Both of these things are true but that is absolutely not the conversation that I am intending on having with her.
‘So – how are things with you?’ I say, bringing the focus back onto her. ‘Anything exciting happening in the world of Scarlet Thompson?’
She rolls her eyes at me. ‘No, Mum. Nothing exciting.’
‘Oh, come on!’ I lean forward and give her my friendliest, least threatening look. ‘You’re seventeen years old! The world is your oyster! You must have lots going on.’
Scarlet wrinkles her nose. ‘I don’t know what life was like when you were seventeen but I can assure you, I do not have lots going on. Unless you mean lots of homework or lots of stress or lots of constant harassment by my mother about what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with – in which case, yeah. I’ve got a butt ton of stuff going on.’
Excellent. I knew that if I played this right I could get her onto the subject I want to discuss.
‘And how was your evening?’ I ask, leaping right in with the hope that I can catch her off guard. ‘Did everything go okay with Petra? Was anyone else at her house?’ I lean forward. ‘Any boys?’
She leans back in her chair and sighs. ‘Okay, whatever. I went to Petra’s house like I already told you and yes there were a few other people there too. Including boys. Are you happy now?’
I am feeling quite content, actually. I think last night’s exploits with Nick have released some kind of endorphin rush because I feel calmer and more relaxed than I have done in ages. So yes, I am happy – and I am also surprised that she’s revealed this so easily. It’s clearly too early in the day for her to relish torturing me with a lack of information and I make a mental note to always interrogate her before noon in the future.
‘And was he there?’ I enquire.
She frowns. ‘His name is Skinz. You can say it, you know?’
I can. But that doesn’t mean that I want to.
‘Fine.’ I stare back at her. ‘How was your evening with Skinz?’
Scarlet raises one eyebrow. ‘Okay.’
Clearly no more dirt is going to be dished. I’m going to have to try harder.
‘He sounds very interesting,’ I tell her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that he was in your year group at school?’
She shrugs. ‘I didn’t not tell you that. You just made an assumption.’
I think about the fact that she is secretly knitting me a gift to cheer me up and swallow my harsh retort. I get it. She needs to control something in her life and if not telling me everything makes her feel good then I’ll just have to deal with it, like the respectful, understanding mother that I am. It’s okay for us to have parts of our lives that we don’t share with the entire world. I know that, better than anyone.
On the other hand, I could also keep on seeking out information with my subtle questioning and mild-mannered interest and if that fails, tracking her phone and roping in my mother to keep me appraised of any new developments.
‘So.’ I smile at her encouragingly. ‘Are you dating him now?’
Scarlet holds one hand against her forehead, as if I am being incredibly frustrating.
‘God, Mum. Why do you have to put a label on everything?’
‘So you’re not going out with him then?’ I am undeterred. Yesterday I talked about sex in front of a whole room of strangers. I am having this conversation with my daughter.
‘Why do you want to know so badly?’ she asks, scowling at me. ‘How can this stuff be so important to you? It’s like you think you have to know everything.’
And there it is. The million-dollar question. Why do I want to know? Why am I prepared to go to such extreme lengths to find out what’s going on in her life? Does it really matter if she’s talking to me or to her grandmother, as long as she’s talking to someone?
I pause and think about the best way to explain to my teenage girl how it feels to be a mother. How to tell her that I only ever want the best for her but that I’m constantly aware of the fact that I am not the best. Not even close. But that the one thing I can promise her is that I will never stop trying to be better.
‘I’ve never been a parent of a seventeen-year-old daughter before,’ I tell her, reaching out for her hand. ‘I’m making it up as I go along, Scarlet – and I definitely do not know everything. But I love you and I want to know about the things that are important to you. But you’re right. I’ll back off.’
Scarlet’s hand tightens in mine. ‘Don’t do that.’ Her voice is so quiet that I have to lean closer to hear her. ‘Don’t back off. I like it that you care enough to ask about what’s going on with me. Petra’s mum couldn’t care less what she gets up and Petra makes out like she thinks that’s a good thing but it isn’t. Not really. It’s lonely if you don’t think anyone’s bothered about you. And living in this house is a whole hot mood but it’s never lonely.’
I am lost for words. But that’s okay.
‘So, you asked if we were dating,’ she continues, pulling her hand away from mine and pushing her hair out of her face. ‘It’s not quite that simple. There are things that you can be doing other than dating or not dating. There’s stages, you know – and he could be eliminated at any point.’
It’s my turn to raise an eyebrow. ‘Stages? What are they?’
She sits up straight and holds up her hand, counting them off on her fingers.
‘There’s the Getting to Know You stage,’ she tells me. ‘Then it’s the Talking stage. After that comes the Exclusive stage and then you get to the Dating stage. It’s really quite simple. And before you bother asking, I’ll bring him home if and when he manages to reach the Dating stage.’
I frown, trying to make sense of what she’s saying while simultaneously silently singing the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus at the declaration that she’s amenable to bringing him home. ‘So there’s three stages before you actually kiss each other?’
It seems like quite a long time to wait but I have to say, it warms the cockles of my heart to hear her say this. I did read something the other week commenting on the fact that this generation of kids do appear to be very restrained and sensible in their approach to relationships and it’s reassuring to know that Scarlet has such a mature attitude. Although it does make me feel like we were all a bit wanton back in the day, by comparison.
Scarlet shakes her head. ‘Of course not. How else are you supposed to decide if they’re someone who’s worth starting on the Getting to Know You stage?’
My cockles drop a few degrees in temperature.
‘So which stage are you and Skinz at then?’ I enquire, hoping that I’m going to be able to handle the answer.
Her face flushes slightly. ‘We’ve moved on to the Talking stage,’ she admits. ‘I need to make sure that he’s more than just a good snog.’
Never a wiser word was spoken. Maybe I’m not such a rubbish parent after all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It’s quite a relief to go back to school on Monday. I make my way through the next few days doing the usual things. Sighing in despair at Year Ten, Class C’s ability to use all the words in their loud and frequent discussions but then none of the words when it comes to committing their thoughts to paper. Laughing with Cassie in the staffroom as Peter comes up with new and ingenious ways to leave teaching and escape to his desert island. Trying to avoid being in a room alone with Miss Pritchard in case she tries to engage me in yet another conversation about our Proper Porn production company. Just a regular three days at school which, after all the excitement of last weekend, I am more than happy to float my way through.
Nick brings pie and chips home for supper on Wednesday night and we’re just putting it onto plates when Scarlet comes flying through the door with her laptop held tightly in both hands.
‘I’m with them now!’ she yells, crashing the laptop onto the kitchen island and twisting the screen to face me.
‘Hi, Mum,’ says a voice and I smile at the welcome sight of my oldest child.
&nbs
p; ‘Dylan! We weren’t expecting to FaceTime with you tonight. Is everything okay?’
‘You tell me,’ he answers. ‘Scarlet just called me and said she’s got something big to show us, only she won’t tell me what’s going on.’
I glance at Scarlet who spins the laptop so that it’s facing away from us and then starts typing rapidly onto the keyboard. ‘What do you want to show us, sweetheart?’
‘Is this going to take long?’ asks Nick. ‘Shall I put the oven on to keep the food warm?’
‘Hi, Dad!’ calls Dylan. ‘Is Benji there too?’
‘This isn’t appropriate for Benji,’ says Scarlet. ‘I’ve bribed him with my phone and told him to stay upstairs until we call him down. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining his childhood.’
Now that I look at her properly, I can see that her eyes are shining and sparkling like particularly twinkly stars in the night sky. She looks almost manic with excitement and my heart rate starts to speed up.
‘Scarlet? What is it? What’s the big thing?’
She ignores me and instead clicks something on her laptop. It makes the whooshing email sound and I start to walk around to the other side of the island so that I can see what she’s doing.
‘What’s going on?’ I demand. ‘What have you done, Scarlet?’
She smirks at me. ‘It’s not me that you need to be worried about right now, Mum. And to think that I thought you were boring!’
‘Scarlet!’ Nick glares at her. ‘I’ve warned you before. Your mother is the least boring person that I have ever met.’
‘Well, I know that now, don’t I?’ she drawls. ‘I shouldn’t have been wasting my time knitting her a stupid scarf to replace the one I lost. She’d probably prefer something a bit more risqué.’
Scarlet is knitting me a scarf. Despite the increasing tension in the room I feel a warm glow of maternal love flooding through me, combined with the tiniest bit of justified wrath and fury. I bloody knew that she’d lost my expensive birthday scarf.
Scarlet leans closer to the screen and I refocus on the situation at hand. ‘Dylan – you should have the email with the link by now.’
‘I’m just clicking on it.’ His voice sounds strangely disembodied and I suddenly have a very, very bad feeling.
‘Got it. What am I looking at?’
‘Just click play. We’re going to watch it here.’
She swivels the laptop back round to face us and presses the mouse. The screen is split into two – one half filled with Dylan’s face and the other with my very worst nightmare.
‘Mum? Is that you?’ I can’t tell if the shake in my oldest child’s voice is trauma or hysteria or a combination of both.
I shake my head and stumble onto a stool. ‘No. It’s not me.’
Nick comes up behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder and together we watch in silence as the camera zooms in on my face and I start to speak.
‘I thought we were here to talk about real sex.’
It’s worse than I thought. Just kill me now.
‘It just isn’t honest to pretend that everyone is constantly in touch with their sexual selves or getting it on, Hollywood-style at every available opportunity. Some of us are too knackered at the end of a long day to do anything other than put on our pajamas and watch Netflix and drink wine before falling into bed. And what happens after that isn’t planned out or orchestrated. It just happens. Or not.’
‘I think we’ve seen enough,’ says Nick, leaning over towards the laptop. ‘Turn it off at your end please, Dylan.’
‘No way!’ His face is scrunched up with laughter. ‘This is brilliant!’
It is not brilliant. It is a total disaster.
Scarlet pulls the laptop out of Nick’s reach and raises her eyebrows at me. ‘I’ll pause it if you tell us why you were there,’ she says. ‘I’d like to hear in your own words what were you doing at Sex Con and why has this clip already got twenty thousand likes on YouTube? And why are they calling you the Queen of Sex?’
And for one beautiful moment I think that I can see a way out. My brain goes into a frenzy as I try to construct a plausible reason for why me, their boring, middle-of-the-road, average mum would possibly be speaking at Sex Con. Maybe I could convince them that it was somehow related to their grandmother and her sex therapy course? Or I could say that Miriam wants me to teach Sex Ed and I was there to learn about what I’m supposed to be telling the younger generation?
‘Mum?’ Dylan has stopped laughing and is gazing at me from the screen, looking confused.
‘Mum?’ repeats Scarlet, and I can see the stars in her eyes burning like fires. My feisty, fearless girl who needs to know that forty-four-year-old women can be just as feisty (if perhaps not quite as fearless).
I look up at Nick. He squeezes my shoulder and gives me a grin.
‘That was an interesting speech,’ he says, nodding at the screen. ‘I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of it later.’
So I take a deep breath and then I say the words that I never, in a thousand years, imagined that I would be saying to my teenagers.
‘Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a woman. She had a wonderful husband and three marvelous (if slightly irritating) children and everything was just as it should be.’
A snort comes from the screen. ‘This is clearly a fairytale because in real life, she has two bloody annoying kids and one talented, brilliant son who is away at university.’
‘Shut up, Dylan!’ snaps Scarlet. ‘Just so you know, I got my predicted grades the other day and they’re way better than yours were.’
‘Do you want me to continue with my story?’ I enquire. ‘Or would you both rather go to bed early without any supper?’
Scarlet nods at me regally. ‘Continue.’
I nod back and resume from where I left off. ‘But, even though the woman had so many good things in her life, she was missing something important. And that was her own identity.’
I wave the hand in the air, getting into my stride. ‘Yes – while she was grateful to have been given the opportunity to be a wife and a mother and a teacher, she felt adrift in the world – like she was floating alone on a raft out at sea and every time she tried to paddle towards land, she would…erm, she would…’
I pause. This analogy would have worked better if I’d had some time to prepare.
‘She’d get tired?’ suggests Dylan.
I shake my head. ‘No – not tired.’
‘She’d break the paddle?’ offers Nick, putting a glass of wine in front of me.
‘No!’ I scowl at him. ‘That’s totally not what I’m trying to say.’
‘She’d just keep going round in circles?’ says Scarlet tentatively and I beam at her.
‘Yes! That! Thank you, sweetheart!’
‘No problem.’ Scarlet sits down next to me and pats my arm. ‘Keep going.’
‘Now, the woman was feeling that something was missing.’ I gaze into the middle distance and put everything I have into explaining this unusual situation through the non-threatening and relatable medium of storytelling. ‘And she also knew that her three charming (and slightly tiresome) children were going to be bleeding her and her husband financially dry over the coming years. So she decided that, as life is for living and should be seen as a magnificent adventure, then she needed to jump off that raft and start swimming – and see where her journeying took her.’
I smile gently, pick up the glass of wine and take a big sip. ‘And there you have it.’
There is silence and then both Dylan and Scarlet erupt, their words flowing over each other.
‘What? You haven’t told us anything!’
‘How does this explain what you were doing at Sex Con?’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘Well, if neither of you were bothering to listen then I’m afraid that I’m not prepared to say it again. I’ve explained very clearly why I’m on that video and I don’t think we need to say any more about it.’
> Scarlet pushes back her stool and reaches for the laptop.
‘Dylan, start Googling,’ she calls towards the screen. ‘Her pseudonym is Twinky Malone. It shouldn’t take you too long to catch up.’
I stand too and look at Nick. He raises his glass of wine and gives me a mid-air cheer and I am reminded of the evening, not so long ago, when we discovered that Twinky Malone, and her manuscript, had been accepted by an agent. So many things are different since then but even more things have stayed the same.
Some things will never change and for that I am truly, truly grateful.
‘Okay, fine.’ I give him a rueful smile and then I twist the laptop so that I can see both my teenagers at the same time. I hadn’t planned to tell them this way; I hadn’t planned to tell them at all but, as Scarlet is so fond of saying, ‘it is what it is’ and I just have to make the best of it.
‘I’ve written a book. It’s an adult book for grown-ups and you are one hundred percent not allowed to read it because it has a few rude words in it and the characters may, on the very odd occasion, engage in consensual, loving relations.’
‘What do you mean?’ Dylan stares out of the screen, his eyes wide. Next to me, Scarlet stifles a snort.
‘I mean that I have written an erotic book that contains some scenes of a more sexual nature,’ I tell her. ‘We don’t need to make a big fuss about it.’
There is silence. It starts quietly and then it gets louder and louder until I am desperate for someone to speak and drown it out, even though I have no idea what their reaction might be and I’m already trying to figure out how we can afford to pay for university fees and driving lessons and counseling sessions for the entire family.
‘Dylan?’ I ask quietly. ‘Are you okay?’
His hands are clasped over his face and I can hear a snuffling, mumbling sound. If he’s crying then I will never be able to forgive myself.
‘Oh my god.’ His voice is breaking into tiny pieces and my heart is breaking with it.
Faking It: The most hilarious and laugh out loud page turner you’ll read this year! Page 31