Kismetology
by
Jaimie Admans
Kismetology © Jaimie Admans.
Second Kindle Edition.
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents portrayed in it are a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the author.
First published in 2012 by Jaimie Admans.
Cover design by Jaimie Admans. Image © iStockPhoto.com/ThomasVogel
Find out more about the author at http://www.jaimieadmans.com
Look out for more by this author, coming soon to the Kindle store.
Also by Jaimie Admans:
Afterlife Academy
Even being dead isn’t enough to get you out of maths class.
Creepy Christmas
If you listen closely, you can hear the faint sound of screaming over the Jingle Bells… Can Kaity help Santa’s daughter stop Christmas being destroyed by Anti-Claus?
A fun, festive, family read!
For Mum. Who is absolutely nothing like the mum in this book. Honest. I love you.
CHAPTER 1
If I could give one piece of advice to every teenager in the world, it would be this: when you move away from home, move far, far away, and never look back. My biggest mistake? I didn’t move far enough. In fact, I only moved three houses down the road. The perfect distance for my mother to interfere in my life, even more than she did when I lived under her own roof.
"Mackenzie, your curtains aren't even straight," Mum complains from her place on our sofa. "I don't know how you can put up with such a mess."
"How can curtains not be straight, Mum?"
"There’s at least six inches more to the left than to the right, and the join in the middle is wonky."
Dan rolls his eyes and gets up from his armchair with a groan.
I know how he feels.
"Don't be long, Daniel, you'll miss Eastenders," Mum calls after him.
"Sir, yes sir," Dan mutters, doing an army salute behind her back.
In all fairness to my mum, maybe my announcement that I was moving in with Dan came as a bit of a shock to her. After all, we’d been dating for a year, but my mum had only known him for six of those months. I was a bit reluctant to introduce them, especially after the incident with an ex-boyfriend—the first and, up to that point, only boyfriend to ever meet my mum—where she'd nearly run him over with a wheelie bin (accidentally) and then put a brick through his car window (she was killing a wasp).
"Can't you get him to brush his hair once in a while?" Mum asks when Dan has left the room. "He makes the place look untidy. And don't even get me started on that shirt."
"Leave him alone, Mum," I warn her. "And stop your bloody dog peeing in my houseplant again, it's dying."
"Oh, Mackenzie, you'll never guess what happened to me today," Mum says animatedly. "Go on, guess."
"I have no idea, Mum."
"I almost got a criminal record. Can you believe that? Me! With a criminal record!"
"I'm honestly scared to ask, but how on earth did you manage that?"
"I nearly got arrested in the park!" She says excitedly.
Only my mother could be excited about getting arrested. "What happened?"
"You know Baby's crocodile outfit, right? I did a really good job of making it, didn't I? I made it look really realistic?"
I nod.
"Baby was off his lead in the park, doing his business, you know, as dogs do. And suddenly all these police surround us. Two animal control vans pull up, there's a helicopter overhead, there are even a couple of men with tranquilizer dart guns poised and ready to shoot."
I rub my hand over my eyes. "Why?"
"Well, it turns out that someone had seen Baby in the park and thought he was a real crocodile. She'd called the police in case he ate the children."
"Oh, Mum, really?" I groan.
"It was so exciting! I think I might even be on the news tonight!"
She thinks this is exciting? Embarrassing would be my preferred term. Very, very embarrassing. "So what happened?"
"The police quickly realised their mistake. But one of them did take me aside and ask if I could not bring Baby to the park in that attire again. Then he gave us a lift home in his police car. He was ever so nice about it."
"I'm sure he was."
"How anyone could mistake my Baby for a crocodile is beyond me. He's hardly crocodile size, is he? The woman must have been blind as a bat."
"Well, you do insist on dressing him up as potentially dangerous animals. And walking him. In public. It's really quite disturbing."
"Oh, nonsense. I like trying out the sewing patterns I find on the internet. It keeps me busy."
Something has to, I suppose.
"Come here, Baby." Mum pats the sofa and the Yorkshire terrier, which is practically surgically attached to her, comes running over. "Don't listen to that big, mean lady. She loves you really."
Baby is currently dressed as a ladybird. No, really. Mum's hobby of making these outfits for him is getting out of hand. He jumps onto the sofa and sinks his teeth into one of my twenty quid cushions.
"These cushions were expensive." I yank them out of his way.
"He likes the tassels," Mum responds.
This is our nightly routine now.
On our one-year anniversary, Dan had proposed that we move in together. My mum wasn’t overly thrilled by the turn of events, until she'd found a little house available to rent and paid the deposit without even asking us. The house happened to be three doors away from her place.
We should have known better.
Dan was indifferent to the fact that my mum had decided where we were going to live and paid a deposit without even telling us. It was one less thing that he had to do. And I couldn't really be mad at her, she was only doing it out of the goodness of her heart. Presumptuous, yes, but ultimately only trying to be helpful. We'd signed a one-year lease two days later.
Since then, Dan has been a gem. Not many men would put up with my mother being an almost permanent third wheel. Not many men would run her cat, Pussy (no, really), down to the emergency vet at three o’clock in the morning because it looked a bit peaky. It was fine. A screeching woman yelling that it looked off-colour had just woken it up from its sleep. I look peaky at that time of day too. Dan had offered his car as transport and we’d roared off down the road at breakneck speed, scaring the poor cat half to death. Then Dan and I had sat in the parking lot for half an hour, while the vet determined that there was absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with Pussy.
The house being so near had softened the blow of me moving out and leaving Mum with only her yappy little dog and not-sick cat for company.
"You can pop in anytime you want," I'd told her.
I had no idea that translated into "come over every night and bring the dog and cat with you" in mum language.
The night we moved in, just as we’d settled down together on our new sofa with a glass of wine each and switched on our newly installed satellite TV, my mum’s special knock-knockknock-knock on the door reverberated through the living room. We looked at each other with dread and Dan groaned.
My mum came in, took her shoes off, sat down on the sofa, helped herself to a glass of wine and put on Coronation Street. She didn’t actually watch Corrie, but proceeded to criticise our carpets, our uncomfortable sofa (it wasn’t) the colour of the walls, the way the walls clashed with the curtains (they didn�
��t) the heat in the room (it was too hot) and the shirt Dan was wearing (I’d always quite liked him in it). Within three minutes, Baby had peed on my new plant. I don't have the best of luck with plants anyway, but I'm sure the dog pee didn't help the plant's life expectancy.
This routine has continued almost every night in the three months since we moved in. In comes my mum, on goes Emmerdale, Corrie or Eastenders, and out comes Mum’s opinion of everything from the wattage of our light bulbs to the colour of Dan’s socks.
CHAPTER 2
"You’re looking a little podgy tonight, Daniel," Mum says as she sits down on the sofa the next night.
"Mum!" I shriek. "You can’t go around saying things like that to people."
"Oh nonsense, dear. Besides, Daniel doesn’t mind, he’s practically family, isn’t he?"
"Now, seriously." She turns back to him. "Have you thought about trying Weight Watchers? My friend Tabitha lost six pounds with their points system."
Poor Dan smiles and nods pleasantly as my mum launches into a detailed and lengthy explanation of Weight Watchers, which eventually ends with her promising to bring their registration phone number the next time she pops round, and me wishing we’d moved to a different continent.
"Stop it, Mother," I interject. "Dan doesn’t need to lose any weight. Unlike your little dog over there. Haven’t you noticed Baby’s been looking a little fat lately?"
"Oh dear, I did notice his jumpers have seemed a little snug recently, but I assumed they’d shrunk in the wash. Do you really think he needs to lose weight?"
I shrug. I only said it to get her off the topic of Dan. I honestly don’t care whether her little pee machine needs to lose a few pounds.
"He does look a little podgy," Dan says with a gleam in his eye. I know he’s only saying it to wind her up.
"Oh no, don’t say that," Mum says worriedly. "Maybe I’ve been feeding him too many biscuits." Said by most people, this would generally mean dog biscuits, but said by my mother it means that Baby the Yorkie regularly snacks on digestives, malted milks and custard creams. All of which are fed to him on a fork while sitting at the dinner table. I kid you not. This is one spoilt dog. One spoilt fat dog.
After Mum leaves, I sit down beside Dan and he puts an arm around me.
"Don’t pay any attention to her, babe." I lean up to kiss his cheek. "You look perfect to me."
He shrugs. "She's right. I snack at the restaurant all the time. It must be showing."
"It's not. Besides, you're a chef. If you never ate what you cooked, you wouldn't be a very good chef, would you?"
"So being fat means I'm a good chef?"
"You're not fat."
"She just really doesn’t like me, does she?" He leans his head against mine.
"It’s not that," I sigh. "It’s just…"
What? What is it?
"I have no idea," I finish lamely.
And I don't. I don't know what Mum's problem with Dan is. Dan is lovely. I mean, okay, he's a little bit predictable, and maybe some people (read: my friend Jenni) might think he's a bit boring. And no, our relationship isn't exactly a bodice-ripping passion-filled love affair that you read about in musty old books, but it's reliable and very nice. I was single for a long time before I met Dan, and it's really good to have someone to share your life with.
Something has to be done, and sharpish.
It is while watching the film Clueless that night that an idea comes to me. Dan and I are lying in bed, he’s reading the latest Harlan Coben, while I’m watching the Alicia Silverstone classic that defined my teenage years on TV.
While watching Cher and Dionne trying to fix up Mr. Hall and Miss Geist, I realise what I have to do. I sit bolt upright in bed as it hits me.
"Dan, that’s it." I turn to face him, grinning. "My mum is miserable so she wants everybody else to be miserable too. We have to figure out a way to make her sublimely happy."
"Gee, that should be easy."
"A man, Dan. She needs a man."
Dan looks at me like I’ve gone insane. "There isn’t a man on earth who would put up with that," he says finally.
I whack him lightly on the arm. "She’s not that bad."
"Okay, but remember vampires can’t go outside in daylight."
"Ha, ha, ha. I’m serious, Dan. She has it in for you because we have what she doesn’t. If we can get her a man, if we can make it so that she’s happy with her own life, then she won’t be half as interested in ours."
Dan closes his book and fixes me with his if-you-say-so look.
"Babe," he finally says. "How on earth do you intend to find a man for her? You’ll never find one good enough. It took her six months to choose her living room curtains. How is she ever going to choose a boyfriend?"
"She was happy once," I say. "With my father. She could be happy again."
"The only male she’ll ever have room for in her life is that damn dog."
"Okay, so I’ll find someone who likes animals. Someone who’ll understand that the dog comes first."
"I don’t think Saints-R-Us is open on a Sunday," Dan quips.
"Or maybe Baby is just a replacement for a man, and if we find her a real person to love, the dog won’t be so important."
Dan has a wide range of looks reserved for every occasion and this time I get his you-are-insane gaze. He doesn’t need to say anything. He thinks I’m crazy.
"This is a good idea," I tell him. "I’m going to look into this."
"Look into going to sleep." He wraps his arms around me and leans over to switch the TV off.
I snuggle down next to Dan but I can’t get the idea out of my mind. My brain whirrs long after Dan is snoring quietly next to me. I know I’ve hit on a good idea: I just don’t know where to start.
CHAPTER 3
The next morning I get up long before Dan, firing up my laptop and trying to make some notes.
My mum is forty-nine-years old—fifty in six months' time. I will be hung, drawn and quartered if I mention that in public. Not that I don't understand. I'm far too close to being thirty for my liking either.
What kind of a man would my mum like? I know her celebrities of choice include Kevin Costner, Bryan Adams and Martin Clunes. (No, really. Martin Clunes.) How can I translate that into real life? I decide that the connecting factor is height and fair-coloured hair. But perhaps looks aren’t all that important in the right guy. Oh well, it’s a start if nothing else. So far I’m looking for a tall, fifty-ish blond guy. With blue eyes. I add that to the list.
After being married once, and with so many years off the dating scene, this can’t be just any man. This has to be the perfect man. And I’m going to find him for her.
I haven’t even begun thinking about where I’m going to unearth such a man. I’m a twenty-nine year old woman, I don’t know a lot of fifty-something men. In fact, I don’t know any at all.
"Whatcha doing?" Dan asks, making me jump.
I spin around in my chair. "Trying to figure out what kind of a guy my mum would fall for."
Dan almost laughs, but he stops himself just in time when he sees the serious look on my face.
"Are you really doing this?"
"Uh huh," I nod.
"Well, good luck with that."
"Jeez, Dan, some help wouldn't go amiss."
"You're never going to find a man good enough for her."
I glare at him.
He rolls his eyes and sits down next to me anyway.
"What have you got so far?"
"Kevin Costner’s long-lost twin brother?"
Dan laughs. "Okay, so," he reads the screen over my shoulder. "Elevated, pale, blue-eyed OAP."
"Dan!" I slap at his thigh. "I need ideas, not a stand up comedian. And fifty is hardly old age pensioner status."
"Sorry. Right. Okay then. He has to like animals."
I type that in. "And he has to have animals. Otherwise he won’t understand why my mother treats her dog better than she treats her children."
"Good," Dan says. "And walking. She’s always walking, right?"
I nod. "Oh, and swimming. She likes swimming. And he has to drive because she doesn’t, and unless you want to be taking her shopping for the rest of your life, he needs a car."
"A good car," Dan adds. "Jeez, would I like to get out of that Friday Night Torture." He’s referring to what we call our Friday nights—not to my mother’s knowledge of course—when every Friday night after work, Dan and I drive my mother down to Sainsbury’s for her weekly grocery shopping. While that, in itself, isn’t such a problem, the fact that my mum is the most irritating person to shop with in the world has turned Friday nights into absolute torture. Dan and I will whiz round with a basket each and load our stuff into the back seat of the car because we know that it won't fit into the boot by the time Mum has finished. We rush back in, only to find Mum still in the first aisle, trying to decide between raspberry or vanilla scented air freshener.
Every week we hope she’ll be a bit quicker, and every week she seems to take longer. God forbid when they have offers on. Dan and I could go out for a three-course meal and return only to find her halfway through her shopping list. A shopping list that she never reads and usually forgets half the things on it anyway. This always ends up resulting in an inevitable eight o'clock on a Saturday morning call that goes something along the lines of, "Mackenzie, can you be a dear and pop up to Tesco for me, I forgot to get sweetcorn." I have no idea what she does with all the food she buys. Every Friday she gets enough to feed a small army, and yet there's only her and Baby - the canine waste disposal machine.
"He has to watch soaps," Dan says. "Or at least, not mind her watching them."
"Like she’d give up Eastenders for anybody."
I type frantically. My list of Ideal Man Attributes is growing fast.
"He has to have the patience of a saint," I say to Dan. "She’s the most indecisive woman I’ve ever known, so he has to be patient and good at decision making."
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