Losing It

by Jane Asher

  On Boxing Day Mum started to talk about him a bit. She really hadn’t said anything since the day he left. Sally said she’d talked quite a bit on that day itself, and she thought they might get somewhere, but then after that Mum just clammed up, and Sal and I found it easier to keep right off the subject. It wasn’t as if life seemed all that different really – Dad had been so quiet and distant for the weeks before it happened and I was usually working in my room or out with my friends so the house didn’t seem particularly empty or anything. But all three of us knew there had to come a time when we discussed it: Sal and I hadn’t got a clue whether things were permanent, like in terms of a divorce and stuff, or whether this was just some extended row that would blow over. Sal said she thought there was another woman involved, but I didn’t believe that. That’s one thing Dad just wouldn’t do – he’s not the type.

  Anyway, on Boxing Day Mum started to talk. She said that she thought Dad was having a mid-life crisis or something (I didn’t like to point out that as Dad was forty-eight he might be considered a bit past mid-way) and that if we just sat tight and kept calm everything would sort itself out. Since he left, Sally’s said so much to me about how women shouldn’t rely on men and how Mum was making a big mistake in not just getting on with her life without Dad and not letting him come back in any case, that I was sure she was going to say something, but she didn’t. We both just listened to Mum and kind of nodded and muttered a bit and tried to show some support. But it’s all pretty fucking awful really: I’ve never seen her like this and she looks so sad all the time – I wish I could help her, but I can see it’s not Sal and me she needs right now. I never realised before how much she really loved Dad. It’s quite shocking.

  Stacey

  Who’d have thought it? The way Charlie’s fitted into my life like he’s done. It’s hard to believe it’s all happened in a few weeks; my mum and I are always saying it’s like he’s been around for ever, really. I laugh now when I look back to that first day when he drove me home from work: he seemed so – I dunno – kinda quiet and a bit dim. Now he’s the liveliest of the three of us. My mum says if it wasn’t that he fancied me she’d have a go herself. Gotta watch that, I have, ’cos you can’t trust my mum further than you can throw her – and that’s not very far neither.

  He come in that first time and he took his hat off – he was wearing that boring black thing that makes him look like a doctor – and I could see right away that Mum was dead impressed. He did a kinda little dip with his head as he took it off and she went all simpery and cute.

  ‘Who’s your friend, Stace?’ she said.

  ‘This is Mr Thornton, Ma. He comes in Sava-Fart for his shopping and we got chatting. Didn’t we, Mr Thornton? About bogofs?’

  ‘Stacey – don’t be so cheeky – what will your friend think of us?’

  ‘How d’ya mean?’ I asked, all innocent. It’s good fun getting Ma going, even though she knows I love her really.

  ‘Well, you know,’ she said, ‘you shouldn’t call it – you know …’

  ‘What – Sava-Fart, d’you mean? Why not? It’s what we call it, ain’t it, Ma?’

  Charlie was smiling at all this – he hadn’t never had a chance to say hello or nothing, and already he was seeing the other side of the Salton household. Dunno why I was feeling so perky, but he’d got me all high on the drive home like I was pissed or downed a tab or something. Fuck knows why – it was something to do with the way he’d been looking at me, and that. It’s hard to say how I felt exactly, but I guess it was how Sheila feels when she knows she looks good and the guys are eyeing her and getting excited.

  ‘It isn’t the best supermarket in the world, is it?’ Charlie said, trying to save Ma from feeling embarrassed. He’s nice like that – I know that, now. He don’t never like to see people unhappy or uneasy and things, although I don’t know how that fits with him having done a runner on his wife and kids. But I don’t like to think about them.

  ‘I think your name for it is rather apt,’ he went on. (Ooooh – that didn’t half sound poncey, but I held my tongue ’cos he might not have understood if I sent him up like I would have if I’d been with the girls. I’d do it now, of course – I send him up rotten the way he talks, but things was different for them first few days before I knew how hung up he was on me.) ‘I always have felt that Stacey is too good for it, Mrs – sorry, forgive me, but you are Stacey’s mother, aren’t you?’

  Course he knew straight up that she was, but he was just trying to get me to say it so’s he didn’t have to leave and he could start chatting and that. But I never – I just looked at him and then at my mum.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. ‘I’m Stacey’s mum, Lena. I’ve always said that about Stace and that place, Mr Thornton, it’s funny you should say it – I’ve always said our Stacey should find something better. She’s a very clever girl, you know, and she’s wasted in that place.’

  Yeah – right, like I should be modelling for the magazines or something. Who the fuck does my mum think I am – Posh Spice? I’m lucky to have got the supermarket job and all – I know that. If I was the size I am now when I’d gone for it they’d never have let me in, that’s for sure. Even then they took a good, careful look at me, and Warren was none too certain, I could see. But they ain’t queuing up to work in Sava-Fart, you see, so I knew I was in with a chance, and I didn’t look too bad in them days and it was winter so I was wearing my thick fuzzy coat. I ain’t stupid, you know. You can’t tell what’s fuzz and what’s me in that coat, so long as I keep it buttoned right up and tuck my legs under. It was fucking hot in the office, I remember that – and they kept saying wouldn’t I like to take off my coat and I kept saying no, it’s OK, I feel the cold really badly so I’m fine, thanks, and I was sweating like a pig and I was sure they could see that. But I kept my head tucked right into the collar so them rolls of fat that I can’t stand was hidden and I looked up at them under my lashes and it was OK. I wasn’t half the size what I am now. I’d seen that film with Eddie Murphy – The Nutty Professor – and he wears this fat suit in it and he looks just like he’s really big, so I thought if I wear the coat like it’s a fat suit then who’s to know where the coat stops and the real me starts? If Eddie Murphy can look big, then I can look small, or that’s the way I was thinking in any case.

  So I got the job and my mum was so thrilled and excited that I got caught up in all that too and felt like I’d won the lottery or something. She had Auntie Ede round and everything – bought some beers and we all had a celebration. So I had to laugh when she said that to Charlie about it not being good enough. I remembered the way we’d all drank our beers and cheered and laughed and that; she was dead thrilled then. And when she come in the shop and seen me in my uniform for the first time sitting at the till I thought she’d start crying or something. I was right embarrassed ’cos they still had a senior standing next to me watching everything I did and it made me so nervous I was punching all the wrong buttons and missing the scanner and fuck knows what else. You kinda lose your mind when you’re being watched like that: I was checking on the daftest things when I was still under a senior. Customers was bringing these fruits and stuff in their plastic bags out of their trolleys and sticking them on the belt and looking all impatient and I’m fucked if I could remember what half of them was. ‘’Scuse me, Mrs Peters, what’s this curved yellow fruit that comes in a bunch called?’ Nah, I’m joking there, but you get the picture. So anyway, when my mum was there looking at me all soppy and proud it was right embarrassing. I was trying to pretend I didn’t know her and she was just another customer, but I could tell Mrs P was onto her. Ma kept whispering the names of stuff when she took it out of her trolley once she saw I was in a panic. Everything – even all them with bar codes on, so I was trying to tell her to shut up ’cos I only had to scan them, but she didn’t get it and kept on whispering ‘fishfingers, Stacey’ or ‘white sliced, love’ like I’m an idiot. God knows how I kept that job, but then whe
n I see as they have such trouble getting any new staff I guess it ain’t surprising. I know how they need me now, see. If Mrs Peters looked at me today like she done then she’d be in big trouble. Stupid cow.

  Charlie stayed and had coffee with us that first evening. Mum gave him her sweet, milky coffee and he said it was just how he liked it. We laughed about that after, me and Charlie, ’cos he likes it black with no sugar and he never dared say. He went on drinking Ma’s coffee for days before he dared tell me. I knew right off something special was happening, though, ’cos I was listening to him talking to Ma and telling her about his job and that and I realised I’d been sitting there without trying to cover myself up like I usually done. I was enjoying myself, and that don’t never usually happen when there’s other people in the flat ’cos I’m always wondering what they’re thinking and trying to sit in a way that don’t look too disgusting.

  It was just like when the girl finds her soul mate in the books Ma reads from the library. She reads a lot, you see, and I always know when the girl’s getting the right guy ’cos Ma goes all dreamy-looking and smiley and she don’t even want to watch the TV unless it’s EastEnders. She’s right soppy, my mum. I wondered if that was why she was so happy and smiley that first evening with Charlie – was it just like in the books, that she knew straight off that he was crazy about me? (Crazy’s the word, if you ask me, as I’m always telling him – crazy to fancy a lump of fat like me. But there’s no accounting for tastes, as Sheila says. Course she says it when some guy don’t want to get in her pants soon as he sees her. Other way round with me.)

  So did Ma know Charlie was Mr Right as she puts it? Or was it just she smelt money? She ain’t greedy, my ma, but she been on benefits for so long she gets all excited when she sees someone what’s earning. Especially someone like Charlie – however much it pisses me off, she still talks about him some of the time as if he was better than us. I think she saw him right away as the one to drag her fat daughter into the good life.

  Well, Ma – you might not be so wrong at that, as it happens. What’s it you always say? ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  Charlie

  I know I was walking about looking like a madman. The minute it was done I couldn’t stop smiling. I was aware of people glancing at me as I passed them in the street, not liking to look at me too directly or for too long – for fear of my engaging them in some crazy conversation, perhaps. My transformation from having been in a state of persistent longing into one of joyful calm was instant and totally unpredictable – for those first few weeks I felt as if I would never need anything more in my life than the regular visits to Stacey and the evenings of disgusting coffee and unimaginable bliss.

  It was all astonishingly easy: Lena accepted me without question, and, even on that very first visit, the atmosphere was so relaxed and uncritical that her invitation to me to call in again the following day seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  Stacey on her home ground turned out to be even more adorable than I could have imagined: funny, bright and completely, captivatingly charming. Yes – there is lust, I cannot deny that, even to myself, but there’s more, too. I love her. I truly love her, and, for the first time in my life, I understand what that means.

  During those early, delirious days I couldn’t think about the future: nothing existed but the present. I stayed in a dreadful little hotel in Pimlico, calling in to see her each evening after work. I knew it couldn’t last, of course, not in that form, but my happiness was such that it left no room for logical thought of any kind. I was content (content? How can such a mild word begin to describe the bliss of my new existence?) just to get through the days and live for the evenings spent in her company.

  It wasn’t easy to keep up appearances at work. The sheer heaven of seeing Stacey made everything bearable, of course, but the logistics were never simple. For the first few weeks, when I was staying in that depressing hotel, I did at least have somewhere reasonable to wash and shave and hang up my clothes, but it was still a miracle that I got to chambers or to court most days on time and looking fairly presentable. My room in the hotel was my launch pad, which, together with the occasional takeaway, packet of crisps or chocolate bar, afforded me every physical necessity and enabled me to project myself into an appearance of normal living each day while my mind existed solely for her.

  I would wake in the morning to my telephone ringing its pre-programmed alarm call – in my half-asleep state I never did learn not to say ‘hello?’ every time into the robotic silence – and smile to myself to think that I would see her within twelve hours of that very moment. My breakfast was a quick cup of tea, assembled, rather than brewed, from little packets and cartons on the tray by the wardrobe, possibly accompanied, if I was feeling particularly indulgent, by a tiny, dry, film-wrapped biscuit. My grooming routine consisted of a shower – newly opening each time a sliver of paper-wrapped soap and unscrewing a tiny virgin bottle of shampoo – and a quick shave. Dressing was functional but efficient: I not only made use of the hotel laundry but also, for the first time in my life, discovered the remarkable effectiveness of the Corby trouser press in the corner (how many times had Judy and I laughed at such things as being useful only for salesmen and illicit lovers). At work, although I was aware that my attention was now never fully devoted to my clients and that little things were beginning to slip, I was happy and positive, simply filling in time until I would make my way to Balham and to joy.

  I worked more consistently than I had over the previous few weeks, in fact, because it had been made quite clear to me that my clerk wouldn’t be suggesting me for any more cases unless I pulled my socks up. For the short time between walking out of the house and the start of the Christmas break, I was committed to appear in various pretty straightforward divorce proceedings. I bought a couple of shirts and some underwear from Marks & Spencer, and, by hanging my suit in the steamed-up bathroom each evening, I could walk into work looking reasonably spruce, without having to face the problem of collecting my things from home. Once in court, with a supreme effort I kept superficially calm. If I’d betrayed even a fraction of the tumultuous feelings that were heaving around inside me during that period I wouldn’t have lasted a moment – thank God for the artifice that’s always been an important part of the way I present a case. I needed all the skill I could muster during that unreal time just to stop myself screaming out loud – mostly for joy, in those early stages, but, even then, sometimes in terror.

  I knew home and Judy would have to be faced before too long. Although I had been surprised by how easily I was surviving with the bare minimum of personal effects (so ironic that most of my time during the day was being spent in argument over the division of the most trivial of goods), I knew soon I would need to expand my wardrobe, and, apart from my clothes, there were books and papers that I needed.

  It was easier than I had foreseen. Apart from a dreadfully stiff phone call on Christmas Day I hadn’t made contact with Judy and the kids at all for a couple of weeks, and I kept putting off getting in touch for fear of upsetting the rickety little boat of happiness I’d somehow managed to keep afloat since leaving. Bloody selfish, of course, but then I swear I honestly felt that they were better off without me and that Judy and I had never really been a proper couple at all. The intense – no, even that doesn’t begin to describe it – the ravaging, all-consuming feelings that I was experiencing for Stacey rendered everything and anything else so irrelevant that I can’t see it now as being selfish in any normal sense of the word.

  I rang the bell rather than used my key, which I still had with me, sensing some unwritten law of propriety that suggests a certain politesse in warning the abandoned spouse of one’s arrival in the family home. Judy answered the door and looked quite startled, poor love. I’d left a message on the machine telling her I was planning to come round and collect some of my things, but she’d been late back and hadn’t had time to check it, she said. I’m not sure that was true, in fact – I�
��m more inclined to think she’d been home for some time, because she had some marks on the side of her face that suggested it had been pressed onto a cushion or pillow or something. My guess is she’d been up in the bedroom with one of her migraines but didn’t like to say so in case I thought she was playing for sympathy. Little did she know she could have told me she’d just been diagnosed with stomach cancer and I’d have brushed it off: nothing and nobody other than Stacey could reach me.

  Ringing the bell of your own front door and being let in like a visitor by someone you’ve lived with for over twenty years is a disorientating but not entirely unpleasant experience. As I was already floating in a no-man’s land of emotional upheaval of stupendous proportions, to find myself standing like the Frog Footman in front of my own house, on the wrong side of the door, seemed oddly amusing rather than depressing. In more normal circumstances I’ve no doubt Judy and I would have laughed about it, but at that moment, not surprisingly, she didn’t look as if she found it very funny.

  ‘Hi,’ I think I said, rather inadequately. ‘How are you doing?’

  The startled look disappeared in a millisecond and she replaced it with her Ofsted expression, as I call it: one of inspection looking for the worst and expecting to find it.

  ‘How do you think?’

  I resisted the temptation to inform her that, given the huge scope for sarcasm, recrimination and noble suffering that my behaviour had afforded her, this wasn’t the most inventive of replies, and merely lowered my head a little in an attempt to defuse the situation.