Souper Mum

by Kristen Bailey

  ‘Shit, Jools. Didn’t know he had them fuckin’ Mitchin stars things. Four, apparently.’

  I smile watching Gia hunch her shoulders to hear Donna swear. Gia is perfectly polite to Donna’s face but is slightly intimidated by all the jewellery and skin-tight denim. I look over the article to see Tommy there in his chef whites, standing in front of his Bristolian eatery, Maison de Gout, recently named one of the best places to eat in the South West. Though as Luella has pointed out, it really does sounds like the House of the Medical Gout, which isn’t so inaccurate given his love for sprinkling a little truffle butter over everything. Next to the riverside bistro he has in London, Mangetout, and the gastro pub he owns in Hampshire, The Petits Pois (not least his penchant for bastardising the French language), he also has mentions in Egon Ronay, the AA Food Guide, and yes, his four Michelin stars. This isn’t even David and Goliath any more. This is Star Wars. And I’m not even Princess Leia in a gold bikini. I’m Yoda. I have my wits about me but I’m shrivelled and small and green with fear at what the future holds for me. Because my cooking is not Michelin star haute cuisine, I’m comparable to a Little Chef. It’s sometimes a bit of a gamble eating there but it’s always there, it fills a gap, it makes you smile. I hope.

  ‘Have you heard? He’s bought his own cow for mincing and he’s having organic avocadoes brought in to make guacamole with a recipe from the best Mexican chef in London.’

  I smile, cutting big, garish buckles off the handbag in my hands. My guacamole will be made from a recipe my dad has cultivated over the years that began life on the back of an Old El Paso box. Donna can sense from the way that I’m handling my shears that the subject needs to be changed.

  ‘Well, who fucking cares, eh? I heard organic doesn’t mean nothing any more. Just means they pile even more horse crap on the stuff to make them grow bigger. Ain’t that right, Gigi?’

  Gia smiles, putting on her ‘I’m-so-shocked-that-I’m-going-to-pretend-I’m-so-foreign-I-didn’t-understand-that’ face. Donna has pilfered parts of my handbag in order to make Ciara some sort of headdress. At the moment all she has is a grey swimsuit, leggings, and silver Crocs. I am attempting to make some rhino horns out of old kitchen towel tubes and some Tippex pens. The boys come running in on the hunt for food and I place one of my homemade masks over Ted’s head, catching him like a fish.

  ‘So what do you think?’

  Gia looks suspiciously at my handiwork while Donna giggles under her breath. These masks are crucial, because all I have next to them are some cheap, light grey tracksuits. The patched pieces of grey leather have been stapled together haphazardly and the horn superglued on in the middle.

  ‘They’re a bit S&M, love.’

  ‘What’s that, Mummy?’ cries a suspicious voice from out of the mask.

  I shake my head so as not to have to answer the question. Ted looks like an executioner/professional wrestler as his little eyes peer out of the holes.

  ‘Can we have some Coke, Mum?’

  ‘Erm, no?’

  ‘Louis Prince gets to drink Coke before he goes to bed.’

  ‘Yep, and the little bugger has black teeth like he smokes thirty a day,’ adds Donna.

  I go to the fridge and pour three glasses of milk, which they down with impressive speed before scampering off again. Donna’s still laughing while Gia stares at me from the kitchen sink, still doing that weird thing where she watches me like I might be part of some sort of sociological study. Subject laughs: reason unknown; hair still unwashed. Luckily, Donna just assumes it’s typical of our in-law relationship and carries on regardless. I look back at Gia, wondering what is going on in that little Italian mind of hers, thinking how she must be processing everything. And I think back to her and Matt’s Italian exchange the other week and what he said the other night, pretty much confirming what I’d known all along: all the justification and persuasion in the world could never erase the fact I took her son from her before his time. She notices me looking and takes a courgette, forcibly hacking one of the ends off. I look away.

  The back door suddenly opens and Annie pops her head around the doorway.

  ‘Only me. Thought I’d drop by and see how things were.’

  My shoulders lighten to see her. Annie’s heard from Matt about meetings with my mother and has been trying to encourage me the best she can since I decided to take my cooking face-off up one notch. Gia is always pleased to see her, given I suspect she likes her influence on me more than Donna. Either that or she secretly wishes Matt had married some highflying, well-styled hotshot like her.

  ‘Annie! You stay for dinner maybe?’

  Annie needs little persuasion, as does anyone who’s invited to share in Gia’s cooking, and comes to give me a hug.

  ‘How are you? How’s things?’

  ‘You know. Drama, drama, drama.’

  Millie reaches up to give Annie a bit of her biscuit. Annie gives her curls a long, prolonged kiss and sniff. Sometimes, if the room is silent enough and the scent of baby lotion is strong enough in the air, you can hear her uterus skip a beat.

  ‘Well, I just came from the docs. Looks like we’re going to go ahead with the IVF.’

  ‘Really? It’s only been a year. What happened with the acupuncturist?’

  ‘He was supposed to activate my ovaries but I always left with the shits.’

  Donna smiles over at her. She glances at Millie.

  ‘Sorry, TMI. Can I have this one? That would still leave you with three.’

  She strokes Millie’s head and holds her close to her. I always feel for Annie, wondering how and what I can say that won’t sound condescending given my fortune when it’s come to popping sprogs. She can’t have Millie, of course, but maybe she could take the twins every other Saturday. She then does what Annie does best and that is to change subject in order to snap out of her baby slump.

  ‘Anyway, I read an article recently that says McCoy’s babies aren’t even his.’

  I turn to face her. Any dredge of gossip at the moment about McCoy is more than welcome to cheer me up, especially as I glance down at the article Donna was reading to see a picture of McCoy handpicking his own beans.

  ‘Turns out all that cooking left his balls all shrivelled up and spermless so Kitty had to resort to using bank sperm, which is why if you look at all those kids they all look slightly different.’

  Donna snorts with laughter and I swear I see Gia’s shoulders shudder a bit at the sink. She comes over and puts a cup of tea in front of Annie. Donna suddenly perks up.

  ‘People were saying that about Paula Jordan at school, you know. Apparently, she ain’t got a belly button because they botched her lipo after Harriet so Toby is some kid they adopted from Estonia.’

  Annie laughs so much a little bit of tea dribbles through her nose. Donna grabs me by the hand.

  ‘Oi, I meant to talk to you about that. Ciara mentioned that Tyrrell girl has been bringing them newspapers into school – all the ones you’ve been in and it’s caused some fuss.’

  Annie, Gia, and I pause to take it in.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘They’ve been trying to get on Hannah’s case about it. Remember Lynne Fry ran off with the bloke who delivered her fridge? Comet Colin, Dave calls him. Well, it’s started a thing with their class where to get on kids’ cases they start badmouthing their mums and dads and throwing words like “divorce” about.’

  I shake my head and close my eyes. My little Hannah Banana. I’m not sure how I thought children her age would deal with information like this, how they’d use it. Not very well, it would seem. And from the very mouth of Jen Tyrrell – Donna’s recent nemesis and Queen Bee of the school playground. I have half a mind to storm around to her house now and give her a good, hard slap.

  Gia intervenes, ‘Hannah is OK?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Han. Ciara says she’s taking it all on the chin, like properly stands up for herself, tough cookie. But thought you should know.’

 
‘No, I’m glad.’

  It’s good to hear something reassuring like that, given the circumstances, but really I need to sit down and speak to that girl. Never mind bullying, I feel there are residual issues there with my mother that need clarifying. We’ve found out snippets of what she thought after her outburst the other day – she told Ben she wasn’t very nice to people who weren’t nice back – a logic so clarified and innocent that I wondered if I should just use that as my mantra from now on. But she also seemed defensive, almost a little angry, and angry tweens are not a good thing. I look over at Gia, who’s now doing the cold and silent thing given her granddaughter has been caught in the firing line of some primary school slanging match. Shit, that’s not a happy face. Annie notices it too and stands to attention.

  ‘Gia? Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘You can grate courgette?’

  I think about Annie’s one-hundred pound manicure and possibly two-hundred pound suit that I don’t have a pinny to cover. She just looks at me and smiles, takes her rings off, and gets tucked in. True friendship if ever I saw it. The doorbell rings and Donna gets up.

  ‘This might be Dave, he’s finishing early today so he said he might pop in to say hello.’

  She scoots up as I sit there and watch Millie lick biscuit out the nooks and crannies of her fingers, how I think all biscuits deserve to be eaten. Is there anything I need to do with you? Check the progress of teeth growing and research what hairstyles best suit curly and ginger. She nods faintly in agreement.

  It’s then I suddenly hear it. Or more like I don’t hear it. Silence. A few minutes ago I swore I heard boys throwing themselves around the living room and the TV blaring, but it’s been replaced by the hiss of a pot on the stove and the mild whisper of a conversation outside. Donna and Dave? I get up to see what’s going on. I see the front door half open and Donna gesticulating wildly to someone halfway up our pathway. The other person is unclear in the haze of the glass.

  ‘Seriously, mate. Fuck off out of here.’

  I swing the door open when I hear it, not imagining who it could be. My first guess is a reporter, the second is a Jehovah’s witness. He was really not very high up on the list at all.

  ‘Richie?’

  ‘Jools?’

  When I see his face, the air gets sucked out of my nostrils like a hoover hose and I stand there not knowing what to say to him. The last time I saw him, bar newspapers and Facebook, was in Leeds during finals in our first year. Let’s just be friends. I’m not sure about us. We’ve just got so much of this life to see. I cringe now to think of the cliché of it all. He dumped me in my student flat, kissing me on my forehead before leaving. I rushed to the window to see him disappear down my road. From matchstick, to pin, to dot. I love you, Richie Colman, I love you so, so much. Please don’t leave me. I crumpled to the floor thinking it was the worst thing anybody could do to anyone, wallowing in self-pity about being abandoned and unlovable and putting on Radiohead while I sat in my darkened student room.

  Yet that was almost ten years ago. Now he just stands here dressed in jeans and a generic bad slogan Topman T-shirt. The shoes are bad: leather and laced and trainers but not. Once I finally get round to looking him in the eye, they’re the same – green like mushy peas. I shake my head if only to wake myself into speaking.

  ‘Richie? What the hell are you doing here?’

  This wasn’t Putney. This isn’t nearly in the same vicinity as Putney.

  ‘My mum told me you lived here. She’s not been well. She had an operation a few days back.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  He nods. Peg Colman. She had big, wild Kate Bush hair and used to partake regularly in local amateur dramatics. She used to joke and call me the daughter she never had. I was, of course, won over by statements like that, especially when they came with fondant fancies and bottles of Irn Bru. I decide not to dig any deeper. Donna stands behind me, arms crossed, looking like she could take on the world. To my right, I see three faces pressed against the glass, belonging to the twins and Donna’s little Justin. Something suddenly became more interesting than Ben 10.

  ‘I wanted to pop by and say hello.’

  I shrug, rather well truth be told, in how nonchalant I appear to be when really I’m seized by shock.

  ‘Well, hello. Give my regards to your mum.’

  Donna cackles behind me.

  ‘Told you, mate. She don’t want anything to do with you.’

  He glares at her while he approaches me and leans in, his arm brushing against mine. It throws me for a loop and I end up staring at him for longer than I need to.

  ‘I was hoping we could have a chat? Catch up?’

  There is something very different about him from our days at university. The hair, the tapered jeans. But there is that feeling in my gut as well. Guilt. That part of my subconscious somewhere rings loud: that small part of my brain that was always registered to him. When I had fights with Matt and my insides brewed with resentment, I always replaced Matt in my mind with Richie. The person who really knew me and was far better suited to me and had been my star-crossed lover in my youth, lying across his bed, snogging until our jaws went numb, telling me we were going to be together for ever. Yet at this moment, all I want to do is kick him really hard. Why the monkeys are you here? You should remain some figment of my imagination, an online acquaintance, someone I once knew. You don’t belong here. Another person appears from behind me. Richie looks up to greet her.

  ‘Abbie, right? Hey.’

  Annie gives me a look of pure horror.

  ‘It’s Annie. What the … why are you here?’

  ‘I was in the neighbourhood. Mum told me you hadn’t moved very far.’

  He makes me sound like I’ve lived in Kingston all my life. I mean, it is the truth, but it’s not like a flat share in Putney is any more exotic or far removed from here. Annie suddenly sees the kids and runs inside the house to peel them away from the glass.

  ‘Richie, it’s really not a good time.’

  My hands are clammy, my temples sticky from having to confront him here on my doorstep. This fantasy had always played out a little better in my head. I had a better monologue prepared, I was wearing Louboutins to make my calves look more shapely, and maybe some control knickers. My mother-in-law wouldn’t appear behind me at such moments either.

  Gia, in a pinny and with a courgette in each hand, her face lightly dusted in semolina.

  And neither would my husband. Matt! Hello, dear! And how was work?

  ‘Hello, can I help you?’ he says, casual as anything.

  And this should be the moment when Doctor Who arrives in his TARDIS and the meeting of these two worlds should result in some sort of time-continuum anomaly whereby we all get sucked into another dimension. Or not. Instead we all stand still in incredibly awkward silence. Until Matt recognises who it is.

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  At this moment, I should be trying to be diplomatic and separate the two men as they edge dangerously closer. Instead, I am comparing them. Matt has better hair, cool headphones, and is three centimetres taller. I win.

  ‘Matteo? Who this?’ Gia still seeks out answers from Donna who is silently watching on, maybe a little entertained.

  ‘Seriously. Please leave.’

  ‘I was actually here to see Jools, not you.’

  ‘Invited, were we?’

  I shake my head resolutely. The air is thick with testosterone and the faint smell of Gia’s antipasti in the kitchen. Little boys watch the conversation rocket back and forth like a tennis match. Donna reaches over my shoulder.

  ‘Don’t worry, Matt. I told him to sling his hook.’

  Richie scowls back at Donna. Matt and Richie both look at me like they want me to take sides. I just want to stand here, on my own in my confusion, embarrassment, and hyper-emotionality.

  ‘You have the temerity to one, flirt with my wife online and two, talk crap to the papers and now show up on
my doorstep, where I live, where my kids live?’

  ‘Mate, whatever happened was between me and Jools.’

  ‘Whatever happened was totally inappropriate. I warned you last time and I’ll do it again. She’s mine.’

  I jolt when I hear it. When was I last a possession? He sounds like he does when he’s claiming the last biscuit on a plate. Still, there is an element of truth. I step a little closer to Matt. I look up at this display of manhood as Richie rolls his eyes.

  ‘Yep, last time when you hit me. What a big man you are.’

  And this is when it should all kick off, the taunting, the insults, the primitive claiming of womenfolk as their own. But Matt catches a glimpse of his sons at the window and stops, his stares bouncing between wife and former lover of wife with such intensity I swear he could bore holes in our foreheads. I, for one, would just like Richie to leave. Richie existed before on some existential level, my alternative reality, my greener grass. But now he’s here, in the flesh, and to be honest, I don’t really fancy it. I just want to bid him adieu and go back to the sanctuary of what is real, of what works. Thanks for dropping by and reminding me of the fact, thanks for being someone I couldn’t give a toss about. Please, please just go away. But someone hasn’t had their say. Confused, I see her consulting a flustered-looking Annie at the door. An Annie who realises she shouldn’t have said anything, because when she does a little old lady storms down my pathway, pushing Donna into our box hedge, and proceeds to pummel Richie Colman with a courgette. The world stops. Matt smiles. I’m surprised how courgettes make for quite robust truncheons.