by Claire Sandy
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
12.05.14
11.23
SUBJECT: It’s over
Hi Soulmate
Thanks for the email.
I think.
It was v long.
And confusing.
Lots of words I didn’t understand but that’s normal.
Before we get into that I have to tell you about today at school. The Evil Queen sat beside me at lunch. She friended me on Facebook. At home time she shouted ‘Bye Angus!’ in that dumb voice she puts on and all the dumb Clones shouted ‘Bye Angus!’ too. One of them blew me a KISS.
It’s over.
I wouldn’t tell anybody else in the whole world but I cried (proper tears and everything) on the way home. It’s over! It’s really over.
Deep breath. Back to you and me. Daren’t call it us.
I agreed with some of the stuff in your email.
1 Yes we can trust each other with secrets
2 Yes we are ourselves with each other
3 Yes you don’t have to act dumb with me (I LOVE you being smarter)
4 Yes talking about our schtupid families helps
Here’s what I disagree with.
1 No it wouldn’t spoil everything if we met
2 No I wouldn’t be disappointed if I met you. Not possible. Not even if you have a bum where your face should be or something.
3 No I shouldn’t give it a go with The Goth Girl Across The Road. Why can’t you just be jealus like normal people? We promised to be honest so I can tell you this. I DO like her. I like her sort of a lot.
But she’s not you.
And I love you Soulmate.
So I’ll wait.
Goodbye Goth Girl Across The Road.
laters
Angus
x
JUNE
Just Because
Rainbow Layer Cake
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
15.06.14
22.44
SUBJECT: Unfinished business
Dear Tod,
Thanks for your email. I’ll call my solicitor first thing tomorrow and let him know we’ve finally hammered out the settlement. Perhaps you’ll finally accept, after all the accusations, that I never wanted maintenance? Now that you’ve signed over the house, you are free of me, Tod. I intend to return to the job market and earn my own living, just like I did before I met you. You’ve been very quick to accuse me of freeloading during our marriage, but if you remember it was you who insisted I stay at home. I was too weak and too besotted to argue.
I want to say this, loud and clear – thank you a thousand times for agreeing to let me keep this house, so it can continue to be a home for me and for your daughter. I’ll be able to sleep at night again. Thank you.
Thank you.
But while we’re saying things loud and clear I’d like to clarify something else. I’m not ‘nuts’. I’m not a ‘silly moo’ and I’m not a ‘psycho bitch from hell’. I’d appreciate it if you could stop calling me names. This is a fresh start for us all and, in the spirit of that, why not drop the pretence that Hattie isn’t living with you? Chloe’s spotted her more than once in the background when you Skype, and if you really think your daughter hasn’t found the locked room where Hattie dumps all her stuff when Chloe visits, then you’re mistaken.
You texted to ask if I miss you. That text came while I was dumping at Oxfam all the diet books you bought me.
As I type I look over at Cookie. She misses you. She misses the way you aimed a kick at her if she dared to cross your path. She misses the way you’d scream at her if she hopped up onto ‘your’ chair. Much as you’d scream at me if I did the same, or boiled your egg thirty seconds too long, or didn’t wear full make-up to bed. Cookie misses you so much she sits in your chair all the time. Bless her, she’s just farted into ‘your’ cushion.
Tod, the truth is I howl with pain at times. Love isn’t a tap I can turn off. No doubt I’ll die regretting the mess of our marriage and wishing it had been different. I’ll die loving you, but I could not let you humiliate me for one moment longer.
I’ve done some research since you left. Thanks to some judicious diary cross-referencing, some questionable email-hacking (were you aware I know your passwords?) and a few tense phone calls to various ‘ladies’, I now know that I wasn’t ‘in need of serious fucking therapy’ when I accused you of cheating. I was right. Every time. Plus a few more for luck.
You and I don’t really matter. When it comes down to it, I’m just some woman you met in a wine bar. Our sob stories, our damaged pride and damaged hearts are our own fault. What does matter is Chloe.
Please, please stop using her as a weapon. Stop asking her to carry nasty messages to me. Stop telling her lies about me. Despite what you clearly think, I DO NOT influence her against you. Quite the opposite. I believe a healthy relationship with her father is vital. So, Tod, please turn up when you say you will, don’t cancel at the last minute, keep your promises. (And don’t, for Christ’s sake, dump her for a night at the theatre with Hattie, like you did last Wednesday.)
Cherish Chloe. Be proud of her. I’ve been boasting my head off about how she managed to revise for and sit her GCSEs, despite the uncertainty and upheaval you and I caused her. Chloe is an AMAZING young woman. She represents the very best of you, the Tod I fell for so hard.
I know how hurtful it is for you to come to terms with her decision to live with me. I know you’re doing your best.
There’s one other thing I have to ask. It’s the last request I’ll ever make of you. Please respect her other big decision, the one she told you about last night. She told me you shouted, and assumed it was all my doing. Well, you’re damn right: it is. I knew it would upset you, but that’s irrelevant. This time it isn’t about you. It’s about Chloe. And her mother.
Goodnight.
And of course I miss you.
Lucy
‘Still not sure about this colour on the walls.’ Aileen scowled at the refurbished reception area. New white shutters gave Lynda some privacy at her desk, and a conker-coloured sofa sat cheek-by-jowl with a lacquered coffee table. ‘What’s it called again?’
‘Eau-de-nil.’ Marie attempted a French accent.
‘Eau-de-feck, more like.’ Aileen put her feet up on the coffee table. ‘Jaysus, I’m shagged out. Remember the good old days when Klay stole all our customers and we had loads of time to chat?’
Good, bad, whatever – those days were gone. Across the road Perfect You stood empty, a hillock of mail rising on the other side of the glass door, the plasma screen in the window a dark blank. Klay’s sudden flit had left quite a stink: unpaid bills; disgruntled staff locked out on the pavement; confused patients with half-whitened teeth and temporary veneers. The lost sheep had wandered back into Marie’s fold, bringing more with them, and the appointment book was plump once more. Marie felt sufficient faith in the future to gussy up their workplace, even splashing out on a few new magazine subscriptions. The latest Vogue lay open, crayon scribbles all over the supermodels. Toddlers have been at it, thought Marie indulgently, before wondering, less indulgently, Or maybe Aileen has?
‘I’m starving,’ said Lynda. ‘Any of those biscuits left?’
‘No,’ said Aileen. ‘You ate them all. Just like you ate all the crisps this morning.’ She sounded hurt, as if amazed anew by the cruelties of man. ‘And all the chips at lunchtime.’
‘I’m twenty-four weeks pregnant,’ said Lynda. ‘I’m eating for two.’
‘Two what?’ said Aileen. ‘Two hippos?’
‘Millicent!’ shouted Lynda and then, more quietly, ‘We need a good sandwich place round here. I could murder a BLT. And an egg-and-cress. And a ploughman’s.’
The music of the trampoline – boing-boing-shriek – drifted through from the garden as Marie weighed and sifted and mixed. The sun was dialled up to eleven, and
it was impossible to resist its good cheer. Humming to herself, merrily ‘in the zone’, Marie watched Angus and Joe out on the patio.
She had to admire their pluck, filming a zombie epic on a sweltering summer’s day. Joe was chalky-faced with talcum powder, raspberry conserve smeared on his chest, his eyes hollowed with Marie’s kohl. He stumbled, groaning, arms outstretched, towards Prinny.
‘Cut!’ shouted Angus. ‘Prinny! Act scared, you stupid mutt!’
‘She can’t. She loves Joe!’ shouted Marie, as the dog jumped up ecstatically, trying to lick Joe’s jammy guts.
‘Don’t be mean to Prinny!’ shouted Rose, mid-bounce, ever alert for dog-dissing.
There had been a definite shift in the family ether. Angus was lighter these days: more a meringue than a Dundee. Marie daren’t ask why, in case that visor of teenage reserve slammed down over his eyes, so she simply enjoyed it. ‘No red food colouring?’ she tutted, opening and slamming cupboard doors. ‘I had a whole . . .’ She realised. ‘Angus! Have you used my red food colouring for gore?’
‘Maybe.’ Angus squinted through his viewfinder as Prinny made sweet love to Joe’s leg. ‘Yes.’
A Woman Who Runs Out of Things needs to know A Woman Who Always Has Loads of Everything; Lucy was out at an appointment in W1, but a brief text brought Chloe across the Close with a tiny bottle.
‘Thanks, love.’ Marie slowly upended the dye, ekeing out a drip or two into the bowl. ‘I hope Lucy’s OK.’
‘Of course she is,’ said Chloe. ‘Lum can do anything.’
‘How’s the napkin campaign?’
‘We’re making progress.’ Chloe, on a crusade to loosen up her stepmother, reported regularly to Marie. ‘I’ve managed to get her to agree to linen napkins on Sundays only. The rest of the time we use paper ones!’ She quelled Marie’s whoop with a dark, ‘Posh ones, though.’
‘Every little helps.’
‘What you making?’ Chloe leaned over the two bowls, one a vivid red, the other growing bluer by the moment, as Marie splashed colouring into the creamy batter.
‘A rainbow layer cake.’ Marie nodded at the photo in the book and smiled at Chloe’s soft ‘Wow!’
Only a wow! did justice to the majestic, five-tiered beauty. Each band was a different vibrant colour, the stripes of red, blue, yellow, green and pink all outlined with soft, thick white icing. ‘For your mum. To say well done. And for Robert, too. To say it’ll all be all right.’
‘It’ll just say eat me to me,’ said Chloe. She hadn’t once looked out to the patio, where Angus could be heard coaxing his star to perform. ‘Up!’ he shouted, then, ‘Down! Down, Prinny! Stop, Prinny, stop!’
A banging on the glass forced Chloe to give the film crew her attention. Joe had noticed her and was gesticulating and smiling and waving, and being about as uncool as a boy can be without actually wearing a tutu.
‘I hope Joe’s wearing zombie make-up,’ murmured Chloe, waving back, ‘or he’s too ill to be out.’
Joe was yearning to get indoors now that Chloe was on the premises. He reminded Marie of the way Prinny scrabbled at the glass during Sunday lunch. Joe stopped short of howling and jumping at the handle, but he did take Angus’s camera out of his hands and shove him indoors. ‘Any more of that lemonade going?’ he asked Marie, staring – hungrily, obviously – at Chloe, who was faking extreme indifference to Angus, who wasn’t faking it. His indifference was the real deal.
Something had happened in Teen World. Marie didn’t know why or how, but life had contrived to plant a full stop on the promising harmony between Angus and Chloe.
‘Your wish is my command.’ Marie poured out her own-recipe lemonade, as the twins materialised, excited by Chloe and her trendy jeans and the drink. Marie had successfully weaned them off canned fizzy tooth-rot. A small maternal triumph perhaps, but one that Marie would like on her tombstone. Along with I owe it all to Mary Berry.
‘Mate!’ Joe thumped Angus on the arm. ‘I’ve had a genius idea! Chloe should be in our film.’ Joe was as fizzy as the pop with his idea.
‘We don’t have a part for a girl,’ said Angus, firing up his laptop.
‘But we could—’
Chloe cut Joe off with: ‘I’m busy, actually. As it goes.’
‘But . . .’ Hormones firmly in charge, Joe couldn’t give up.
‘Honestly,’ said Chloe, firmly. ‘I can’t. OK?’
‘Awk-ward,’ sang Rose.
‘Sshh, you,’ said Marie, seeing Chloe’s chin sink, her lips compress. The girl was determined to look nonchalant, but her feelings were evidently bruised by Angus’s coolness. The hopes that Marie had nurtured during the brief thaw in their Cold War seemed ludicrous now that normal frosty service was resumed. She considered tackling Angus: she couldn’t force him to like the girl, but she could damned well drum some manners into him.
‘A boy in my class,’ said Iris, ‘thinks lemonade is made from lemmings.’
Beneath Joe’s bark of a laugh, Marie heard her son inhale sharply, his eyes on the laptop screen.
Angus slammed the computer shut. Marie knew to leave well alone, but Chloe didn’t have her years of experience at Angus-wrangling.
‘Bad news?’ she asked.
‘Why,’ said Angus, a nasty spin on each word, ‘are you always here?’
‘Hey, bro,’ protested Joe, but Angus shoved past him, making for the stairs as if zombies were after him. Or as if, thought Marie, he was about to cry.
‘Angus is horrid,’ said Rose, putting a hand on Chloe’s slender arm. ‘Come out to the trampoline with us, Chloe, and forget all about our meanie brother.’
‘Only if Marie comes,’ said Chloe.
‘But I . . .’ Marie looked down at her apron, at the bowls brimming with jewel-coloured slop, at the flour-spattered worktop. She was on a tight schedule if the cake was to be ready for Robert’s homecoming. ‘I have to—’ She stopped. Mary Berry would not condone such priorities. ‘Only if Joe comes.’ She nudged the confused boy, who had half-stood, uncertain whether blokey etiquette decreed that he should follow Angus or leave him alone.
‘You’re on!’
The twins were right. You can’t be miserable on a trampoline.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
17.06.14
17.41
SUBJECT: Zombies etc etc
Hey Angus
Your Zombie movie idea is dingdongtastic. Love the script. Bit like that Japanese movie you made me watch, Bio Zombie. And a bit like – Warning! Huge compliment alert! – your beloved Shaun of the Dead.
Supposed to be clearing out my room – arrrrrrgh – but yeah you guessed it, I’m watching An Officer and a Gentleman. That scene. Over and over. Can’t believe you don’t get it. Only the best constructed most romantic scene EVAH. Duh.
Picture it . . .
Richard Gere on a motorbike. As if that isn’t exiting enough for the laydeez, he’s wearing an AMERICAN NAVY UNIFORM.
We’re talking bright white tailored shit. With those thingies on his shoulders, can’t remember what they’re called. And Richard has such brooooooad shoulders.
So. Basically we’re all swooning.
And yes feminists are allowed to swoon.
Just remembered. The shoulder things are called ‘epaulettes’.
The song starts. ‘Up Where We Belong’. TBH I hate it. Far too schmaltzy. But it’s perfect for the scene.
Cut to Debra Winger. Pretty, brown hair and (obviously) skinny. Working in the factory along with her mates. She’s wearing the worst tweed cap thing you ever saw. Not dolled up.
Richard G walks in. He heads straight for her. He looks really out of place in a factory. Like an angel (SHUT UP, HE DOES) in his white kit.
He goes to Debra. She has her back to him. He kisses the back of her neck. Debra jumps and turns round and recognises him.
She knows then that it’s going to be all right.
Everything.
Her life is solved.
Richard puts his hands on her neck and kisses her.
Then he twirls her around.
Then he lifts her into his arms like she’s a baby and walks off through the manky noisy factory holding her.
I’m usually crying by this point (yeah, ME, I know, the one who just laughed when they took Dumbo away from his mummy) and I cry harder when her friend shouts, ‘Way to go Paula! Way to go!’
All the workers clap. They’re all laughing and crying and wanting to kill themselves with jealousy because it’s not them Richard Gere is rescuing.
Debra’s hat falls off. She grabs his cap and plonks it on her head. They’re outlined in the light flooding through the doors and that’s it.
Slushy. Commercial. Mainstream. All those other bad words you’ve thrown at it. But FANTASTIC.
End of rant!!!
Dead flattered you want my help with the zombie title sequence but you don’t need me, you idiot. Your artwork and design is way, way better than my pathetic efforts. Make them really retro and old-fashioned.
I like it when films have THE END in big letters at the end because then you know it’s time to have a stretch and a yawn and go off and get on with something else.
That’s what I’m doing now, actually.
I’m writing THE END in big letters so we both know where we stand.
Angus, I can’t do this any more. I can’t take the pressure. You can’t come to see me but if I told you why you’d hate me. These emails are getting in the way for both of us. You’re not the only one with feelings for somebody else. I do too. It’s crazy for us to ignore them.
What if The Goth Girl Across The Road is the one for you?
What if you’re missing out because of me?
Which is why I’m going to type in big letters
THE END
‘Why are my children so clean?’ Robert paused as he hung up his jacket in the hall. ‘Urgh!’ He backed away from his family, arranged as if for a portrait, all beaming at him – even Angus, whose smile had a hint of rigor mortis. ‘Stop that! Ignore me, like you always do.’