How to Make Time for Me

by Fiona Perrin

  HOW TO MAKE TIME FOR ME

  HOW TO MAKE TIME FOR ME

  Fiona Perrin

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.ariafiction.com

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Fiona Perrin, 2019

  The moral right of Fiona Perrin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781788547345

  Cover Design © Charlotte Abrams-Simpson

  Aria

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.ariafiction.com

  To my wonderful Mum

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Become an Aria Addict

  1

  I was on my way to wine. That was my first thought when I got knocked off my feet by the Deliveroo rider.

  It was a Friday night in April, darkening at six, and I was out of the station, striding with a Sainsbury’s bag of food and my handbag, heavy with all the crap you needed with a full-on-job and even-more-full-on-family.

  I was cold and knackered but smiling because I was listening to loud rock music (classic Stone Roses, if you’re interested) on my headphones, and I could almost smell and feel the warm home waiting for me.

  There’d be life in it – even if that was just three teenagers who’d look up for about a second from their phones/laptops/other devices to acknowledge that I was there. I’d cook pasta while they lay around doing absolutely nothing. Eventually, we’d all sit around the kitchen table and I’d tell them I was sending them to a Bootcamp for the Perennially Lazy and they’d say, ‘Oh, FFS,’* – the acronym, because swearing was not allowed – and I’d say: ‘What is the eleventh commandment?’ and they’d chorus back: ‘Thou shalt not take the piss out of thy mother.’ And all that time there’d be wine, and it would be allowed because it was Friday.

  The green-blue and black of the cyclist’s uniform came from nowhere as I stepped onto the zebra crossing. As he hit me, I felt myself fly upwards in the air, along with my bag for life, earphones and handbag: a firework comprised of a forty-three-year-old woman, dinner for four and wires, tissues, purse and make-up.

  I instinctively put my arms out as I hit the striped tarmac. And then, just for a moment, everything went dark.

  When I came to – and it was probably just a few seconds later – there was an overwhelming smell of Thai green curry. The food-delivery cyclist was looking down at me, still holding his bike. I could see headlights from cars stopped behind him and hear him shouting, ‘Stop, there’s been an accident,’ in a deep, panicked voice. Then down at me, ‘Oh, my God, are you all right?’

  I heard car doors slam and the sound of people running towards us. Everything was very woozy, but I was awake and trying to sit up.

  He said, ‘I just didn’t see you, I’m so sorry, I just didn’t see you…’

  That was when I started to laugh and cry at the same time as I looked up at him from the ground. ‘Ha, ha,’ I said, ‘no one sees me any more.’

  *

  I think I passed out again. When I opened my eyes, the cyclist was crouched down beside me. He was about my age, blondish hair poking from his helmet, from what I could see through my blur.

  ‘Curry,’ I said. ‘Lemongrass.’

  ‘Oh, hurrah, you’ve opened your eyes,’ he said. Relief lit up his face – it was a pleasant face, from where I was lying on the tarmac: blue eyes, skin pink from the exertion of cycling, even if he did seem a bit older than your usual food-delivery rider. Behind him was a giant billboard that greeted people coming out of the station: ‘Welcome to Seymour Hill’, the name of our market town thirty miles north of London. In front of that was a small circle of people peering down at me; someone was saying an ambulance was on its way.

  ‘Yes, I was delivering it to some people on…’ He looked around and I could see cartons of green food along with my pasta and, in my peripheral vision, a smashed bottle of carbonara sauce. ‘Seriously, I’m so sorry, but we’re going to get you help now. It’s all my fault, I just didn’t see you.’ His eyes were still desperate, a couple of feet from my face.

  Ha, ha, I’m the Invisible Woman. This made me laugh again – a mad sort of cackle that didn’t sound as if it was coming from me at all. You’ve had a bang on the head. You’re deranged.

  The cyclist shook his head and smiled back uncertainly. ‘I’m so glad you’re OK. Are you, do you think? I can’t move you until I know nothing’s broken.’ His voice was low and the sort that people described as English, when they meant no discernible regional accent.

  I couldn’t feel any searing pain from my body and there was no tunnel full of angels waiting to greet me, even if I had turned into a nutty old fruit loop. ‘I think I’m fine,’ I managed, but everything was a bit dreamy, as if it were happening to someone else. ‘What about the people waiting for their curry?’

  He laughed and put his black-gloved hand on my shoulder. ‘The ambulance is on its way,’ he said. ‘Do you want to sit up?’

  ‘Poor love, are you OK?’ A woman with a large Russian-style fake fur hat on crouched down beside him.

  ‘He just didn’t see me,’ I told her, and she looked at me quizzically. ‘He just didn’t see me. I’m the Invisible Woman.’ For some reason, I thought I was hilarious and was laughing again.

  ‘I came round the corner but I didn’t see anyone on the crossing…’ the cyclist started.

  I was wearing a coat with a large deep pink band at the bottom of its flared black skirt. I have a full head of brown hair. I’m no short-arse either at 5’6”. And while I’m not overweight, I’m no stick insect. That was what I was thinking rationally.

  Unfortunately, it’s not what I was saying.

  As they helped me sit up on the cold floor, I could hear myself repeating over and over again: ‘the Invisible Woman, the Invisible Woman’ and I was laughing like a drain.

  Then there was the pah-pah of an ambulance arriving.

  *

  It was clear that I wasn’t injured, just dazed and confused. I was in the back of an ambulance and a friendly paramedic
was telling me I needed to come to A & E to get checked out. The contents of my bag had been gathered up and given back to me by the lady in the hat and everything was there, including my phone, miraculously uncracked. I held my bag on my lap as my vision started to become more normal.

  From outside the white shiny doors I could hear people saying things about the lighting near the station not being good enough ‘since they fixed the road’, and the voice of the hat-lady telling someone that, ‘She keeps going on about being invisible.’

  ‘No one sees me any more, that’s the joke,’ I said to the paramedic who was strapping me into one of the ambulance chairs. I could see this other version of me – the one who’d been sideswiped by Thai green curry – but I couldn’t seem to control her. ‘I’ve lost my actual mind,’ I said. ‘Not just my mind, but my actual† one.’

  She nodded and smiled. ‘We’re going to make sure you’re OK,’ she said in a voice designed to reassure.

  ‘Do I smell of curry?’ I asked her, but she was busy plugging in something else.

  The cyclist appeared in the doorway of the ambulance. ‘I’m really, really sorry,’ he said again. ‘What can I do? Shall I come to the hospital with you?’

  I smiled at him, ‘the man who thought I was invisible,’ and bent over laughing again.

  He grinned – a kind grin – but mostly, as you’d expect, he looked confused. I was clearly mad. I’d look confused myself if I came across me.

  ‘You’ve got to let me do something to help,’ he carried on. The paramedic was preparing to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Have you got my dinner?’ I was still sane, then, because I was thinking about the kids’ dinner.

  The man handed me the Sainsbury’s bag. ‘One of the pasta packets split and the jar burst,’ he said and then started apologising again. ‘Listen, shall I bring some food later? I mean, it’s the least I can do and… Look, please, can I have your number? I want to check you’re OK.’

  ‘First you knock me down and then you want my number?’ Now I was a stand-up comic. But he looked confused again, so I rattled it off twice while he punched it into his phone and then said, ‘I live at number 42 Patchett Road.’

  The cyclist looked even more confused. ‘What a coincidence,’ he said. ‘I’ve just moved into number 36.’

  ‘Really?’ I hadn’t seen him outside in our street even though this was three doors down; I would’ve remembered a middle-aged man in Lycra.

  ‘So, we’re neighbours,’ the man went on.

  ‘You could’ve just come round to borrow a cup of sugar,’ I pointed out. ‘You didn’t need to run me over.’

  The cyclist’s face crinkled again in a smile, but the paramedic was getting impatient. ‘What’s your name, love?’

  ‘Callie,’ I said. ‘Callie Brown.’

  She signalled to the cyclist to get out of the way as she wanted to close the doors. He disappeared from view, saying, ‘I’ll get in touch later and make sure you’re OK.’

  ‘Now is there someone we should phone?’ the paramedic said. ‘Husband, partner – other responsible adult?’

  ‘None of the above,’ I said.

  She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to one side. ‘What about your parents?’

  I thought about my generally batty mum and dad – they meant well but weren’t exactly responsible adults. ‘They won’t be much help. Look, I’ll call one of my friends.’ She pressed a button to her side, which must have been a signal to the driver as the engine kicked in. ‘No blue light?’ I asked. ‘The traffic’s going to be shit.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not sure you’re an emergency,’ she said. ‘You haven’t broken anything, and you seem all there to me.’ Then she muttered to herself, ‘Apart from all this stuff about being invisible and curry.’

  *

  I was staring at a white ceiling with a halogen strip light in a curtained cubicle. A nurse with beautiful skin like polished teak, and a name badge that read ‘Maura’, was taking my blood pressure. She’d asked me to remove the jacket I was wearing to go to work and wrapped one of those rubber things round my arm over my white shirt.

  I’d messaged the kids on the family groupchat‡ just telling them that I was going to be late; there was no point worrying them.

  Daisy texted back.

  Hope you’re on the sauce. Have fun Ma!

  She spent a lot of time telling me to get a ‘like,§ social life’ and was obviously hoping I’d gone out after work.

  Lily sent me a single kiss:

  x

  I imagined her sitting at her desk with her head in a textbook, furiously studying for her GCSEs, which started in a couple of weeks. Alternatively, she’d be thinking, Hurray, Mum’s out, and getting it on with her boyfriend, Aiden. Call me a modern and progressive parent, but I’d rather she was doing the latter – she was working too hard and was really stressed lately.

  There was nothing from Wilf. But then he’d probably got his headphones plugged into his Mac, occasionally looking up at another screen as he mixed beats. Wilf was not my biological son, but I considered him my child. I’d split up with my long-term partner and his father, Ralph, a couple of years back, but he’d been going through a bit of a meltdown at the time (to put it mildly), and Wilf had stayed on with me while his dad recovered and got sober. And then afterwards, they’d needed to rebuild a very fractured father-son relationship; some of the scenes when Ralph was at his worst hadn’t been pretty. So, Wilf stayed on at our house.

  Eventually, Ralph did recover, got into healthy living, and at the gym he’d quickly met a very competitive South African named Petra (I’m not saying a word; honestly, I’ve tried really hard to like her) and, after a few months, moved to her executive home on the other side of Seymour Hill. Then, in a move that had surprised most people who knew Ralph (he wasn’t famous for making decisions or taking action) he and Petra had got married. At the time, I’d just been relieved that he was better, and someone instead of me was taking care of him.

  Wilf spent quite a bit of time at their house now but didn’t show any signs of wanting to take Ralph and Petra up on their invitations to live with them, despite her constantly buying him presents. After everything that had happened between Wilf and his dad, I thought he should make up his own mind where to live and in his own time; secretly, of course, I hoped that he would never pack up his messy bedroom and move to the other side of town. I considered him my special gift in life alongside my own girls.

  I felt a tug towards them all as I lay having my blood pressure taken. Well, them and wine. I should be at home by now with a bucket of Sauvignon Blanc. Instead, this was my Friday night.

  ‘Now, it’s Callie?’ Maura said. ‘Short for what? Caroline?’

  ‘Calypso,’ I said, embarrassed to explain as always. ‘Odd parents.’

  Maura spent a few seconds looking at the blood-pressure gauge. ‘If I was called Calypso, there’s no way I’d be shortening it. It’s a brilliant name.’

  ‘Now it’s the brand name of lemonade or something,’ I said. ‘But once it was a character in a book that my mother liked called The Camomile Lawn. Calypso was always having sex with people she wasn’t married to.’

  The bang on the head had made me overshare. Maura smiled though – this was probably pretty tame tosh for a night in A & E.

  ‘Free love?’ she drawled, arching an eyebrow. ‘Now, your blood pressure is fine, Callie. You don’t feel any pain?’

  ‘I think I’m going to have a few bruises but that’s all.’

  ‘And your vision?’

  I look around me at the yellowing walls and the nylon curtain. ‘All fine.’

  Maura wrote on a chart on a clipboard. Around me I could hear the sounds of a bustling ward: a mix of voices, whirring machines, the pad of soft shoes on the tiles.

  ‘Well, the doctor will be coming along soon to check you out.’ Maura looked at the chart again. ‘And you don’t feel confused?’

  ‘Confused?’ I said. Anno
yed about being there, numb and a bit emotional, but not confused so to speak…

  ‘Well, it says here that post the accident, you seemed confused.’

  ‘Well, I was joking a bit about…’

  ‘Says here that you kept calling yourself the “Invisible Woman”,’ said Maura, and she raised another majestic eyebrow at me. She was probably about fifty, not much older than me, but I already wished she were my mum.

  ‘It was a joke,’ I said weakly. ‘The driver kept saying he didn’t see me and… he was delivering curry.’ I looked down at my trousers. I could still smell lemongrass, but there were no signs of splatters.

  ‘The paramedics said it went all over the kerb.’ Maura cocked her head to one side and laughed. She probably laughed a lot; she had that kind of look. ‘So, what’s all this about being invisible?’

  ‘It was a joke,’ I muttered again, colouring. ‘Bang on the head.’ I was embarrassed now about causing a fuss and making a fool of myself.

  ‘Comes from somewhere, though?’ Maura looked knowingly at me. ‘You got someone to talk to?’

  ‘It was a joke,’ I managed, before a waterfall of tears rolled down my face. What was it about someone being nice to you when you felt sorry for yourself that made you blub like a baby?

  Maura was quickly beside me, rubbing my shoulder and saying, ‘Hey, come on. Maybe you’ve got a lot on. And that’s without some cyclist mowing you down.’

  ‘I was on my way home from work,’ I told her in between sobs. How long had it been since I’d cried? It felt strangely good. Cleansing and overdue. ‘Going to give the kids dinner.’

  ‘How many have you got?’

  ‘Three: a boy, fourteen, and twin girls. They’re sixteen,’ I said, as she handed me tissues. ‘Although the boy’s not mine really. His mum died ages ago, before I met his dad.’

  ‘Families are not that straightforward now, are they?’ Maura clicked a few switches. ‘Are you with him now? He’s not the twins’ dad?’

  ‘No to both questions. The girls’ dad was a bloke called Dougie – a short thing in my late twenties. I got pregnant and I wanted to keep them; he didn’t and, to be fair, had always said he was going to live back in Australia. I was a voluntary single mum.’