by Gill Sims
It took me a while to notice this, though, because I was happily babbling on about how clever I was, and showing him how many more apps had been sold since that first payment, which it turned out was just the money up until the end of January, and another 40,000 had sold in February, and the same again this month, which meant that actually there was at least another sixty grand coming our way, possibly more, and what were we going to do with it? We could go on an amazing holiday, we could buy a car, or cars, or we could do both and wasn’t it fucking fabulous?
Simon just muttered to himself and then said, ‘What about tax, Ellen? You are going to have to declare it and you’ll end up paying 40 per cent on it.’
‘Is that seriously all you have to say about it? “What about the tax?” Even I do pay 40 per cent, that’s still well over £30,000 for us! Fuck the taxman, not literally, I think that is frowned upon, though I suppose somebody must have to, but that is still enough money to change our lives.’
‘I mean, if you’d just set yourself up as a limited company, you wouldn’t be liable for so much –’
‘– FUCK OFF with your fucking limited company. Don’t you see what I’ve done? For US? Despite you telling me it was a stupid idea, and would come to nothing.’
‘What do you want me to say? “Well done, you’ve done brilliantly”?’
‘Yes, that is exactly what I wanted you to say, instead of being so negative and talking about tax and limited companies and just bloody implying once again that I’m just some stupid little girl who can’t cope with finances, and is going to rush out and spend it all on shoes.’
‘Of course I’m happy, and of course it’s amazing, and you’re anything but stupid, though you are shit with money, you know you are. You openly admit you regard credit cards as free money and you do buy a lot of shoes –’
‘Simon, I thought you were being nice!’
‘I am! It’s just … well …’ He went quiet for a minute and looked down, avoiding my eye. ‘Well, you won’t need me anymore, will you?’
‘Need you? Need you for what? What are you talking about?’ I asked, bewildered.
‘For anything. You’ve never really needed me, and I’ve always been so scared you would leave me. You could have had anyone, and you picked me, but I’ve always thought you would wake up one day and think “what am I doing with this guy?” and that would be it for me.’
‘You are a twat,’ I told him. ‘You are a massive self-centred twat. This isn’t about you! What the fuck is wrong with you? Hannah only said the other night about how half the girls in Edinburgh were in love with you.’
Simon perked up a bit. ‘Ooooh, were they? Like who? What about that blonde one, with the big tits, what was her name? Sadie? I always thought she was giving me the eye. Did she fancy me?’
‘Shut UP, Simon. Why do you think I will leave you? Why are you not happy about ALL THIS LOVELY MONEY I HAVE MADE FOR US? Because if you don’t want any of it, I will bloody well spend it on shoes, just see if I don’t!’
‘I am happy. And I’m proud of you. It’s just when things have been tight the last few years, I did sometimes think “well, at least Ellen can’t afford to leave me now, we’re too broke”. Stupid, I know.’ He avoided my eye again, waiting for me to respond. Probably hoping I’d soften and reassure him that he wasn’t being a massive twat.
Instead I replied, ‘Yes, very stupid. Very, very fucking stupid,’ before asking him incredulously, ‘What have I ever done that made you think I might leave you?’
‘I dunno. I suppose I always just thought you’d get a better offer. Like that medic that was always hanging around you when we first started going out, the one who constantly panted after you with a gormless expression, like a Labrador who’d spotted a plate of sausages.’
‘“Like a Labrador who’d spotted a plate of sausages”. Thank you, Simon, it’s nice to know I have such a lovely effect on men. Has it ever occurred to you for one bloody minute that if I had wanted to marry Charlie the Labrador, I would’ve married him instead of you?’
‘You remember his name, though.’
‘You remember Sadie with the big tits.’
‘S’not the same. And you’re friends with him on Facebook. I’m not friends with Sadie’s tits on Facebook,’ mumbled Simon sulkily.
‘I’m friends with lots of people on Facebook, and you’re not friends with Sadie and her hooters because you only have about six friends because you primarily use Facebook to stalk me and, according to you, gauge what sort of mood I will be in when you get home. I also once had a tweet retweeted by a Radio 2 DJ, it doesn’t mean I am going to run off with Steve Wright In The Afternoon.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Simon, you’re not the only one who’s paranoid. Do you think I don’t worry that you’ll get some sexy new secretary and fall for her filing skills, or be enchanted by a sloe-eyed señorita on one of your trips abroad? But despite everything, the credit cards and the hell-fiend children we have created, and the rough patches, so far you haven’t, and we’re both still here, and still together, so I don’t know why you think this money is going to change our lives for the worse, not the better. And you are really fucking me off right now by being so fucking negative. But I’m not going to leave you, because actually, when I don’t want to stab you for being an obstreperous, up-your-own-arse dickhead, and you’re not wearing your terrible fleece or your granddad slippers, I do quite love you. And also, you’ll have to sort out the tax thing for me because I still don’t understand VAT. So you see, I do need you. So will you cheer the fuck up now and come and talk about all the really lovely things we could do with all the FUCKING MONEY, because I LOVE YOU, and you’re not getting rid of me that easily?’
Simon immediately began to talk of ISAs and mortgage payments and pensions.
‘Bollocks to that!’ I said. ‘I’m having at least one pair of Louboutins and a bloody good holiday. You can be sensible with what’s left.’
This is possibly another example of why Simon is in charge of our financial decisions.
I should really have taken the opportunity when Charlie came up in conversation to mention to Simon that I’d bumped into him, shouldn’t I? And maybe dropped in the fact that I’m actually having a teeny tiny drink with him after work tomorrow, not for anything untoward, but because we’d been messaging a bit, catching up on all the other stuff of the last few years, and then he said it would be nice to finish catching up properly and would I like to go for a drink – Simon too, he added. So it is clearly not anything improper, but Simon is hard enough to get out the house at the best of times, let alone to meet someone he barely knew a lifetime ago, so I didn’t quite get around to suggesting it to him.
Anyway, my motives are pure, because it occurred to me that it would be much easier to talk Hannah up to Charlie in person; just casually mention her and how fabulous she is now, and also slightly single, blah blah, rather than doing it in a message which might make her sound a bit desperate. I am a good person! The Wedding of the Century could be back on before you know it. And now I am going to spend the rest of the evening googling impractical shoes and luxury villas in hot places while Simon feverishly compares savings plans.
Friday, 25 March – Good Friday
Simon’s parents, Michael and Sylvia, are here from their bijou retirement chateau in France for Easter. They gave us their customary three days’ notice that they were coming, as they found ‘cheap last-minute ferries’ and arrived this morning. Peter and Jane are very excited about ‘French Granny and Grandpa’, or ‘Mamie and Papi’ as Sylvia insists on them being called. ‘Mamie’ is very confusing, because either it just sounds like they are shouting ‘Mummy’ at which point I turn around and screech ‘WHAT NOW!’ at them, or if they try to affect a French accent, as Sylvia encourages them to do, it sounds like they are doing a very unfortunate Al Jolson impression, which is not something that is really approved of in public.
Sylvia and Michael have at least brought a bo
otload of cheap French plonk with them, rather than drinking us out of house and home like their charming daughter, which will somewhat ease the pain of their visit. Sylvia has always been quite tricky and hard to read. She likes scarves, that I do know – with the possible exception of TV Alicia I have never seen anyone wear so many scarves as Sylvia. Sometimes I wonder if she actually wears any clothes at all, or just layers and layers of scarves. I mentioned this to Simon once and he turned pale and said ‘Don’t put thoughts like that in my head! Jesus, she might get pissed and decide to do the Dance of the Seven Veils! Oh God, I’m shuddering at the very thought!’
Apart from scarves, and her pug ‘Napoleon Bonapug’, I’m not quite sure what else Sylvia likes. Cushions. She likes cushions. I like cushions, too. However, cushions may be the only thing we have in common, as I’m not that keen on scarves and I think Napoleon Bonapug is an evil little fucker. I see the way he looks at me. My dog agrees, and he is an excellent judge of character. He would quite like to eat Napoleon Bonapug (full name to be used at all times), but Sylvia never puts him down for long enough. There is only so much conversation that can be eked out of a shared interest in cushions, though, and so I end up babbling wildly in Sylvia’s presence about any random crap that enters my head – perhaps my finest moment being a lengthy soliloquy on otters and how they have opposable thumbs (see? That very expensive trip to the aquarium when Jane tried to drown Peter in the ‘petting tank’ wasn’t completed wasted), while Sylvia looks bored and demands to know what art galleries and exhibitions I have been to recently and I try not to shout that I haven’t been to any actually, because I don’t really have time to go to art galleries by myself and when I try to take her grandchildren to instill a love of learning and culture in them they run amok like wild beasts and then demand to know where the gift shop is.
Sylvia fancies herself as something of an artiste, as many moons ago, before she married Michael, she had a brief stint as a temp at the BBC, and therefore she likes to shoe-horn ‘when I worked in TV’ into every conversation she possibly can. She also belonged to an art club when she lived in Surrey and auditioned for Watercolour Challenge, and therefore takes full credit for Simon and Louisa’s artistic skills while shaking her head sadly that poor Simon has ended up married to such a philistine.
Simon’s father, however, is a splendidly jolly chap. He is charming and adorable, very easy-going and likes red wine, golf, tweed and his grandchildren, possibly in that very order. He tends towards the stoutly tweeded school of dressing, and his main mission in life appears to be to get everyone pissed, which in my opinion is an excellent intention to have. He is a most enthusiastic topper-upper of glasses and it is in fact distressingly easy to get disastrously drunk in Michael’s presence and have no idea whatsoever how that happened, as I discovered the first time Simon took me home to meet them.
Michael and Sylvia lived in a rather posh house in Surrey at the time. Although both my parents were far from badly off, on paper at least, they did not live in particularly big houses, preferring instead to waste their money on bitter divorces and recriminations, and, as they still like to remind us more than twenty years after leaving school, the dreadful expense that was our school fees (though technically that could also be classed as ‘recriminations’, I suppose).
Sylvia made it quite clear as soon as I arrived that she did not find me in any way good enough for her son and heir, not least due to the fact that she felt having divorced parents and numerous step-parents rendered me deeply morally suspect. I have later come to the conclusion that, a) Sylvia looks down her nose at pretty much everyone unless you have a title or have been on the TV (did she ever mention that she used to work in TV?), and b) no one actually would have been good enough for her precious boy, ever, except possibly a bona fide princess, and even then she would have had to have been from the British Royal Family, foreign royals also being distinctly rackety in Sylvia’s eyes. Though that only really left the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie for him, and Sylvia does not approve of them either, because she feels their mother is very common, as is red hair according to her. Sylvia has a long list of arbitrary things that are considered common, including, but not limited to, buying pants from anywhere but Marks & Spencer, dahlias, ITV, hoop earrings (‘Darling, must you look quite so like a gypsy?’), Greece and Finland (no idea), instant coffee (unfortunately she has passed this particular snobbery on to her son, who recoiled in horror the first time he saw my jar of Nescafé); computers, all takeaway food, shop-bought jam, tumble driers, magazines and, surely most bizarrely of all, the WI ( I have my suspicions that they blackballed her).
At the time of that first visit, though, so grand was Michael and Sylvia’s house, so glacially terrifying was Sylvia and so generous was Michael’s hospitality, that after he had topped up my glass for the umpteenth time, I found myself leaning over to him and congratulating him on his lovely home, where, I had been most impressed to notice, the whole family could go to the toilet at the same time, and still have two toilets left for visitors.
‘Errr, well, yes,’ said Michael, ever the perfect gentleman. ‘I suppose we could. Can’t say we’ve ever really thought of it like that. Perhaps we should give a try sometime, eh? More wine?’
Michael made what he describes as ‘an absolute bomb’ in the City in the eighties, and he has a large stock of hysterical anecdotes about that time, most of which tend to end in, ‘And then you’ll never guess where the stripper produced that from’, or ‘It was only to be expected really, after he’d had that much Columbian marching powder!’, while Sylvia tries desperately to hush him, as she does not feel such stories really match her image as the Gracious Lady of the Manor. Unfortunately, these days I also have to try to hush him, as he has a tendency to hold forth with such tales in the presence of the children, which can involve some interesting explanations to questions like ‘But why was the lady playing ping-pong with no clothes on?’
Michael is an unashamed capitalist (he refers to his son-in-law Bardo as ‘that useless grubby hippy’ and once incurred the wrath of Louisa for teaching Coventina to play poker, and telling her there was no point playing unless you were in it for the cash), so he was delighted to hear about the success of my app.
I suspect part of his enthusiasm was also relief, as I have noticed Sylvia and Michael making discreet cutbacks in their lifestyle over the last few years, suggesting that the ‘bomb’ has dwindled somewhat after several recessions, Sylvia’s extravagances and the depredations of Louisa and her constant need for bailing out, or ‘investment in the retreat’, as she puts it.
The cases of champagne and Saint-Émilion they would once have turned up with have been replaced by crates of ‘this rather fun, little local wine we’ve discovered’, Sylvia’s scarves are still silk, but from French markets rather than Hermès, and Michael no longer buys cars on a whim, only to sell them again a few months later because he’s got bored, instead insisting that his trusty Saab is ‘a classic’ and that there is no need for anything more modern. For all his bonhomie and generosity, Michael is a prudent man, and I don’t doubt that they have more than enough money to see out their days comfortably, but our own somewhat precarious finances must have been a worry to him, especially if he was no longer in a position to be able to help us out to the same extent that he had helped Louisa. So he was most thrilled to hear that there was now a good whack of cash coming in, even if he did tease me about it, asking with a completely deadpan face, ‘What are you going to do with it then, Ellen? Live your dream by putting in a couple more toilets, so you can all go at the same time?’
Sunday, 27 March – Easter Sunday
‘Let’s have a jolly Easter Egg Hunt,’ I said. ‘Won’t it be fun?’ I said. ‘Hannah, Sam, bring your children, too!’ I said.
Simon also suggested we invite his school friend Tristan, who he discovered at Christmas, and his wife TV Alicia and their children.
As if that wasn’t enough, I then decided to ask the nice new family w
ho moved into the Jenkins’ house last week, the tales of Louisa’s camper van and vagabond tribe sadly not having reached their ears. Alas, despite our best attempts to lower the tone of the neighbourhood to make the house affordable enough for Hannah, it was not to be.
I met the mummy a few days after they moved in, and she seemed very nice, even if I didn’t quite manage to work the conversation round to how much they had paid for their house, which was obviously the only reason I had brightly accosted her in the street and then demanded she come in for a cup of coffee under the guise of being ‘neighbourly’ and also because for once my house was in a relatively clean and tidy state. As I wasn’t sure when that might next be achieved, I thought I should take my chance while I could.
Her name is Katie and her husband is called Tim. They have two tiny girls called Lily and Ruby. They are the nicest people I have ever met, and possibly the blandest. They both giggled nervously at everything we said and looked terrified by Michael, who was circulating with an ever-present bottle in each hand and shouting, ‘Come on, come on, drink up! No need to endure our families sober, you know. Get it down you. Did I ever tell you about the time old Eddie Harrington-Hughes – what, Sylvia? I’m just telling these nice people about the time we switched Eddie Harrington-Hughes’ marching powder for sherbet before he went to his in-laws for Easter lunch, and when he popped off for a little toot to make the roast lamb with the battleaxe more bearable he ended up with half a sherbet Dip Dab up his left nostril! He sneezed a mouthful of mushroom soup over his mother-in-law and thought his brain had exploded! WHAT, Sylvia? Not suitable? What on earth do you mean? Oh, the children. Right, sorry, sorry. No, Jane darling, Mamie says I’m not to tell the story about the champion ping-pong player I met in Bangkok any more. I know, it is a funny story, isn’t it? What, Sylvia?’