‘That was wonderful reading, fantastic expression and intonation.’ I clap enthusiastically. ‘I’ll get up and make some breakfast, have a bath and then we’ll do something. A game of chess? Not too much television, though.’ I don’t know how to play chess. Rhodri was the one who could play chess.
Jack pulls me from his bed. It’s an effort to put one foot after the other. I don’t know why I suggested chess. I can barely muster the enthusiasm to fill the kettle with water. I shake out a bowl of Shreddies for him, sprinkle some sugar on, pour out the soya milk and place it on the coffee-table in the living room. Then I crumple up on the sofa to drink my tea. I’m pathetic – even for me, this is quite pathetic. I force myself to get up again and tread heavily up the stairs, turn on the taps, sit on the edge of the bath and watch the room fill with steam.
My thoughts are confined to one-word sentences: Bath. Hot. Cold. Water. Why?Me?
I plod hopelessly from the bathroom back to bed. Have coped on my own before. Will cope again – the bath sounds like it may spill over.
‘JACK!’ I yell. ‘The bath.’
‘Mum,’ he yells back, ‘WHAT?’
‘The bath!’ I groan.
‘Oooo–kaaaaaaaay!’ he yells back, then bounds up the stairs – a very healthy boy, not a poorly boy.
I hear Jack get into the bath. He starts to talk to the cars and the Star Wars figures he’s lined up on the shelf.
‘Don’t pee in the water,’ I shout to Jack. ‘I’ll get in after you.’
‘Why would I pee in the bath when we have a toilet?’
Fair point.
I’m clean, sort of, if you count bathing in another person’s dirty water as washing.
The telephone rings. Jack answers. I hope it will be Rhodri.
‘Zelda,’ Jack says. ‘For you.’
‘How are you, love?’ asks Zelda.
I look down at Rhodri’s green Y-fronts, which I’m wearing as a kind of homage to the times we wore one another’s underwear.
‘Are you upset?’
‘No.’
‘You shouldn’t be. It was going to happen. It happened. You need to get over it.’
Yes, yes, yes, for God’s sake. Can a girl not be weak? Not even for a day?
‘Meet me for lunch. One o’clock. Kim by the Sea.’
I look to see what time it is: twelve fifteen. I’m not – ‘I’m not dressed,’ I say to Zelda.
‘Well, get dressed. ’Bye!’
Before I can argue, she hangs up. Jack is standing brazenly in the doorway, hands on his hips, naked little peachy pecs and full tackle on display. ‘Why,’ he asks solemnly, ‘are you wearing Rhodri’s green underpants when you’re a girl? Where’s your own knickers?’
‘Don’t have anything clean.’
Jack glares at me, totally unimpressed by what I think is a logical answer.
‘And these are warm and comfortable and it’s cold outside.’
‘You shouldn’t be wearing them. You’re a lady. I’ll tell him.’
‘Well, I am wearing them because I have nothing else and need to keep my bottom warm.’
‘You shouldn’t.’
‘How can I take you seriously,’ I say, ‘when you aren’t even wearing underpants?’
He turns around, shakes his little bottom at me, then slams his bedroom door shut.
‘And get dressed,’ I call. ‘We’re going to meet Zelda.’
I go to the bathroom, still wearing Rhodri’s underpants, to brush my teeth, only to discover Rhodri has taken pretty much everything, including the toothpaste, and possibly even my knickers. I haven’t felt so depressed since the last time I felt depressed.
We step into Kim by the Sea – it must be a mother-and-baby afternoon because there are lots of mums cooing at their babies. I’m mesmerized by them. I wish I had a baby. The mothers look affluent and Bohemian. I just know that their cupboards are brimming with Meridian food products, tofu and falafel. One of the little girls will be called India or Summer or Sunshine, something like that.
‘India, darling, give that to Mummy.’
I knew it.
I see a vacant table by the door, beneath the specials board. Jack picks up the menu and hunts for something he likes.
Zelda arrives, looking glamorous as usual, and sits opposite Jack.
Then the waiter walks over, a generic-looking boy with a beard and skinny pants. ‘What can I get you to drink?’
‘Coffee. Black,’ says Zelda.
‘Organic lemonade,’ says Jack.
‘And for you?’ the waiter asks me. He fancies me. Course he does. Course he does.
‘Can I have organic egg and organic homemade chips?’ Jack butts in. He’s becoming more middle class by the day. He’ll be changing his name to Theobald before he has his first shave.
‘Organic egg and chips twice,’ I tell the waiter. ‘And a Coke.’
Zelda looks at me with disapproval, a look that says: Coke, egg and chips, you can do better than that.‘What’s wrong with him?’ she says, pointing at Jack. ‘Fancy a day off school, did you?’
‘I had stomach ache but I’m feeling better now.’
‘You’ll be well enough to go to school tomorrow, though, won’t you?’ I add.
Zelda turns to the waiter. ‘I’ll have the falafel with salad,’ she says. Then Jack launches into an incredibly long monologue about his magazine, Worm Warfare.
‘Can I speak?’ I ask, half an hour later.
‘In a minute, Jack’s talking,’ says Zelda. ‘Carry on.’
There’s a lot of oohing and aahing, some slapping of hands on the table, and some laughs as Zelda and Jack compete to be the loudest and most theatrical. They’re one step away from standing on the table and performing a tap dance when the food comes.
In the car on the way home Jack asks, ‘Was I good?’
‘Yes. I don’t think you’re ill, though, are you?’
‘I was but I’m feeling better now.’
‘You were good, but I didn’t get chance to talk to Zelda. You two were chatting all the time.’
‘That’s because she’s my friend too,’ says Jack. ‘I’ve known her nearly as long as you. You can’t keep all your friends to yourself.’
That evening Jack tucks into sweets, repeating lines from old films over and over again. He’s rooting around on my desk, looking for heaven knows what but he’s very intent on finding it. It’s almost the school holidays, so it can’t be his homework.‘What are you looking for?’ I ask.
‘I need a pen and some paper.’
‘What are you going to do? Is it to make another edition of your Worm Warfare magazine?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can. I’m your mum.’ I hand him some paper and a pen, and he runs off to his room.
He’s been up there for a suspiciously long time, a sure sign that he’s up to mischief, so I knock on his door.
‘Don’t come in.’
‘I’m just collecting things for washing,’ I lie, entering his bedroom. Jack is sitting at his desk, writing furiously.
‘Come and watch The Simpsons with me,’ I say.
‘I can’t,’ he replies.
‘Why?’
‘All I can think about is Ellie. That’s what happens when you lose your girlfriend, you can’t think of anything else.’
‘You’ll get another girl,’ I say, expecting him to think that girls are like skateboards.
I’d thought Jack and Ellie were a fleeting playground romance. I knew he liked her, but not as much as this. The other week he mentioned his friends are in love with her too, but I brushed it off as a childish game. Now it seems that his best friend wants to be her boyfriend too.
‘I’m going to write a letter to her and tell her I love her and want her back.’
I sit at the end of his bed, and try to tickle his feet, amazed that while I’m so down in the dumps he’s coping fantastically. Still, I am his mother. And it’s my duty to protect him, especially f
rom girls. ‘Don’t do that. Ellie has the other boys after her. You might end up upset. She’s been your special friend for a while now, and it’s time to move on.’
‘It’s taken me four years,’ he replies seriously, ‘to tell her that I fancy her. I’m not going to give up now. That’s not what you do. Can you leave me alone, please?’ He stands up and pushes me out of the room.
‘Would you like me to help you?’ I call, as he closes the door behind me. ‘I could check your spellings.’
Jack slides the letter to me through the gap beneath the door. It is written on A4 computer paper and folded in half. He has drawn a heart on the front and written in capital letters: I LOVE YOU. ‘Dear Ellie,’ I begin to read it aloud. Jack opens the door and gazes up at me with pride. ‘You are the most beautiful girl in the world. I fancy you. You have the most beautiful eyes and the most beautiful hair. You are also the kindest girl I will ever meet. I want you to be my girlfriend. Let me know what you think and you me and Tyrone and Tai and Mark can talk about it. I hope you decide it is me. Love, Jack.’
Tyrone, Tai and Mark are the other boys vying for Ellie’s love.‘What a wonderful letter,’ I tell Jack. ‘Are you sure you want to send it?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Just… are you sure?’
Jack folds the letter and slips it into an envelope, with a furry koala bear key-ring. On the front he writes in big letters: ‘FOR THE EYES OF ELLIE ONLY’. ‘I’m putting it in my school bag,’ he says. ‘I want to give it to her.’
As I’m making supper, I try to imagine how it must feel to be only nine and so fearless you can write a letter to the one big love of your life, and ask that love to choose – even just to ask that love to start a conversation that ends somewhere. I’m completely in awe of my son. And I wonder if perhaps it isn’t Rhodri or Damien’s absence that has upset him, but that he was feeling the first pains of unrequited love.
32
It’s just over a week until Christmas and I’m ashamed to admit that nothing is planned. We haven’t even got a Christmas tree up yet. And, horror of horrors, I’m very soon going to turn thirty.
‘We’re not having that plastic one we had last year,’ says Jack, throwing his school bag into my arms when we get home.
‘The one Granddad very kindly gave us?’ I point out.
‘It was small and awful,’ proclaims Jack. Interior design being his new calling, I must remember to ring House & Garden to find out if they’re looking for a nine-year-old columnist. ‘I do not want that plastic Christmas tree in the house.’
‘I haven’t any money for a real one,’ I tell him. ‘They’re very expensive.’ A real tree is, what, about forty pounds? My Christmas budget is what? I haven’t even got a Christmas budget.
‘I’ll use my pocket money.’
‘You’re not using your pocket money to buy a Christmas tree.’
‘I have loads of pocket money. In my Doctor Who Tardis piggy-bank.’
Playground sales of Worm Warfare magazine must be rocketing. But Jack isn’t going to buy the Christmas tree, even if he is a Felix Dennis-style entrepreneur. I shall purchase the tree. Trouble is, it’s too early to get a reduced-price one. We have bought real Christmas trees before, but only when they were going cheap. One Christmas Eve I bagged a six-footer for six pounds just hours before the shop was due to close.
Jack looks as if he might cry. Maybe what we need to make everything better is a huge Christmas tree.
‘Okay, okay. We’ll get a real tree.’
‘Now?’
‘Now. This very instant.’
We slide around Christmas tree vendors’ yards in the mud, Jack yelling, ‘What about this one?’ while I try to keep up with him. I look at the price tags and gasp, ‘Fifty pounds for a tree? Robbery! Next year I shall grow my own.’ I haggle with the vendors. No use. All the best trees have been sold, but there are still plenty of fools around to pay over the odds for the crap that’s left. I take Jack’s hand and pull him out of there. ‘Supermarket,’ I say. ‘They’ll be cheaper there.’ I can’t let my principles get in the way of the purse strings.
‘But I want –’ Jack stops. ‘Okay,’ he says, swinging his legs into the car.
It’s dark, it’s raining, and Jack and I are laughing as we struggle to carry the biggest Christmas tree we could find across the supermarket car park. He has the trunk, I have the spiky end, and we’re stumbling all over the place as if we might fall over at any minute. Jack is cackling, ‘Mum, don’t, don’t, I’m going to pee my pants.’ He pauses to breathe. ‘I will pee my pants!’ he says sternly, which encourages me to behave even more ridiculously. We throw open the boot of our little car, set down the rear seats, move the front seat forward, and try to ram the tree in. Jack scrambles into the back and climbs all over it like a lumberjack, hoisting and tugging. I’m pushing and shrieking, ‘Pull! Pull! Heave-ho!’ and Jack is yelling, ‘I’m going to pee my pants, I’m going to pee my pants,’ when a very classy black Audi TT pulls up in the bay next to us, and out steps a man, not much older than me, in a suit.
Thank you, Santa Claus. My three favourite things, all at once. A man. In a suit. And an Audi TT. You get a much better class of man in a Sainsbury’s car park. If we were at Asda he’d be wearing a boiler-suit and driving a clappedout Ford Escort.
‘Would you like some help?’ the man asks.
Oh, heaven, yes. You can help me get out of these wet clothes back home. Help with the tree? I ponder for a moment. ‘No, it’s all right,’ I say. ‘All part of the festive fun. Getting it into the car is the best bit.’
‘You sure?’
‘Sure.’ I smile.
Audi TT shrugs his shoulders and walks off. Nice bottom. What a very nice bottom.
Tree up. It was too tall for the house so I held it between my legs while Jack sawed the top off with a steak knife. Lights. That’s what we need. Out to the shed for the ladder, then up to the attic. I hate the attic. Not that I spend much time in it. Usually I just flail my arms about in the hope I’ll touch the things I’m looking for. Torch in hand, I discover it’s a relationship graveyard in here: the bag containing lights is next to many boxes containing Damien’s belongings – old copies of Strike, photographs, clothes. Other boxes contain toys from when Jack was a toddler, and baby clothes from when I’d naïvely hoped I’d have another baby. I find a box of Rhodri’s things and a pile of Welsh books. What do I need Welsh books for? It’s like a curated exhibition of my life up here – complete with the gold Lurex boob tube I wore when I was nineteen, sexy and slim.
Downstairs, we struggle to wrap the lights around the tree.
Jack stands on the sofa at the far end of the room, flicks the light off and I switch the fairy-lights on. He claps wildly. ‘It’s beeeeeoooootiful,’ he gasps. The tree has taken the place of furniture in the living room and, ‘extravagance’ being my new middle name, is resplendent with purple, silver and white baubles I bought on a three-for-two offer at Sainsbury’s.
We sing ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’, followed by ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’, a veritable medley. We hop about the living room in what could be described as ballroom dancing, but really shouldn’t. Jack stands with his legs apart so I can try to crawl under them, he twirls me in and out, then I throw him under my legs, and struggle to pick him up again.
Margaret No. 2 knocks on the door, comes in, plants herself on the sofa with her dogs and exclaims that we have the best Christmas tree she’s ever seen.
The next day I’m determined that this year nothing is going to interrupt Mission Happy Christmas. I take a deep breath and insert my cash card into the ATM to withdraw cash to spend on Christmas presents and food. The machine asks: ‘Would you like to check your balance?’
Yes, go on, then.
‘Your current balance is: £1653.24 OD. Your available balance is: £1876.03 OD. Would you like to use another service?’
Yes.
‘Choose a service.’
&
nbsp; In the absence of ‘Withdraw money from Richard Branson’s account’ I press: Withdraw cash. Amount £100.00 Money dispensed. Things are looking up: the bank is still happy to give me money when I have none. What a helpful, helpful, bank.
Drat. The Christmas present Jack really wanted, a punch-bag with boxing gloves, is sold out. I should have shopped earlier. I order one at Argos, which will arrive two days before Christmas. I’ve no idea where we’ll hang it without the ceiling caving in. I go to the pet shop and order a new hutch for the rabbits.
I’m just leaving the store when Zelda calls: ‘Hi, love. I’m coming over for a coffee. Be there in about half an hour.’
‘I’m just out shopping.’
‘Where?’
I can’t say, ‘The pet shop’: she’s a John Lewis kind of girl. ‘I’ll make it back. See you soon.’
Zelda is ill, bless her. From upstairs I heard her hammering on the front door and sneezing. ‘Open the door!’
I make her a hot drink. ‘Have a cup of coffee, keep warm.’
Zelda takes a sip and puts it back down: ‘What type of coffee is this?’ she asks, appalled.
She likes my Christmas tree: ‘Very nice.’ Hates my mess: ‘Oh, my God, what happened in here?’ Thinks my romantic state needs an instant remedy: ‘You’re lovelorn all the time.’ And that my clothes, skin, general self, et cetera, need urgent attention: ‘Get a facial. Join the gym. Go shopping and buy some new clothes. That’s what works for me after a break-up.’
I do look drab. I bought this dress at a charity shop four years ago, my coat is torn, my tights are laddered and Oxfam would decline to resell my shoes. ‘I’ll sort myself out,’ I say.
‘I’ll arrange a night out,’ she says encouragingly. ‘You’re a wonderful girl, Maria. Anyone would be lucky to have you. I’ve always thought that.’
33
The day before Christmas Eve I’m woken by the shrill of the telephone. It’s bound to be my mother. Only she would call me the morning after I’ve been out with Zelda, Nancy, Emmeline and Sybil for Christmas drinks the night before. I stumble to the windowsill to pick up the phone. Catching my reflection in the dressing-table mirror, I see my lip is cut and swollen. I look down to my knees, which are scabbed and bruised. When the black cab dropped me at home, I took one step onto the pavement, slipped on some ice and fell flat on my face. I hope no one saw me.
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