Mummyfesto, The

by Green, Linda

  Sheila smiled. ‘Come to think of it, I might just come door-knocking for your campaign.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ I said. ‘Now, drink up and go and knock the Year Nines into shape.’

  I sat at the back of the drama studio, a big notebook on my lap, pen poised to scribble notes. It was the last run-through the Year Elevens were going to do before their mock GCSE.

  They were a good group of students: enthusiastic, innovative, bold. There were several who stood out, but only one capable of taking your breath away with the maturity of his performance. Will hadn’t been sure he could do detached and brooding, let alone the Deep South American drawl that the part of Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof required. I’d asked him to give it a go and joked with him that at least having hung out in the park in Hebden Bridge he would be able to do alcoholic.

  Leanne strutted on to the set as Maggie. She may not have had the presence of Elizabeth Taylor, but she could shout and whine with the best of them. A minute later Will emerged from behind the door of our pretend bathroom. Only it wasn’t the chirpy, having-a-laugh, gangly Will who always had a witty riposte. It was someone else entirely. Someone who was everything he had been asked to be with a bit more thrown in for good measure. I sat and watched as the two of them sparred with each other, spitting hurt and resentment. It should have been Maggie’s scene, and Leanne gave it a bloody good shot, but Will somehow managed to edge it without looking as if he were even trying.

  ‘Wooh,’ I yelled, whistling and giving them both a standing ovation as they ended the scene with Brick reluctantly putting down the chair he had been brandishing above his head. ‘Fantastic stuff. Taylor and Newman eat your hearts out.’

  Leanne grinned and gave me her best Liz Taylor pout. Will immediately tried to ruffle his mop of brown hair, which had been slicked down for the part, back to life.

  ‘It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, Miss,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t say they were bad, simply that you were better.’

  ‘Well, at least unlike Newman I won’t end up with my face on a jar of pasta sauce.’

  ‘So where will you end up?’ I asked, walking over to him as Leanne headed off to get changed.

  Will knew what I was getting at. I’d given him enough prompts about doing something with his immense talent.

  ‘Probably face down in the park, pissed or out of my head on something.’

  ‘I’m being serious,’ I said.

  ‘So am I. That’s what happens to everyone else around here.’

  I hesitated, but decided this was not a time for tiptoeing around the edges. ‘The kids that happens to, Will, they don’t think they’ve got a choice, do they? And do you know what? Some of them are probably right. There are no jobs for them. There are no opportunities. You have a choice. You can choose a different life for yourself. They’d never admit it to you, but your mates would give their right arm to be half as talented as you.’

  ‘Try telling my dad that.’

  ‘Hey, I bet he’s dead proud of you.’

  ‘He would be if I was good at maths or science, but this …’ Will waved his arm around the drama studio and shook his head.

  ‘Well, your mum’s proud of you. I know that for a fact.’

  Will shrugged. It must be awkward, your mum being friends with one of your teachers. There’d been so many times when I’d thought he was holding back, not saying what he wanted to because he suspected it would get back to his mum. I also sensed that having Anna’s entirely unconditional love wasn’t enough. And if it was paternal approval he was looking for, that was going to be a harder nut to crack. I suspected he was right. David would have been happier had he his sights set on a career in banking or the legal profession. I remembered when I’d first met him at a parents’ evening, I’d got the distinct impression that the drama teacher was the person David wanted to fit in while all the other more important teachers were busy.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘What do you want?’

  He shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Don’t try to fit in with the crowd, Will. Step up to the bar. And not that sort of bar.’

  Will rolled his eyes.

  ‘Am I sounding too much like a teacher?’

  He managed a half smile. ‘Did I really whup Paul Newman’s arse?’

  ‘Yes. And don’t you dare suggest that I could play Big Mama in the next scene, OK?’

  Will grinned and did an over-exaggerated impression of the sixteen-year-old boy swagger as he headed out of the studio.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Bain,’ I said, a smile spreading across my face. I busied myself tidying up in the studio. Hoping I hadn’t overstepped the mark. And wishing David could see the same Will that I did.

  We arrived at the clinic as an obviously pregnant woman was heading out. Paul held the door open for her. She smiled and said thank you. I tried hard to smile back. It wasn’t her fault, of course. They should have separate entrances. Front one for those trying to conceive, back door for those who have been successful, and never the twain shall meet.

  ‘Are you OK?’ asked Paul, taking my hand as we walked down the corridor. I nodded. It was the kind of question men probably felt they had to ask. And one that women probably didn’t answer truthfully.

  We sat down in the waiting room. The woman across from us got up to go to the water-cooler. The glugging noise which came as the water was dispensed sounded like a rather crude impersonation of my stomach. I remembered the last time we’d been here. I couldn’t help think the whole process was unnecessarily cruel: like forcing failed A-level students to have their results read to them in person by the examiner and then having to rub shoulders with those who had passed on the way out.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Crabtree?’ Paul and I rose in unison as the young woman smiled at us. ‘Mr Kemp is ready for you now.’

  We followed the woman’s clickety heels along the corridor until she stopped outside a door and opened it for us. The man sitting at the desk looked up at us as we stepped inside. He was the smiling assassin. I knew it instantly. If you had good news to impart there would be no need to look over-the-top jolly about it. He was about to pull a hidden gun and kill us at point-blank range. And the stupid thing about it was that we were supposed to smile back at him while he did it.

  ‘Thanks for coming back to see us,’ he started. It was as if we had been transported to the land of stupid things to say. We were hardly going to go through all these tests just for kicks and then not come back for the results. ‘I’ll go through each test result in turn and then we’ll have a chat about the implications.’

  He was going to keep us talking until he pulled the trigger. Bastard.

  ‘The semen sample you gave, Mr Crabtree, was entirely within the normal range of someone of your age.’ He handed a piece of paper to Paul who nodded and smiled the best one could when you have been saved from the firing squad but your wife has taken your place.

  ‘Mrs Crabtree, the AMH hormone sample again came back well within the normal range for someone of your age group.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked, tired of the politeness of it all.

  ‘It means you’ve got less eggs than you had ten years ago, but pretty much the same as any other forty-year-old would.’

  I nodded. ‘And what about the ultrasound?’

  ‘That came back entirely clear as well. No sign of fibroids or polycystic ovaries and clear evidence that you had ovulated.’

  ‘So you’re saying that there’s no medical reason why we haven’t conceived?’

  ‘None that we’ve found so far. And obviously the fact that you already have a child is also in your favour. The only other medical factor which we need to rule out is a blockage in your Fallopian tubes.’

  ‘So why didn’t you perform that test before?’ asked Paul, who clearly hadn’t looked at all the websites I had, or read the ‘So you want to have a baby?’ books.

  ‘We always complete the other tests first as the tubal patenc
y check involves an injection of radioactive dye and X-rays.’

  ‘Is it painful?’ asked Paul.

  I looked at him and smiled. ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, grinning at me and Mr Kemp in turn. ‘I guess I meant to ask how painful. Would she need an anaesthetic?’

  ‘No, just painkillers and antibiotics. It’s a day case procedure and I’m told patients suffer only mild discomfort.’

  I looked at him with a raised eyebrow and resisted the temptation to ask what his definition of mild discomfort was based on. ‘How soon could I have it?’ I asked.

  ‘We should be able to fit you in within the next couple of weeks.’

  ‘That’s fine. We’d like to go ahead.’ Paul looked at me. A ‘hey, hang on a minute’ look. Mr Kemp clearly saw it too.

  ‘There’s no need to commit yourselves now,’ he said. ‘Have a chat about it and give my secretary a ring in the morning if you do want to go ahead. I’ve got some information for you about the procedure.’ He handed me several sheets of paper, which I folded and put into my handbag.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, standing up to go. I’d won a stay of execution. I was well aware that was all it was. Certainly not a cause for celebration.

  Paul took my hand again as we walked back down the corridor. Fortunately I didn’t see any pregnant women on the way out.

  Alice was still up when I got back home after checking on Mum later. She was sitting at the kitchen table in her pyjamas, her blonde hair brushed and loose ready for bed, her felt-tips spread out across the table. Paul was unloading the dishwasher.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Alice, jumping up and rushing to give me a hug, ‘would you like to see what I’ve drawn for you?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, stroking her hair. Alice held up her picture proudly for me to see. There was a large purple lollipop on a stick with a pink spiral swirl running through it.

  ‘It’s your lego,’ she said. ‘The one for your party.’

  ‘Our logo.’ I smiled. ‘Alice, it’s fantastic, I love it. Thank you. Did you do this all by yourself?’

  ‘The lollipop was my idea, but my first one was really tiny so Daddy said to do it bigger so it showed up better. Is it going to be on posters?’

  ‘Yes, it is. Even if we can only afford one poster we’ll make sure it’s in Hebden Bridge where you can see it.’

  Alice grinned and tidied away her felt-tips without being asked.

  ‘I suppose there’s no going back now’ said Paul. It was a rhetorical question, I was aware of that. But I couldn’t help feeling that he was still waiting for me to announce that the whole thing had been a huge wind-up.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘And I’m in it to win it.’ Paul smiled at me. Although I suspected that was because he still hadn’t really grasped quite how serious I was about this.

  ‘Will you be as important as the Queen if you win?’ Alice asked.

  ‘No. I’m afraid not.’

  ‘What about like a carnival queen?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said laughing. ‘That’s probably a bit more like it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Paul, bending down to Alice and scooping her up in his arms. ‘It’s up to bed for you now, Missy.’

  ‘Can we finish Charlotte’s Web tonight?’ she asked. ‘We’ve only got two chapters to go?’

  ‘We can if you go straightaway,’ said Paul, putting her back down again. ‘I’ll read you a chapter, then Mummy will be up to read the last one.’

  ‘Yay,’ said Alice, heading straight upstairs. Paul put his hands on my hips as he squeezed past.

  ‘Was your mum OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. She was in the house, at least, and she’d been fed and watered.’ It was ridiculous really. How you ended up talking about your own mother as if she were the family pet.

  Alice called down for him.

  ‘I’d better see what she’s up to,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk later, OK?’

  I nodded. We had gone to the hospital in separate cars so I could go straight to Mum’s house and Paul could pick Alice up from Sam’s. We needed to talk. Though I really didn’t know what there was to say. I was going to have the tube test done whether Paul wanted me to or not – and I suspected it was not. I couldn’t stop now. I needed answers. And there were still too many questions in my head.

  I snuggled with Alice under the duvet when I’d finished reading the last chapter of Charlotte’s Web. I loved the smell of her, her warm body next to mine, her little legs scrabbling around, trying to get curled in as tight to me as she could.

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been good if you’d made an egg-sac like Charlotte, when you had me?’ said Alice. ‘Then I would have loads of brothers and sisters to play with.’

  I stroked her hair, relieved that I’d turned the bedside lamp off so she couldn’t see my face. ‘Yes, sweetheart,’ I whispered, kissing the top of her head. ‘It certainly would.’

  9

  ANNA

  ‘So what’s the question today?’ asked Will buttering his third piece of toast as I closed the lid of my laptop. I asked a question every Wednesday on the blog. Big ones usually, the sort of thing they asked in those Sunday newspaper supplement questionnaires: What’s your biggest regret? What keeps you awake at night? What would your epitaph be? It had taken off in a pretty big way, fuelled by Twitter and Facebook, of course. Today’s question was a bit different to the usual ones though. I was rather apprehensive about how people were going to respond out there in the blogosphere. But not half as apprehensive as I was about how my family were going to respond when I told them what it was and why I was asking it.

  ‘What would you do if you were Prime Minister for a day?’ I said, pouring myself another cup of tea.

  ‘Easy,’ said Will. ‘Ban school uniform and homework.’

  ‘I’d cover the world in glitter,’ chipped in Esme. ‘And make a lot of noise because no one could tell me off.’ Charlotte smiled, but made no attempt to add anything. I had a feeling I knew what hers might be though.

  David looked at me over his copy of the Independent and raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s hardly the usual sort of question, is it? What happened to the on-the-psychiatrist’s-couch stuff?’

  ‘We’re shelving it for a bit. We’re getting a campaign going, actually.’

  ‘What sort of campaign?’ asked David.

  I suspected my attempts to soften the ground for what I was about to say had been far too subtle for any member of my family to notice. I prepared for the inevitable fallout from the imminent nuclear explosion.

  ‘We’re forming a new political party. Me, Sam and Jackie. I’m going to stand in the general election.’

  David laughed. He actually had a very attractive laugh. I remembered thinking that when I first met him. But on this occasion the shards of laughter cut me as they fell.

  ‘Very droll,’ he said. There was a silence. Everyone looked at me. Will realised first why I wasn’t laughing.

  ‘Mum wasn’t joking,’ he said. David put the newspaper down and waited for me to deny it.

  ‘He’s right,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t.’

  David stared at me. A cloud of bafflement and bemusement masked his features. I was waiting for him to ask me if I was going through some kind of mid-life crisis, as if this were the thinking woman’s equivalent of doing a Shirley Valentine.

  Esme finally broke the silence. ‘Are we going to have another protest where I can shout as loud as I like?’

  ‘Not exactly, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Mummy’s going to be knocking on doors asking people to vote for me.’

  ‘Please tell me this isn’t true,’ said David.

  ‘Why?’ I replied.

  ‘Because if it is, you’re clearly out of your mind.’

  I fished my herbal tea bag out of my mug while I waited for my anger to subside and the hurt to sting a little less.

  ‘What’s so ridiculous about me standing?’ I asked. ‘You stood in the local elections.’

 
; ‘Yes, but that was entirely different.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I was a longstanding member of the Liberal Democrats and I’d been to every party conference for thirteen years. You can’t just set up a party one day and stand as an MP the next. It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Who says it doesn’t? Anyway, we don’t believe in having to serve your time and work your way up. It doesn’t tend to favour women who have families to care for.’

  David put his mug down heavily on the table. Will, Charlotte and Esme were still staring at me. I realised we were having a domestic in front of them. I wished I’d done this differently. Told David one night when the children were in bed. If I was honest, really honest, I knew I should have discussed it with him first, like Sam and Jackie had with their partners. Although he was giving a very impressive demonstration of the reason I hadn’t done that.

  ‘So what do you believe in? Your party.’

  I decided to ignore the patronising tone in his voice. ‘Putting families first. Speaking up for those who haven’t got a voice. Making this country a fairer, more caring place to live.’

  ‘We all believe in that. How are you going to achieve it?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. That’s why we’re asking people for their ideas.’

  David rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Well, I think it rocks,’ said Will. ‘It’s the most exciting thing anyone in this family’s ever done.’

  ‘Thank you, Will,’ said David, getting up from his chair and taking his cereal bowl and mug over to the sink.

  ‘At least they’re asking people for their views and taking notice of what they say. It’s more than this poxy government have done.’

  I glanced at Will’s face. He genuinely seemed to enjoy baiting his father like this, knowing how difficult he found it to be one of Cameron’s bedfellows.

  ‘It’s all very well asking people for their crazy ideas,’ said David, still with his back to us, ‘but some of us have to live in the real world.’

  My skin prickled. Although the comment had been directed at Will it was clear there was another intended recipient. I wanted to fire a salvo back, but I knew that doing so would demonstrate that he had got under my defences and I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. I also knew that I had an able and willing first lieutenant in Will, who wouldn’t have any such reservations.