How to Make Time for Me

by Fiona Perrin

  It had never occurred to me that she would want to move Wilf to a whole different country. Or that Ralph would ever have thought about it either.

  I read on:

  but provides sufficient time for you to emotionally prepare for the departure.

  How could I emotionally prepare? And what about Wilf? How was he supposed to emotionally prepare?

  It also recognises that this is the appropriate time in Wilf’s education to make the move, giving him two years to prepare for his secondary school examinations under the SA system.

  Christ. As if they would even think about his education. I wasn’t even sure that Ralph knew what he was choosing in his GCSE options. It was me who went to the school briefings and helped him fill in the forms, trying to find a way he could do music tech as well as drama. The timing would be nothing to do with Wilf’s education.

  This had to be down to Petra – and I’d clearly underestimated her as being a slightly strange, but ultimately harmless do-gooder, who got a kick out of turning my ex-partner into a reformed character.

  When she first got together with Ralph, my reaction, along with Marv, Abby and Ajay, had been ‘What the F**k?’ She had a sleek head of blonde hair and wore very efficient block-colour trouser suits – as if she were going to one day become Hilary Clinton – and she worked as a corporate lawyer somewhere in London. What did she see in feckless, scruffy, bohemian Ralph? But the truth was that, after a couple of years when we’d all played a part in collecting him from whatever bar he was passed out in, or trying to protect the kids from seeing the worst of his drunken excesses, we were just glad that someone else was helping him. And Petra had managed to get him to stay sober and out of trouble. He’d even started up his graphic design business again. Then eventually he’d asked Wilf to be his best man at his wedding – a simple thing with very few guests at the town hall. Petra, I’d thought, despite really not liking her at all, was generally, in her determination to fix broken people like Ralph, a force for good. Well, I’d got that wrong. Very wrong indeed.

  Mr and Mrs Colesdown trust that suitable ongoing visiting rights should be established between you and Wilf on an annual basis and regularly via Skype or a similar platform.

  What? I’d see him once a year? Pick him up from the plane they’d put him on, hardly recognising him because he’d have grown? And we’d use Skype. As if that made up for seeing him sitting at the kitchen table with his headphones on, eating a bowl of cereal.

  I bit my hand while I read on.

  Mr and Mrs Colesdown believe that the use of a solicitor in the case provides for appropriate third-party arbitration but trust that this will not be necessary, given their right to assert Mr Colesdown’s parental responsibility and rights in the case of Wilf.

  Ralph certainly had rights. I’d never adopted Wilf when we were together – to do that we’d have had to get married. That was out of the question in the beginning as we never had any money. And after the early years together, I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry Ralph and I think he was relieved. I became more of a carer than a partner when he was really drinking, very sad that I couldn’t seem to help him, but also focused hard on looking after the kids. When we eventually split up, I was very glad I hadn’t married him. But that meant that Ralph was Wilf’s father and Petra was his stepmother and I was… well, acting in loco parentis or whatever it was the lawyer had called it.

  I must have some legal leg to stand on, then, I thought in desperation. And what about Wilf? Didn’t he have a right to say what he wanted to do? I knew he would hate to leave me.

  My headache was succumbing to the drugs I’d swallowed but there was no escaping the new tension that was stiffening every bone in my bruised body.

  I thought about the girls, who considered him their quite annoying and smelly sibling, but who could barely remember a time when he hadn’t been their wingman. They called him ‘Bro’ and he called them ‘One’ (Daisy) and ‘Two’ (Lily). They’d grown up together and would all protect each other from anything, despite it being very, very uncool to express affection for each other out loud. What about the effect on Lily, already so raw from whatever was going on in her head? With Wilf gone there’d be an empty seat at that kitchen table, so maddeningly full of life.

  I had to be able to fight this. I was a strong and capable woman.

  I turned off my phone and rolled over into my pillow. There were noises from the kids and my folks still occasionally coming up the stairs. Laughter. I could hear the noise of Mum and Dad eventually slowly shuffling out of the back door, which banged with a click I knew so well.

  I was shaking with cold despite the heat of my duvet and the dark of the room. Why couldn’t Ralph go to South Africa if he wanted to be with Petra but leave Wilf behind? Petra didn’t really want Wilf; I was sure of that, deep down. And Ralph loved his son deeply, of course, but had been happy to let me have the lion’s share of parenting. Wilf could fly out and see him and he could visit, and I’d look after him, and he would be stable and…

  My best bet was to make Ralph and Petra see this, I thought as the drugs and drama of the day took over. I’d make them understand.

  Knocked out by life as well as a cyclist, I fell into sleep. Tomorrow I’d sort it all out.

  4

  I woke up the next morning because something was rustling round in my bedroom. I opened one super-heavy eye, still deep in delirium, and there, in the shafts of bright morning light coming around the curtains, creeping across to my chest of drawers with an exaggerated tiptoe, was the unmistakable shape of Daisy.

  ‘Ummpppfffhhh, I can see you, madam,’ I managed.

  ‘Oh,’ she tried to laugh, ‘but I’ve got no knickers and—’

  ‘You’ve loads of clean ones. Get your own bloody pants,’ I hissed. Daisy frequently stole my underwear rather than look through the pile of clean washing I would have put on her bed a couple of days back, which would now be mixed up with the fetid heap of books, clothes and general teenage debris that was knee-deep on her bedroom floor. It was not unusual for me to get out of the shower wet, rushing for work, and open my drawer to find myself completely out of knickers, due to my dear, dear daughters.

  ‘But I’m late for the meeting,’ she said, her hand still going for the drawer. She meant the Saturday morning meeting of the local youth charity, which was called GenZ.* She loved it, talking politics with other young people who were ‘woke’† and occasionally they went on a march, normally to raise awareness of something really peripheral like saving Madagascan otters or the inalienable right to communicate at school through only dolphin song.

  ‘Well, go commando,’ I said, rolling over onto my pillow and becoming freshly aware of my bruised body. ‘No one will know if you wear a real skirt.’ She was wearing something that looked like a long jumper, which came just past her arse. ‘Or trousers. Actual trousers that cover your legs.’

  ‘It’s because of my dress that I need your knickers,’ she said. ‘Big black ones.’ This was one of my rules – the non-negotiable wearing of boy short pants with any miniskirts – and I knew she’d won one over on me.

  I couldn’t be bothered to fight on, sighed and shut my eye again: ‘All I want are my own knickers, just for me.’ This was a frequent refrain.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ asked Daisy, rustling away in my drawer. As I tried to answer her it came back – not the pain in my body or the dull throb of my head, but, with a slightly delayed wham, the knowledge that Ralph and Petra wanted to take Wilf away from me. I gulped back the lump in my throat.

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ I said brightly. ‘What’s the meeting about today?’ Maybe if I put her off knowing what was going on with her brother, I could put off having to face it myself.

  ‘Youth mental health,’ said Daisy. Oh, something useful for once. ‘We’ve got someone coming from Resilient, who’s going to run a programme in the town to make teenagers better able to cope with being part of the most pressured generation ever.’

  I wa
sn’t exactly sure what these pressures were for Daisy – she was popular, social and attractive and didn’t seem fazed by anything, but her sister was a different ball game altogether. I was also impressed: Resilient was a national charity that had hit the headlines by getting famous people from all walks of life – musicians, politicians, actors – to make a film talking about their own struggles with mental health as teenagers. ‘That sounds really interesting. Can’t you take Lily?’

  ‘She said she’s got too much revising to do.’ Daisy slammed the drawer – noise, ouch. ‘I’m going for coffee afterwards and a party tonight, remember?’

  ‘Revision, madam,’ I said, hopelessly. ‘Your exams start soon.’ But she was gone, my knickers in her hand, pretending she didn’t hear me.

  *

  ‘Why does everything have to f-ing beep?’ I groaned as I went into the kitchen a few minutes later. Someone, astonishingly, had put the dishwasher on and it was reminding me very loudly, about every ten seconds, that it was finished with a shrill, repetitive beep. I kicked it pathetically with my slippered foot and then pushed the ‘off’ button with my fist.

  Wilf was sitting at the kitchen table prodding away at his Mac, headphones on. As it was Saturday, he was wearing a T-shirt with an obscure DJ’s name on it with his blue and white scarf wrapped round his neck; I made a mental note to wash it one day when he stopped wearing it for a minute. Bodger had his head on Wilf’s knee: even the dog was going to miss him. I wanted to rush over and hug all the blood out of him as his head bobbed ever so slightly along with the music, but instead, I just stood and stared at him as if by doing so I could make him stay in our kitchen, safe from the world forever. I’ll fight this, I told him silently as I flicked the kettle switch.

  It was the smell of coffee, and me sitting down at the table opposite him, that finally made him sit up and pull off one headphone, smile his wonky grin – so like his dad – and say, ‘Hey, Cal.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t look injured or anything.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘There’s a purple one here…’ I lifted a corner of my long fringe, where there was a quite impressive bruise the size of a small tangerine, tender to my touch, but which was going to be easily covered by make-up and hair. I showed him my left shin too, rolling up my pyjama trousers. ‘They’re like that all up this side.’

  ‘Man,’ said Wilf. ‘You need to stay in bed all day, Cal.’

  ‘What are you up to?’ I said. Don’t say you’re going to your Dad and Petra’s.

  ‘Going to the vinyl shop then jamming in Jowan’s garage,’ Wilf said, looking as if this was his nirvana. ‘Then pizza tonight at his sleepover. You remembered that I’m staying round at his?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Have you recorded anything yet that I can listen to, you and Jowan?’ I said this while hoping that he wouldn’t offer to play me a track – it was one up from the dishwasher beeping in terms of harmony.

  ‘We’ve nearly got a new one.’ Wilf’s face lit up. He gently pushed Bodger’s head off his leg, picked up the cereal bowl beside him and then, seeing me look at him, made for the dishwasher. On opening it he looked relieved to find out it was full and lobbed his bowl into the sink as usual.

  ‘How’s your dad?’ I pushed gently. Although Wilf refused to talk about it, Ralph’s breakdown had hurt him very much.

  ‘He’s OK,’ said Wilf.

  ‘What’s he up to? Got much work?’

  ‘Something about finishing some jobs off.’ Wilf shrugged. ‘He’s got a new coat, though, that Petra got him for his birthday. Quite flashy.’

  I nodded. We both silently acknowledged that his dad, who’d been borderline hobo in his darkest days of drunkenness, and always a bit ‘I’m with the band’ in his dress and looks, had sharpened up his act since Petra had come along. Now he sometimes looked nearly conventional, but the shiny end of conventional, as if she’d polished him with Pledge and a good duster.

  He grimaced though. ‘She said she’d get me something, but it was a bit roadman,‡ so I said I’d rather have a new microphone.’

  ‘It’s not your birthday for ages,’ I said lightly.

  ‘Petra got a bonus or something.’ Wilf shrugged. ‘See you tomorrow, Cal, hope you feel better,’ and he was gone.

  I waited until I’d heard his bike go down the side passage before I banged the table with my fist. They were trying to win Wilf over with more presents. Very expensive presents when it wasn’t Christmas or his birthday.

  I went to have a shower, thinking about when I’d met Ralph. He’d sat down by me at a school concert, coming in the back door of the hall, late like me, and being forced to sit on the added-on row of chairs reserved for tardy parents, right at the back. He was panting but I felt only sympathy – the mad dash to the school concert was something I knew only too well. I moved over slightly but I didn’t look up – I was too busy wondering how I was going to get through listening to the Year 3 Grade 1 violins and recorders, play another number. This time it seemed to be vaguely recognisable as Madonna’s ‘Holiday’, which Daisy and Lily had been practising for a week or two, but with additional full-on screeches and plenty of bum notes.

  I must have clenched my teeth and clutched my chair extra hard because he looked at me through the gloom of the hall and grinned, rolling his eyes.

  It was interpretative dance next from Year 4 and I had to bite the insides of my face as they came on in leotards tacked with long pieces of green chiffon and wafted (the better dancers) or clunked (those who were never really going to have moves) around the stage pretending to be the sea. He seemed to be shaking beside me, but I couldn’t look at him or I was going to lose it. Year 5 did a mash-up of Rolling Stones songs next with plenty of wannabe Jaggers, probably coached by their dads.

  During the cheering that followed I glanced at him. He was clapping as enthusiastically as the rest. He had overlong brown hair and a sheepskin jacket that had probably never seen a dry-cleaner’s. In profile his nose was straight and long; his forehead crinkled with his mouth as he smiled.

  At the end, the head congratulated the kids on their hard work and told us to wait in the foyer for them. The man beside me stood up, turned to me and said, ‘Those violins,’ and bent over laughing until I was snorting away with him. His voice had a hint of the artist.

  ‘Mine were in the recorders,’ I told him. ‘The rehearsals have been hell.’ I picked up my bag and went with him into the queue.

  His face fell as we shuffled forward together. ‘I missed my son – he’s in Year 1. I ran all the way, but I missed it.’

  Oh, poor him. Fancy having tried that hard and still missing his young son sing. ‘It was good. They sang—’

  ‘Abba, I know. We’ve been practising. His favourite was Waterloo. I don’t know what to tell him.’ He looked stricken. ‘I got held up at work and then…’

  ‘It happens to all of us,’ I said. ‘You have two choices – tell him the truth or tell him you were at the back and he was brilliant. They really were.’

  ‘I can’t lie to him,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well, then, I’ll tell him how good he was,’ I said, and he looked at me and smiled.

  So that was how I met Wilf, a tiny version of his dad, as he came in a line with all his classmates excited to see the pleasure on their parents’ faces. He looked up to see the man beside me and gave a grin that sloped to one side with something between shyness and irrepressibility and, as soon as he was able to, ran the few feet to his dad and grabbed his legs.

  The man bent down and, putting his arms round him, said something in his ear. And for a tiny moment the smile on his face receded but then, as if he was used to having to deal with bad things, it came back, and he glanced shyly up at me.

  ‘I thought you were absolutely brilliant,’ I said and tried to give him a high five. He missed but came back to try again and eventually his tiny palm met mine. ‘Waterloo was the best bit for me. Were you in the front row or s
econd?’

  ‘Front,’ said Wilf with a hint of pride.

  ‘What’s your name? I need to look out for you when you’re famous.’

  ‘Wilf,’ he said. ‘Not short for Wilfred. Just Wilf.’

  ‘I’m Callie,’ I said, not bothering to tell him that that was short for something.

  ‘And I’m Ralph,’ said the man beside me.

  *

  As I got out of the shower, still deep in this memory, my phone rang from where I’d tossed it on the bed. Bloke in Lycra. I sighed but wrapped a towel round me and answered.

  ‘Hello? Callie?’

  ‘Yes, BiL,’ I said.

  ‘My name’s Patrick, not Bill, but never mind.’

  ‘It’s because of the Bloke in Lycra, that I stored your number in on my phone.’

  ‘You can call me whatever you like, but it may take me a while to answer to Bill. What with actually being called Patrick.’

  I hmmed for a while but said nothing. I did have stuff to do and while I needed to be polite to my new neighbour it didn’t warrant that much effort. Still, he was very solicitous.

  ‘Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were still feeling all right after last night.’

  ‘Few bruises, that’s all.’

  ‘And what about…?’

  ‘You mean am I still crazy?’

  ‘Your words, not mine. But are you still feeling invisible?’

  ‘Only to my immediate family of children and old people,’ I said. ‘I haven’t ventured out into the world yet today.’

  ‘How can you be invisible to your own children? How many of them, anyway?’

  ‘Three,’ I sighed. ‘They loved the sushi, by the way.’

  ‘If I’d known, I’d have bought more,’ he said in a voice that sounded as if he meant it. ‘I can’t get over what happened. I haven’t been doing this gig very long.’

  I didn’t want to ask why a forty-something man was fetching other people’s dinner for a living, so I hmmmed again.