Souper Mum
Kristen Bailey
Monday morning can’t get any worse for harassed mum-of-four Jools Campbell when, after a frantic school run, she’s cornered in the supermarket by pompous celebrity chef Tommy McCoy, who starts criticising the contents of her trolley. Apparently the fact that she doesn’t make her own bread or buy organic is tantamount to child abuse. In a hurry and short of patience, she berates McCoy for judging her when she hasn’t the time or the money to feed her family in line with his elitist ideals.
Unbeknownst to Jools, her rant has been filmed and immediately goes viral on YouTube, making her a reluctant celebrity overnight. With McCoy determined to discredit her by delving into her personal life, Jools decides it’s time to fight her corner in the name of all the fraught mums out there who are fed up with being made to feel bad by food snobs like him. Armed with some fish fingers and her limited cooking repertoire, Jools must negotiate the unfamiliar world of celebrity while staying true to her instincts as a mum.
It’s very easy not to write. So thank you to Shirley Golden, Sara Hafeez, and Claire Anderson-Wheeler who cheered me on from the side-lines and told me to keep at it.
Thank you to Accent Press, especially Cat Camacho, for their belief and all their hard work.
Grazie bella Helen per il vostro aiuto con la traduzione. Sei una stella!
And an even bigger thank you to Nick Bailey for believing in me when I’d given up on myself; for digging me out of that low point when I developed an addiction to online Scrabble and thought everything I wrote was crap. You told me I wasn’t crap. I’m glad I married you.
For the mini Baileys.
J, T, O, & M
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Six Months Later
Jo Bartlett
Kate Field
Rosie Orr
Jenny Kane
Other Accent Press Titles
PRoLoGUE
‘We could sex it out?’
There are no words. I look at Matt as he eyes me up cautiously, wondering whether making love to his nine months pregnant wife would have her explode like John Hurt in Alien. The ‘sexing it out’ will not be happening, mainly because I’m teetering on the edge of the sofa trying to find the best position to accommodate my piles, but also because I know the sweaty and brutish effort that sex would entail is just not worth the indignity. The baby body-pops inside me and I imagine a very tiny me in sweatbands dancing to the Sugarhill Gang. She stops.
‘The fact is, I’m never having sex with you again. You and your sperm are not allowed within a five-mile radius of my nether regions once this one gets out.’
‘Single beds and onesies then?’
I nod. Matt pretends to laugh. I am deadly serious. This baby makes four. Four little humans. From now on, reading, wine, crochet, and addictive iPhone games will become my nocturnal activities of choice. He hands me my tea and starts to pat down the sofa looking for the remote. I smile secretly to myself because a) Matt makes great tea and b) my back fats have tight control of the remote. I am carrying this man’s progeny past the forty-week stage, this TV is mine. He starts sifting through the toy box. I sip my tea loudly.
‘Have you …?’
‘Check the kitchen maybe?’
I return to my show, half-watching, half-comforted by a noise that isn’t the high-pitched shriek of three children under the age of ten. Matt swears through the wall and returns scratching his head.
‘It’s bloody Jake, isn’t it? He uses those remotes as car ramps.’
‘Probably.’ Winning. I am winning.
‘What you watching?’
‘Some cooking thing.’
Cookery programmes get me through pregnancies. When I am swollen, overtired, and literally stuck to the sofa because I can’t lever myself off it, there is always comfort to be had from watching someone baste a ham or ice a gateau. Matt thinks otherwise.
‘Can we switch to BBC2?’
‘No.’ Simply because I cannot endure another tedious programme about a man walking up the Welsh coast for no other reason it would seem than to be rained on. Not even a handsome man at that.
‘Please, anything is better than this. Really, Jools. This bloke is such a tosser.’
I look up. Tommy McCoy: foodie hero, Michelin-starred, TV chef du jour. The sort you see splashed across jars of pasta sauce, shiny books, and your television, asking you to buy local, go organic, and sieve your own fruit. Sorry, in our house your fruit will always have bits. So maybe he’s a bit of a cock, but that didn’t mean his brand of cooking wankery was going to make me give up the television.
‘So, my love, it’s me, Tommy. You know me, off the telly. Hahahaha, look how shocked you are! Class!’
‘I mean, the mockney geezer act is wearing a bit thin, eh?’
‘So … balsamic vinegar – laaarrrvely on your strawberries. Who’d have thought it, eh?’
Matt cuddles up next to me. ‘Or, alternatively, you could leave the strawberries as they are, you dipshit. Why is that woman crying?’
‘It’s part of the show. He accosts someone in a supermarket, goes through their trolley, tells them how crap their food is, and then spends a week teaching them how to buy and cook proper food.’
Matt scrunches his eyebrows, trying to understand how the show’s concept is worthy of a woman’s tears. I surprise myself at how much I know about this show given I’ve only ever read about it in Heat.
‘This is the part where he brings out the pictures of what her body will look like if she continues to eat the way she does.’
True enough, Tommy starts with graphic pictures of an enlarged heart and gastric ulcers. Matt grimaces slightly.
‘Preachy. So really, he’s getting paid millions to tell people they need to eat proper food. What a revelation. Some jumped-up Essex wannabe, probably makes more in a day than I do in a year.’
I nod, awaiting the rant – the money rant where for a moment, Matt slips back into his socialist student self and preaches about distribution of wealth, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Poor little church mouse Matt and his holey socks and sad life with his Jabba the Hutt wife. This is my least favourite rant given it always has a way of questioning mine and the kids’ value in his life. Still, at least it’s better than his ‘teabags-in-the-sink’ rant.
‘Why is everyone hugging? What’s in that bowl?’
I look up.
‘Quinoa.’
There is no response as to how anyone can cuddle over grain. Matt starts to put his hand down the sides of the sofa in his continued quest for the remote. He pulls out a toy cow, a Tesco Clubcard, three Lego men, and something greying and round.
‘For the love of … crap, Jools – is this a piece of meat?’
I look at the furry, leathery disc curiously.
‘Nope, an old breast pad.’
He stares intently at it, secretly working out how long it must have been down there. Five years, to be exact. Then a look li
ke he gives me when he finds solidified milk in the fridge or a huge, sticky mass of travel sweets on the passenger seat of the car – his health and safety look. I give him a look back.
‘It’s all right, love! I’ve got a great chicken dish for you. Stuffed with lemons, thyme, and a bit of bacon. What do you say?’
‘I say I can’t believe I am fricking watching this shite.’ Matt’s voice deepens, his accent slowly evolving into Angry Scotsman.
‘Please … it’s just TV … a stupid TV chef and you’re getting your melons in a twist about it.’
I sit forward. The remote literally falls out of my back. That’s not Matt’s happy face.
‘Seriously?’ He reaches over. I let the remote fall to the floor and try to kick it under the sofa. The lunge action makes me topple like a Weeble. Matt laughs. This induces rage.
‘Oooh, Tommy McCoy earns more than me for doing nothing … suck it up, Campbell.’
‘Well, maybe we should get him round here. Teach you a thing or two about cooking.’
I pause. I half want to smother Matt with my pregnant boobs, but there’s a definite need to stop proceedings for a short while. I look down. A wet patch grows in my maternity shorts like an angry, enveloping raincloud. I think two things: first, my tea? No. Second, damn my pelvic floor! Have I pissed myself? No. Then my abdomen tightens. I look up at Matt and grab on to the sofa cushions until my knuckles lose colour. Mother of bollocking bollocks. Tommy McCoy’s face beams at me from the TV.
‘Don’t worry, laaarve, I’m Tommy. I’m ’ere for you!’
With whitened teeth and badly dyed blond hair, he prances around some stranger’s kitchen in really terrible trainers. Please don’t let this man be the first person my baby sees. Please. Pain sears through my back like someone ironing my spine.
‘Matt … Jeeeeeeeeesus Christ, she’s coming.’
And even though he’s done this twice before, Matt stops in his tracks, the emotion hits his eyes, and he catches me.
‘Wow. So we don’t need to sex it out then …’
I laugh. I fall into him. Now. She’s coming now. And all I hear is Tommy sodding McCoy’s voice echoing around the room as I spread my legs, my undercarriage throbbing as if it might fall out.
‘Now with your chicken, first check for the gizzards. Just pop your hand up the hole and pull them out.’
CHAPTER oNE
It’s a dream I have almost once a week. I am in a room with the kids. The room has no windows or doors but has a strange padded quality to it. There is no Matt and Millie is almost always without a nappy. Jake notices first and declares she will pee everywhere and we will all drown. Ted is bored and picks his nose. Hannah sits quietly and asks where her father is and why I didn’t bring my phone. I am wearing jersey catalogue pyjamas that have flattering flowy bottoms and a vest which magically supports my flaccid boobs. My hair looks frigging fantastic. In my pyjama pocket is a key. But there is no door? Everyone starts shouting for help and Ted gets anxious and starts eating the fruits of his nose-picking. I beat the walls with my fists. I feel along the sides of the walls with my fingers. They are ridged and leave a fine white dust in my palms. I know this. I hold the dust to my lips. It’s sweet. The walls are spongy. Wait! Doughnuts! The room is made out of doughnuts! ‘Eat!’ I tell the children. ‘Eat your way out!’ They do as they’re told. The walls are filled with jam; raspberry, apple, some with custard, which we all agree is an abomination. All the kids tuck in, grabbing handfuls of sponge. They have sugar around their lips, jam in their hair but they all look so content, so joyful. I smile. Then from a little hole that we’ve eaten through in the wall, I see daylight. We hear Matt’s voice. I never recall what he says but he doesn’t sound too impressed. The voice always gets louder. Millie always pees on the floor. Then I wake up.
‘Jools … Jools! Get your arse out of bed.’
And I always check. No doughnuts. No jam. No fancy pyjamas. No key.
‘Seriously? Jools, c’mon!’
Is there a key? It’s happened again, hasn’t it? I pull the duvet over my head to see my regular bedroom attire: an old misshapen T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, my hair looking like small mammals have nested in there to seek refuge from a harsh winter. A muslin, dry and crispy, is stuck to my forehead. Outside, a pigeon sits on the sill, has a crap, then flies off into the drizzle. I look down at a wet patch where fatigue or doughnut lust has seen me drool into the pillow. The bed undulates as a five-year-old boy bounces in next to me. Get up. Get up. Get up. You great big state of a woman, you.
‘Jake … get your zombie mama out of bed for me …’
Jake does as he’s told and tries to prise my eyes open with his five-year-old fingers. He’s lucky zombie mama don’t bite. A bare-chested Matt appears at the bedroom door wearing just his work trousers. If I squint in the lowlight of the room, he looks a little like Richard Gere in the beginning of American Gigolo except the only dancing he seems to be doing is with the Febreze bottle. He finds a shirt on the back of the bathroom door and sprays it frenetically, smoothing it down with his hands. Jake flashes the bedside light on and off in my face.
‘Are you dead?’
‘No.’
‘Then can I go?’
‘Yes.’ He kisses me on the cheek and scoots off. I reach for my phone on the bedside table. 7.27 a.m. Matt eyeballs me with a foamy mouth. Now is not the time for Facebook, wifey. I eyeball back as he stands there with his chest on show and his flies undone. He looks over at Millie, her little pink tongue hanging out in fatigue.
‘How many times was she up last night?’
The urge here is to exaggerate to garner some sympathy so that maybe, just maybe, Matt will volunteer to take the kids to school.
‘Three.’
‘You better grab a coffee then.’
He, who slept through each episode of waking, spread-eagled across three-quarters of the bed with only his erratic night flatulence keeping me company. To be honest, I forget now if Millie wakes in the night at all, the only sign I get being if in the morning one of my boobs is hanging out. I roll up my T-shirt. True enough, the right is out – my nipple bowing its sorry head down to the floor. Matt glances over, a little disheartened as he watches me stuff myself back in my bra. Then he utters the words that no one really needs to hear.
‘We’re out of milk.’
We look at each other for five seconds to let the news wash over us. Crap. The big question though is whether it was anyone’s fault. Will we survive? How will we address the matter? Breakfast is allocated Matt time in our house. He’ll sit with the kids at the table and he has his quality time with them over Weetos and Rice Krispies while I either get fifteen minutes more sleep or tend to Millie. This sounds like some idyll of wholesome family time but no one really talks. They just stare at each other in a sleepy haze, milk often dribbles down chins, the twins will complain that someone’s got more cereal than them, and they hate the world.
‘The kids had a quarter cup each for breakfast but we are running low on everything.’
He gives me a look. This is your department: catering and beverages. Your department has underperformed.
‘I’ll go for a shop today. Is your pay in?’
‘Well, this is food. The kids have to eat. You can put something like that on credit, you know?’
‘But you told me …’
I trail off, not wanting to bring up the searing topics of finance and his casual condescension so early in the day, else my eyeballs seep out their sockets. Given I’m married to an accountant, it’s always made sense for Matt to have the last word when it comes to our finances, something I don’t necessarily fight, knowing it’s for the best. Still, being twenty-nine and having my credit card usage monitored always makes me feel like I’m an errant teenager, like I might spend Matt’s wages on Strongbow and Superdry. I salute him when his back is turned. Millie pops her little auburn head off her mattress and looks around to see where she is. There’s a rosy blush in her cheeks fro
m naughty, hurty teeth. I pat her head and put my legs over the side of the bed.
‘Millie smells.’
‘So do you.’
I stick my tongue out at Matt, who doesn’t get the joke. But hell, he’s right. I wrestle Millie on to the change table, pinning her down with one elbow as I fiddle with the wipes, praying there has been no spillage. No wipes. Bollocks. I take her into the bathroom and try to her wipe her down using some cosmetic pads and lukewarm water. Her face in the mirror says it all. This is undignified, Mother. I then pop her down on the floor as I put the seat down to have a wee. The door swings open. There are no boundaries in this house. I haven’t peed on my own since 2006.
‘Mum, can I have that white stuff in the fridge?’ Ted stands by the entrance to the bathroom in that half-jog stance he always seems to favour; places to go, has our little Ted. He doesn’t seem too perturbed by the fact I am mid-stream. I bend over to stop Millie going through the contents of the under-sink cupboard.
‘It’s in the measuring jug with the cling film.’
‘No, hon – that’s coconut milk.’ I’m half glad he asked my permission, as I think that might have been in there since at least last Friday.
‘What, coconut like in Bounty bars? I like them. Please?’
‘This isn’t a negotiation, Ted. If you drink that, you’ll be sick.’
‘But …’
‘She’s right, buddy.’
Matt nods and gives me another look. Look at our children scavenging in the fridge! Ted, like all the others, takes Matt’s validation over my authority – slightly disheartening but at least it means I can wipe in peace. Or not. As I’m half hovered over the loo, half pulling up my pants, the door swings open again.
‘Can you see my nipples through this shirt?’
Matt turns on the main bedroom light and I flinch from the light like a 1930s vampire. Matt stands by the door – no longer Richard Gere, but looking like a pastel blue Shar Pei.
‘Kind of.’
‘Shit.’
He looks over at the mountain of clothes in the corner of the room then looks to me. He knows better than to mess with it; one false move and it’d be like a house of cards. I wash my hands then give him Millie while I sift through it. Go on, dance or something. I’ll be Smokey Robinson. This has to be funny. Nothing. I find him a vest and retreat to the bathroom to brush my teeth, staring at the woman in the mirror. She looks familiar. I look down at the old T-shirt I’m wearing and the lovely wet patch over my left breast. I forgot to swap sides again. I take off my T-shirt and bra and grab a vest, shirt, and jeans from the top of the laundry hamper. I slowly pull up my jeans, breathing in to do up the button, and let my ricotta cheese mummy tummy relax over the waistband. Today’s look is pale, uninteresting, and braless. It will have to do. I hear Matt’s scowling from next door.
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