How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

I should have thought of this before. Attempt rapid mental arithmetic but brain feels like fudge. (‘Help me, please, Roy. How old are my kids?’)

  ‘So. Emily. Emily, she’s my daughter and she is eleven. Yes, she’s eleven. And Benjamin, that’s my son, he will be, he will be eight next birthday.’ I tell Jay-B their ages with what I hope is a proud maternal smile, rather than a look of blind panic.

  ‘It’s high time I got back to work. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck in.’

  Phew. The lie comes more easily than I imagined, almost as easily as it did when I was an undercover working mother in this office all those years ago, trying to act like I didn’t have kids at all.

  Well, you know what that doctor said. Use it or lose it.

  2.30 pm: First meeting with the whole team. Chance to impress. Eleven guys around the table, all spraying ideas, and two women (me and Alice). With his quiff and his head cocked to one side, Jay-B looks like a cross between Tobey Maguire and a quizzical parrot.

  ‘Yeah, thanks, Troy. Was there something you wanted to contribute, Kate? Just in case some of you guys don’t know, this is Kate Reddy, our newbie. Kate will be covering while Arabella’s off on maternity. Sorry, Kate, please shoot.’

  The thing is, I went in with this really good idea I thought Jay-B might buy. But the moment we sat down my mind flicked like a switch to School Frequency, remembering I hadn’t returned the bloody form for Ben’s German exchange student. Friedrich? (‘Roy, can you please find name of the German boy coming to stay in March?’) And when it switched back to the Work Frequency three seconds later, the idea was gone. Poof! Just like that, gone.

  There I am with twelve pairs of eyes on me and I plead silently with Roy.

  ‘Please, Roy, this is our first day back at work in almost seven years. Please go and fetch me that brilliant idea I had to impress The Boy with. It’s got to be in there somewhere. Forget Friedrich.’ Christ, this Perry memory-pause is really getting me down. I need to be firing on all cylinders. ‘ROY?’

  And I just sit there like a carp out of water, mouth opening and closing. Thinking of Barbara who believes Jem the dog is still alive. Thinking of Ben’s exchange student, the one I’d forgotten. (Cedric? Yes, Cedric, I’m pretty sure.) Thinking of Conor telling me my body’s taking longer to respond because it’s older. ‘No worries.’

  ‘Sage!’ The word just pops up, from a chaos of Joely’s menopausal tea and Mum’s carpets.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ says Jay-B, not sounding the least bit apologetic. ‘What’s sage got to do with anything?’

  Take a deep breath, fight down the panic. Then, suddenly Roy, bless him, is back with the missing thought and I’m up and running: ‘Oh, you know, Warren Buffett. The Sage of Omaha. Buffet has this really great idea. Make a list of your twenty-five top goals then go through it and circle the top five and act on those. They will be the investments you really believe in.’

  ‘Like it, Kate,’ says The Boy, tapping on his phone. ‘Top Five. Joe, can you make a note of that? Top guy, Warren Buffett.’

  7.05 pm: Would anyone like to ask Mummy how her first day back at work went?

  No, fine. I understand that people have better things to do than pay homage to the breadwinner. Richard just waved at me, scooting through the kitchen on his way to the shower, after chucking a pungent Lycra top on the floor of the utility room. Emily yelled at me when I put my head round her door. Apparently, I interrupted a vital eyeliner tutorial and she got a black streak down the side of her face. Ben is in the living room playing some horrible new video game, which I don’t recognise and am quite sure I didn’t pay for. (‘Did we buy that game for him, Roy?’) The only one pleased to see me is Lenny, who practically leapt into my arms when I came through the door and has stuck by my side ever since. Sally calls him Velcro Dog. Am grateful to inspire such unqualified adoration in at least one member of the household. Later, I need to do some work, looking through client profiles so I can be on top of things if The Boy throws a question at me tomorrow. First, I need to make dinner and then it’s time for my tranquilliser of choice.

  8.39 pm: My mother rings at the precise moment I sit down to watch Downton Abbey, which I have recorded specially to unwind after work. You know, sometimes I wonder whether there is some vast global conspiracy to prevent me having a moment to myself. Perhaps my parents, in-laws and kids are all fitted with earpieces, like Carrie in Homeland: ‘Hey, looks like she’s poured herself a glass of wine and is lowering herself onto the sofa and assuming a TV-watching position. Uh-oh. Are you gonna interrupt her or am I? Over!’

  ‘Thing is, Kath, I can’t decide about the curtains. Do you think I should go for the biscuit or the sage?’

  Not this again.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum. What do you prefer?’

  ‘Well, they’re both nice, but the biscuit’s a bit washed out. It goes with everything though, doesn’t it, biscuit?’

  ‘Yes, but green is very fresh and pretty …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t like GREEN.’ My mother shouts suddenly as though an intruder had frightened her.

  ‘Okay, but you said sage was one of the options, that’s all.’

  ‘Did I? No, I don’t like green. Very bilious is green. Julie’s got oatmeal in the front room.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

  ‘Terrible. Looks like she’s made the curtains from Shredded Wheat. What do you reckon to biscuit then?’

  ‘Um … Lovely. Very, er, biscuity.’

  Gulp of wine. Although I’m on the wagon in the run-up to the college reunion, I’m permitting myself a drink tonight to celebrate first day back at work. Lower eyelids like shutter on a camera. Open them to see the Dowager Countess of Grantham pulling that face she makes before launching one of her Wildean witticisms. Maggie Smith’s mouth looks like a drawstring purse. Is that what they mean by pursed lips? Downton’s Lady Grantham is supposed to be a snobbish harridan. I like her far more than Lady Mary, a creature of ‘motiveless malignity’. Who said that? (*‘Roy? Roy? Need you to check a quote. “Motiveless malignity?” Macbeth maybe.’)

  Where was I? Oh, yes, I love Lady Grantham. She makes me think old age might be a wicked pleasure, not just decrepitude and ever more fearful forgetfulness. Like poor Barbara with all her kitchen stuff out on the worktop. Plus, unlike my mother, Lady G does not deliver punishingly long monologues about curtains and carpets.

  Suddenly, there is a squawk from the phone. ‘I don’t want that Gordon Brown taking my money,’ says my mother.

  ‘Gordon Brown isn’t the Prime Minister any more, Mum.’

  ‘Isn’t he?’

  ‘No. Gordon Brown went ages ago. Have you taken your tablets today, Mum?’

  ‘Course I have. I’m not senile yet, you know.’

  ‘I know you’re not.’ As I say it, I get a pang thinking of Barbara, who really is senile with no tablets that can fix it. ‘You’re doing brilliantly. I can’t believe how well you bounced back after the heart bypass. You know that I’ve got a new job, Mum. The one I told you about. It’s a bit scary getting back in the saddle after all these years. I feel old and clapped-out to be honest.’

  ‘Don’t go overdoing it, Kath,’ says my mother. It’s her reflex reply, always was. Don’t think she really heard what I said. Not sure she can take my worries onboard any more. Hate to think what would happen if she found out about Emily’s belfie. Her head would explode. Hell, my head is exploding!

  ‘You always were a one for doing too much,’ my mother says. ‘Do you think sage walls would go better with the new carpet?’

  Hold phone slightly away from ear, just close enough to catch my mother talking me through the many different greens in the paint chart. Centre Court Green. Sherwood Green. Olive Green. Seasick Green. Why bother? I know she’ll end up picking magnolia, the default colour of the English imagination.

  Take another gulp of wine and resume watching Downton. What I really need is a Mrs Hughes to take care of the house and Anna, that lovely ladies�
� maid. A Carson to strike a gong and summon recalcitrant children to dinner would also be fabulous. Wonderful, capable Mrs Hughes could oversee the mad manor, and she wouldn’t mind a bit that Piotr has removed the kitchen sink, so we are having to get water from the teeny basin in the cloakroom and the kettle won’t fit under the taps so you have to use a glass to fill it. Anna, meanwhile, could update my back-to-work wardrobe, sew on missing buttons, adjust the seams, etc.

  ‘Will you be wanting the blue day-dress, Milady, which makes you look like you could actually be forty-two, even though your half-century is approaching like a train? Or would you prefer the nine-year-old black Joseph jacket you can no longer button up over your once fabulous and now frankly sagging bust?’

  ‘Oh, Anna, be a dear and pull in my corset a notch.’

  ‘Yes, Milady.’

  9.31 pm: Enter Richard with another uplifting herbal brew. Instead of joining me on the sofa, he stands there regarding the TV screen with a look of immense pain.

  ‘I don’t know why you watch that rubbish, Kate,’ he says. ‘It’s a ludicrous parody of what society was like in the Twenties. Do you really think an earl would waste his time advising his cook about a memorial to her deserter nephew?’

  ‘I don’t want a documentary about Das Kapital, thanks, Rich. I want to relax. Can you get me another glass, please?’

  He takes the empty wine glass with evident distaste and hands me the ‘I’m A Feminist’ mug in exchange.

  ‘Joely says that alcohol can exacerbate menopausal symptoms.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, mood swings.’

  ‘Oh, please. Spare me the clean-living lecture.’ I expect Joely’s idea of stress is figuring out what flavour Whiskas to feed her nine cats. ‘I’m just trying to unwind after my first day back in the office which no one seems even vaguely interested in.’

  ‘Mu-um?’

  ‘Yes, darling, what is it?’ Emily comes and sits next to me, leans in close and starts twiddling my hair, wrapping a strand around her forefinger, like she used to do when she was a baby drinking her milky bottle.

  ‘Mum, Lizzy can like get me this fake ID from her sister Victoria who’s got the same hair as me, we look really similar, so I can go out with them on Friday night. Pleeaaaase, Mum.’

  Here we go. Round Twelve of the ‘Why Can’t I Get Fake ID?’ battle. Em is desperate to be in the cool group at school, but I won’t let Emily use fake ID, so she will never be allowed into clubs or the cool group. Ergo, I am an evil witch.

  ‘Darling, how many times? I said no, OK?’

  She pulls away, taking a strand of my hair with her. Owwww.

  ‘Whyyy?’

  ‘Because it’s not suitable, that’s why.’

  ‘You never think anything’s suitable.’

  ‘How about illegal?’ says Richard soothingly. ‘Mummy’s right, darling, I’m afraid underage drinking is illegal.’

  Richard now assumes his traditional role as Mother–Daughter Peacemaker on the Iran–Iraq border. It makes quite a tableau: my daughter is standing up to me, my husband’s standing up for me and, most important of all, they’re both standing in front of the bloody telly.

  ‘Will everyone please get out of the way so I can see Mr Carson? All I want to do in this world is spend one hour watching a functioning household in 1924.’

  10.33 pm: I go up to Emily’s bedroom to apologise for sticking to my principles and not letting her use fake ID to get into a club. You might think it should be the other way around, and it’s Emily who should be apologising to me, but there you would be wrong.

  Just my luck to be a mother at a time when teenagers are able to speak to their parents in a way no previous generation in history has allowed. I can remember my dad accusing me of being an ungrateful little tyke, and I probably was. But my kids have so much more to be thankful for than we did. Rich and I have observed and nurtured their fledgling emotions, taken pains to get to know them as individuals, made sure they eat a balanced diet, frequently bust the budget to deliver most requests on the Letter to Santa. We have never smacked them – well, maybe that time at Luton airport when Emily got on the luggage carousel. We have read them millions of words from carefully selected books and taken them to Suffolk and Rome and Disneyland Paris, not left them in the back of the car with a packet of smoky bacon crisps – which is what happened to Julie and me while our parents were in the pub. (The car’s cream plastic ceiling had turned saffron from Dad’s chain-smoking.) And guess what? Em and Ben grew into teenagers, just like we did, only much ruder and a lot less grateful. I mean, how is that fair?

  Emily is lying on the bed scrolling through her selfies. She won’t look at me.

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry about the ID thing, we just can’t let you break the law, it’s not safe.’

  ‘S’NOT THE ID,’ she wails. ‘So much work. I mucked up my French. Can’t cope.’

  ‘Look at me, Em. Look at me. You’ve just started a new course and that’s stressful for anybody, OK? Mummy just started a new job and I’m worried I can’t manage.’

  ‘You’re not.’ Em has stopped crying and I can tell she’s listening.

  ‘I am. Of course I am, sweetheart. I have to prove myself in front of all these new people and I haven’t done a scary job like this one for a long time, not since you and Ben were little. Do you know I’m the old lady in my office?’

  ‘You’re not old,’ Emily objects, half sitting up and her hand on my arm. ‘You’re really young for a middle-aged woman, Mummy.’

  ‘Thanks, darling. I hope I am. Are you behind with your homework, love?’

  Emily nods. I thought as much. The door between us that’s been slammed shut is briefly ajar and I must lose no time in getting inside, before she closes it again.

  ‘Well, we can fix that.’

  ‘We can’t, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, we can. Is it an essay?’

  ‘Twelfth Night. Mr Young gave me an extension, but I can’t do it. Got to get it in by Wednesday or I get detention. There’s like so much. I can’t. I caaaaaaan’t.’

  ‘OK, so how about you send me what you’ve done so far, and Mummy will take a look at that, pull it together, yes? I bet it’s really good. Then you can hand something in and you’ll be back on track. Everything will feel better once you’ve caught up, I promise, darling. Now, let’s put the phone away, shall we? It’ll keep you awake, my love, it’s bad for your brain. Can I take your phone out of the room? No. OK, so I’ll put it down here. You can see it. It’s just there. It’s charging. No, I’m not going to take it away. Sleep now. Sleep, my angel.’

  Midnight: Going through some client files to try and get myself up to speed. Brian the brewery baron sounds interesting. Arabella’s notes say that Brian’s a ‘bit of a handful’: that’s industry code for sex predator. Am dropping off, but before I sleep must look at Twelfth Night. I did the play at school so hopefully it will all come back. (‘Roy, can you get out thoughts about Shakespearean comedies for me, please?’)

  I never wanted to become one of those crazy, ambitious Sadie mothers, the kind who write their kid’s coursework when they’re in an anorexia unit.

  Just look at yourself, Kate.

  Richard always says our parents wouldn’t have had a clue what subjects we were doing at school. It’s true. Now, it feels like we’re practically taking the kids’ exams for them. Is that why everyone’s so bloody stressed? The parents are stressing the kids out because perfect grades are achievable if they behave like lab rats, negotiate the maze and open the correct boxes. The kids are stressing the parents out because they duly behave like lab rats, who open the right boxes then all end up going mad and gnawing off their own feet. No one dares be the first to ask if the experiment is worth it.

  I know I shouldn’t be doing this for her, but Emily seems so worried. If I finish this essay she’ll be back on track. It’s just this once, isn’t it?

  12.25 am: ‘So, City superwoman, you didn’t end up telling me. How
was your first day?’

  Richard has come to bed in a pair of baggy grey sweatpants. I’m guessing they’re yoga trousers. I slide Em’s copy of Twelfth Night under the duvet. Rich believes that children should ‘build resilience’; don’t think he’d approve of me writing an essay for her. Besides, I don’t want to risk another argument. He isn’t wearing anything on his top half, revealing an almost hairless, wiry torso. The hair on his head is grey and wispy. This is how a super fit man who has cycled several thousand miles and eschews all refined carbohydrates looks; like an emu having a bad experience of chemotherapy. Obviously, I bury that unkind thought as soon as I’ve had it. (Does Richard look at me and think, ‘What happened to that fit blonde I married?’ Wouldn’t blame him if he did.)

  I tell him the office was surprisingly OK. ‘Most of the guys on the desk are blanking me until I prove I won’t be a passenger, which is fine. Nice girl called Alice. My immediate boss is a cocky little hipster. Jay-B. About the same age as Ben with roughly the same social skills, but, unlike Ben, he probably has his own pedicurist. I don’t need any help with the client stuff, but some of the new technology is totally beyond me. What’s a dongle?’

  ‘Wasn’t he in The Banana Splits?’ Rich says.

  We both laugh. Encouraged by his reaction, and thinking that, to make the most of Candy’s testosterone patches, I should at least make an effort, I inch towards Rich’s side of the bed. But, with a single movement he has turned over and switched off his lamp. I place my hand on his shoulder. So cold.

  ‘M’night.’

  ‘Night.’

  Once I’m convinced he’s asleep, I retrieve Twelfth Night and start to read.

  Throughout our life together, I had always been able to reach Richard, to restore that closeness I told myself was our default setting. No matter how great the irritation, how furious the argument, all it took was a glance, an allusion to some shared story grown shiny with the retelling. The way Rich had ordered cuttlefish pasta the very first time we went out together and got black ink on his teeth, making him look like a tramp, never failed to make us laugh. Over time, the date’s hopeless lack of romance had itself become romantic, part of our mythology as a couple. This larder of memories, of sex, of life, of family that we had built up, could always be called upon in the leaner times of our relationship. The briefest of kisses on the back of his neck, his hand resting on my waist and we were our selves again, Richard ’n’ Kate, Kate ’n’ Richard. Everything we had built together over twenty years was there to be tapped into, summoned as evidence that we were made to last.