by Beth Miller
So am I. When she’s out of the way, I crawl upstairs and fall into bed. I’m sure I won’t sleep; my head and heart are both racing.
There’s a feeling of intense heat. Fiona, a friend from school, runs ahead of me. I call out, tell her to wait, but she laughs, and then we’re in a room with an old-fashioned black dial-phone. Fiona has turned into Evie. She reaches for the phone and I want to stop her, but I can’t move, my legs are made of water. ‘No, don’t call her,’ I cry, but she says, ‘I want to go home,’ and picks up the receiver.
I wake up and the real phone is ringing – my mobile. It’s Ceri, wondering why I haven’t texted her back.
‘Sorry, Ceri,’ I say brightly, to cover the fact that I’ve just woken up. ‘Perhaps we should cancel? Huw’s just told me he’s got a work commitment tonight.’
‘Hasn’t he always.’
Oh, do fuck off. I say, ‘I’m happy to rearrange.’ Bit of luck, she’ll forget about it for a few more weeks.
‘I suppose we might as well go ahead tonight anyway. Rees has been looking forward to it. I’d like to have known earlier.’
Bollocks. I make peppermint tea in the interests of tummy-calming, and by the time Evie gets back from school I’m feeling better. She runs upstairs and I follow her, and knock on Mama’s door. She is standing by the wardrobe, her face pinched, suitcase open on the bed.
‘What are you doing, Mama?’
‘Surely that is obvious, Laura. I won’t stay where I am spoken to so rudely, so harshly.’
A shrink would say I’ve spent all my life trying to make my mother happy; it’s too ingrained to stop now. ‘Mama, please don’t go!’ I reach for her hand, but she holds hers away from me. ‘I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to, oh, it doesn’t matter what I wanted.’
‘No. You weren’t thinking. I have just lost mi marido, the love of my life. I come to my daughter’s house for a small piece of comfort, and what does she do? She accuses me of dreadful things! I would not have believed it of you, Laura.’
I start to cry. She can always make me cry. ‘I’m so sorry. Please stay.’
‘As you know, bebita, I did not have a happy relationship with my mother,’ she says, staring at the floor. ‘I always prided myself that we were different. But the things you said to me today … I wonder, where did I go wrong?’
‘But Mama! You haven’t gone wrong anywhere.’
‘I hope you will take me to the station, but I am willing to telephone a taxi.’
‘A train? What, now? It’s an eight-hour journey! You’ll get stranded at Stockport! There’s at least four changes!’
She hesitates. She’s never tried to go anywhere by herself from North Wales.
‘At least will you wait till tomorrow, and I can drive you as far as Crewe?’
With extremely ill grace, she agrees to wait till morning, and goes downstairs to call Rail Enquiries.
There’s a burst of giggling from the study, and when I push the door open I find Evie and Glynn lying together on his airbed. They’re each wearing one earphone plugged into Evie’s iPod. Music seeps out.
‘Mum! Haven’t you heard of knocking?’ Evie sits up. ‘It’s the latest fashion.’
‘Chill,’ Glynn says to her, and flashes me an insolent smile. ‘We’re not doing anything illegal.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ I say, in Mama’s youth worker voice. All I can think to do is leave the door open, but am not surprised to hear it shut before I get downstairs.
Rees suggests a pub on the far side of town called the Ty-Nant, which I’ve not been to before. At Ceri’s subtle suggestion (‘If you’re not drinking anyway …’), I’m driving. Rees sits next to me in the front, so he can navigate, or that’s his story. In the dark of the car, his hand brushes my leg more often than chance alone. Once, he rests it there for a moment, and I abruptly change gears so I have a reason to shunt him off; the car lurches and Ceri screams, ‘Ooh, I’m getting all thrown around here.’
Rees turns to her. ‘You would if I was back there with you, babe, yeah?’
When we arrive, he sits at a table before Ceri and I have got our coats off, and says to her, ‘I’ll have a pint of best, babe, yeah?’ He has that North Welsh verbal tic, the interrogative ‘yeah?’ at the end of every sentence. Wonder if he does it in bed? Oh, you’re so good Ceri, yeah? Do you like it like that, yeah?
While Ceri dutifully goes to the bar, I try to shake my head free of images of Rees in bed. I sit opposite him but he leans round the table so he can stroke my arm.
‘This is nice, Laura. Soft. Cashmere, is it?’
‘Polyester, I think.’ Actually, it is cashmere. Creepy bastard. I shift a little further away along the seat.
‘Ceri was saying you’re off to a big fancy party in England. Your stepsister and brother, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, but he doesn’t notice.
‘Well, now. If I remember what a little bird told me down the Student Union in 1985, when she’d had too much snake-bite and black – and I think I do – wasn’t this stepbrother your first shag, when you was just fourteen, yeah?’
Christ, I can’t believe I ever told him that. I can’t believe he remembers it, either. I suppose it was that godawful night I ended up on his filthy sofa. Bloody dreadful being young, wasn’t it?
‘Always liked that story, Laura. Always thought it was a bit kinky, like.’
‘Is that a fact?’ God, how does Ceri stand it? She comes back with the drinks. Spills a bit of mine, but as it’s orange juice, who gives a shit?
‘Is anyone smoking in here?’ she says, tilting the ashtray to see if there’s anything in it.
‘So, you planning to get up close and personal again with him, Laura? Old times’ sake, yeah?’
‘What you on about, Rees?’
‘Laura’s stepbrother.’
‘What about him?’ Ceri looks round the pub for other smokers.
‘Nothing, babe,’ he says, and winks at me. Christ on a bike. Why’s it always the ones you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole who fancy you?
‘Thing I don’t get about this Melissa, right,’ Ceri says. ‘You haven’t seen her for years. Then you meet her and bam, you’re bezzie mates, off for the weekend together.’
‘It’s not that strange. We are related. And we used to be brilliant friends.’
Ceri lights her cigarette. ‘When you were kids. But last time you saw her, your mum had just run off with her dad.’
Rees lights up too. ‘Romanian, these are.’ He shows me the packet. ‘Wouldn’t smoke nothing else now.’
My stomach, which has been calm for hours, gives a sudden lurch, and I wince.
‘You okay?’ Ceri says. ‘You look washed out. Doesn’t she, Rees? Maybe you’re anaemic?’
Rees blows smoke in my face. ‘She looks good to me. She looks good.’
I cough, and he says, ‘Bloody hell, Ceri, we shouldn’t be smoking. The baby, yeah?’
‘Think I’ll just nip to the loo.’ I stand up.
‘In that case, I’m going to carry on smoking,’ Ceri says.
Rees discreetly strokes my bum. Just once. Just light enough that if I say anything, he can say it was a mistake, he was just moving his arm. ‘You’re still a bit of a goer, Mrs Ellis, aren’t you, on the quiet?’
‘What do you mean, still?’ Ceri stares at him.
I walk round the bar, the pain getting steadily worse. I spot the sign for the toilet at the same moment that I see Huw sitting in a booth with a woman. His back is to me, but I can see her clearly. The good news is she’s not that tart from New Year’s Eve. The bad news is everything else.
I push open the toilet door and collapse onto a loo, let my mind go blank until the pain fades. I don’t know how long. Two minutes? Ten? I count the black and white tiles on the wall. Two hundred and fifteen. I wonder how long it took to tile all the cubicles. Wonder if halfway through they wished they’d chosen more interesting colours. When I wipe myself, there is blood on the paper. This
makes me very focused. Everything else is irrelevant, except for the following:
1. I don’t want Huw to know I have seen him;
2. I don’t want Ceri and Rees to see him;
3. I don’t want anyone to know I am bleeding;
4. I want to go home.
I step quietly back into the pub. Huw and the woman are still there. So it wasn’t a horrible mirage. She is younger than me. Good skin, blonde hair piled on her head like Brigitte fucking Bardot. She is looking at him from under her lashes. She is the reason he couldn’t get his dick up last week.
‘You were a long time,’ Ceri says. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, but I was taking a call from Evie. She doesn’t feel well. I’d better go.’
‘Shame.’ Rees makes a crying face. ‘Thought your mum was with her, yeah?’
‘Oh, you!’ Ceri hits his arm playfully. ‘Typical non-parent. You always want your mummy when you’re sick, don’t you? You’d better head off then, Laura. We can get a cab back, no worries.’
‘Well,’ I say, thinking desperately, ‘she also wants to see her Auntie Ceri.’
‘Does she? Why?’
‘I told her I was with you and she said she wished you’d read her a story.’
‘Ah, that’s sweet,’ Rees says, stroking Ceri’s arm.
‘Well I can do, I guess …’
‘How about you both come with me, we pop inside for a quick story, make a sick little girl happy, then you two can go for a drink at that lovely new cocktail bar near us?’
‘The Griffin? That’s not new,’ Rees says. ‘I’ve been there loads.’
Thanks a fucking bunch, Rees.
‘Who’ve you been there with?’ Ceri says.
Huw’s blonde ‘professor’ comes round to our side of the bar to order drinks. Rees stares a moment too long, and Ceri puts on her coat. ‘Come on, then. Just call me Florence Nightingale.’
Then, thank Christ, we are out of there. Back home, I work quickly, going in first and then nipping back outside to tell them that Evie’s already asleep. Ceri and Rees bugger off, and I shut the front door and lean against it, like in the movies when they’ve outwitted a load of zombies.
Mama comes into the hall. Another zombie. ‘There’s a train first thing tomorrow, Laura. Only three changes, not your nonsense story.’
‘If that’s what you want, Mama, fine.’
I’m unequal to any more conversation. Possibly ever again. I crawl into bed, wrap my arms round my stomach, and whisper, Come on, now. Come on, now. It’s going to be all right.
12 MARCH 2003
No blood on the sheets. None yesterday, either. The midwife said she’d worry if there was any more. Got to stop rushing about after other people, she said. Got to not let things get to me. I told her that my mother had gone home – I didn’t say in a huff – and the midwife said, ‘Good. Now you could do with shifting that stepson of yours.’
Too right, Nursie. Apart from anything else, I’m anxious Glynn will take advantage of Evie. I must talk to Huw about it. Oh, yes, you’re right. Must also discuss that blonde with him. But when? He gets in after I’ve gone to bed; he leaves before I’m up. An idea comes to me and makes me laugh. Evie, eating cereal, looks at me but doesn’t say anything. I drop her at school and go on to work.
I usually love going into the shop, but Ceri’s in a bit of a mood today. I tell her I like her jumper (even though it has a picture of Olive Oyl appliquéd onto it), make tea and try to amuse her with Tales of Glynn. When we first started working together, Ceri and I bonded over our nightmare step-kids. We would spend hours analysing the dreadful things Huw’s kids said to me, and the vile things Owen’s kids said to her. Now she’s divorced that wanker and never has to see them, lucky cow. The topic works some of its magic again, as she smiles at my descriptions of Glynn sleeping in till lunch, him saying ‘chill’ and ‘don’t get stressy’, plus his irritating vegetarian pose.
The shop’s quiet as usual, so we sit out the back with the portable telly on, keeping an eye on the door. Today’s programme is about men who’re in love with their mothers-in-law. It’s mystifying how many the producers have managed to round up. Ceri smokes and I passively inhale. I ask if her younger sister might lend me a nice dress for Miffy’s party – Rhianna’s just had a baby, and her maternity clothes are way more stylish than Ceri’s usual wardrobe. Ceri shrugs, maybe, and gives me the phone number.
I politely ask her how things are going with Rees – not that I want to know.
‘Okay. I don’t know. He’s good in bed but he talks a lot of shit.’
I’m amazed to hear this: not the talking shit part but the sexual prowess. He was totally useless when we were students. I’m distracted by a mother-in-law on the telly who looks younger than her daughter-in-law, when Ceri says, mock-casual, blowing out smoke, ‘So Rees says you and he used to date.’
What a twat! Why on earth did he tell her?
‘Oh, you could hardly call it dating. It was one of those incredibly brief student things, years ago. Before I met Huw. Before you and I were even friends, I think.’
‘Thanks for letting me know, Laura.’
‘Gosh, Ceri, I’m sorry, but it was, what, eighteen years ago? You know what it was like when we were students. I scarcely remember it.’
‘He remembers all right. He can’t stop bloody going on about it.’
‘How boring of him.’
Ceri stubs out her cigarette on the step and says, ‘Looks like it’s going to be another quiet day. Why don’t you head off? There’s no point us both hanging round.’
She stands up, brushes fag ash off Olive Oyl’s face, not looking at me.
‘Seriously? Do you want me to?’ I stare at her.
She smiles. Not properly. ‘Yeah, I’ll do the stocktake. See you tomorrow.’
It’s not yet eleven o’clock. Reluctantly, I get my bag and leave, calling ‘Bye!’ in a cheery voice. After the row with Mama, the last thing I need is to fall out with Ceri as well. But I feel pretty upset. This not letting things get to me is going well, then.
As I’m in town I decide to act on my idea of this morning to surprise Huw at the university. After all, I need to speak to him, and he’s never at home. I haven’t been to his office for ages. I used to come here a lot. Ha ha, in both senses of the word. It was so exciting shagging in here when he was still married and I was his student.
I knock, and when he snaps, ‘Come!’ I stick my head round the door and say, ‘Ooh I was just thinking that I’d love to.’
‘Laura!’ He looks so startled I wonder if he’s getting a blow-job under the desk from that Brigitte Bardot tart.
‘Well, hello, honey bun, to you too.’ I sit on a chair opposite him. There are photos of me and Evie on his desk, where Carmen and Glynn used to be.
‘Why aren’t you at work? Is everything okay?’ Huw sounds completely rattled. I ought to turn up unexpectedly more often. Keep him on his toes.
‘Everything’s fine. It’s just we haven’t had much chance to talk lately, so I thought I’d pop in.’
He leans back in his fancy leather chair, trying to look relaxed. ‘So, what can I do for you, cariad?’
We’re on a new reality TV programme called Couples Communicate. Our images freeze on the screen, and over the top a computer writes:
Things to discuss with you:
1. Posh Sussex house party on Saturday;
2. Your son being creepy around our daughter;
3. That blonde I saw you with the other night.
The screen unfreezes and I feel more confident. That’s the way to do it: start with the easy, work up to the hard.
‘Three things. One, what are we doing about Miffy’s party this weekend?’
‘First I’ve heard of it.’
‘No, it isn’t! I told you about it on the way back from Great Yarmouth.’
‘Fucking hell, after that shitty week I wouldn’t have remembered if you said we’d won the lottery. No way can
I go love, sorry.’
‘The professor, right? What’s his name again, I keep forgetting?’
‘Professor Hartfield. You don’t really want me there, do you, cariad? It’s your long-lost family. You and Evie will have a great time.’
Hmm. No Huw and no Mama. But yes to Danny … Maybe this party could work rather well.
‘So what else is on your urgent agenda?’
‘Glynn. The other day I found him and Evie lying on his airbed together.’
‘Were they dressed?’
‘Bloody hell! Of course they were.’
‘I’ll have a word. He’s not very good at boundaries.’
‘He’s a terrible influence on her, Huw.’
‘You sound ancient when you say stuff like that.’
‘I just can’t understand why he wants to stay for so long. You’d think he’d be missing his friends in Kings Heath. He doesn’t actually do anything all day, just gets under my feet’ – and now I am starting to get worked up – ‘and he has to have vegetarian food, which is incredibly inconvenient, and he never even bothers to talk to me, he just mooches round the house like a long streak of piss’ – and then proper tears fill my eyes.
‘Where the fuck’s all this come from?’ He pats my shoulder as if I were a student upset about my grades. ‘Sorry you’re finding him a strain, cariad. Carmen’s not been coping and I said we’d give her a break for a couple of months.’
That stops the tears all right. ‘A what? A couple of months? Without consulting me?’
‘Well, now.’ Huw walks over to the window. With his back to me he says, ‘I didn’t know we had to consult each other about such trivia. For instance, like you didn’t consult me about having another baby.’
‘Is that what this is about? Are you playing get your own back like some pathetic five-year-old?’
I know I’m supposed to be keeping the peace, but sodding Mother Teresa would be hard pushed here.
He turns round. ‘And what was the third thing you wanted to talk about?’
‘Fuck off.’ I slam the door.
I’m in such a rage on the way home that when a red Fiesta cuts me up, I hoot so vigorously the driver winds down his window and sticks a finger up at me. As soon as I get home, though, my mood lifts. The bliss of a silent house; the unexpected windfall of a few free hours. I sink into a chair, allow my mind to relax, let X-rated images of Danny and me flick across my mind.