every corner has puddles of vagrants’ wee. She says it’s all overpriced coffees and cardboard sandwiches and you have to pay to use loos that aren’t even clean. But as we walk towards her she spots us and looks properly disappointed that we’re on our way to get her. She waves, only half to say hello. The other half is to wave us away for a bit longer so that she can carry on chatting.
As we get closer I can see who she’s chatting to. It’s Julie the Weirdy Girl. Julie from school. I see her out and about sometimes, in the supermarket mostly, but I never quite manage to say hello to her. They’re chatting like old friends. Catching up. And I remember how my mum and her mum were friends when we were at school. How they used to chat outside the school gates for ages and expect us to play together. How Julie and I used to weigh each other up and play our separate games in the same space outside the school. I did want to play with her but I couldn’t find a way of talking to her so we used to just rub along, looking like friends but never really being friends.
As we get closer, He asks me who it is that my mum is talking to.
“It’s a girl I knew at school,” I say, “I think she’s called Julie.”
I don’t want Him to think that it’s a friend of mine. I don’t want Him to start quizzing her about what I was like, or things I did or who I hung out with. I’d rather Him think that she’s just some vaguely-remembered girl who was in the same class. I don’t mention that I see her from time to time myself and never speak to her. I don’t say “Isn’t odd that when I bump into her we never speak but when she bumps into my mum they chatter away like best buddies.” I just brace myself for the awkwardness when we get to them and Julie and I will be forced by politeness to speak to each other. I just hope that she doesn’t say “I’ve seen you lots of times but you always blank me,” or anything like that.
She doesn’t.
When we reach them it’s difficult for anyone to get a word in edgeways because Mum is so enthusiastic about this chance meeting. She can’t wait to tell me everything that Julie has just told her. She can’t wait to introduce Julie to Him. She’s delighted, on my behalf, that I’m married and Julie is not. She is point-scoring by proxy, visualising the look on Julie’s mum’s face when she finds out that middle-of-the-road Marion has bagged a husband whilst Brain of Britain Julie is still on the shelf.
So Julie and I smile at each other in silence and it’s actually much less awkward than I would have thought. Probably less awkward than we used to be together when we were kids waiting for our mums outside school, or circling each other at other kids’ birthday parties. And while we stand sharing a doesn’t-she-witter-on moment and my mum fills us in on the marriages and babies of everyone I went to school with, He looks Julie up and down as though He were a Special Branch officer looking for evidence of wrongdoing.
I wonder what he thinks her face will reveal. If He’s looking to see what kind of bad influence she was or what secrets she could tell Him about me, He’s looking in the wrong place. Hers is a face that should tell Him that she can’t be bothered what people think. She has lipstick on but that’s all, and it’s probably just because she’s dressed for work and lipstick is part of the uniform. Her hair is less wild than it was when we were at school but it’s still curly, still tucked behind her ear on one side and still a wishy-washy colour that you’d be hard pressed to put a name to. It still looks like it hasn’t seen a hairbrush in days. Those makeover shows would have a field day with her. She probably doesn’t watch them. She probably doesn’t even know they exist.
“I thought you still lived around here,” she says to me when my mum pauses for breath. “I’ve seen you I think, once or twice, but I was never sure it was you so...”
Her sentence trails off, partly because I’m nodding in acknowledgement that I’ve seen her too, partly because He’s audibly sighing with irritation at this unscheduled delay.
“So you two go way back?” He says.
“Kind of,” she says, smiling at me. “We went to primary school together; we used to play together sometimes.”
“And our mums were friends,” I add. “Weren’t you, Mum?”
“We were, we were,” she joins in, “but I lost touch with so many people when I moved away. It’d be great to get her number from you, Julie,” she adds.
He actually tuts then, realising that we’ll get a ticket unless He moves the car from the waiting zone into the proper car park.
“I’d better move the car,” He says and waits for one of us to respond with a ‘no it’s OK, we’re coming now’.
But then my mum says “Perhaps Julie would like a lift?” and He wasn’t expecting that. Not at all. These are the curve balls that my mum is allowed to throw. I could try that kind of trick but I know how long I’d spend trying to make amends for it later. I kno
w it’s not worth it. I’ve given up recklessness like that. For my mum there are no consequences, apart from the apologies I’ll have to make on her behalf and she won’t even know about those. As far as she’s concerned, it’s no bother.
To my amazement, Julie jumps at the chance.
“That’d be great if it’s not too much trouble,” she says.
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” my mum chips in before He gets a chance to say anything, so He has no choice.
“No, it’s no trouble,” He says sarcastically, but she chooses to ignore his sarcasm and just smiles. She smiles at Him but I know the smile is for me really. She has scored a point for me and, somehow, she knows it.
So He marches on ahead of us and my mum practically has to break into a trot to keep up with Him.
“Sorry,” I say to my mum and Julie. “We put the car in the waiting zone. You only get fifteen minutes. He’s worried about getting a ticket.”
My mum gives me that ‘I wouldn’t put up with it’ look she does so well.
Julie just says ‘It’s fine.’ Maybe she doesn’t know how it works. It’ll be fine while she’s in the car but at some point this evening it won’t be fine. Or maybe she’s right. Maybe it will be fine. It wasn’t me who offered her the lift or me who accepted it, so maybe it will be fine.
Julie and I are sitting in the back of the car like two school kids with my mum in the front with Him. Mum says she gets car sick in the back. She says it disorientates her. Normally that makes me cross and I end up seething in the back, dethroned from my own front passenger seat. But today I’m happy to sit quietly in the back while my mum cranes her head round the head rest to speak to Julie sitting next to me.
And while she tells Julie all about the many health concerns that plague her, I glance down at Julie’s hands holding her handbag on her knee. The bag is leather. It’s a bit old and worn but good quality. ‘Well loved’ you might say. But I’m not looking to see the bag, I’m looking to see whether she’s wearing a wedding ring. I want to see whether I am more or less normal than the Weirdy Girl. Why should I think that being married should make her more normal or being unmarried keeps her weird? I don’t know, but that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for clues to see whether she is better at life than me or not.
There is still no ring there. Not even an engagement ring. There’s no jewellery on her fingers at all. No nail varnish either. But her hands are nice. A bit bony, but soft. You can tell that they’re soft even without touching them and the nails are not long but not bitten, just right. They’re probably her best feature, these soft, long-fingered hands, but they give nothing away.
There’s no jewellery on her hands but there’s a charm bracelet on her wrist and I’m counting the charms on it. One for every birthday, maybe? There are fourteen, so maybe that’s one for every birthday since she was 21? Or could it be one for every birthday and every Christmas for the last seven years? Maybe they’re love tokens? Maybe the love of her life buys her a different charm every time they go on holiday together, to remind her of her special memories every day. Maybe she has a charm bracelet instead of a wedding ring and instead of one little gold ring to last a lifetime she gets a new little piece of silver every few months.
I can’t help wondering about it and before I know it I am reaching out to touch one of the little charms and my mum and Julie both look at me at the same time. I feel like I’ve committed the world’s most atrocious faux pas.
“It’s lovely,” I say and I blush. But she smiles at me. It’s fine, she doesn’t think I’m odd, she’s just pleased by the compliment. Anyway, I tell myself, why shouldn’t she think I’m odd? I think she’s odd.
“A boyfriend bought it for me years ago,” she tells me. “I think the idea was that he would buy me a new charm every birthday. Unfortunately, we never got past the first couple of charms but I love the bracelet and if I spot one I like, I just buy it.”
“Doesn’t it make you a bit sad to be buying the charms yourself when you thought he’d be doing that for you?” I ask.
And I blush again, especially when Mum chips in with an admonishing ‘Marion!’ to make it clear that I should have thought before speaking.
But Julie doesn’t mind. “Maybe it should make me sad,” she says, “but it doesn’t. It sort of reminds me of him, but in a nice way. If we’d still been together now he’d probably just be buying me the charms because he felt he couldn’t stop, but this way I know that the ones he bought for me he bought because he really wanted to.”
“Which ones are they?” I ask. And she shows me two: a little silver horse and a tiny enamelled lily.
And I think I’m going to ask her whether she has a boyfriend, or if she misses Charm Bracelet Man, but suddenly He is back in the car with us.
“Does someone want to let me know where I’m going?” He pipes up. “I’m just heading home at the moment but if Julie wants dropping back at hers I’ll need to know where it is.”
So we just stop talking and Julie directs Him from the back seat until we get there. It’s not that far from our house. In fact it’s a street that I sometimes cut through on the way home from the shops if it’s sunny. It’s not a short cut. If anything it’s a long way round, but it has beautiful trees on either side, really old horse chestnuts. Her house is not one of the biggest but it’s one of the nicest. It has blinds that have been custom made to fit the windows and a front door that’s been stripped down to the bare wood with a stained glass panel at the top.
“What a lovely door,” I say when we stop, and He gives a snigger under his breath because I’ve said something so banal again. But Julie grins.
“That’s my favourite bit of the house,” she says, “in fact that’s what made me buy the place. I knew it was the right one as soon as I got to the front doorstep.”
“Women!” He says disparagingly and she just laughs.
“Let me give you my phone number,” she says, and she takes a business card from the front of her well-loved handbag then scribbles a number on the back.
“That’s my work number, my mobile and my home number there now,” she says, and as she hands it to me she gives my hand a little squeeze with her soft, bony fingers. “You’ll give me a ring so we can catch up properly, won’t you?”
And I don’t even need to answer her, because Mum says “Of course she will” so it’s done for me. And Julie can just get out of the car and dash to her front door as though it’s raining. She dashes towards that beautiful front door grasping that scruffy bag by one handle and turns and smiles and waves before she disappears inside. Even from inside the car I can hear the door slam shut behind her and I turn the card over to where she’s scrawled her home number and wonder if I will ever ring her. And if I do, what will I say?
“Right, home,” He says. “At last.”
“She’d look so much better if she just sorted her hair out,” Mum says as we drive away and then she finally stops peering from the head rest and rummages in her bag for a boiled sweet to keep her going until dinner.
10
How are you bearing up?”
He’s taken her bags upstairs and finally I’m allowed to be a little girl with a grazed knee running in for my mum to kiss it better. But she can’t kiss it better. She doesn’t even know where it hurts. And I can’t tell her.
“I’m OK,” I say. “I’ll be OK.”
And then she hugs me and I cry big body-shaking sobs and she tells me it will all be OK.
“There’ll be other chances, you know,” she says and now I know she isn’t going to make it better. Her grazed knee treatment was always TCP, waterproof plaster and out you go again to play. ‘You don’t grow up tough without getting a few bruises along the way’ she used to say when I just wanted a hug and someone to feel sorry for me. But the cure-all for everything in our house was a quick kiss-it-better and stop-feeling-sorry-for-yourself. “There
’s plenty have it much tougher than you, miss!”
I want to say ‘there’s only one chance at life for that little person and it’s already gone.’ But I can’t tell her to piss off home so I just say, “I’ll be OK mum. I think we all need to eat though, don’t we?”
“I do,” He chips in as he comes down the stairs. “What’s for dinner?”
So He pours three glasses of wine and takes two of them into the living room for Himself and my mum and leaves me on my own with mine in the kitchen. He loves a captive audience and Mum does captivated very well. She’ll listen to his stories of office politics and the dickhead from accounts (renamed ‘bird brain’ for her more sensitive ears). She’ll let Him explain to her how the management team have got the business strategy all wrong and wouldn’t know a commercial opportunity if it jumped up and bit them. She’ll marvel, sympathise and agree. She will never interrupt and she will fill every pause with a relevant question that gives Him the chance to explain how He would run things better. They will not talk about me. In fact they might even forget that I’m in here. Until they remember how starving they are, anyway.
I’m peeling potatoes and thinking about Julie the Weirdy Girl. I shouldn’t call her that, it’s unfair. Who am I to call her weird? I should never have called her that. I’m sure she knew, too. People always know their nicknames even if no-one ever calls it them to their face. Mum always told me not to call her that. “How would you like it?” she would say. I wouldn’t have liked it, but that’s not the point. No-one would have called me that. “No-one would call me that because I’m not weird,” I would tell her. But perhaps by not weird I just meant ordinary. Maybe I was just bland. I never had a nickname and it didn’t bother me then, but thinking about that now gives me a niggling paranoia that I was just too boring to deserve one. The thing about Julie though, is that Mum could tell me off for being cruel by calling her Weirdy Girl, but she couldn’t contradict me. Julie was weird, even if it was weird in a nice way. “Just don’t let her hear you saying it,” Mum used to say. “It could be hurtful.”
The SECRET TO NOT DROWNING Page 5