by Fiona Perrin
‘Hey, I really want to help if I can,’ Sunil said with the same warm smile. ‘I can tell you have a very special family, Callie. Look, I’ll make these calls and then maybe I could call in on my way home? Nine-ish? Maybe we could have a beer or something?’
OH. Of course, he was just being friendly. He didn’t mean any more than to come round and have a chat to a mother of one of the kids he was involved with. This was just the way woke blokes in their mid-thirties acted. My next thought was that I didn’t have any beer. And should it be Becks or one of those fruity ones with names that suggested sunshine?
I tried to look as if this were a very run-of-the-mill event indeed, thank you. I moved quickly to the door. ‘Great, see you later,’ I squeaked.
I scuttled off across the hall. I was having a beer with a man because he was helping me. The kids were what I needed to be focused on, just as I’d told Patrick. I was a stupid, deluded woman, who was so unused to male company that I didn’t know how to act any more around men.
But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small smile on my face.
17
That evening, I felt a sudden need to do some body maintenance as well as wanting to stalk my kids round the house, checking they were OK every minute. Cooking wasn’t high on my priorities.
Particularly not high on that list was cooking for my folks as well as my kids, but Lois and Lorca appeared at 6.30 p.m., simply shuffling into their places at the table. Wilf came in just after that – he’d been with them on another recce trip to Yoof and a Roof, ready for their trial, and walked his bike back alongside the old people.
‘It’s cool, you know, Cal,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Pete’s got some decks so we all played a few tunes.’
‘Choooooooo-ooooons,’ chorused my parents, and fell about laughing. ‘Not tunes, Cal, but chooooons.’
‘That’s what Pete called them,’ Wilf said. ‘I’m going back to have another go with him tomorrow when Lois and Lorca move in.’ Ah, yes, the joy of moving my folks into a home – that was what the weekend comprised.
I carried on rootling around at the back of the freezer, wondering what the hell everyone could eat that would take the least amount of time. My frozen hand eventually alighted on two plastic tubs of pre-cooked bolognese sauce – well, that was what it said on the sticker in my own handwriting. I couldn’t remember when I’d had this fabulously fortuitous Nigella-like moment, but I figured they’d still be good to eat. I put them in a massive pan to gently defrost and then heat.
‘I’m going to check on Lily and have a shower before dinner.’ Mum, Dad and Wilf all looked aghast at me, as if the idea of having to wait for half an hour for food was a complete disaster. Bodger joined in, like a mimic dog.
I ignored them, and they went back to talking about mixing desks and how inspiring Pete was. I decided not to ask if no one else had detected a tang of dead seafood emanating from this veritable guru.
Lily was sitting at her desk but looked at me when I put my head round the door and said, ‘I’ve just had a power nap for twenty minutes. I’m going to do another thirty then have another break.’
‘Dinner will be ready then,’ I said, relieved, and went into the bathroom. There I attacked my armpits, the worst of my bikini line and my legs with a Bic razor. I’d never been a particularly hairy person but, after so many months of neglect, this felt like deforesting the Amazon jungle. It had probably been the previous summer, when I was last wearing shorts and a vest, that I’d bothered with any of it.
I washed my hair and combed conditioner through it. Then I exfoliated my face, emerging feeling like a raw, smaller, smoother version of myself. Definitely not with the makeover Marv had prescribed, but better. I put jeans on, a stripy top and Converse, not daring to put make-up on as the kids would accuse me of ‘grafting’ on Sunil.
Dinner that night was good – no one seemed to notice that the bolognese was from an uncertain date in the past; Lily joined in with the conversation; Wilf seemed to have put his departure to one side and, if Petra had said something about him moving to her house before they emigrated, he didn’t mention it. Daisy and Mum had a lively debate about the Labour party – I say debate as they both agreed with one another but couldn’t stop arguing for long enough to realise it. I ate a few spoonfuls of spaghetti, my stomach small and unwelcoming in the face of all the worry of the last few days and the fact that there was an attractive, soulful, younger man coming round for a beer in a couple of hours.
After we cleared up, Wilf said he was going to walk round to my folks’ house with them. My dad had been going on about having an old record player somewhere and Wilf wanted to see if he could get it going. As he went out of the door ahead of her, I could see Mum’s face looking haunted by the idea of losing him. Just for a moment she looked up and her eyes met mine – I tried to signal that I knew exactly how she felt.
Daisy said she was going to her friend’s house in the next street to revise. Then Lily surprised me by saying, ‘Aiden texted me – he said it might be cool to have the night off and watch a movie. What do you think?’
‘It’s a great idea,’ I said. ‘The doctor said you need to be chilling out as much as possible.’ Aiden lived a few streets away and I knew his parents would also keep an eye out for Lily. ‘Make sure you’re back not too late.’
As the girls left together in the light spring night, it occurred to me that there were no kids to comment on whether I put on mascara and lipstick before Sunil came round – or changed my very casual top into one that was a little more feminine and attractive…
I spent the next hour yanking hair from my eyebrows and experimenting with contouring, which the girls had assured me was just clever use of highlighter and bronzer. Despite copying tips from a YouTube video, narrated by a nasal-voiced woman, I just ended up looking stripy. I washed it all off again, carefully checking my neck for stray brown blobs.
I also put on a floral shirt, which, tucked into my jeans and with boots rather than Converse, I convinced myself should be the sort of look a woman of my age would wear, while pottering picturesquely round her own kitchen. I stood on my bed and peered into the mirror to check whether I looked like, as Marv would say, ‘mutton dressed as mutton’ (bad – meaning a middle-aged woman who dressed her age) or ‘mutton dressed as beef’ (also bad – a middle-aged woman who was dressed aggressively, say in punky or gothic clothes) or ‘mutton dressed as sheep’ (also bad – too many jumpers on) or the more usual ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ (also bad but, in Marv’s book, the most forgivable because at least you were fighting the natural condition of ageing).
The house was eerily quiet. I texted all three kids to make sure they were OK. Both Daisy and Lily sent back slightly bored affirmatives with Lily adding:
stop worrying!
Wilf frequently didn’t answer his phone anyway.
Sunil would either cancel or be late, I told myself as I wandered around the ground floor, picking up shoes and jumpers and books – the daily mess of family life. But at 8.55 p.m., five minutes ahead of when he’d said he’d be there, there was a rap at the back door.
*
It was very helpful that I was a trained professional. I mean, if I hadn’t had quite a lot of experience in how to maintain composure in all circumstances, the moment I saw Sunil, it would have been really easy to be jolted by the spark of pure desire and leap straight into his arms, turning the spark into a fire of never-ending lust…
But, of course, he was here to talk about building resilience in children, not to rip off my clothes, push me up against the kitchen counter and kiss me into nothingness. Despite everything that was going on, the glorious, beautiful sight of him, his hair dark and shiny above his face, which smiled at me so warmly, was enough to turn me – a grown woman who hadn’t thought about sex for months or years probably – into jelly: the melty kind that had already been out of the fridge too long.
Anyway, I welcomed him in, took his jacket, asked him in an embarrass
ed voice what kind of beer he wanted, gave him a bottle of Becks, found the bottle opener, opened one for me too and invited him to sit down.
Sunil surprised me, though, then. Instead of sitting down at the kitchen table, he seemed to take my invitation to ‘sit down’, with a waft of my arm, as a gesture that meant: ‘go through to the sitting room and sit on the sofa’. He started in the direction of the door and, before I knew it, was seated in one corner. I followed tentatively.
It seemed so intimate.
‘So lovely to be in a real family home,’ he said, sinking back into the cushions and slurping his beer appreciatively. I sat balanced on the edge of the sofa at the other end. ‘Ah, that’s great, I needed a beer.’
‘It’s so kind of you to come,’ I said, but it came out in a kind of stifled whisper. I added, ‘Very kind,’ but that came out in a loud squawk. He didn’t seem to mind, just carried on smiling at me.
But then he looked serious. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have good news from the lawyer I spoke to…’ he started, his voice thick with concern. I nodded resignedly. I hadn’t expected anything else. ‘He said you were welcome to contact him direct, but he said the way he understood the legal position was the same as you’d already been advised.’
‘I don’t have a leg to stand on,’ I said.
He nodded, grimacing. ‘He said it was an unusual situation and the best hope you had was to appeal to the father. Or try to get the kid a voice.’
‘I can’t ask him to stand up to his father like that,’ I said.
‘Not everyone would put the child first – it’s very brave,’ Sunil said and reached out a hand towards me. It was as if he wanted to place it on my arm in a comforting way, but the gap on the sofa between us was quite large. I moved a little bit closer with a small laugh.
‘The most he’s said is why does he have to go? Which I think is reasonable,’ I said.
‘I think you’re being incredible.’ Sunil looked at me with admiration. I felt myself blossom under his gaze. He’d called me incredible. It felt like quite a long time since I’d been called anything like that.
I giggled but quickly returned to despair. ‘Oh, I don’t know what to do.’
‘It sounds like trying to reopen a dialogue with Wilf’s dad is the best answer,’ Sunil said. ‘Sorry there isn’t anything more I can suggest.’
‘I’ll go to the mediation session,’ I said resignedly.
Sunil reached out his arm again and this time it met my upper arm. I instinctively tensed it so that, if he could feel the shape of it through my shirt, it would be more Michelle Obama than Bat Wing Betty. I hoped he couldn’t feel my blood speeding round my veins like haemoglobin in a racing car.
As his warm hand left my arm, he looked down at his beer – it was almost empty. I leapt to my feet and said, ‘Let me get you another one,’ rushing into the kitchen before he could say, ‘No, I’ve got to go.’
He didn’t seem as if he was going anywhere though. He grinned agreement – oh, the beauty of his lovely mouth – and seemed to settle another few inches into the cushions.
‘So,’ he said, when I’d come back with another Becks. ‘How’s Lily?’
I registered that with all the kids he had to keep an eye out for, he’d remembered the names of mine, and then told him about how she’d been better after school and had gone to her boyfriend’s house for the evening.
He nodded approvingly. ‘That’s just what she needs now – normality and chill-out time. But do get her to come along to the resilience workshop.’
‘I’ll try. Maybe the attack was a bit of a wake-up call.’ I shuddered at the thought of any more of them.
‘She’s lucky to have a mum like you,’ Sunil said. I turned warmly to him and started to ask him questions about his work. He became animated and passionate about improving the lives and chances of young people. There was always more to do to get the funding required, pressure the government to put adolescents and young people at the heart of its agenda.
I nodded. God, he was so principled. He made me – a person who contributed precisely nothing of a positive political nature to the world – seem very inadequate.
Oh, the intensity though, when he talked. It was so enthralling to be in the presence of such goodness and such energy. And it was emanating from someone of considerable physical gorgeousness. I felt myself lulled by his voice and let my eyes roam a little over the width of his torso in its blue shirt, still crisp despite it being the end of the day. As he talked there was a nine o’clock shadow on his chin, but it just made him look more rugged. How fabulous would this man look in the morning, stretching on the pillow beside me in the dawn sunshine?
I gave myself a metaphorical slap. There was absolutely no way that this piece of delicious XY chromosome-ness was ever going to end up in my bed. He’d have a string of gorgeous, young, socially noble women waiting to contribute politically as well as sexually with him. And I should be listening rapt to his conversation instead of staring at him with hidden lust. I tuned in again.
‘And with austerity for so many years, we’re only creating an even worse childhood legacy to come,’ Sunil was saying.
I slurped my beer and realised that he’d again finished his. ‘Do you want another…?’
But just then, there was the noise of the back door clanking open. It was like a bright electric shock into the calm of our evening together. I jumped, and Sunil sat back from where he’d been leaning towards me.
Wilf came quickly through the kitchen and appeared in the doorway. ‘Oh!’ he said as he saw us sitting on the sofa together. ‘Sorry, didn’t know you had friends round.’
‘Hey, man.’ Sunil got up, went towards Wilf and put out his fist. Wilf awkwardly put up his too for a small bump. ‘I’m from Resilient, you know, the youth group Daisy goes to. Great to meet you, man.’
Wilf looked at him suspiciously and Bodger looked up from where, until now, he’d been sleeping peacefully beside the sofa, and joined in.
‘Hey,’ he mumbled.
‘I was just hanging with Cal here and talking about youth resilience,’ Sunil went on smoothly.
‘Right.’
‘We’re having a session next Tuesday, if you fancy coming along?’
‘Yeah, maybe.’ Wilf nodded, but he didn’t smile.
‘Got to go now,’ Sunil said. ‘Maybe see you soon then, Cal?’
‘I will be there.’ I nodded, smiling hard at him.
I saw him to the front door. Bodger followed, slowly sniffing the air behind him. ‘So great to hang out with you.’
I smiled about as broadly as it was possible to grin. He gave me a big smile back and went off into the night. I did a little jig in the hallway as the door closed.
But behind me, in my reflection as I spun round, there was Wilf, his face pale and undecided.
‘Did you find the record player?’ I asked immediately.
‘Yeah,’ he mumbled and headed for the stairs. I heard his bedroom door slam.
18
Saturday: Wilf got up and seemed to be wearing his headphones as a barrier against the world. Or maybe it was just me. He gave me a sad smile while he spooned cornflakes into his mouth.
‘Hey,’ I said, indicating that he should lift up an earphone, so I could talk to him. ‘What are you up to, today?’
‘Going to see Dad,’ he said, in a small voice, ‘then I’m going to hang with Pete. Aren’t Lois and Lorca moving in today?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But only for the trial.’ I hated the idea of him sitting around with Ralph and Petra plotting the future, but what could I do?
Wilf got up and put his bowl in the dishwasher without even being asked and put out his hand to open the door. ‘See you later then, prob,’ he said and was gone with a swish of his bike. He was clear that he didn’t want to spend any time with me. Bodger looked at me disapprovingly.
‘I don’t see why I’m subject to your judgement, dog,’ I said. ‘All I did was have a beer with a man.�
� Did everyone else have dogs that acted as their conscience or was it just me? I was sure whatever weird freak-out Wilf was having was a by-product of his anger about moving to South Africa. Why, then, had he chosen to go to Ralph’s house again?
*
I told Lily to take regular rest breaks. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll go to Nando’s. No argument. Aiden can come,’ I banged on Daisy’s door. ‘Out of bed, madam.’ She grunted but I’m pretty sure rolled over and went straight back to sleep.
As I came out of the house to walk Bodger to the park, Patrick appeared, very nonchalantly, from number 36. ‘Hi, Callie,’ he called in a neighbourly way, and looked as if him coming out of his door at exactly the same time as me was a complete surprise.
‘Hello.’ Bodger looked very pleased to see him and wagged his runty tail enthusiastically.
‘How are you doing?’
‘Good, thanks. Just hanging on in until the exams.’
He propped himself against his fence post in a conversational way. I slowed down, just to be polite, remembering that I’d agreed to be friends with him.
‘You know that once she’s done one it won’t seem so terrifying,’ Patrick said. I suppose he was a teacher. Today he looked more like one, but a weekend version, in jeans and a plain red jumper. It wasn’t a bad look.
I needed to get on with the day. ‘Come on, Bodger, we need to get you walked if we are going to move Nan and Grandad today.’ I realised I was talking like a person who thought humans were actually biologically related to dogs.
‘Can I help with that?’ Patrick leapt in. ‘Moving boxes and stuff? I mean, I am quite strong.’ He flexed his muscles in a way that made him look, despite the fact that he was obviously quite fit, really weedy. It was difficult not to laugh. He persisted. ‘You know what it’s like when you move somewhere new – you want to spend your weekends doing usual stuff. And now we’re friends…’ he winked ‘… that’s the sort of normal thing friends help with.’