by Fiona Perrin
‘To twins? You’re a brave woman, Callie.’ She mimicked very believably holding two babies up to her impressive bosom. ‘Was it like two at a time? Rather you than me.’ She winked, and I had to laugh despite the tears.
‘But then I got together with Ralph and he already had Wilf and we were together until a couple of years back,’ I carried on eventually. ‘Ralph had a breakdown and became an alcoholic. He’s all right now though.’
‘You’ve been through a lot,’ Maura mused. ‘And you took on his boy?’ Her questions were gentle and distracting. She stood still now at the end of the bed and looked as if she really gave a fuck about my complicated family set-up.
‘I love him,’ I told her, and she just nodded.
‘Bet you’ve got olds to look out for too.’
I thought of Mum and Dad, who lived down the road, and stopped crying. ‘Just two extra children in their seventies. My mum is practically deaf now, poor her, and they’re both a bit strange.’ At least no in-laws that I was responsible for. That was a bonus. And Ralph no longer turned up on my doorstep broke/pissed/useless since he’d got better and married Petra. Somehow, she’d managed to keep him sober – a fact that she was very fond of passively aggressively pointing out to me, as if I still had feelings for her husband. I didn’t, I promise. And frankly, although I didn’t want him to return to his worst periods, she’d made him quite odd and boring now, like a robot in their beige home. I shook my head and concentrated on Maura. ‘What about you?’
‘I’ve got three kids, two grandchildren and three old ones,’ she said. I nodded – shit, thank God, no grandkids yet. But then she added, ‘In my house.’ She paused dramatically. ‘Sometimes some of them go back to their own places.’
She joined in with my laughing, which dried up the tears. ‘It’s all the bloody washing,’ Maura carried on. She shushed with her finger and looked around her at the curtain, mock-worried about if anyone could hear her. ‘I’m not supposed to swear in front of patients, but you try putting up with this shit. The only good thing about it is getting out of that house.’ That old female joke – I come to work to have a rest. Maura carried on. ‘All that, “do you know where my rugby socks are”, and, “can I have a twenty to go out and get wankered?” And that’s from my husband.’
She winked once more but she’d set me off again – this time more tears with my laughing.
Maura did nothing to silence me, but she stepped forward to rub my shoulders again. ‘You let it out,’ was all she said. ‘Mrs Invisible? They didn’t have her in the superheroes movies.’
‘I’m no superhero,’ I said.
‘Sometimes it feels like you have to be, though, doesn’t it?’ Maura said. She sat down on the end of the bed. ‘Where do you work, hun?’
I told her about my unbelievably pointless job running the HR team of a small car-leasing company. Well, pointless apart from it being necessary as I was economically responsible for three teenagers, a dog and, quite often, my parents.
‘Here’s to having it all,’ whispered Maura. ‘What do you think of that, Mrs Invisible? Now, haven’t you got a new man?’ She then clearly remembered that she’d been on a course on how to be more liberal because she hastily added, ‘Or a woman? Or…’
‘No man,’ I said. ‘There just doesn’t seem to be any time.’ I knew this was an excuse. But now, faced with a choice of lying on the sofa guiltily reading Grazia or doing all the plucking, waxing and trying to remember how to flirt that went with going on a date, I’d choose the couch and celebrity gossip every time.
‘You must go out? Gorgeous woman like you.’ I smiled politely at the compliment. Not gorgeous. Not any more, although I was dimly aware of a time when I’d been attractive enough to have a steady stream of lovers and lover applicants. God, it felt so long ago. Now I was a pale shadow of that confident, fun person.
‘Have you done that Match.com thing?’ Maura gestured to her head and then her pelvis. ‘Full head of hair? Bald. Six foot two? Bonsai in real life. Big cock? Can’t even see it, mister.’ I loved Maura, just loved her. She winked, getting up. ‘Well, the doc will probably say you need ibuprofen and a lie-down, but I recommend a shag.’
We laughed a bit more and then she looked reluctantly at her watch. ‘Now, I reckon the crash has made you a bit shaken, but the doc will give you the once-over, Mrs Invisible.’ She looked at me kindly; I bet her grandkids loved her.
‘I’ll be fine.’ I’ve only got the same shit going on as everyone else. A bang on the head had turned me into a temporary batshit-crazy nutjob, who cried and made unnecessary jokes and felt sorry for herself, that was all. I shook my head.
Maura nodded. ‘Look after yourself.’
Please don’t go. I need you to look after me as well as your extensive family. ‘Thank you for cheering me up.’
She blew me a kiss and disappeared round the curtain.
*
My best friend Marvin came to pick me up. He appeared in the bay from nowhere, like Mr Tumnus in Narnia, his goatee beard in a really good point. He was wearing mascara, striped black and red leggings and a floaty, theatrical coat. ‘You get knocked down, but you get up again…’ he sang tunelessly but dramatically.
‘I’m sorry, were you going out?’ I said.
‘You know damn well this is what I always look like to watch TV on a Friday night,’ Marvin replied, then, as I went to get down from the trolley bed, he rushed towards me. ‘You stay there. Now what did the doctor say?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Take co-codamol, watch out in case I puke as that means concussion. Have a kip.’
‘The lady takes to her bed.’ Marvin did his best Oscar Wilde impression. ‘You will receive visitors in the shape of me, Ajay and Abby.’ He meant our two other best friends, who we called the ‘AAs’ because they should’ve been at a meeting years ago.
He put one of his weedy arms underneath me and I pretended this would help. We hobbled along the corridor, passing all the people who were coughing or wheeling oxygen cylinders, but on their way to have a fag. I told him about the crash. ‘I went a bit nuts for a minute though,’ I said in the end.
‘What kind of nuts?’
‘I kept calling myself the Invisible Woman. It was because of how the cyclist – who turns out to be my new neighbour, by the way – kept saying that he didn’t see me. But I was deranged.’
‘You’re all right now?’
‘I just feel stupid. But then there was this nurse who was great. Told me about her family. I mean, she’s got grandkids.’
‘Oh, my God, not grandkids,’ Marvin groaned. ‘You’re already like one of those lactating animals with someone dependent hanging off every teat.’
It was the kind of joke we made from knowing each other so long but I started to cry again in the corridor. Marvin swung round and hugged me quickly. ‘Oh, God, my stupid big mouth, I’m so sorry, you know I didn’t mean it like that, Callie…’
I shuddered into his bony shoulder. ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just, you know, I feel so old and knackered and…’
‘You’re just tired,’ Marv said diplomatically.
‘I suppose it’s just what happens to you around my age.’
‘Sandwich generation,’ said Marvin. ‘You get the kids, the parents, the whole lot.’
‘All those people and yet we still make the sandwiches,’ I said, and we started towards the car park. ‘Seriously, Marv, sod getting old.’
Marvin squeezed my shoulder. ‘You’re in a rage against age. Oooh. That’s good: a rage against age. Go me.’
‘Go you,’ I said. ‘You’re a sage in my rage against age.’
‘Just a stage in your rage against age,’ Marvin went on.
‘Turn the page on your rage…’
‘I think we’re done, don’t you?’ He smiled, and we carried on down the corridor.
As we tried to work the car-park machine, Marvin asked, ‘Was he hot?’
‘Who?’ I handed him my purse.<
br />
‘The Deliveroo guy?’
‘I have no idea. He was about our age: older than your usual delivery dude and quite middle class. Maybe he’s hit hard times.’
Marvin managed to get the machine to spit out a yellow token. ‘Look what happens when Seymour Hill becomes hip.’
His point was that Deliveroo had only just set up in our town, alongside loads of other hipster stuff. Google had built a new office at the London end of our trainline and lots of millennial families had moved to leafy Seymour Hill overnight – our parks had become full of thirty-something men carrying skateboards with babies strapped to their chests in slings; we’d got a sushi bar, a craft beer shop and a vinyl record store too. I secretly approved.
*
Marvin had a date. He told me he’d texted her – Marvin was extremely camp but resolutely heterosexual – to tell her that he’d had an emergency and would be late.
We got almost to my house in his Fiat 500 before he said, ‘You look absolutely fine to me, Cal. Bit shaken, you know, but fine. Do you think, what with chatting her up on Tinder for ages… that you’d mind if I went to the date? And the kids are at home, aren’t they? Or some of them?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. We swung into our Victorian terrace. All I wanted to do was sleep. I’d tell the kids what’d happened, and they’d sort themselves out. And then I’d postpone having that bucket of wine and see if I could sleep all this off and start again tomorrow. ‘You go and get laid.’
Marvin didn’t bother to deny that this was his sole intention. ‘I love you,’ he said as he drew up. ‘I’ll come round tomorrow.’
I picked up the Sainsbury’s bag. ‘Thank you so much for coming to get me.’ We hugged. I felt the first twinges of the bruises I’d have in the morning.
It was only as I got out of the car that I realised there was someone leaning on the post by my front gate.
He carried a paper food bag and was still wearing greeny-blue and black Lycra.
‘Oh, thank God for that,’ he said in greeting. ‘You’re all right.’
‘Not gone totally fruit bat yet,’ I said as I came into the light from the lamp post. ‘Sorry about all that.’
‘It’s me who should be sorry.’ He moved forward as if he wanted to help me. ‘Look, I really hope you like sushi.’
*As this story features teenagers who frequently speak a different language from the rest of mankind, I have taken the liberty of adding footnotes throughout to help. FFS means ‘For F**k’s Sake’ and is in wide use on social media by teenagers (and many adults, actually, who should probably know better).
†Using the word ‘actual’ to reinforce a statement was a habit picked up from my teenage children. Typical use might be ‘What the Actual F**k’. You get the gist.
‡A forum typically used by my children for useful purposes such as sending me pictures of an empty fridge, to indicate how starving they were.
§‘Like’ is a completely unnecessary addition to most teenage sentences but probably one of Daisy’s most frequently used words.
2
I f-ing love sushi. Well, actually, cold, slimy, raw sashimi. Preferably salmon or tuna. And I love edamame beans. And the inside-out rolls with crab and mango.
The maki sticky rice with bits of cucumber in it, not so much. I wondered what he’d bought – expensive, raw fish or basic rolls? I looked at the food bag and it had the logo of the new sushi restaurant, No Fusion, that had opened in the high street but that I hadn’t been to yet, what with it being completely booked out by hipsters in lumberjack shirts.
I looked at him and tried to work out the likely success rate of him handing over the sushi but then buggering off to let me sleep.
‘That’s really kind of you,’ I said. His face was smiling and contrite in the darkness. It was a calm face, now that he’d stopped looking so panicked, no unnecessary facial hair and no wanky hairdo that looked as if he was trying too hard, just a mop of white stuff that had probably been crushed by his cycle helmet. He was just above average height and, in his Lycra, a bit on the skinny side for a man who was, I guessed, in his forties – but that probably came from cycling up and down the hills of our town delivering Thai curry and sushi to the people of Seymour Hill. I wondered vaguely how he’d tipped up in my street and how he could afford the home counties rental price, if he was riding a bike for a living. Then, instead, I thought about getting my hands on the sushi and getting into my house.
He could very well be a serial killer. Frankly, he’d already mowed me down on a Friday night – his creds as a potential slayer of women had been sealed when I’d faceplanted the tarmac outside the station.
Still, sushi. And probably pretty good sushi. And the kids were in. If he tried anything I could just get them to shout ‘no win, no fee’ really loudly.
But he held up the sushi bag. ‘You can just take it,’ he said, and I blushed because it was as if he’d just read my brain or I’d been saying my thoughts out loud. ‘I just wanted to say sorry again and make sure you were OK. Look, is there anything else I can do to make it up to you?’
‘I’m just exhausted,’ I said, ‘that’s all. It was an accident and it happened and…’ I took the bag of sushi and it felt satisfyingly heavy. ‘You didn’t need to do this.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ he said but looked relieved. ‘Look, I know I live just there—’ he indicated a blue door on our side of the street ‘—but can I give you my number? In case you have any lasting injuries or something?’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t sue your arse.’ I smiled.
‘That wasn’t what…’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to have my number in case…’
I couldn’t think of what other ‘in case’ there would be, but I got my phone out and he smiled.
‘My name’s Patrick,’ he said.
‘I’ll file it under Bloke in Lycra,’ I said and put that into my contacts.
‘Not the best outfit,’ he said, looking down at his uniform, which made me glance at his legs (muscly and long, if I were noticing, but I wasn’t) and then hastily look away. I wasn’t in the habit of sexually assessing any man at that point, let alone my new neighbourhood food-delivery person.
He told me his number and I punched that in too.
‘Thanks for the sushi.’ I turned to go.
‘Sorry again.’ He started to wheel his bike up the street. ‘Really glad you’re OK.’
*
You could hear the din of an epic teenage row before I’d even got halfway up the path that led round the side of our house to the back door into the kitchen. I sighed. That would be the twins, then. Daisy and Lily passionately loved each other – it came from hanging out in the same over-stretched uterus together for nine months, I guessed, one egg fertilised by the same swimming sperm – but they also argued with just as much feeling.
About pretty much anything.
‘Fuck that,’* Daisy was shouting. ‘I didn’t know there was a speed restriction on the fucking† broadband. What is this? A developing nation? Who doesn’t have super-fast broadband?’
‘But I can’t do my revision,’ Lily shouted back, only marginally more quietly.
Lugging both food bags and my handbag, I felt like turning round and going back out again but I took a deep breath and got to the back door. I could see their silhouettes behind the glass of the window, one either side of the kitchen table, two tall skinny figures, leaning forward in aggression.
As I pushed open the door, they both turned to me. Even in fury their similarities were as obvious as their differences – their faces were curled into identical snarls, even though Daisy’s face was rounder, her nose more pronounced and her eyes bigger than Lily’s more delicate, pensive features. Their hair was the same though – both refused to cut it and it fell down their backs, so dark it was almost black, almost to their bottoms.
Wilf was in the kitchen too, although he was sitting at the table with his noise-cancelling headphones on – wise, I though
t – and was prodding at his iPhone. He didn’t even seem to notice that I’d come in, although this wasn’t unusual.
The dog, Bodger – a small and, most people might say, scruffy springer spaniel of dubious hygiene – was sitting under the table with his face curled in agony. Bodger was generally a good reflection of the emotive state of my household, his face being particularly expressive for a dog.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
The twins both started talking at once.
‘Right, so I’m trying to do online past papers and it’s against the clock and the wireless was really slow and that’s because Daisy was streaming Riverdale.’‡ Lily, accusing and red in the face.
‘Apparently, we don’t have enough fucking broadband.’ Daisy, definitely in the wrong, was already fighting back.
‘Please stop swearing,’ I begged, dropping the shopping and holding onto the kitchen cabinet with one hand. The drugs from the hospital were wearing off – I could feel my headache coming back with a vengeance, sharp and throbbing at my temples.
I held up my hand. They both took no notice.
‘So, her watching some crap TV show is more important than my education.’
‘It’s Riverdale! Everyone’s watching it. Literally everyone. It’s, like, social death§ not to have watched it.’
‘Social death? You’re such a drama queen.’
Bodger let out a small moan; Wilf was oblivious.
‘Please shut up,’ I said less quietly, holding my hand to my head.
Wilf looked up then and, seeing me, he smiled his lovely lopsided grin. ‘Hi, Cal,’ he said extra loudly as he was wearing headphones. It hurt my head, but I smiled back, and his dark hair flopped into his eyes. He was still wearing his school shirt and blazer, tie knot so loose it was halfway down his chest. He removed the headphones and said more quietly, ‘I know you’re not a feeding machine, but is there any dinner?’