Oh, here comes Roy, back from the stacks and a little breathless. Thank God. *Roy says that I put my glasses in the drawer next to the Aga.
‘WHAT? I don’t need to know where my glasses are, Roy. That was earlier. What I would now like you to focus on is retrieving this woman’s name.’
‘By the way,’ the woman says, ‘I’m so glad Emily can come to Taylor Swift.’
**‘It’s Lizzy Knowles’s mum,’ says Roy. ‘You know, mum of that little cow that sent Emily’s bum everywhere. Cynthia Knowles.’
Good job, Roy!
I’ve only met Cynthia a couple of times. After a school concert when both our daughters sang in the choir. And then at one of those charity coffee mornings where a well-bred mummy provides chocolate chip cookies no one eats, because we’re all fasting or eating protein only, and you pay her back by buying some jewellery you don’t want, and can’t really afford, but it’s rude not to because the mummy, who is married to Someone in The City, is trying to find something she can Do For Herself. So, you hand over your money to this hugely wealthy woman, which she then gives to charity, when she could perfectly well have written a large cheque. Oh, and nine days later the ‘silver’ earrings you bought at the coffee morning turn green and pus starts coming out of your left earlobe.
‘We’ll take them to the O2, of course,’ Cynthia is saying. ‘Christopher will drive them down in the Land Rover. Lizzy wants Korean BBQ afterwards. She said Emily’s a definite. Did she mention the ticket price?’
You know what? Meeting Cynthia, mother of the girl who has hurt my daughter so hideously, I don’t feel like being polite. My inner maternal dragon would prefer to breathe fire at her and scorch those perfect caramel highlights to cinders. Does she even know about the belfie that Lizzy accidentally-on-purpose shared with the whole school and all the paedophiles of England? Or are we playing Let’s Pretend I Have Perfect Children, which is a favourite game of women like Cynthia because to admit otherwise would be to admit their whole life has been a tragic waste of time?
‘Yes, that’s absolutely fine,’ I lie. How much can it be? More than £50? £60? No wonder poor Em was so frantic to get our agreement at breakfast. She’d already accepted Lizzy’s invitation.
‘And I hear you’re on the waiting list for our brainy book group, Kate?’ Cynthia continues. ‘Serena said that you’d expressed an interest. We like to think we’re a cut above your average book group. Usually choose one of the classics. Very occasionally a novel by a living author. Booker Prize shortlist. No chick lit. Such a waste of time, all that shopping and silly women.’
‘Yes, isn’t it.’ Who does Cynthia Knowles with her carrier bags: two L.K. Bennett, one John Lewis and one Hotel Chocolat think she is – Anna sodding Karenina?
‘Such luck bumping into you. Just tell Emily to give Lizzy a cheque for ninety pounds for the ticket.’
Ninety pounds! Make strenuous effort not to let jaw drop or emit squeak of dismay.
‘I think Lizzy just wants Topshop vouchers for her birthday,’ she goes on. ‘No presents per se. Good luck with the job hunting!’
Cynthia stalks off to the far corner of the café to join a group of the yummiest mummies imaginable, taking her skinny latte and most of my morale with her. Why do women like her get to me? Probably because they get to play domestic goddesses on hubby’s Platinum Amex. Not a life I ever wanted – although, recently, I must admit the idea of being a kept woman has developed a certain appeal.
Bit late for that, Kate. Most of the guys who could keep you in the style to which Cynthia is accustomed are (a) on Wife Number Two or (b) picking up debt-ridden students on Sugar Daddy websites so they can rub their slack, saggy bodies on prime young flesh. Uch. For Wifey Number One, hanging onto her position is a full-time job: gym, Botox, yoga, nutritionist, even vaginoplasty to get her pre-baby pussy back so hubby’s floppy dick isn’t wanging about in a wind tunnel that three babies’ heads have passed through. No thank you.
And yet, glancing across the café at Cynthia and her gaggle of mums, I feel a corkscrew of envy in my gut. Always slightly dreaded the whole school-gate thing; in truth, I was dismissive of those women whose life revolves around coffees and playdates. But now that Ben is too old to be picked up any more, I miss the ready companionship that that ritual provided and all the pleasant, eager, worried women I could discuss my kids with. They were a bulwark against the loneliness of parenting, if only I’d known it. Anyway, need to get this magnificent CV finished. Just a few final points.
Oversaw the establishment of a major hydro site. (Weekly laundry, handwashing Rich’s pongy cycling gear so it doesn’t ‘go bobbly’.)
Provided sustainable nutritional support for staff in line with industry standards. (Always kept snacks for kids to eat in car on way home from school, thus avoiding total meltdown. At least one cooked meal a day for four people, making approximately ten thousand hot dinners in the past seven years, without any thanks or acknowledgement of what it takes to cater said dinners.)
Turned around declining private company through regular programme of cuts and aggressive streamlining to offset threat of double-dip recession. (Went on Fast Diet and started going to gym again. Hopefully on track to fit into my old office clothes.)
Strove for a consistent improvement in the bottom line. (Slightly smaller bum as a result of excruciating squats.)
If any of the above strikes you as vaguely fraudulent or unethical, well, I’m sorry, but what are the words you’d use to describe the fact that women take care of the young and the old, year in year out, and none of that work counts as skills or experience, or even work? Because women are doing it for free it is literally worthless. As Kerslaw said, we have nothing of interest to offer, except everything we do and everything we are. I am not by nature a political person, but I swear I would march to protest the vast untold work done by all the women of this world.
3.15 pm: Fighting the urge to go upstairs and sleep. Can hardly put ‘afternoon napping’ down as part of my skillset on application form, although it’s the one thing I excel at these days. Probably Perry’s fault. With my CV immensely improved (although I’m not sure I’d dare show it to my Women Returners group) I brace myself for a call to Wrothly Social Services. Sadly, it’s too early for alcohol.
‘Your call may be assessed for training purposes.’
Here we go. You know when you’ve pressed five for one department and then you’ve pressed one from the Following Range of Options, although you think you may have misheard, and that maybe you needed three? And then you’ve pressed seven for Any Other Queries, and your hopes are getting up that you might be about to interact with an actual human being, when a recorded voice says, ‘Sorry. We are experiencing a high volume of calls. Your call is important to us, please hold the line’? And the phone rings and rings and rings and you picture a cobwebby office with a skeleton sitting in a chair at a desk and the phone on the desk it rings and rings and rings? Well, that’s what it feels like to be calling Wrothly Social Services.
By now, surely everyone has figured out that these multiple options are not designed to be helpful; they are supposed to act as a deterrent whilst giving the illusion of progress and choice. Even ‘your call may be used for training purposes’ is basically a threat, telling you to behave yourself or else. A mere twenty minutes elapse until I get through to someone in the right department, who then asks if he can put me on hold while he speaks to a colleague, who may or may not have access to Barbara’s case notes. I am almost tearfully grateful for this basic courtesy.
‘Hello? Can I help you?’
The voice does not sound at all helpful. In fact, she sounds as though she may recently have graduated from a bespoke Unhelpfulness training course – the one they send American border security staff on.
I know, let’s baffle her with politeness and friendliness.
‘Good afternoon, thank you so much. It’s great to talk to an actual person.’
No response.
�
�So, I’m ringing on behalf of my mother-in-law, she has a burns injury …’
‘Barbara Shattock?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Great. Thank you so much. I spoke to my father-in-law earlier and he says that, unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding between Barbara and Erna, the carer you so kindly sent to help them.’
‘I’m afraid that your mother-in-law has been reported in connection with a possible hate crime,’ says the voice.
‘What? No. That can’t be right.’
‘Mrs Shattock racially abused one of our carers.’
‘Sorry? No. You’ve got that wrong. You don’t understand. Barbara, she’s eighty-five. She’s very confused. She’s not herself.’
‘Mrs Shattock accused her carer of not being able to speak English. At Wrothly, we take hate crime very seriously.’
‘Hang on. What hate crime? Erna is Lithuanian, isn’t she? She’s not a different race to Barbara. Do you even know what racism is?’
‘I’m not trained to answer that question,’ the voice says flatly.
‘But you’re making a very serious allegation.’
There is an icy silence into which I burble and plead: ‘I’m really sorry if there’s been a misunderstanding, but it’s simply not in Barbara’s nature to upset someone like that.’
That is a blatant lie. As long as I’ve known her, more than twenty years now, Barbara has been the princess of passive aggression, the empress of undermining. The world is full, as far as Barbara is concerned, of people who are Simply Not Up To It. The list of Simply Not Up To Its is long and ever-expanding. It includes news anchors with sloppy diction, women who ‘let themselves go’, tradesmen with dirty boots who don’t show sufficient respect to Axminster carpets, pregnant weathergirls, politicians who are ‘basically Communists’, and the fool responsible for a misprint in the Daily Telegraph crossword. A mistake in her favourite crossword and Barbara will act out the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, calling for the head of the idiot who introduced an error into Twenty-Two Across.
As the lesser of her two daughters-in-law, it was established early on that I was Simply Not Up To It. I was hardly the girl Richard’s mother hoped her son would marry and she did very little to conceal her disappointment. Every time we visited, Barbara would ask without fail, ‘Where did you get that dress/blouse/coat, Kate?’ and not in a way which indicated she wished to go out and purchase one for herself.
One Christmas, I was in the pantry looking for tinned chestnuts when I heard Barbara say to Cheryl, the preferred daughter-in-law, ‘Kate’s problem is she has no background.’
It stung, not just the snobbery, but because Barbara was right. Compared to the comfortable, well-established Shattocks, my own family had a hasty, provisional feel. We were the Beverly Hillbillies, the supermarket’s basic range, and I know Barbara sensed it from the moment Rich first took me home. Luckily, he was so in love he didn’t notice her dig at my unmanicured hands. (I’d been decorating a junk-shop chest of drawers and the residue of grey-green paint looked like dirt beneath my fingernails.) I could put up with having my family patronised, my cooking dismissed and my choice of clothes derided, but the one thing I could never forgive Barbara for is that she has always made me feel like a bad mother. And I’m not.
Yet, here I am defending Barbara to the woman from social services because Barbara is no longer in any fit state to tell this woman that she is Simply Not Up To It. Which she clearly isn’t.
‘Has it occurred to you that it might be quite upsetting if you’re an elderly lady and the person washing you is a bit rough and she can’t understand what you’re saying? Are we allowed to say that? Oh, I see, we’re not allowed to say that. Pardon me.’
Uch. When did we become this nation of hateful automatons, unable to deviate from the official script to respond to genuine need and upset? All friendliness gone now, I channel my steeliest professional self and suggest that the voice gets another carer around to help Barbara and Donald asap.
‘Otherwise, Mrs Shattock might seriously hurt herself at which point Wrothly Social Services will be obliged to comment. On the evening news.’
‘I am not trained to answer that,’ I hear the voice say, followed by the dialling tone.
Well, that went well.
To: Candy Stratton
From: Kate Reddy
Subject: Headhunter Humiliation
Hi hon, thanks for the pep talk. I did a new CV as you suggested. Might enter it for Pulitzer Prize as piece of groundbreaking, experimental fiction. It’s not really lying if you know you can do all the things you haven’t done, is it?
I’ve been going to these Women Returners meetings. Don’t laugh. They’re really sweet and it’s making me realise how much luckier I am than those who quit when they had their first baby. Desperately trying to lose weight and get myself into shape, but I’m just so damn tired and wrung out the whole time. Hard not to raid the biscuit tin when you’re knackered! Not sleeping cos of night sweats. I have hog’s bristles sprouting out of my chinny chin chin. I’m so blind I can’t read the calories on any foodstuffs, which I’m not supposed to be eating anyway as I need to get into my Thin Clothes because I gave my Fat Clothes to the charity shop the last time I lost weight and swore I would never be fat again. Plus, I need to take a nap every afternoon. I have the energy of a heavily sedated sloth.
Missed my gym session today with Conan the Barbarian because I was talking to Richard’s dad about Richard’s mum, who clearly has Alzheimer’s, but no one can face having that conversation so we are all pretending it’s fine until she burns the house down. Oh, and the council is accusing Barbara of a HATE CRIME because she didn’t like the surly, non-English-speaking ‘carer’ they sent to bathe her. Excuse me, she’s eighty fucking five! If you can’t be a difficult old bitch then, when can you be?
I never know when my period’s coming these days and I’m scared the deluge will happen when I’m out. Just like I was scared when I was 13 and my period started in the middle of a chemistry test. So I prefer to stay in and watch property-porn shows and fantasise about life in a neglected French chateau being renovated for me by Gérard Depardieu (circa Green Card, not since he got bigger than an actual chateau) with his large, capable yet tender hands, TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE.
Be honest. Does this sound like the kind of mature, together person anyone in their right mind would want to employ?
Your (VERY) old friend,
Kxx
4
GHOSTS
Women Returners. They sound like the ghosts in some horror movie, don’t they? You can practically see the trailer with that grave, apocalyptic, male Hollywood voice booming, ‘Women Returners! They’re back! Rising from the dead and rejoining the workplace! If only they can escape the Mummy’s Curse and rely on someone else to take the lasagne out of the freezer and give Grandma her statins!’
I don’t know about ghosts, but some of the women in our Returners group definitely have a haunted look about them. Haunted by the careers they gave up – in some cases so many years ago that they might as well be a different person altogether. Haunted by all those Might Have Beens. Sally, sitting on my right today, used to work for a big Spanish bank in Fenchurch Street. A small, sunken person in an outsize cable-knit cardigan, Sally only has to say Santander or Banco de España in a perfect Spanish accent and you glimpse the spirited, flirtatious person that she must have been twenty years ago, when she was running her own department with a squad of Juans and Julios doing her bidding. Sally’s nostalgia for those days is so acute that sometimes I can’t bear to watch the dormouse-bright eyes in that lined face. During the group’s first few meetings, Sally was shy, almost painfully reticent, swathed in an unseasonally warm fleece when the rest of us were still in linen trousers and summer dresses.
Kaylie, the group leader – a large, expansive Californian with a wardrobe built exclusively around turquoise and orange (to be fair, it probably worked better in San Diego than it does in East Anglia) – did
her best to draw Sally out. By Week Four, Sally volunteered that once her two sons and a daughter had flown the nest (Antonia graduated two years ago; Spanish and History at Royal Holloway), she did think it would be ‘good to get back out there’. Sally said she got a part-time job, which she still has, working as a cashier at Lloyds Bank in the scuzziest street in the pretty, prosperous market town where we meet.
‘You know the one, it’s all charity shops and doner kebabs,’ Sally said. We nodded politely, but we didn’t know it.
Over time, the branch manager began to notice that Sally was unusually competent. (She played down her years in London on her application because she was worried it might look boastful or intimidating and they wouldn’t employ her.) The manager gave her more responsibility: totting up at the end of the day, handling foreign currency. They get a lot of Turkish lira conversions because of the kebab shops.
‘I suppose it is a bit beneath me,’ she told the group, sounding not in the least bit convinced that anything was beneath her, except possibly the ground, ‘but I like my colleagues. We have a laugh. It gets me out of the house. And now that Mike is retired …’
‘You’d like to be at home more?’ Kaylie beamed her best facilitator smile.
‘Oh, no,’ said Sally quickly, ‘now that Mike is retired I want to be at home less. Drives me potty having him in my kitchen.’
‘I know how you feel,’ said Andrea. ‘I sometimes think I’ll go mad if I don’t get out of the house.’ Andrea Griffin joined the graduate training scheme of one of the UK’s big four accountancy firms straight from university. By the time she was thirty-seven, she’d made partner. Not long after, her husband John had his accident; a lorry smashed into his car on a fogbound M11. Luckily the helicopter was available – it’s the same one Prince William pilots now – and they flew him straight to the head injuries unit at St George’s. Took John a year to learn to talk again.
‘The first words that came back to him were the filthiest swear words you can imagine,’ Andrea said. Her freckly chest flushed a little at the thought of her husband, a decent sort who used to say ‘Blimey’ and ‘Well I never!’ at moments of great surprise, reduced to a scowling wreck who told his mother-in-law to go fuck herself. The insurance company finally paid up in January, after a ten-year legal battle, and now that they can afford 24/7 care for John, Andrea can relinquish some of her responsibilities. ‘Started to think it might be nice to use my brain again,’ she said when Kaylie asked us to share what we hoped to get out of the Returners workshop. ‘If I’ve still got a brain,’ Andrea laughed. ‘The jury’s still out on that one. It’s all a bit daunting, to be honest.’
How Hard Can It Be? Page 7