Mind Games and Ministers

by Chris Longden

  “Oh, yeah. I know that. An’ it’d come in friggin’ useful, the mess Vinnie’s left us in. All our furniture. Everything. Even Poppy-Rose’s baby toys are gone, for fuck’s sake …”

  I swallowed. My tongue felt tacky. This wasn’t an empty gesture. This was a big deal for Dawn.

  “But,” she carried on, reaching for a tissue from the box on my desk and spitting her gum into it, “some of us have got standards. Or whatever the frig you wanna call it. And you helped me. So I’m helpin’ you back.”

  And now I could feel my face flushing.

  “Right … but Dawn. I really should explain to you about that photo in the newspaper – it didn’t come across well. What I was actually doing was ...”

  She held her hand up and started chuckling;

  “Look, hun, you don’t have to explain to me. Of all people! An’ if nowt is going on between you and yer minister bloke, well. Don’t burst me bubble. Don’t make me life any more borin’ than it already is. I’ve never known anyone famous before. It’s well funny. It’s well romantic, actually.” She nodded at the bouquet. I looked away. She added, “Even if I can’t go round talkin’ about it …”

  “Dawn, the last thing I would call your life is boring. But all right, if it makes you happy, I’ll stop all of the denials!” I beamed at her. Poppy-Rose stopped sucking for a second and gave out an enormous burp. Dawn rolled her eyes. “Pig!”

  “Right. But there is one more thing that I wanted to say to yer.” She started fiddling with one of her hair extensions.

  “Go on.”

  “On Monday, when I came over here to say thanks to you, an’ to see if you could help me with lookin’ for a house, I was gonna tell yer then that I’d clocked you an’ him on Saturday. Michael Fingy. I could tell that you had summat goin’ on between yer.”

  “We didn’t.”

  Her mouth twisted into a smirk.

  “Yeah. All right. At that point. Or whatever. But in the end I didn’t say anythin’ properly to yer about it ’cause …”

  She rifled through her handbag and brought out some more chewing gum. Offered me a piece. I took a stick. Fruity. She popped a white piece into her mouth and nibbled it between her front teeth. I waited.

  “Cause it turned out you ’ad enough problems on yer plate that day”.

  She looked uncomfortable again now. Less embarrassed; more troubled. She chewed. Her lips puckered into wrinkled slick of glittery lip-gloss. I stared. The baby was sucking the bottle at breakneck speed. There was a short silence. All that we could hear was the bottle being drained.

  “Thing is,” she popped another piece of gum into her mouth, “I was havin’ a ciggie in the park outside while Poppy-Rose were havin’ a kip. The lady on yer reception said you were out on yer lunch break. So I went and sat in the park, waitin’ till you were back at work again. And then this couple turned up just behind where I were sittin’ in the park. An’ they were talkin’. Well, more like arguin’. An’ I suddenly realised it were you.”

  I nodded slowly. Bloody hell. Yes. The woman sitting on the bench just feet away from me and Shaun on Monday, after the drink in the pub. I had been more than a bit distracted. Not realised that it was Dawn. Even though she had trotted into the centre afterwards and accosted me. I simply hadn’t put two and two together. Silly Rachael.

  “An’ I also knew him. The big bloke with yer. ’Cause he’s always in the local papers or telly. Gobbin’ off about whatever.”

  I dipped my head, looked hard at her and replied. “And?”

  “And I honestly weren’t tryin’ to earwig. But madam ’ere,” she nodded at Poppy-Rose, “were bloody quiet for once. Asleep. So I heard most of what you were sayin’ ...”

  “And?” I had run out of conversational skills.

  “And, well, it were well weird. Listening to someone like you. Getting drawn into all of his shit.”

  I stared at her, dumbfounded. Words still wouldn’t come.

  She sighed. Stopped biting her nail for a minute.

  “So alls I wanted to say was, don’t take any crap from anyone. Not from your Frankenstein bloke. Or your minister man. Sounds to me like you’ve had your own fair share of shit in life. Might well be best stickin’ with a fella who’s in London half the time, though. Best to have a man at the other end of the country. One that you don’t have to see too often! Me and Vin got on great when he was in the army and never around …”

  My frozen-moment thawed. Ending with laughter. “Dawn, I like your assessment of the situation. Very insightful advice there …”

  She beamed at me.

  “Nice one. That’ll be a three-hundred-quid psychiatrist fee for that. Ha! But really,” she turned to go, “glad you’re not pissed off with me. I think you’re well sound. An’ it would be well shitty if you got into trouble over all of this stuff. When alls you’ve been doin’ is trying to help people.”

  Dawn hoisted Poppy-Rose up onto her hip. Moving towards the door, she directed her words at the baby: “Jesus, though. Talk about people havin’ complicated lives! Thought mine was bad!”

  I followed and tapped her on the back, trying to convey my gratitude.

  “I really appreciate this, Dawn. I know you’re struggling for money. That you could have done what Shelley and her lot did. It means a lot to me, this does.”

  She turned back to me with raised eyebrows.

  “Hey – don’t be thinkin’ that I’m … Let’s be straight. I mean, at the end of the day, if I pissed you off – you might well have ended up stoppin’ me from gettin’ moved off Brindleford to somewhere better. I know you say that you don’t have owt to do with who gets a house and where. But I’m not a blood relative of Shit For Brains … remember? I know you lot. How these things work …”

  She gave me a wicked grin. I smiled back at her, trying not to mind her lumping Sisters’ Space and our independent advocacy approach with the statutory authority figures at the council and those at the housing association. Call me self-obsessed, but I could happily overlook such assumptions when my own arse was in the firing line of the national press.

  “Well,” I said, “be that as it may, I still want you talking to our solicitor properly about whether you should be going for a non-molestation order or an occupation order against Vinnie, as otherwise ...”

  She left the office, and flapped her hand over her shoulder – dismissing me.

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. But yeah, yer secret’s safe with me. So long as you keep away from that nob. The other one. Him trying to get back into your knickers. I mean it: steer clear!”

  After she had left I mused on how many times all of us – service users, staff and volunteers – would say exactly that kind of thing to another woman who was involved in a destructive relationship.

  And yet the chances of her going back to him?

  They were far too high to disregard.

  Chapter 20

  HADES SETS THE LABYRINTH

  I had been hoping for some time at the local park at the weekend to let the kids run off some steam, perhaps allowing me to slump on a bench with a book while they went mad on the monkey bars. But the weather conspired against us. Thunderstorms and downpours, crowning most of the country with slate-grey rain and pinched, overcast skies.

  On the Sunday afternoon the three of us were all going a little bit stir-crazy. After various squabbles over board games (“Matthew can’t even figure out how to play Ker-Plunk! He is such a durr-brain stinky-pants brat!”) and who had made the nicest painting of a rainbow (Matthew won this battle when he poured his jar of slurry paint-water over Lydia’s hair) I had finally given up trying to carry out even small meaningful and memorable activities with them.

  I had rammed some earplugs into my ears. I was lying on the sofa with a cushion over my face. I was letting the kids look at various children’s cartoons on YouTube – good old-fashioned Tweetie Pie and Bugs Bunny. And I was hoping that Lydia wouldn’t end up downloading hardcore porn or something (making a men
tal note to myself to sort an internet filter out). I was about to drift off into a nice, drooling sleep when I heard a distant and muffled but mouthy Matthew.

  “Turn it off, Liddy! Turn it off! That stupid noise!”

  I took my earplugs out. Lydia was peering quizzically at my tablet.

  “It’s making a funny bee-bop sound, Mummy! Have I done something bad?”

  I sat up and moved round to them both. Matthew was licking the edge of the tablet. Strange boy. I swiped him away. Someone was calling me on Skype. It was Michael. I had forgotten that he had added me as a contact a few days ago.

  “Budge up,” I said to the kids and after a moment’s hesitation (to wipe away the saliva and to shove my wild hair in a pony tail) I clicked to accept the call. The video camera started up, and Lydia shrieked.

  “It’s the man on the fridge! Hey! How did you get onto Mummy’s tablet?”

  Michael looked taken aback to see Rachael plus two, but he smiled widely.

  “The three musketeers! And one of you looks very bad-tempered indeed!”

  Matthew growled his best Chewbacca impersonation and ran off to try to find my phone to play with. He clearly preferred Bugs Bunny to the Fridge Man.

  Michael was in Brighton and sitting in one of rooms apparently earmarked for Cabinet members. It looked suspiciously like a bar. But then that was probably the desired effect, knowing the whims of politicians and conference organisers. We had hardly had a chance to speak during the last few days, due to the fact that Michael was ensconced in all things party conference. I had texted him a couple of times and there had been a couple of emails. But I didn’t want to come across too much like a needy saddo single mum, trailing after a man who might well (despite his protestations) be quite happy with just a ‘showing in Mottram for one night only’ fumble. And I didn’t want to drone on about the complex logistics involved with parking small children with relatives on the off-chance that he might be able to spend a weekend with me. The guy didn’t have kids. Hell, he probably thought you could drop them off at the kennels at the last minute or something.

  The decision I made a few days ago – to think positively, to take risks – had crumbled quite quickly. Instead, the evening before, I had decided to opt for the default to negative thinking. That way you can never feel too let down or embittered about anything in life. And it had always worked for me in the past. So it came as a surprise when Michael told me that he had noticed that I was online and wanted to say hello. It was all a little surreal. Not just because Lydia was stilting the conversation, thanks to her pint-sized but overbearing presence – but because every now and then the odd familiar face from the TV would appear behind him. At one point, the deputy prime minister materialised, performing some bizarre kind of R & B dance to the background music. He appeared to be slightly drunk, confirmed by Michael’s “Yes, the silly old sod’s well on his way.”

  Was it far too early to expose Lydia to some random bloke who may or may not be involved in a burgeoning relationship with her mother? Perhaps it wouldn’t have been the right course of action for many single mothers – for many widows with young children. But I knew my daughter best. She wasn’t the sensitive type when it came to Mummy sharing her affections. So long as Liddy got lashings of attention from anyone and everyone she came across in the normal course of the day, I could be shagging the boy who delivered our milk, for all she cared.

  Michael, though, clearly wasn’t used to Skyping with such a verbally-gifted near-seven-year-old.

  “So, Lydia,” he said. “Do you go to school?”

  “No,” said Lydia. “I go to a circus. I’m the star acrobat and I nearly broke my neck last week because I did the flying trapeze thing without a safety net.”

  Man on the fridge paused for a minute and then scratched his head, directing his next comment to me.

  “Has she inherited your sarcasm? Or does she have a very unusual imagination?”

  I tried not to laugh. Lydia huffed.

  “It’s rude to say ‘she’ about people. And anyway. Who are you and why can I hear seagulls?”

  “I’m Michael.”

  “Right. Can I call you ‘Mickey boy’, then?”

  “No. Michael’s just fine. Thank you very much.”

  I’d seen this before with Tia and Tyler. Either Michael wasn’t the sort to even try to play the kid-friendly game. Or he didn’t know how to.

  “So, how do you know my mum, then?”

  “From ...”

  “From work,” I stepped in, quickly.

  “Yes, from work,” Michael agreed. “And I’m working right now, actually. In Brighton.”

  “Neverurdofit,” replied Liddy, deliberately adopting her thickest Yorkshire accent.

  “Not heard of Brighton? Good grief. What do they teach you children at school these days? It’s a famous seaside resort. Look – there’s the sea.” Trying a little bit harder to accommodate Lydia’s presence now, he moved his tablet away and pointed it towards a window. The deputy prime minister reappeared. Whirling his arms strangely.

  “Who’s the fat man – the one that’s dancing there?” asked Lydia. “Has he eaten all of the seagulls? ’Cause I can’t see any.”

  “Lydia!” I was appalled. “It’s rude to call people ‘fat’! You know much better than that!”

  Michael started sniggering. This immediately irritated Lydia. Thinking that someone is amused at her expense always gets her back up.

  “And it’s rude to laugh at people!” Lydia now added. “And anyway, why would you be at the seaside and working? If I were there I’d be on a million donkeys and eating ice cream. You must be bored out of your head sat in that room with all those old men, when you could be doing pirate boat rides and amusement arcades like we always do at Scarborough …”

  Michael agreed with her. “It is a bit boring, actually, Lydia. Maybe playing the Penny Falls or whatever they have in amusement arcades these days would be more entertaining.”

  I cut in again.

  “Lydia – why don’t you go and see what your brother’s up to?”

  Lydia ignored me.

  “I know what would be dead good,” she told Michael. “You could just leave your boring old friends in the room there, and go and find a Punch and Judy show or something – on the pier. Or we could just talk about Sooty if you want? Because …”

  Lydia cocked her head to one side. Little cogs and wheels firing up there.

  “... because I’m thinking … that you’re the person who I was talking to the other day. About mad women who make their boobies bigger. When I had just had that bath where Matthew had nearly weed all over my hair …”

  I stared at Michael’s image on the screen. He was rubbing his forehead. Perhaps developing a headache. He looked tired. Unsure of his reply. Liddy was presenting a more troublesome challenge than Dimbleby or Paxman did, by the looks of it. Lydia continued with her disturbingly mature and photographically-gifted vernacular, however. Whilst managing to pick her nose at the same time;

  “And I’m thinking … that you’ve got the exactly same posh voice as the man who wanted to talk about Sooty. About trying to be Sooty. With my mummy the other night. You’re him, aren’t you?”

  I nudged her sharply. “Liddy – get your finger out of your nose. And … I think that I can hear Matthew in your bedroom. Maybe he’s going through your box of precious things. If I were you, I’d …”

  But Lydia knew when her presence wasn’t wanted. So Liddy was staying put. I decided to make things easier all round.

  “Michael – it’s a bit tricky, all this. I don’t like to mix my – work – and small children. And I did promise Liddy that I would let her help me make the tea. And they’re both starving. So, speak later, OK?”

  He nodded “No problem, ladies. Go and make Yorkshire pudding, or whatever you subsist on in Holme.” And he then gave us a little wave. Lydia gave him a casual flick of the wrist and then gallivanted off upstairs. Ready to break Matthew’s arm after se
veral prolonged minutes of delving in her shoe-box for shitty plastic gems, no doubt.

  Michael and I managed to have a phone chat later on in the evening. He didn’t exactly tell me that my daughter was a precocious little brat, but he didn’t need to. I got in there first with that particular acknowledgement, making him guffaw.

  “Well, I hate to say it, Rachael, but she really is exactly how I imagine you must have been as a child. And look how nicely you’ve turned out …”

  And we ended that conversation with him mentioning the London jaunt.

  “Look, it’s all a bit crazy at the moment. The Chancellor and all the budget stuff has really put my back against the wall. So I won’t be able to say until … about midweek … whether they’ll let me have next weekend to myself. That OK?”

  (Sure is, Michael. Didn’t you know that the Kiddy Kennels can be booked at five minutes’ notice?)

  The next few days passed quickly. Shaun had been in the regional newspapers and on the TV for three days running. All in relation to the government’s funding cuts, which Mr Big at Medlock Council and all his other pals in authorities across Greater Manchester were up in arms about. Cue lots of pictures of Shaun in the Manchester Evening News looking cross, mighty and self-righteous in a slick-looking Hugo Boss. A winning combination when you want to sell a news story.

  I tried not to dwell on Shaun’s words. About Michael not wanting to jeopardise his career for a fling with a bint from up north. And I tried not to think about the fact that by Wednesday there still had only been a couple of quick chats with Michael in between his conference activities, with no mention of me heading to London at all. So in order to counteract such default to negativity thinking, I decided to take the kids to Reading, regardless. Seeing their grandparents would be something for all of us to look forward to. It would be a welcome distraction for me, too, from the mounting bills. I’d had two more final demands that week.

  On Wednesday lunchtime there was a charity event at the local community centre in Medlock. Representatives from Sisters’ Space had been invited along, so Gillian and I popped over for half an hour. I caught a glimpse of Shaun, towering above the rest of the usual councillor cronies. Gillian left me for a few minutes to pick over the buffet and have a little grumble to herself about the lack of vegan and gluten-free products. And then Shaun appeared at my side.