Mummyfesto, The

by Green, Linda

  ‘What, you mean like make promises in your manifesto and then ditch them all as soon as you get a sniff of power?’ said Will.

  I took a sip of my tea, mainly so David couldn’t see the smile on my face as he turned around.

  He looked at me long and hard. ‘I’m off to work,’ he said, ‘in the vain hope that when I step outside the door I’ll discover that this whole thing has been a bad dream, rather like one of Edmund Blackadder’s, and the world will revert to normal. Not fantastically interesting, I’ll admit. But normal.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Will as the front door slammed shut. ‘That was better than watching Jeremy Kyle.’

  ‘He’ll come round,’ I said. ‘I think it was simply a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Why are you doing it then?’ asked Charlotte. I smiled at her, recognising that the peace-keeper in the family was clearly ruffled by this.

  ‘Because I believe in it, love,’ I said. ‘I don’t like the priorities this country has and I really do want to do something to make things better, particularly for children and young people.’

  ‘Can we help?’ asked Esme.

  ‘That would be fantastic. I’ve got a job for you all actually. To come up with a slogan for our party.’

  ‘What’s it called?’ asked Will.

  ‘The Lollipop Party.’

  Will stuck two fingers in his mouth, pretending to gag.

  ‘It was Zach’s idea,’ I explained. ‘And actually it’s better than anything we managed to come up with. We want it to be family-friendly, you see, without it sounding boring.’

  ‘I think it sounds great,’ said Esme. ‘Will there be games and party bags as well as lollipops?’

  ‘It’s really not that sort of party,’ I smiled. ‘It’s a party where we come up with ideas about how we’re going to make things better.’

  ‘You’re not even going to have ice cream?’ she asked.

  ‘If one of us wins the election, we’ll have ice cream,’ I said.

  ‘Chocolate?’ asked Esme.

  ‘Double choc chip.’

  Esme’s face brightened visibly.

  ‘Is there a prize for coming up with the best slogan?’ asked Will, finishing off his last piece of toast.

  ‘Why did I guess you’d be looking for monetary reward?’

  ‘You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’ Will grinned.

  ‘We’re offering an internship working for our party in the summer, actually.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve got plans.’

  ‘That’s the first I’ve heard of them,’ I said, starting to clear the breakfast table.

  ‘That’s because they’re top secret at the moment. Anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of an iTunes voucher.’

  ‘Oh, you were, were you?’

  ‘Twenty pounds would be nice.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it? I’ll run to ten.’

  ‘Fifteen, and that’s a bargain.’

  ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘Fifteen, as long as whoever wins shares it equally with the other two.’

  ‘But you don’t get anything extra for winning then,’ said Will.

  ‘Oh you do,’ I said. ‘You get the glory.’ Will smiled. ‘Everyone agreed then?’ I asked. Charlotte and Esme nodded.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Will.

  ‘I want some good slogans, mind, in return for my investment. And I want you two to help Esme, OK?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘Right,’ I said, glancing up at the clock. ‘Time for school.’

  ‘Is Daddy going to be allowed to enter?’ asked Esme, following me out into the hall.

  ‘He’s allowed, love. But I don’t think he will.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Will and Charlotte looked at me. I hesitated before replying. ‘He’s just not interested in iTunes,’ I said.

  On Wednesdays I got to wear my other hat. The nutritionist’s one. People were always amazed when I told them I had three jobs and three children. Words like ‘superwoman’ were banded around. Personally, I didn’t see it as anything out of the ordinary. I knew plenty of Mummybloggers who juggled far more than that and had far more stressful lives. Besides, I only had to look at Sam and Jackie to realise how easy I had it.

  I worked for a GP practice in Halifax. It had been my decision. I was well aware that Hebden Bridge was a bubble; you couldn’t live and work there and claim that you had your finger on the pulse of the nation. And the reason I wanted to keep practising as a nutritionist was that I wanted to help people who really needed it.

  And as I watched the procession of people entering my room that morning there was certainly no doubt that they needed help. A cruel commentator might have said that it looked like an audition for a fat-camp reality TV show. In truth, a trawl of any high street in towns up and down the land could have produced similar results.

  A man called Keith sat before me, the overspill on the chair suggesting that we really ought to invest in a bigger one in order to meet our clients’ needs. He was the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to sit next to on a bus. To be honest, you wouldn’t have been able to sit next to him, even if you had wanted to.

  He, like all my clients, had been asked to produce a list of everything he had eaten over the past three days. I read through it: the usual catalogue of processed ready meals, fast-food takeaways and sugary snacks.

  ‘Do you ever eat fruit or vegetables, Keith?’ I enquired.

  ‘Oh yeah, quite a lot.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘I sometimes have a Hawaiian pizza, with the pineapple on, like, as one of my five a day. And I always ask for extra tomato ketchup in my burgers.’

  I nodded, trying hard to keep my expression neutral. ‘Do you cook at all for yourself, Keith?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I’m a real whiz with a microwave.’

  I resisted the temptation to bang my head on the table. It wasn’t Keith’s fault he lived in a society that seemed intent on covering the high streets of the lands with fast-food restaurants and where the only things you learned to cook in school were pizzas and Victoria sponge sandwich cakes. You couldn’t survive on that. Well, you could; you just ended up like Keith.

  I went through my usual spiel, trying to find some healthy foods which he might like and handing him some supermarket shopping lists and very basic recipes that he might like to try.

  ‘I’ll maybe give one or two of them a go,’ he said. ‘I suppose it’s like drugs, you have to wean your body off the bad stuff gradually so you don’t get withdrawal symptoms from lack of sugar and fat, like.’

  ‘Er, no Keith. It’s not like that at all. You’ll be absolutely fine. You may enjoy fast food but it’s not clinically adictive. Your body does not need sugar or processed food to survive.’

  Keith frowned at me and scratched his balding head. He’d be having a good laugh about that in the pub later. The rubbish that this fancy-food woman had come out with. And probably folding the recipe sheet up to put under the wobbly table his pint was on.

  Sometimes, if the weather was horrendous, I’d drive straight to school to pick Esme up. But it was an unusually mild day for March, the sun was out, I had time to kill and, most of all, I needed a walk to clear my head. Which was why I parked outside the house then took a steady walk down the hill.

  The air smelt of spring, there were pockets of green all around, pushing back the last vestiges of a long, cold winter. But inside me the coldness lingered on, throwing a damp, icy blanket over the hope and excitement which had tried so hard to push through.

  I hadn’t expected David to embrace my newly politicised self, but neither had I expected him to be quite so brutal in his dismissal of it. Another layer of scar tissue had formed inside since this morning. The trouble with scar tissue was that it was much harder to get rid of than it was to form.

  I ached for a softness within. A warmth. Dare I say a glow? But all I had were embers of something which had once burned there but had gone out a long time ago.

  Maybe I e
xpected too much of everyone: of David, the government, of people like Keith. Or maybe I was simply tired of expecting too little.

  Despite the walk, I was still the first parent to arrive. I stood at the edge of the playground and got my phone out of my handbag. I’d been so busy at work I hadn’t had a chance to go online since I posted the question. I went to my blog first and scrolled down to the bottom. I started to read the answers, some of them funny, some serious. But none of them questioning my sanity for asking the question in the first place. I scrolled down further. The comments kept on coming: making public toilets free, toy manufacturers who produced pink and blue versions of the same product publicly named and shamed, hospital car parking to be free, models under a size eight banned, the list went on. And on and on. I flicked on to Twitter. I’d used the hashtag #mummyfesto. When I searched on it, a whole list of tweets and retweets came up. Some of them were from my regular mummyblogger friends and followers, but many were from people I’d never heard of before. People all over the place. All over the world even. My hands were shaking as I scrolled down. I came to the end of the page, but there were older entries and new entries were coming in all the time.

  ‘How’s tricks?’

  I looked up, startled. It was Jackie. I noticed that the playground behind her was rapidly filling up. I glanced down at the phone in my hand, struggling to form anything coherent to say.

  ‘Look,’ I said instead, thrusting the phone into her hand. ‘Scroll down, scroll up, scroll any way you like.’

  I watched Jackie’s face as she started to read. Saw the smile spread across her face as she scrolled further down.

  ‘When did you put the question on?’ she asked.

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  For once, Jackie’s language could be excused. She looked up and threw her arms around me. I was surprised at how good it felt, being hugged by a crazy woman jumping up and down in platform shoes.

  ‘Hey, what’s this?’ asked Sam, hurrying through the gate. ‘Can anyone join in?’ Before I could answer Jackie grabbed hold of Sam and pulled her in between us.

  ‘It’s a Teletubbies-style big hug,’ said Jackie. ‘Anna here, who is really – which one had the aerial on its head?’

  ‘Tinky Winky,’ said Sam.

  ‘Anna here, who is really Tinky Winky, has got ideas for the mummyfesto coming in from all over the bloody world.’

  Sam looked at me. I nodded.

  ‘My blog and Twitter have gone crazy with it. I haven’t even had a chance to look at Facebook yet.’

  Sam’s features did the facial equivalent of turning up the radio and dancing around the living room. ‘This thing’s got legs,’ she said. ‘It’s really going to run.’

  ‘It’s Usain bloody Bolt,’ said Jackie.

  ‘Better make it a distance runner,’ said Sam. ‘The election’s a marathon not a sprint.’

  ‘Paula Radcliffe,’ said Jackie. ‘She’s the only one I know. Although didn’t she end up blubbing at the side of the road?’

  ‘Forget the running analogy,’ said Sam. ‘The fact is people are interested. People want to get involved. It’s a fantastic platform to build on. Are you both still on for Friday?’

  Jackie and I nodded.

  ‘Good. Anna can you put all the suggestions together in a file? Even the silly ones, it doesn’t matter. We’ll go through them all, start to put the mummyfesto together. How are you getting on with your own ones?’

  ‘Mine are a bit ranty,’ said Jackie. ‘But I’ve got lots of them.’

  Sam looked at me.

  ‘I haven’t had much chance yet,’ I replied, ‘but they’re all in my head.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ said Sam. ‘How’s David taken to the idea?’

  My face must have indicated that this was an awkward question.

  ‘You have told him, haven’t you?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Yeah. This morning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’ll just need a bit of time to get his head around it,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ said Sam. ‘Well tell him we’d be very grateful for any expertise he can offer. Being as he’s the only person I know who’s actually won an election.’

  I nodded. Although I was in no doubt about the response I would get if I asked.

  ‘I’ve got you a slogan,’ said Will, when he arrived home shortly before teatime.

  ‘Great,’ I said, adding some more stock to the risotto. ‘Hit me with it then.’

  ‘Rip it up and start again,’ said Will. ‘It’s a line from a song by Orange Juice.’

  I smiled at him. ‘I know, I did the eighties first time around, remember?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Anyway, I like it. Bit alternative.’

  ‘So when are you going to decide?’

  ‘I’ll put all the suggestions to our meeting on Friday.’

  ‘You haven’t got any others. You may as well just give me the prize now.’

  ‘Thank you, Will. I’m sure your sisters will come up with something.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘That’s not very nice.’

  ‘It’s true, though. Esme may come up with something, but it will be sparkly and totally unsuitable. And I don’t suppose Charlotte’s going to bother.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘She’s got other stuff on her mind at the moment.’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked, putting the wooden spoon down and turning to face Will.

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does. Why did you say that?’ Will shuffled his feet and looked down at his trainers. He had always been absolutely hopeless at keeping stuff to himself.

  ‘It’s all started up again at school.’

  ‘The texts?’

  Will shook his head. ‘It’s Facebook as well now.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know, Mum.’

  ‘I’m asking you, aren’t I?’

  ‘Stupid stuff. About her being a virgin. Saying she’s frigid. Crap like that.’

  ‘So being a virgin’s a crime now is it? At thirteen.’

  ‘You have to play the game, Mum. Cover it up, put on a bit of a show, act like you’re something you’re not.’

  ‘Why do you have to do that?’

  ‘To survive.’

  I shook my head. ‘These kids on Facebook, why doesn’t she just block them?’

  ‘It’s not one or two any more. It’s a whole load of kids. And they’re posting all over. Not just on her wall.’

  ‘Why hasn’t she told me this?’

  Will shrugged. ‘I guess she’s just trying to deal with it her way.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Sticking her head in the sand and hoping it will go away, from what I can make out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  Will avoided my gaze. ‘She asked me not to. Said she didn’t want to worry you.’

  I handed Will the wooden spoon. ‘Keep an eye on that, please,’ I said, pointing to the pan. ‘Esme’s watching CBBC. If she asks for a biscuit, say no, OK?’

  Will nodded. I went straight upstairs to Charlottes’s room. She’d been in there since she’d got home from school. I’d thought I was giving her space, privacy. It turned out I was doing nothing of the sort.

  I knocked on the door. ‘Charlotte, it’s me. Have you got a minute?’ There was a muffled sound from within. I went straight in. She was lying on her bed surrounded by an assortment of textbooks. I could tell by her puffy eyes that she’d been crying.

  ‘I know what’s been going on,’ I said. Charlotte sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not Will’s fault,’ I said. ‘I made him tell me.’ I sat down on the corner of her bed. ‘By the way, mums are supposed to worry. It’s part of the job description. We only end up worrying that we don’t know what’s going on if we’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Charlotte sighed and looked up a
t the ceiling. ‘I thought if I just ignored them it would stop,’ she said.

  ‘It hasn’t though, has it?’ She shook her head. ‘We need to do something, Charlotte. We can’t simply let it carry on like this.’

  Her bottom lip started to tremble. I leant over and hugged her to me. Hating what they had done to her. Thinking how much easier it was when your children were toddlers, when you could simply pick them up out of harm’s way.

  ‘I don’t understand why,’ she said. ‘What’s so wrong with me that they do this?’

  I took a soggy strand of her long dark hair and tucked it back behind her ear.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with you, sweetheart. They’re the ones who have got something wrong with them. Bullies are usually deeply insecure. It’s easy to be one of the crowd, isn’t it? But it’s not so easy to be yourself.’

  Charlotte sat staring at the bedroom wall. Her face devoid of any hope.

  ‘I’d like to go and see the Head about this,’ I said. Charlotte groaned. ‘I don’t have any choice, love. I can’t let them do this to you. I love you far too much for that.’

  The tears fell again. She wiped them away with her sleeve.

  ‘At the risk of sounding like a counsellor,’ I said, ‘there are websites you can go on, they have mentors your sort of age who have been through this type of thing. And there are helplines you can ring. It might be good to talk it through with someone other than me. I’ll do you a list of the websites and numbers, if you like.’

  Charlotte shrugged. I took it as a yes.

  ‘You have to promise me one thing, though,’ I said. ‘Please keep talking to me about this. I will worry far more if you don’t talk to me, OK?’ She nodded. ‘Now, let’s dry those eyes. Tea will be ready in about ten minutes.’

  She nodded again. I kissed her on the forehead, wishing for a second that I was Glinda the Good Witch of the South and could leave a mark there that would somehow protect her from harm. I got up and walked towards the door.