Single Mother on the Verge

by Maria Roberts

  ‘Nothing’s happened, okay?’

  I’ll press him after dinner when he’s finished his homework and we’ve read a story together.

  We glide past the enormous houses, which tower over us. The sun is bright and buds are bursting on the blossom trees. Jackson is lush in early spring. I say to Jack, ‘That’s a nice one, isn’t it? We’ll live in a house like that one day.’

  ‘When we do can I get a dog?’

  Rhodri would say I’m encouraging Jack to be a capitalist. But I couldn’t live without hope. I don’t want a mansion. I don’t need stables and vintage cars. All I want is an above-average house. All I want is something other than what we have.

  By the time Rhodri returns home, Jack is already asleep. I tried to get him to talk but he wouldn’t. Rhodri sits on the leather chair, and I balance on the arm, legs stretched out over him. The curtains are swept back so we can look out of the window onto the street. Together we watch a group of teenagers race around the corner throwing stones at one another, shrieking and drinking.

  ‘To be a teenager –’ I stop as a car hurtles around the bend and smacks into the bollards that edge the communal garden. ‘Bloody hell!’ I leap off Rhodri and push my nose up against the window to get a closer look. Two lads run off. No one appears to have been left for dead inside the car. I rush to the phone and call the police. ‘I’d like to report an accident… Sunnyside Close… No… two lads, early twenties… dark clothes… They ran off.’

  ‘We’ve had a number of calls, we’re on our way,’ says the law-enforcing telephonist. ‘Can I take your name and address?’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t.’ I don’t want my house vandalized, or worse. ‘I don’t want police coming to the house,’ I add briskly. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’ Hanging up, I turn to Rhodri. ‘They won’t catch them,’ I tell him. ‘It’ll be hours before they get here.’

  We stand at the front door and study the angle of the car, somehow expecting something to happen – like an explosion, or a riot.

  ‘If it weren’t for the bollards it’d be in our living room,’ says Rhodri. ‘Look at it. The car was heading this way.’

  Across the gardens, Albert emerges on his front step, his wife at his shoulder behind him. They look across to us. I shrug my shoulders: I know, but what can you do? They’ve lived here forty years, as long as Josie next door, ever since the estate was built. They were proud of the place then.

  ‘It drives you mad, doesn’t it?’ says Josie, stepping out of her house, her terrier scuffling between her feet. ‘You think one lot of trouble is over, then another begins.’

  A few nights after the car accident, I’m woken by a man banging violently at the front door. At this time on a Sunday morning, it could only be Damien. Drunk. ‘Rhodri,’ I whisper. ‘Rhodri, wake up.’ I look across to the alarm clock – two a.m. ‘Rhodri, wake up. Please wake up.’ I shake him hard. ‘Come on, Rhodri, wake up.’

  ‘Whaaat?’ he mumbles, rolling over. Then an almighty wallop startles him to life.

  ‘Ssh,’ I whisper, placing my finger on his lips. ‘I don’t want him to hear us. He’s been out there for about twenty minutes.’

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  More thumps land on the door, making me jump with fright.

  ‘Should I go out there?’

  ‘No… No,’ I stammer. Rhodri is strong, but Damien is wild. On second thoughts… ‘Yes. You’re stronger than Damien. See what he wants.’

  Rhodri scrambles about in the dark for his trousers and a T-shirt. The bangs on the door land so fiercely that I worry he may force his way in.

  ‘No, Rhodri, stay here.’ I pull him back onto the bed. ‘For heaven’s sake, Maria. What do you want me to do?’

  Should I call the police? No. He’s not actually done anything yet. But what if he hurls a brick through the window? What if he’s back to finish off what he started years ago?

  ‘Should I call the police?’ whispers Rhodri.

  ‘No, he’ll hear us.’

  ‘But he’s outside the door in the gardens. How could he hear?’

  ‘Ssh – you’re too loud. He just will.’

  So we both sit in awkward silence in the dark. I take short gasping breaths, bring my knees up to my chest and nibble my nails. Another heavy bang.

  ‘This is ridiculous, Maria.’

  ‘I know. I know. We’ll just have to wait until he goes away.’

  Another bang.

  ‘Come on, you bastards,’ yells a voice. ‘Open the fucking door!’

  Rhodri wraps me in his arms. I’m quivering. I want to scream. Or cry. But nothing comes out. ‘Is this how scared you used to be?’

  ‘Yes. No. Worse. I was on my own then. At least now I’ve got you.’

  ‘Open the fucking door!’

  ‘Look out the window – see if it’s him,’ urges Rhodri.

  But I can’t move because I’m frozen with fear. ‘I can’t.’ I whisper. ‘He might see I’m here.’

  Bang.

  ‘Open the fucking door!’ he yells again.

  Then I relax a little. ‘I don’t think it’s him.’

  Bang.

  ‘Open the fucking door!’

  Bang.

  ‘No. It’s not him. It doesn’t sound like him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I reckon if it was Damien he would have smashed the windows in by now.’

  Rhodri gets up and walks across the room in the dark, knocking into things noisily. He pulls aside the curtains and opens the window. ‘Can I help you, mate?’ he says gruffly, in a bizarre attempt to sound like a northerner.

  ‘I’ve come for the party.’

  ‘Great.’ I groan. ‘Does it look like we’re having a party?’

  ‘Someone said there was a party here.’

  ‘Sorry, mate, no party.’

  When does Rhodri ever call anyone ‘mate’?

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘We’re in bed. Wrong house, mate.’

  He said ‘mate’ again… hilarious.

  The man shouts our address. ‘That’s this address,’ replies Rhodri, ‘but there’s no party here, sorry.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ yells the man. Then he walks off. I hear him kick his feet down the path. ‘And I bought all these beers,’ he grumbles.

  ‘He had a crate in his hand.’ Rhodri climbs back into bed. ‘He looked really disappointed.’ He pulls me towards him and holds me tight against his chest, accidentally shoving my head under his armpit.

  ‘You need a shower,’ I tease.

  ‘You’re really shaking,’ he murmurs, into my hair.

  My legs and arms have taken on vibrations of their own. ‘I’ll stop in a minute,’ I say, suddenly feeling very exposed.

  ‘Come here,’ soothes Rhodri, teasing his fingers through my hair. ‘We’re pathetic, aren’t we? That’s no good, being scared to death. I’ll have to take up kick-boxing or something.’

  Two incidents in one week have left me shaken. I need some respite or I’ll be at the doctor’s begging for Valium. Not good. When Jack and I come home from school the next day, I decide to talk to Rhodri. I can see he’s in the garden.

  ‘Can I have Ellie come over and play?’ Jack asks shyly, as he tries to open the gate.

  ‘Have you unlocked it, love?’

  ‘Just doing it,’ he says. ‘Can Ellie come over one day?’

  ‘I’ll ask her mum.’ I wheel my bicycle through to the garden. The front wheel collides with Rhodri’s bottom, which is sticking out of the shed because he’s bent over, rummaging for something.

  ‘Ouch.’ He tuts, burrowing deeper. ‘I’m looking for something to make placards out of.’

  ‘We need a holiday,’ I shout to him. ‘We need to get away from here – it’ll do us good.’

  ‘I’m not flying,’ he says adamantly, coming out of the shed with some spray cans in his hand.

  ‘A holiday park, then?’

  Rhodri
scowls. ‘You know what I think about holiday parks.’

  There was a feature on a green website about a family who, a few years ago, had been displaced from their houseboat by a well-known holiday-park provider that wanted to build chalets on the land. Rhodri showed me the article online. I want a week’s holiday, but a child lost his home because people like me fancy a semi-posh vacation in a forest. So we can’t ever visit a luxury forest oasis, or any other camp where children have fun. When I tell Rhodri I want to book a cheap flight to Nice, he shows me National Geographic pictures of motherless babies in India being paddled out of flooded homes. But if I don’t get away from this estate I’ll have a breakdown.

  ‘Jack needs to be around other children,’ I reason. ‘Imagine how awful it must be as an only child.’ Suddenly it dawns on me that Jack may have developed a crush on this Ellie at school. He needs some boys to play football with. A holiday should distract him.

  Rhodri doesn’t look like he’s imagining how awful it must be. He looks like he’s plotting something.

  ‘You had your brother to play with,’ I push. ‘Jack can’t hang out with his mum all the time.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ says Rhodri, heading into the house to use the telephone.

  An hour and a phone call later our holiday is booked. ‘It’s arranged,’ says Rhodri, flopping next to me. ‘Easter week at Cobble Cottage.’

  ‘All to ourselves?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  Squeezing his arm, I plant kiss after kiss on his cheek. I love Cobble Cottage. Rhodri grew up in it in a pretty hamlet in the Snowdonia National Park. There are fields to scramble over and the Cambrian Mountains to climb. We can take long bike rides along Llyn Tegid pausing for lazy picnics and peering into sailing boats, or cheering on Jack with his remote-control speedboat as it races across the lake. Or drive to the beach. Or to the old-fashioned cinema where kids queue for tubs of ice cream during the interval, and as the end credits roll the audience bursts into applause. We can bake potatoes on a campfire by the river…

  ‘There should be children to play with. My mum said a boy Jack’s age lives opposite and we can visit my friend Maddog – he has a baby.’

  Jack will be so excited. Cobble Cottage! It’s been far too long since we holidayed together. It will be wonderful. If it’s cold and wet we can play cards by the wood-burner. If it’s warm, we can sunbathe in the garden or sit beneath the pergola. I can pick fresh lemon thyme and basil in the garden for gorgeous slow-cooked dinners. In the evenings Rhodri and I can drink heavy red wine beneath the parasol. Or we can play games in the large sitting room, listen to old songs on vinyl and read. Jack can drape sheets over the chairs and eat lunch beneath a makeshift Bedouin tent. Or we can dance. Or make dens in the woods from broken branches and wild grass.

  ‘Can we borrow a kayak to row on the lake?’

  ‘We should be able to.’

  ‘It will be just the three of us?’

  Rhodri’s parents own Cobble Cottage but live in Liverpool.

  ‘I asked my mum if anyone else is going and she said we’ll have the cottage to ourselves.’

  Over the years we’ve holidayed with Rhodri’s family. It’s not that I don’t like them. It’s just that Rhodri and I need time together. It’s been weeks since we were thoroughly intimate – discounting exhausted fumbles in the dark. Some new lingerie, no work, good food and fresh air will bring the romance back into our lives. We used to be so frisky. Better to massage our relationship before it needs rocket-powered resuscitation.

  ‘This will be so great,’ I say to Rhodri. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  Rhodri bundles me tightly into his arms. Having heard the excitement, Jack dashes in and bounds on top of us.

  Holi-day. Holi-day. We all need a holi-daaay. I sing like Madonna. Well, not actually like Madonna at all.

  ‘Yes!’ whoops Jack, bouncing up and down on the sofa, punching his little fist in the air. ‘YES!’

  15

  It’s Rhodri’s birthday. I can’t afford to take him to the Bombay Balti like I’d hoped. I may be insane, and Tina round the corner will be justified in calling me a ‘weirdo’ again, but as it’s a pleasant evening I decide to move our dining-table and chairs outside. At weekends Rhodri and I have scoured skips looking for a garden set, but no one seems to throw them out in March. We might have more luck over the May bank holiday, or at the end of summer.

  I’d no idea what to buy him for his birthday. Any extravagant gesture would be frowned upon. Last year I almost passed out in TK Maxx under the pressure. Eventually I wound up in Neal’s Yard and bought an organic shaving kit – the brush was made from sustainable wood and the flannel was organic cotton. It was pricy but an absolute gem.

  Or not.

  Rhodri decided to grow a beard.

  But I can’t go wrong with adzuki bean stew, quinoa and salad. He’ll love that. I step outdoors to check the temperature. It’s a wee bit chilly, so we may have to wear our coats, hats and gloves at dinner. I set out wine glasses and cutlery on the table and light some candles. Now the garden looks very romantic. Rhodri should be home from the allotment soon.

  *

  ‘This is a nice surprise,’ he says, stepping into the garden.

  ‘Happy birthday! This is your birthday dinner,’ I explain. ‘Jack, are you cold? Do you need more layers?’

  ‘No,’ he says, his legs swinging on the chair. He’s shivering, and his lips are tinged light blue but he thinks outdoor dining in the cold is a fantastic idea. He can’t wait to tuck into his bean wraps. Fortunately, we’re protected from Tina’s view by Josie’s clematis. If she spots us from her bedroom window she’ll start yelling and hissing insults at us. Ever since I won the Wheelie-bin War, she walks straight past me in the gardens, smirking.

  Rhodri takes a seat and loads his plate with hot food. As he eats he scans the garden, our house, and the line of terraces opposite and adjacent to us. ‘I can’t believe I ended up here.’ He laughs in the candlelight. ‘My gran would be so disappointed. She’d think all that money spent on my education wasted because I ended up here.’

  Does he mean here, with me, a single mother on a council estate?

  He does. That’s what he means. It hurts.

  ‘My parents worked hard so they could bring me up in a nice hamlet in a national park, and I ended up here.’

  I’m terrified of what he’ll say next to bring my little world crumbling down. ‘I didn’t always live here,’ I say. ‘We ended up here. You don’t know how hard it’s been for me to have only this.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he says, trying to calm me down.

  Rhodri and his middle-class nonchalance. It drives me mad. Our struggles are just a game to him – if he wanted to, he could head off back to Wales and leave us. If he wanted to, he could earn heaps of money in web design or television – but he doesn’t want to. He wants to paint banners while I work myself stupid. He wants to forgo a reasonable income because it goes against his principles.

  ‘If we both worked full time we could sell this house and leave here.’

  Sensing an argument, Jack makes a run for it. ‘Going to play in my bedroom,’ he calls, as he charges through the kitchen.

  Rhodri’s face turns stormy. He knows I’ll land the blame on him.

  ‘Relationships are like a seesaw,’ I lecture. ‘We both have to do equal amounts to balance it out. When one person does less, the other person has to do more. That’s why I’m tired all the time, and that’s why I get grumpy – because I have to do more. And you sit there and turn your nose up at what I’ve had to work for.’

  I clear away the plates unhappily. ‘While you loafed about at university, I was doing three jobs, studying and bringing up a baby. I was cleaning a bank at eight in the morning and working night shifts in a care home, writing up notes at four in the morning. And this is all I have for it. Do you think I want to live here? Do you think I want Jack to live here?’

  Not that it’s Rhodri’s fault: he didn’
t get me pregnant; he didn’t even know me then. But all I want right now is for him to feel as worthless as I do.

  Two days have passed and even though Rhodri has tried to make up with me, I still feel wounded. A bitter battle rages in the kitchen. This evening a fight broke out over the potatoes.

  “Don’t boil them so hard,’ Rhodri berated me, turning the gas down.

  ‘You boil spuds hard, then simmer,’ I said, turning it up again.

  ‘I don’t want my potatoes boiled to death.’

  Take them out of the pan and boil your own, I think. Not that I say it. ‘It’s eight o’clock in the evening, Jack’s starving, I’m starving, and I haven’t got all night to simmer potatoes. Let’s just get it done and eat dinner.’

  ‘They’ll have no nutritional value.’

  So what? If they fill a hunger-hole, job done. I’ve cycled for two hours today, worked for nine, cleaned for one, and will spend another hour cooking. I need to bath Jack and read with him, check his homework, then start the laundry. I just want to eat. Rhodri glowers at me, and turns the potatoes down again. When he leaves the kitchen, I sigh hard and move the potatoes to the largest hob, and boil them to within an inch of their lives. Thank goodness I’m going to London next week, I think. Then I realize I haven’t told Rhodri about the trip yet, and I’ve just discovered that I’m going to be in Edinburgh in August because the play I’ve been writing has been taken on by a young director.

  When I go into the living room, I find Jack doing his homework and Rhodri reading up on moon cycles for our organic, reclaimed-materials allotment. ‘It says here that if I plant the seeds under a full moon we’ll get a better yield.’

  ‘Oh, when will you do that?’

  ‘I’ll go out at midnight under the next full moon.’

  ‘Okay.’ It all sounds a bit mad to me. How on earth will he see what he’s doing in the dark?

  ‘I’ll wear my head torch,’ he says, reading my mind.

  ‘I’m going to London next week,’ I say.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘There’s a play I want to see. I’ll take the coach and stay in a hostel. Jack can stay with my mum.’ I take a deep breath. ‘A theatre company has found a venue for that play I’ve been writing. It’s going to be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe the first two weeks in August. So I want to see some good fringe theatre in advance.’