Happy Families

by Janey Fraser

  By the end of the following day, Vanessa had signed up Sunshine as a temporary patient (thank heavens for her passport which had helped with the paperwork); bought a book called How to Raise the Perfect Child by an author called Dr Know; and made an appointment with Joe Balls, the headmaster of Corrywood Primary, the local junior school. Funny to think that Brian had once been in his seat.

  Mr Balls was a nice man, whose wife Gemma sometimes popped into the shop, along with her three small children. ‘Officially, we shouldn’t accept Sunshine without properly validated written consent from the parent or, in the case of a carer, something called a Parental Responsibility Order,’ he told her in his small office, which was lined with books in alphabetical order. ‘But if this is just going to be a temporary arrangement, I’ll take her in as an emergency measure.’ He gave a little sigh. ‘It’s not the first time this has happened in my experience, I’m afraid.’

  Vanessa felt mortified. What must he think? Brigid’s irresponsible behaviour reflected on her, too. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure what my daughter is up to,’ she said worriedly. Then she dropped her voice, conscious that Sunshine was outside in reception. ‘Brigid’s always been rather unpredictable.’

  Mr Balls nodded as though he understood, rather than being shocked. ‘If Sunshine’s mother hasn’t returned by Easter, we’ll have to reconsider the situation. Meanwhile, I can give your granddaughter a place in Year One, starting tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ Vanessa felt a huge weight lifting from her shoulders. ‘She needs stability at the moment. All she wants to do is sit and play her flute. She doesn’t even want the television on!’

  Mr Balls gave her a sympathetic look. ‘All this must be rather different for you too.’

  ‘It is.’ She nodded, thinking how her life had changed in the space of forty-eight hours. ‘I still can’t believe it! I mean, I’m thrilled to have her, but it’s all so sudden and I’m out of practice. What time do six-year-olds go to bed nowadays? What do they do for entertainment? What do they wear?’

  Mr Balls laughed. ‘If they’re anything like ours, they want to do exactly what you don’t want them to do! That reminds me.’ He pushed across a small flyer with a picture of a smiling mother with her arm around an equally happy-looking child. ‘You might be interested in this. It’s a new parenting course that we’re running on Monday evenings here at the school. You’ve missed the first one but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t join in next week. It might help you get into the swing, don’t you think?’

  There once was a sister and brother,

  Who wouldn’t stop fighting each other.

  ‘Stop that,’ snapped their aunt.

  ‘What do you mean, “Can’t”?

  By the way, I’m really your mother.’

  Chapter 9

  ANDY

  WELCOME TO THE FIRST SESSION OF OUR PERFECT PARENTS’ COURSE! PLEASE GO TO ROOM 1A FOR THE THREE TO ELEVEN GROUP AND ROOM 10A FOR TWELVE YEARS UPWARDS.

  Andy looked at the crudely written sign on the blackboard in the reception hall of Corrywood High. That was him! He was the one who was running the teenage lot. How utterly terrifying! It wasn’t the prospect of an audience that scared him witless. He had been used to that at work: standing up at meetings and, every now and then, in front of huge conferences as the keynote speaker. No. It was the place that scared him. He and schools had never gone together. Even on the rare occasion when Andy’s work had permitted him to accompany Pamela to parents’ evenings, he’d felt distinctly uncomfortable, waiting for a teacher to leap out and cane him.

  Andy wiped his clammy palms on the side of his beige trousers, which he’d put on along with a smart navy jacket. The nature of the audience was unnerving too. He could fob off predatory women in an office environment (amazing how many didn’t seem to care that he was married!) but school mums posed a different problem. They’d know far more about bringing up children than he did.

  Still, he’d promised to do it, so do it he would. Mentally visualising a positive outcome (a tip he’d picked up from one of many business courses), Andy paused outside room 10A – it was buzzing with high-pitched chatter – and then strode in.

  Just look at that wall chart. Andy began to sweat as he took in the various organs of the human body, and another with a list of foreign words that could have been Russian for all he knew. Languages were something he’d never had the opportunity to learn. For a moment, Andy was a small boy, poised to do a runner: anything to get out of the classroom …

  Then he became aware of a smallish group of women, seated in a horseshoe of chairs, swivelling round to focus on him expectantly, as though he was going to solve all their problems in two hours flat. Problems that he wasn’t qualified to solve.

  ‘Make them laugh,’ said the voice in his head. ‘Make them laugh like you did in the home.’ It was something he still did in tricky work situations; it defused the atmosphere. Threw the opposition by making them see you in a different light.

  ‘You might be wondering if Pamela has had a sex change!’

  There was a silence.

  Help.

  ‘Pamela,’ he began again. ‘Pamela Gooding – my wife – was meant to be running this class. But she had a domestic emergency so I’m afraid you’ve got me instead.’

  To his relief, a horsey-looking but attractive redhead, wearing an extremely low-cut clingy jersey that showed the top of a black lacy bra, made an ‘ahh’ sound. ‘That’s so sweet!’ Her voice was much posher than her racy outfit suggested. ‘You wouldn’t get many husbands doing that.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Mine certainly wouldn’t. It’s why I’m here. It’s not easy when you’re an MSP.’

  ‘MSP?’

  She gave him a provocative smile. ‘Married single parent, darling. It’s when you have a husband in name but he does sod all to help. By the way, I’m Audrey.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ piped up another, who seemed to have come straight from the gym in black Lycra shorts and sweat band round her head. ‘Sometimes I think it would be better if I was on my own. Then I wouldn’t have someone telling me I’d got it all wrong.’ She sniffed. ‘And I’m not just talking about how to bring up the kids.’

  ‘Come on, Paula!’ whispered the pretty blonde woman next to her, wearing a red sweatshirt with JILLY’S AU PAIR AGENCY emblazoned across the chest. ‘Nigel said he was sorry, didn’t he? Besides, this isn’t Relate. That’s tomorrow night. We’re here for the kids. Remember?’

  These women were utterly terrifying! Exactly the kind he could never have married. Thank heavens for Pamela with her calm, efficient, steady manner, even if it could be misinterpreted as cool. ‘Anyway, my wife will be back next week.’

  ‘Shame,’ he heard Audrey whisper loudly to her neighbour. ‘Rather cute, don’t you think? Wouldn’t mind him for a bit longer!’

  Andy had never quite understood why his boyish good looks (as one admirer had once put it in pre-Pamela days) went down well with ‘the ladies’. It wasn’t as though he was tall either. But they did seem to appreciate the way he listened to them, as well as his self-deprecating humour.

  Usually Andy ignored women who gave him come-on smiles. But it was difficult to blank out this posh Audrey who simply wouldn’t stop talking and looking at him in that provocative manner, thrusting out her chest meaningfully. Power bosoms! That’s what he called them secretly. He only hoped hers were properly cooped up.

  ‘What I really want from this course,’ she was now saying, ‘is to get my kids to do exactly what I tell them, when I tell them.’ She waved a hand, encrusted with diamonds, around in the air. ‘Simple as that. When I was a child, I’d have got a jolly good hiding if I hadn’t obeyed my mother.’

  There was a murmur of ‘me too’s. ‘Actually,’ said Andy, desperately trying to recall the first chapter of the handbook which he’d been mugging up since 4 p.m. that afternoon, ‘I was going to start with goals and objectives.’ He turned to the whiteboard. That was better! He felt safe
r now; as though he was doing a presentation at work. ‘What do the rest of you want help with?’

  ‘Bedtime! I can’t get the little buggers to stay in their beds!’

  Audrey again. If he wasn’t careful, she was going to dominate the rest of the sessions. Still, he was used to that at meetings. You had to target the non-talkers to remove the spotlight from the hoggers.

  He turned to a very skinny woman, wearing a too-short skirt over black leggings (the sort of thing that a teenager might wear), a leopard-skin spotted scarf artfully wound round her neck and long, dangly green earrings. Very bohemian for Corrywood, wasn’t she? Living with a houseful of women had taught Andy to notice clothes and make-up and other girly stuff like that. ‘What would you like help with?’

  She ran her long, thin fingers through her hair, which was scrunched up in a loose knot. ‘I’ve always tried to be a friend and not just a mum to my kids …’

  ‘Grow up,’ muttered someone.

  ‘I could never tell my mother anything. She was always criticising me. So I’ve gone the other way with mine.’ She fiddled awkwardly with one of her earrings. ‘The other night, I let my fifteen-year-old’s boyfriend stay over.’

  There was a gasp from the others.

  ‘It’s OK!’ Bohemian Mum smiled reassuringly at them all. ‘She is on the Pill. But when I ask them to do something, like their homework, they ignore me. It’s like they don’t have any respect for me any more.’

  Was that surprising? ‘That can’t be easy,’ he began. ‘But you know what we can do?’

  They all looked at him with hope in their faces. Fuck, thought Andy. What can we do? He glanced at the manual, which he’d left surreptitiously at his side to use as a prompt. Big black letters jumped out at him.

  WHAT KIND OF CHILDHOOD DID YOU HAVE? HAS IT AFFECTED THE WAY YOU PARENT NOW?

  Andy felt a cold dread descending on him but immediately batted it away. His own experiences were irrelevant. This wasn’t about him. It was about them. ‘I’d like you to write down some childhood memories,’ he said, more positively now. ‘Then we’ll discuss how your own parents’ methods of bringing you up have formed you as parents.’

  ‘Come again?’

  It was Sweat Band Mum. That was another thing Andy had learned from his business-skills conferences. If you found it difficult to remember names, you gave them a mental badge that summed up their appearance or attitude.

  ‘This isn’t going to be some kind of psycho session, is it?’ She made as though she was going to get up. ‘Because if it is, I’m out of here. I had to pay my au pair extra to babysit for this!’ She waved away her blonde neighbour, who looked as though she was about to intervene. ‘No, Jilly. I’m telling him straight. What I want is some practical advice.’

  She was right. ‘OK.’ Andy was really getting in the swing now. ‘Forget the handbook. Let’s take one problem at a time. Bedtime, for instance. How old are your kids? And what time do you make them go upstairs?’

  ‘Not everyone has an upstairs!’ pointed out Bohemian Mum.

  ‘There’s no need to interrupt!’ butted in the woman next to her. ‘Mine are five and fourteen. It’s the older one who’s the problem. He goes to bed when he wants to because he won’t listen to me.’

  Whoa there! This lot were getting really vociferous. ‘Then you need to make him listen,’ he suggested calmly.

  ‘And how exactly do we do that?’

  Everyone was facing him now, each one with the same questioning look. Andy thought of his own two girls who were always in bed when he rang from foreign trips to speak to them. ‘You just tell them.’

  They spoke in one breath: ‘But it doesn’t work!’

  Quickly, he tried to think on his feet. Solve it like a business problem. That was it: ‘Give them a bonus,’ he declared enthusiastically. ‘Offer them something they really want if they’ll go to bed.’

  ‘It doesn’t work!’ Sweat Band Mum repeated, loud in her indignation. ‘I bribed mine with a new games console each but they still stay up later than me and then they won’t go to school in the morning. We want proper answers.’ She looked round the room and everyone nodded. ‘That’s why we’re here. It’s because nothing else has worked. And as for those ineffectual parenting books – has anyone read Dr Know’s latest? – don’t even get me started!’

  This was really getting out of control! Andy briefly wondered how the young teacher was getting on down the corridor with the three-to-eleven group. Maybe they could do a swap. Her class couldn’t be worse than his.

  Then Audrey spoke up. ‘Come on, you lot. Let’s give Andy a chance, shall we?’ She sat forward confidentially so Andy could see the dip between her ample breasts. They were tanned and smooth. Quickly he looked away. ‘I like your idea of talking about childhood, Andy. It does make a difference in the way you bring up kids. My mum was a control freak. She wanted to know exactly what I was doing with my friends, and where, right up to when I left home. To be honest, it’s made me the same with my own. Sometimes they come back reeking of fags and other stuff. When I ask if they’re doing drugs, they tell me to sod off and then that leads to another argument.’

  Phew! She’d finished. Andy’s head was reeling. But she had a point. Quite a lot of them. Very deliberately, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dropped it on the floor. There was a gasp from his audience as it came apart, scattering the battery and other bits under the chairs.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ gasped the woman wearing the JILLY’S AU PAIR AGENCY sweatshirt.

  ‘To show that patterns can be broken.’ Andy knelt down on the floor and gathered his phone together. It was a technique he had witnessed once before at a work conference; they’d all been quite impressed by it. ‘You can get very attached to something, like many of us are to our mobiles or to a way of doing something. But you can also break that pattern if you want.’

  He looked at the redhead. ‘Your mum might have been controlling but recognising that is the first step to recovery. Next time you find yourself wanting to tell your daughters what to do, remember how you felt at their age. Angry, maybe. Trapped, even.’

  There was a wave of uncertain nods and Andy felt a quiet hum of satisfaction followed by panic as they all waited expectantly for his next trick. Now what? Yes! He could play the DVD which accompanied the handbook. ‘Mind dimming the lights, please?’

  What a relief! This would buy him thirty minutes of peace and quiet. After that, they would have a discussion. Then they could all go home and he’d never have to do this again. Still, it made him realise what a brilliant job Pamela had done. He’d always been appreciative but now he was more grateful than ever. He’d buy her something to say so. Another diamond eternity ring perhaps. Or maybe a pair of earrings from her favourite jewellers in Old Bond Street.

  Andy slipped off into a daydream about how he would treat Pamela. After that, they might spend the night at a nice hotel somewhere. Pamela was always more receptive in hotels. ‘The girls might hear,’ she would say when he suggested something different to just going to sleep at home. Not that there was much chance of that in their huge house where the girls had their en-suite bedrooms at the far side. But the principle was right: the girls had to come first. There was nothing more important than family and even though he didn’t like his mother-in-law, he admired his wife for rushing off to help her.

  The film was coming to an end now and the redhead was jumping up to turn on the light like teacher’s pet. ‘That was extraordinary,’ she started to say just as the door opened and a large, burly man lumbered in.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, mate. The name’s Kieran, by the way.’

  Andy glanced at the man in an orange, oily boiler suit. Corrywood might have a great reputation but you got a real mixture of people here, like this one with his rough accent and bald head with no neck. ‘Take a seat, will you?’ There were certainly enough empty ones!

  The man stared, his eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere, mate?
’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ began Andy. But then he stopped, taking in the long silver scar on the newcomer’s right cheek. The tattoo of a red flame on one side of his neck, and a matching blue one on the other side. For a minute, he was overwhelmed by the smell of urine and cabbage and Brussels sprouts. No, he said fiercely to himself. No. It couldn’t be!

  ‘Barry, isn’t it?’ the man persisted.

  ‘Andy actually,’ he replied pleasantly. Politely. So as not to reveal his shock. ‘I’m afraid you’ve missed most of the session but perhaps the rest of you would like to tell Kieran here about the film and any tips on compromise that you’ve hopefully picked up.’

  The newcomer took a seat but his beady black eyes remained firmly fixed in his direction. He’s recognised me, gulped Andy, feeling sweat gushing down his back. He’s recognised me.

  What if Kieran questioned Pamela at the next meeting? What if Kieran insisted that he was sure he knew Andy from the past? The questions began to throb in Andy’s brain before he’d even got into his Porsche, parked carefully under a streetlight to deter thugs.

  Pamela, who had always been intrigued by his lack of family, might make her own enquiries. Then all his carefully built-up secrets would come tumbling down! It wasn’t just the fact he’d been in care. It was the Thing that had happened there. The Thing which even now he couldn’t bring himself to think about or else he would go mad. Think of something, he told himself urgently, pressing the security button at his gate. Think of something.

  The house was horribly empty. Usually when Andy got back late, exhausted from work or a trip, Pamela was waiting for him in her silk dressing gown, drink in hand. There’d be a meal in the oven if he hadn’t already eaten and Classic FM playing quietly in the background. But now it was silent apart from a drone of television from Natasha’s bedroom, which stopped before he reached the top of the stairs.