by Fiona Perrin
‘I’ve got savings too,’ Ajay said and then bitterly added, ‘Raul didn’t take it all.’ Ajay had split up with his long-term love, Raul, a few months previously, in one of the most acrimonious splits you could imagine – all broken windows at six in the morning, clothes piled in dustbin liners on the small front garden of the flat they’d bought together. Now they were arguing over who owned it.
‘You need all that for the flat,’ I said. ‘But thank you.’
Marv didn’t offer me any money simply because he rarely had any. Marv was what he dismissively called ‘a retweeter’ – in actual fact, a social media manager for minor celebrities. His working day was principally moving from his bed to his kitchen table – the one we were all sitting at now – and putting out propaganda for has-beens who ‘are so Z-list they’ve been kicked out of the alphabet’.
‘But as well as a legal attack, how do we get Ralph to understand how awful he’s being? Petra’s brainwashed him.’
‘I know, right?’ said Ajay. ‘I saw them in Waitrose and he looked so clean and her trolley was full of superfoods.’
‘Ralph is now made of blueberries and kale,’ Marv said with disgust. ‘And quinoa.’ He pronounced it kwinoah.
‘Is that how you say it? I never say it out loud in case it makes me sound like a twat.’
‘Yeah, kwinoah,’ Abby confirmed. ‘And they haven’t said anything to Wilf yet?’
‘I made them promise they’d give me a few days,’ I said. Marv poured me another large glass of wine and went to the fridge to get another bottle. Ajay reached out for his fourth cheese straw. I grabbed one too, just to make sure he knew that I was on his case, but he didn’t seem to notice, just carried on munching away.
‘I can go and talk to Ralph,’ Marv went on. ‘I’ll do it on Monday. I’ll text him and invite myself for a coffee. He can’t really say no to that.’
‘Well, he can ignore the text,’ I said. ‘It’s not like he’s that great at communication. You’d better just go round there and lurk until you see him.’
‘I’m good at lurking,’ Marv pointed out and we saw no reason to disagree with him.
Over the next two hours, we got rambunctiously drunk. We ripped Petra apart first, sending up her shrill voice and her precise ways.
‘She’ll reach out to you,’ I groaned.
‘And socialise the results of her thinking,’ Abby said. ‘That’s a new one at work – sharing information becomes “socialising” it.’ She downed the rest of her glass and ate another cheese straw.
It was at that point that Ajay also tried to reach out for another. ‘No way, Jose.’ Marv pulled the plate away. ‘You’ve had your four, you greedy bastard.’
‘Have I?’ He feigned innocence.
We moved on to hearing about Marv’s date the night before, as we opened bottle number four. I thought about the horror of the hangover that was coming my way in the morning but then figured that I was probably too drunk to escape it now.
‘She was absolutely gorgeous – lives a few miles away, really athletic,’ Marvin started.
‘Then why are you already talking about her in the past tense?’ I despaired of Marvin ever finding someone who lasted more than a few dates.
‘There was a bit of an embarrassment when her false eyelashes caught in my beard and just came off.’
‘Yuck, like having spiders on your face?’ Abby asked.
‘It was a bit of a passion killer,’ Marv agreed. ‘But she was all upset about it – said that no one ever saw her without her lashes on. After that she wouldn’t let me look at her face, so we tried to… improvise… but we’d kind of lost it.’
God, it felt good to have time out from what was going on in my life.
Daisy and then Lily texted that they were home and going to bed. This was the rule – you had to text when you got in. I messaged Wilf to find out if he was having fun at the sleepover and he texted back:
Yeah, good.
‘So, I think we should play a game now,’ Marv said. He was always the instigator of games – particularly ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’. One of us would choose someone to ‘snog’ and Marv would go on for the next two hours about it. ‘But I always think of Ed Miliband as talking as if he has an over-sized tongue?’ or, ‘I can’t believe you’d go there with Mary Berry.’ That kind of thing.
So now we all groaned but Marvin ignored us. ‘It’s a new one. It’s called “Who’d be on your team in the face of a zombie apocalypse?”’
‘Who are you allowed to have?’ Abby wanted to know the rules of engagement.
‘Well, anyone that you want, but your team has to be two famous people and then one person you know in the room.’
‘But that means some of us won’t get picked each time,’ I said.
‘It’s called life, Cal, and it’s not fair,’ Marv said. ‘We’re all big enough and strong enough…’
‘All right,’ I said. They were always accusing me of being too soft.
‘So, you have to pick them and tell us who is in on your team and why,’ Marv continued. ‘Ultimately, we have to decide on whose team would beat off the zombies and survive.’
‘Very dystopian.’ Ajay looked keen.
‘I’ll start,’ Marv went on, ‘because I’ve been able to think about it for longer. So, mine would be Kim Kardashian, as she would distract the zombies and then she could turn around and the zombies would bounce off her arse.’
We nodded, and he went on. ‘And then I’d also have Boadicea. I mean, she’s got form.’
‘And one of those chariots with knives coming out of the wheels.’ Abby approved.
‘And you, of course,’ Marv said, turning to her. ‘Abby’s just the kind of kick-arse woman you want on your team in the face of a zombie apocalypse.’
Ajay nodded. ‘So, yours is an all-female action squad. Nice.’
Abby looked mildly pleased about being part of it. ‘Goals,’ she said. ‘Right, mine would be Ajay as he is a secretly greedy bastard and would fight like a beast to make sure we were eating.’
This made sense. ‘And I’d be a mean fighter.’ We all waved our wine glasses at her in agreement. ‘Then my celebrities would be people who are unafraid in the face of danger. Like Vin Diesel. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger.’
‘Pretty standard boring choices there, Abs,’ said Ajay.
‘All right, let’s hear you be so original,’ she said huffily.
‘Easy. My celebs would be people who were clever enough to find a way to defeat the zombies without direct confrontation. Amal Clooney, natch.’
We all sighed because we hadn’t come up with Amal. We adored her and in recent years had turned our standard question in the face of any decision-making from, ‘So what would Beyoncé do?’ to, ‘What would Amal do?’
‘Then, I’d have Steven Hawking,’ Ajay continued.
Marv considered for a minute. ‘I think you’re allowed dead people,’ he said.
‘Marv had Boadicea. So, I think I’m good with Steven.’
‘Which one of us though?’
‘You,’ Ajay said without hesitation. ‘You’re a devious little shit who’d come up with a way to charm the shit out of the zombies.’
‘Hmmm.’ I tried not to feel too outraged. ‘What about me? Why wouldn’t any of you pick me to face into the zombies?’
They seemed, through my drunken blur, to be sharing a moment. Marv picked up my hand and said in a gentle voice, ‘I mean, it’s not really your thing, is it?’
‘I kind of think you’d be there,’ Ajay continued, ‘but, you know, with more of a back-seat role. Making the tea or something.’ Abby looked horrified for a second, but then she couldn’t stop herself and burst out laughing, getting louder as the full impact of what Ajay had just said obviously registered on my face.
‘Sorry,’ I spluttered. ‘Did you just say that in the face of a zombie apocalypse, I’d be making the tea?’
‘Don’t take it the wrong way or anything.’
How was
it possible not to take this the wrong way? ‘Making the tea?’ I asked again in outrage. ‘Seriously, that’s all you’d think I’d be up to?’
‘He’s winding you up.’ But Abby was laughing and laughing, and Marvin was joining in. I felt every bone in my feminist body, probably fuelled by drink, respond with rage.
‘It’d be great tea,’ Ajay went on with a completely straight face. ‘Nice and strong, with just the right amount of milk.’
‘That’s so mean of you,’ I said and, although I found myself laughing with them at this point, it did hurt. Was that what they really thought of me? That I’d be in the background and in a support role in the face of imminent danger? Invisible, my drunken head said. Invisible.
Marv caught my eye as he stopped laughing. He was remembering the state of me in A & E. ‘Back off, Ajay, she’s not in the right mood.’
‘Only teasing.’ Ajay held my hand.
‘I can’t believe I’m getting upset about my hypothetical role in an event that’s never going to happen.’
‘You can have my last cheese straw if you forgive me,’ Ajay said, which meant that we all forgot about a game where the mythical walking dead were coming to take over the world and started going on about how he was a greedy bastard again.
*
It was midnight when I got to my house and I’m not proud to say I wobbled up the path to the back door, over-enthusiastically shushing myself to make sure that I was quiet. Teenagers can be remarkably judgemental about their parents, considering that they spend a lot of time desperately trying to do the things we get up to – like get drunk at a good night out with their mates. This was the kind of deep thought running through my brain when I nearly tripped over a small pastel-coloured carrier bag on the doorstep.
Bending down, I picked it up to see what was in it. It certainly looked like a gift – it was pink, and the bag was made of expensive logo-less paper. Inside was a cardboard box – the sort you got in posh patisseries. Ah, probably a gift from a boy to Daisy.
But there was a small card on top of the box and it clearly read: ‘Callie’ and underneath it said:
Hope you’re feeling better, from a Bloke-newly-called-Bill.
Ah, another guilt offering from the Deliveroo rider. Still, at least he knew that the way to my heart was through my stomach – even if the old adage was only supposed to apply to men. And he’d gone to the new funky late-night bakery near the church to get this box for me – I recognised the posh hipster pinkness. I worried briefly about him being able to afford it but then I picked up the bag and it smelt of warm pastries. Lifting the lid, I could see four beautiful pastry shapes covered in sugar.
I put them on the top shelf of the medicine cupboard so that anyone getting up unnaturally early wouldn’t eat them all. Then I wobbled my way up the stairs with a clear aim of sleeping for a very long time.
*
But it was 4 a.m. when I woke, my head throbbing from the wine. I gulped down the glass of water by my bed in three slugs and then got up to go and get more from the bathroom tap.
The Fear came fast and furious as I climbed back into bed. Even while I knew that the extreme paranoia surging round my capillaries was caused by drinking too much while I was miserable, it wasn’t going anywhere. I gripped my head as I listened to my own brain doing me in.
What if Wilf – I thought about him on the floor in his sleeping bag at his friend’s sleepover with a rush of love – wanted to go to Cape Town and have a new start with his dad?
Next came the familiar worries about Lily. Should I take her to a doctor to discuss her obvious anxiety? How did I find ways to make her more resilient? I should ask Daisy about the talk she’d been to.
I longed for the days when my kids were so young that you always understood all their emotions – simply because when they were sad or angry they cried and could be cuddled better; when they were happy, they laughed and ran around with joy.
I rolled over in my bed, trying to make the feelings go away, but my headache and self-loathing came with me. And look, a whole half a bed that was empty and had been ever since I’d split up with Ralph.
For a moment, I thought about the twins’ dad and how young and brave I’d been when I’d met him. I’d been in my late twenties; he’d been in London on a working visa from Australia. We hadn’t fallen madly in love but we’d definitely had fun and when I’d found out I was pregnant – one of those 1 per cent who still got pregnant while following the contraceptive instructions exactly – I’d wanted them very much indeed and it hadn’t occurred to me to be scared. I’d chosen to keep the babies; Dougie had made it clear he was going back down under and, while he would help pay for them, kids weren’t part of his plans. I’d moved back to Seymour Hill to be near my folks, full of energy and courage now: willing single mother, career woman, and still young and eager for life. Then eventually I’d met Ralph and Wilf.
Now I was ugly and old, and it was only going to get worse. I pulled at my neck – it was impossible to ignore that it had grown a turkey-like saggy bit at the front. My face was descending too, with extra bits of skin slightly flapping under my jaw, and the crow’s feet round my eyes were turning into big bird footprints.
My fearful head went on obsessively: if you had a man you’d have someone to help you now. But the last thing I’d wanted for the last few years was a man, the more reasonable part of my early morning brain countered – I hadn’t had the time or the energy.
But in the meantime, they’d stopped thinking about me. I wondered how long it was since I’d been chatted up or flirted with. There was the guy outside the Tube at work who always shouted, ‘Cheer up, gorgeous,’ when he was sober enough as I passed at the end of the day – but I wasn’t sure that homeless suitors counted.
Even Ajay thought I was so background that I was only good for making the tea in the face of a zombie apocalypse. The whole world seemed to think I no longer counted or mattered.
Oh, The Fear! I shook my sore head from side to side and remembered how stupid and paranoid I could be at 4 a.m. with a liver trying to process too much wine. And it was inevitable that I would wake with the worry of Wilf and lie here, trying to work out what to do. But what if I’d become so ineffectual that I was incapable of helping him? I rubbed my eyes furiously as tears of self-pity started to flood onto my pillow. Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t going to help.
Getting my shit together – that was what mattered.
8
Abby was as good as her word and by Sunday evening had arranged for me to speak on the phone to a solicitor friend. He was called Dominic and it was easy to tell that, while he felt sorry for my situation, he didn’t think I had a leg to stand on. I was hiding in my bedroom and speaking very quietly as the kids were downstairs.
‘The problem is, Callie,’ he said after I’d given him a precis of the situation, ‘that you didn’t marry your ex-partner or adopt his son. And you tell me that the living arrangement with Wilf has always been informal?’
‘Well, yes, his father and I lived with each other for six years, but we never got round to being married. And then when his father was ill, Wilf stayed on with me, and he asked to stay even when his dad recently married. He thinks of me and my children as his family.’
‘And he’s fourteen, you say? A judge will take his wishes into consideration, but the problem is that it seems to be that the only person in this situation with parental responsibility is your ex-partner.’
‘So, his new wife has no responsibility either?’
‘No, not unless she adopts Wilf,’ Dominic went on. He was more or less just reinforcing what I’d learned about our situation online, but the idea of Petra trying to become more officially Wilf’s mother than me sent a sharp new jab of pain through me. ‘But that would be a provocative gesture and not one that she would probably go near unless the child really wanted it.’
‘But what if Wilf simply says he’s not going to Cape Town?’ Even as I said it, I knew that unless this wa
s what Wilf came up with himself, I could never beg him to stand up to his father.
‘Well, it would count for quite a lot, but there would have to be a special court order and that would be highly unusual,’ said Dominic. ‘Sorry, when Abby told me what was happening, I did tell her that on the face of it I wouldn’t be able to give you good news.’
‘But could you act as my lawyer, you know, if I paid the proper fees?’
‘I couldn’t take your money,’ said Dominic gently. ‘Firstly, I can only advise you that any lawyer taking on your case should recognise that it has little hope of success. So, I can clarify your position and so on, but there’s no need to give me any money. Not as a friend of Abby’s.’
I thanked him profusely and he went on about how I had to be realistic about my chances before he said anxiously, ‘Is Abby a close friend of yours? Will you tell her I was as helpful as I could be?’
Ah, one of Abby’s long list of admirers. One who didn’t know where he stood at all with her because she showed so little of her feelings. I told him I would absolutely tell Abby how helpful he’d been and thanked him again before I put the phone down in abject despair.
*
Downstairs, our sitting room, which used to seem spacious when the kids were smaller, now seemed to be overcrowded with teenagers. Aiden and Lily were in one corner of the sofa, their arms round each other; they’d probably been snogging but had stopped at the sound of my footsteps on the stairs. Aiden’s tattoo of a bird – probably an eagle – that rose from the back of his T-shirt was just visible over the back of the sofa. I knew it was one of many, having met him a few times on our landing in his pants on the way to the bathroom, when he’d stayed over on the floor in Wilf’s room. He’d got some quite feminine roses across the bottom of his back and some Eastern symbols on his arms.