Souper Mum

by Kristen Bailey

  ‘This is a hell of a lot of money. Do you desperately need me to lose tonight?’

  Roger Kipling adds his authoritative five pence share.

  ‘Mrs Campbell, Mr McCoy is offering this money in goodwill. From reading about your history and familial situation, we sense this money may be of huge benefit to you.’

  I sit there open-mouthed, pained by the fact they look down on my family so. Pained that they think a bit of money and my life would be perfect. They look so incredibly smug, so convinced that they have some sort of power over me. All I’m thinking of now is trapping parts of their manhood in that suitcase. The door flies open and Luella stands there.

  ‘Hello?!’

  Tommy and Luella look at each other for a while as I rise from my chair.

  ‘Jools? Is everything all right in here?’

  I nod.

  ‘Yep, Mr McCoy and his lawyer were just leaving.’

  They don’t take their documents. They leave them on the table. I watch as Tommy smiles at me on the way out, a weird smile that a fox might give a farmyard goose before killing it. I don’t smile back.

  5.35 p.m.

  ‘Give me the bloody phone, I’m going to call The Sun now. They can get this on their website before day’s end.’

  Matt is not happy. He stands there wrinkling bits of paper in his hands and stomping about as Luella hisses in unison and Annie grabs bits of the document and casts her lawyerly eye over them. Ben and the children play some card game in the corner of the room, feasting on snacks and looking stylish and trendy in GAP and Converse. Adam found a make-up girl he took a fancy to a while back so we’ve lost him to the studio corridors. I go over and sit with the children and Ben puts an arm around me.

  ‘Well, think about it. McCoy thought you could actually beat him and he was so intimidated he was willing to pay you to lose.’

  That’s one idea. Could I seriously win this thing? He thought so enough to pay a visit to a lawyer and have him run up important-looking documents. I think about the money. That money could be so useful to my family right now, my kids most of all would be the chief benefactors and maybe that’s what’s important. Matt, however, thinks it’s shameful – the fact that his ability to provide for his family has been brought into question. He’s stomping in the corner of the room. Luella pours him another plastic cup of champagne (brought by Annie to loosen the place up). Ben has even brought Valium that he got from a flatmate, except I refuse to take them given that he tells me they could possibly be something else, their bathroom cabinet not familiar with a labelling system. I sip my champagne slowly and deliberatively. The twins come over and sniff at cups for drinks. I grab on to Jake sitting in front of me. They gelled his hair before so it’s now all crispy and shiny. I miss his chocolate mound of fluffy hair. Jake always had the best hair even when he was a baby. He knew it as well. He looked over at Ted and his wispy strands of hair and looked very pleased with himself. Ted came back and half smiled, showing off two deep dimples like they’d been carved into his cheeks. I remember thinking nothing. I had a baby in each arm, still high off pethidine. I thought Ted had six toes on his left foot. I just inhaled. It was like a drug. I grab Ted with my other arm and put them both in a headlock and kiss them on their foreheads, which they immediately wipe off.

  ‘Jools! Don’t mess the hair!’ Luella shouts from across the room. I glance over and she is trying to calm Matt down and pointing at a pair of shiny trousers laid out for him. I don’t have to hear what Matt is saying about them. All I hear is the word ‘guttering.’ Still, I think I like him the way he is, Ramones T-shirt and battered trainers, the right side of trendy dad.

  ‘Where’s his dressing room? I have a good mind to take this round to him and tell him to stick it where the sun don’t shine.’

  I look over and smile. I stuff a whole hand of crisps in my mouth to soak up the champagne as Annie saunters over.

  ‘He’s done his groundwork.’

  ‘But what if she loses anyway?’ asks Ben.

  Annie gives him a look.

  ‘Well, she’d get the money anyway but at what cost, Benjamin?’

  Ben nods his head from side to side.

  ‘But the document is saying here that Jools could drop out, forfeit, or simply not show up and still get the money so … the decision is yours. But there is more …’

  My ears prickle.

  ‘He wants you to just go away. Not follow up on this celebrity thing, just fade away and never have existed.’

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask my sagacious lawyer friend.

  ‘I think he’s a tit. This is obviously to protect himself and his interests. I think it’s got little to do with recompensing you and is all about him being threatened by someone who is much more likeable and could steal his foodie thunder.’

  Ben nods in agreement. Matt still stomps in the corner of the room. I’m not sure if it’s about the money or the guttering trousers any more but I can see that fury, that blind rage in his eyes that surfaces at very few moments: moments when emotions have properly been stirred up by something significant, something of worth to him. I guess that would be me. I stand up, look at the clock, and think long and hard about why I am here. Was it money? Was it pride? Or was it for some other reason – thought up by some raging, braless woman in a supermarket one Monday morning. Because McCoy is not me, he will never be me, and I will never be him. When did I lose sight of that? I get up.

  ‘Luella, there’s that press call in the studio in five minutes. We’d better get down there.’

  Everyone looks at me in surprise. Even I’m surprised. I am calm. Did Ben sprinkle the Valium on the crisps? But I know why. I stroll up to Matt waving the cheque in the air and tear it into four. The room freezes. So do I.

  6 p.m.

  Fifteen minutes later and my hands are shaking a little from having had a winning lottery ticket and ripping it to shreds. Everyone in that room stared at those four bits of paper on the floor for the longest time as all our dreams of holidays, well-fitting jeans, and extensions faded into nothing. I have my pride, I have my pride. She says. So now, a little shell shocked, we’re all in the studio having our photographs taken. This has been my only demand in all of this. While McCoy was keen to get our clans out in the open, I wanted my kids out of this so bartered with the production company that they could have a couple of photos and that’s it. As we’re led out the twins are obviously the most excited, given their recent school play success, so bounce on to the set. Hannah stays close, Matt holds my hand. The twins notice the other children first: one girl preened like a peacock in a tulle party dress and ballet slippers, the boys in matching Fair Isle jumpers. The boys, who like company, bound over but the children are ushered away by a bosomy woman. I know that woman: the McCoy’s nanny from This Morning. So they must be Basil, Mace, and Clementine. Hannah goes over to ‘Baz’ who’s got a Nintendo DS and looks over his shoulder. He immediately turns his back to her. Matt hurries over and puts an arm around her.

  ‘Gobshites, the lot of them.’

  Hannah laughs in shock while Baz runs off behind a curtain, revealing a melee of people behind it, one of whom strides in, clad in denim, and rushes over to shake my hand. I hear cameras click all the quicker. I see Matt’s foot ready to trip him up.

  ‘Jools! How are we doing? Are we set?’

  I shake his hand and say nothing, turning my head to smile, watching Luella from the side-lines telling me to show some teeth.

  ‘I’m good. These must be your kids.’

  The children flutter on, followed by skinny Kitty who gives Matt an evil look. Not in camera shot of course. The children are weirding me out. Before, they had the look of death drones ready to kill. Now they’ve all gone a bit Stepford as they position themselves against their dad. Even little Ginger seems to know how to rest her little head by her dad’s knee.

  ‘You have one missing. The redhead.’

  ‘She’s at home with her grandparents. She’s retired from
the media. It was all too much for her.’

  The photographers laugh a little while Tommy goes stony-faced for a second to think that maybe I was directing that at him and his constant pimping out of his clan. He keeps standing in front of me, knowing I’m much too short to look at him directly in the face, even with heels. It’s like a boxer’s weigh in, without the scales, thank God. Matt just stands behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder. This is the first time he’s meeting the McCoys and unlike them and their media charade, he’s not as good at hiding his true emotions, especially with everything that’s happened in the past hour. I know, as Luella keeps trying to gesture over at him to stop flaring his nostrils. As for my kids, they are less familiar with standing correctly for this picture jigsaw so the twins simply flank me while Hannah bends down by my knees. Kitty keeps smiling, maybe at how unpractised we are. A production crew member strides on to set.

  ‘Right, let’s finish up now. We still have some things to discuss with our guests.’

  Everyone with a camera is ushered away as Luella runs on and the producers dressed like mime artists with clipboards make an appearance as if from nowhere. As soon as the last photographer disappears, so does the Stepford act. The McCoy kids’ shoulders slump and Kitty’s face curls into a snarl. Tommy’s entourage stalk the stage like Stormtroopers, adjusting lights and laying out his organic produce. McCoy just stands there listing demands.

  ‘So we have some knives we want to use. A German brand who are looking for promotional consideration and I want to wear my chef whites.’

  Matt and I look at Luella, who’s shrugging her shoulders. I don’t think I have a problem with fancy knives nor McCoy trying to remind everyone again that HE IS A CHEF. To make a point, he starts stripping in front of us and slips his whites on over his oily torso. It’s the Chippendales, restaurant style. I notice Luella looking a moment too long at his shiny chest, no hair – that means he must wax. Eeks.

  ‘And we want the kids to be on set when I cook. Kitty too.’

  Again, Luella shrugs and rolls her eyes. I look at Matt whose fingers grip mine so tightly I can feel the pulse in my thumb. The producer looks to me for my similar needs for the day.

  ‘Well, I want to wear a sombrero and have a bottle of tequila on hand.’

  Everyone laughs except the McCoy clan, of course.

  ‘And what about your family? Will they be joining you on set?’

  I look over at Luella who always has advice to give me on such matters but knows when it’s down to my family then the ball’s always in my court. I see Kitty give her the once over, no doubt knowing who she is. I turn to the producer.

  ‘No. I don’t really see the point, to be honest.’

  A producer can’t hide his glee at my statement and Matt sniggers under his breath. Luella smiles the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on her as the McCoys are ushered away, out of earshot of my defamatory remarks. Ben, who stands nervously behind Luella, ushers the kids away.

  ‘I love you. Really fucking love you. Did you see the greasy chest? He’s pulled out all the stops. I want you to go back and jiggle your tits about. Idiots.’

  She storms off. Matt’s hand is still in mine as people mill about and we’re left standing in my side of the fake kitchen. I stand at the counter and look into the lens of the still camera, rubbing my hands up and down the pale wood like it might give me luck. Matt stands opposite and looks down at my boobs.

  ‘They’ll do.’

  I grab them and push them up manually. They could do with an inch of hoisting but that is really way down on the priority list. I look up and Matt just smiles at me.

  ‘Do you remember when you gave birth to Millie? Weren’t we watching McCock on the telly?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Didn’t you scream at him that he was a Mockney shite and you didn’t want him to be the first person our child saw?’

  I laugh but I don’t answer. That was when it all started. When we became the family we are now, when life got crazy and busy and mental. He gets it. I think I do too. And I just smile as he kisses me on the forehead and we walk off set together.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘So we all know the gauntlet has been laid down today. McCoy vs Campbell … any final words before we get down to it?’

  Vernon is still tall. Heels are useless against someone so tall. I should have brought along that footstool in my bathroom that the boys teeter on to pee. The thought makes me smile.

  ‘May the best man win.’

  I’m still thinking about that footstool and the time that we told Ted he had to stand on it to pee and he did just that without the toilet bowl to aim in. I found him standing in his own puddle of piss scratching his head, wondering how he’d failed. I laugh. No one else does. What was that? Best man. But I’m a woman.

  ‘May the best person win.’

  The selected few in the studio laugh as Vernon whoops and presses the comedy red button, big numbers count down in the background like as soon as we’ve finished cooking the ground will swallow us up and nuclear warheads will be released. That would be go-go-go then.

  It’s strange. I am seriously calm. All the nerves and panic has subsided. I am focussed. I think about the kids, who are watching all of this from the comfort of my dressing room with a DVD of Toy Story playing alongside. Uncle Adam, who can’t bear to watch, sits with them and keeps them topped up with apple juice. As requested, McCoy’s kids are on set, watching from the side-lines with Kitty looking a little Von Trapp in that they might break into song at any moment. I only have Matt, Luella, and Ben watching from out of shot, each of them with their hands over their mouths. Ben puts his thumbs up every so often. I watch as Mace McCoy mimics him from across the set and Kitty laughs. I wonder if these knives are made for throwing.

  So where was I? Chilli Con Carne. I need to chop an onion. Vernon is over with Tommy at the moment, picking his brains over chopping without crying and red vs white. I just get down to it and a cameraman comes close up to my hands as I start to peel. I flash him a hint of manicure and he smiles. Onion peeled, I go to chop and my technique is slightly laboured but better than before all of this. Great knife! Like a blade going through hot butter. I gain a little bit of speed and look over at McCoy who’s smashing his garlic and being a smarmy g … shitty shit shit. I look down and see that next to chopping onions, I’ve also been chopping fingers. Crap bags. I flinch as the cameraman realises what I’ve done and jumps back, waving his hands in the air to a producer. I panic, waving my hand about and watching as blood drips onto the chopping boards. I still have a finger but I have a deep cut on the joint, blood gushing from it without ebb. A producer runs on, grabs my finger, and puts it under the sink, whispering into my ear.

  ‘Are you all right? Do you want us to go to break?’

  Vernon looks over, as does McCoy. I see Kitty smile in the background.

  ‘Just get me a plaster.’

  The producer, one of those bouncy, glossy-haired types, does as she’s told with the help of someone running about with a big green box. We wrap it up as best we can so that my finger is completely straight and unmanageable but I will soldier on. Like those people who save whole platoons with great big pieces of shrapnel in their legs. Ben has disappeared. Luella looks down to the floor. But Matt is still there. A little paler but still there. I hear McCoy next to me.

  ‘So most would use your bog standard mince beef for this sort of thing but the best meat you can use is chuck steak in largish chunks so this becomes a real man’s chilli.’

  I look down at my pink straggles of mince in their black container. Focus girl, focus.

  ‘And I think it’s important to keep the ingredients authentic, so I’m using Mexican chipotle as opposed to plain chilli powder, fresh chillies, and some streaky bacon for depth of flavour.’

  I keep chopping my celery and carrots, wondering how the hell he kept within the ten pound budget we were given. My finger looks ridiculous. Luella is squatting on the floor
looking like she might be hyperventilating. I am focussed, I can do this. A hand on my shoulder makes me jump a little and my carrot falls out of my hand and rolls on to the floor. Nice cameraman picks it up and hands it back to me and I go and wash it. Bloody Vernon. I hear a small child snigger in the background.

  ‘Sorry, love. How’s it going? How are you feeling? Calm down. You’re doing great. Been through the wars already?’

  I laugh and hold my finger up.

  ‘Must be the knives. Not sure if I’m too keen on this brand. Bloody death traps.’

  I see McCoy slam a saucepan down. That would be your promotional consideration gone. I hear Matt softly laughing and Luella go to stand like that might have saved me.

  ‘But you’re soldiering on, tell me about your chilli.’

  I look down at my simmering hob and up to the big black hole that is the camera. Hi, Dad! Hi, Gia! Hi, Millie!

  ‘Well, it’s my dad’s recipe. He’s been cooking it ever since we were kids. I’m just going to sweat some veg then add the mince and all the herbs and stuff.’

  Look at me! I’m ‘sweating veg!’ How technical of me. Vernon plays with my spice jars and ingredients bag.

  ‘Chocolate! In a chilli! Are you mad?’

  I thought Dad was too. But apparently that’s what he’s been using for years.

  ‘Yeah. We’ve got cinnamon, chilli powder, garlic, and cumin, and at the end I melt a few squares of really dark chocolate to really draw out the flavour.’

  And I’m drawing out flavour too! Just give me that Michelin star now. I see McCoy grinding things in a pestle and mortar, staring at me. Does he have chocolate too? Kitty’s neck is craned over so far over her kids’ heads that I see how haggard her neck is. She’s all designer, with big shoulder pads and leather trousers. Luella let me have trousers too: black and skinny with a tunic dress. I think they’re comfortable. I’m not sure if I’ve breathed much since this all started so I assume so. But I’ve made a concerted effort not to bend at the knees so much this time, also because I fear the trousers may split. Vernon is nodding and staring at my beef. It’s very bloody. Unreasonably so. Is it off? I then stare at a tiny blood trail on my countertop and realise the blood from my cut dripped onto the meat a little. Shit. I’m cooking human blood chilli. Vernon doesn’t seem to have noticed.