by Fiona Gibson
‘You want to live in a barn?’
‘Yeah, but it won’t be, like, barn-ish. It’ll be all done out like a kind of open-plan apartment. We planned it all on holiday.’
I blink at him, momentarily lost for words. This is my boy, who can barely make toast without incinerating it, and still fears crusts. ‘I … I still can’t understand why on earth you think this is a good idea.’
‘Oh, it’ll be great,’ he exclaims, brightening. ‘I mean, it’s a bit of a state, Dad says, and there’s a horse in it at the moment—’
‘They don’t have a horse!’
‘It’s Patsy’s friend’s but it’ll be gone by the time I move in.’
‘Well, that’s good to know,’ I snap, sensing my cheeks blazing. ‘At least you won’t be bedding down on hay with Dobbin, I suppose we should be thankful for that—’
‘Jeez, Mum.’ He tuts loudly, clearly amazed that I’m not wholly supportive of this startling development.
‘And you’d do your own cooking, would you?’ My voice is shrill but I can’t help it. ‘I mean, what would be the set-up in this barn?’
Logan shrugs, clearly not having considered this. ‘S’pose I could do my own thing when I wanted to and have dinner with them when I couldn’t be bothered.’
‘I’m sure that’d go down well,’ I snap. ‘Anyway, never mind that. I can’t believe Dad didn’t mention this when he brought you home. Why hasn’t he spoken to me about it? Doesn’t he think I should know what’s being planned here? It seems crazy, Logan, that he’s going to be solely responsible for you when he could barely get it together to go to a bloody parents’ evening, and even then it’d be all about being charming and matey with the teachers instead of actually finding out how you were getting on with—’
‘Why are you so mad at Dad?’ he blasts out.
‘I’m not! Well, yes, I am, Logan, because of this. A plan concocted without anyone thinking I might possibly need to know about it.’ My heart is pounding, my chest juddering visibly with every beat.
‘He knew you’d be mad,’ Logan murmurs. ‘That’s why he didn’t say anything.’
‘Mad? Of course I’m mad! I’m your mum, Logan. For Christ’s sake – you can’t just casually say you’re moving out on a whim …’ To my horror, my voice is wobbling and my eyes are filling with tears.
‘It’s not a whim,’ he says firmly.
‘So, you’re prepared to move hundreds of miles away and leave Blake and all your friends and your school for, for …’
‘Dad can enrol me in Thornbank High.’
‘Where the hell’s that?’
‘Near them, just down the road. It’s a really good school – I’ve checked.’
I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. ‘You mean you’ve studied the Ofsted reports?’
‘Um, no, but I’m sure it’s fine.’
‘Your father will have, obviously.’
He shoots me a look of disdain. ‘Stop getting on at Dad.’
‘I’m not,’ I say firmly. ‘What I’m saying is, you deciding it’s fine isn’t the same as finding out if it’s any good or not. Anyway, it’s completely the wrong time to change schools. It’s a different system from the Scottish one – you do know that? And you’re just about to sit your exams. It’d be far too disruptive to move now.’ I reach for his hand but he pulls it away. ‘I know I’m a pain sometimes,’ I rant on, ‘but everyone gets sick of their parents, especially at your age when you’re desperate to get out in the world …’
‘I just want to live with Dad,’ he mutters.
‘But why?’
Logan shrugs, remaining silent.
‘I know you’ve just been away with him,’ I go on, ‘whereas with me, it’s just the tedious day-to-day stuff – but we can go away too. I’ve got a bit of money saved, and I’ll go all out to promote the meringues more, and any spare cash can be put aside for a summer holiday.’ No, no, don’t try to bribe him …
‘I’ve made up my mind,’ he says quietly. Pink patches have sprung up on his cheeks, and I so want to wrap my arms around him and say, What’s got into you? What is this all about really? But he’d hate that, and anyway, I know what it’s about: quite simply, Logan adores his dad. ‘I’ll go after my exams,’ he adds, ‘so I can get settled in at my new school before the summer holidays. Dad says he can have the barn ready for me by then.’
‘You’re seriously going to live in a horse house?’
‘I told you – the pony’s moving out …’
‘Right. So what are we talking – the end of May?’ A tear rolls down my cheek, and I swipe at it with the back of my hand.
‘Yeah,’ he murmurs.
‘Are you sure Patsy’s okay about this?’
Logan nods. ‘Yeah, it’s cool.’
Fine! Go then, go and live with a woman who freaks out if her own child ingests so much as a crumb of meringue …
‘Dad says I can help with the business,’ he adds, ‘packing stuff up. Orders and all that. So that could be my summer job.’
‘But they already have people to do that. It’s not just Patsy and Dad putting pyjamas in boxes, you know. They have a warehouse, they employ people, it’s a major operation these days …’
‘Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to do something.’
‘Right,’ I say, and we fall into silence as Fergus wanders in, clutching an ancient Game Boy he picked up at a charity shop in the Highlands.
He glances at both of us sitting hunched and sullen on the sofa. ‘What’s up?’
I look up at him. ‘Logan says he wants to go and live with Dad,’ I say flatly.
‘Oh. Yeah. I kinda heard them talking about that.’
I meet his gaze, incredibly stung that this secret has hung in the air between them. Fergus perches on the sofa arm, and the three of us sit there for a few moments with the TV on mute. From outside comes the distant hum of traffic, and someone laughs in the street below.
‘How would you feel about Logan moving out?’ I ask tentatively.
Fergus pauses for a moment, as if he hasn’t really considered this. Then his face brightens as he says, ‘It’d be fine, Mum, ’cause then I’d get the biggest room.’
*
I spend the rest of the evening attempting to contact Tom, to no avail. My voicemail messages to his mobile and landline are at first restrained – ‘Could you call me, please?’ then virtually spat out: ‘Tom, I really need to talk to you NOW.’ He doesn’t phone back. He’s either torturing me deliberately, or dead.
Next morning – Monday, first day of the new term – I somehow manage to get through the whole breakfast-and-getting-ready routine without mentioning the move at all. I know it would only result in Logan and I stomping off to our respective schools in filthy moods. Instead, I try to affect a calm manner, pleased with myself for having bought mini variety boxes of cereals, as if that might possibly persuade him that it’s not so terrible here after all. Bet Patsy doesn’t have those, all coated in sugar and honey to attack tooth enamel. At her place it’ll be gravelly muesli all the way, or a dense lump of pumpernickel bread if he’s lucky.
‘Have a nice day, boys,’ I say lightly as they gather up their bags to leave. ‘D’you both have your lunch money?’
They nod. ‘Take a bit extra from the jar for a snack on your way home.’ I realise I’m trying to bribe Logan again, paying him to stay. As if a quid for a Kit Kat will swing it. More sugar, too. Is that why he wants to break up our little gang of three – as a last-ditch attempt to hang on to his own teeth?
Once they’re gone, I take a moment to sip the remains of my coffee before grabbing my handbag and checking my reflection in the mirror in the hall. God, I look old. Two grey hairs have appeared at the front – in fact, not so much hairs but wires. I yank them out and, with my scalp still smarting, try to maintain my calm demeanour as I hurry off to school.
In the office, it’s tempting to blurt it all out to Jacqui, the classroom assistant with whom I get on especially well.
But she has a headstrong sixteen-year-old of her own – a stunning, red-haired daughter called Kayla – and I know she’d be so sympathetic and understanding, I’d end up weeping all over the boxes of newly delivered school photographs. And one thing you can’t do at school is cry – at least, not when you’re a grown-up. It’s a sign of weakness and children never forget that. A bunch of them once spotted Jacqui having a sly ciggie on her way home, and it’s still mentioned three years on: ‘That Time We Saw Mrs Harrington Smoking Outside the Co-Op.’ You’d think it had been a spliff. Anyway, Tom is the person I need to speak to, damn him. How dare he avoid my texts and calls when he must know precisely why I need to talk to him? The spineless arse, hatching plans with Logan – then being too cowardly to discuss them with me.
‘His mobile must be broken,’ Viv suggests as I march home, phone clamped to my ear. ‘There’s got to be some explanation.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘maybe it fell out of his pocket when he was furrowing the land.’
She sniggers dryly. ‘I can’t actually believe Logan would rather live with them than you. Patsy sounds like such a priss.’
‘She’s okay. She’s just, you know – everything has to be right. She’s very particular.’
‘You’ve called their landline, obviously?’ Viv says.
‘Yes, but I’ll try again.’
‘It’ll just be a whim,’ Viv says. ‘He’ll soon change his mind.’
‘That’s what I said – what I’m hoping – but it doesn’t sound like it. I mean, I know he can be fickle, but he has always loved being with Tom because he’s fun and spontaneous and not an uptight old fart …’ My voice splinters.
‘Alice, you’re so not,’ Viv declares. ‘You’re a brilliant mum. God, I don’t know how you manage sometimes …’
‘… But he’s never mentioned living with Tom before,’ I cut in. ‘I think maybe it all spiralled from Blake getting his own annexe …’
‘His what?’
‘Oh, Clemmie had the whole top floor converted for his sole use and now Logan feels horribly hard done by.’
‘Is that what teenagers expect these days?’ she gasps, and I can sense her thanking her lucky stars that she’s never produced a child of her own.
‘Seems to be,’ I say gruffly.
Viv sighs. ‘Cheer yourself up,’ she says in a softer tone. ‘Give Giles a call, I know he’d love to hear from you …’
‘He texted actually,’ I say dully, ‘but I haven’t got around to replying.’
‘You will do, though, yeah?’
‘I might,’ I mutter, not certain that going out drinking with a twenty-nine-year-old will help matters right now.
By the time I turn into our street, both Kirsty and Ingrid have both expressed horror at Logan’s plans. (I knew Kirsty would be especially aghast – all three of her kids were virtually strapped to her body for their first two years of life; back then, she was a firm believer in ‘wearing your children’.) I let myself into our block, realising with shame that I didn’t ask Ingrid what’s happening about her eggs being harvested this week, and decide I’m a pretty cruddy friend, too.
I dump my bag in our hallway, relieved that I’m home before Logan and Fergus, and call Tom’s landline for the umpteenth time.
‘Patsy?’ I say when she picks up. ‘It’s me, Alice. I’ve been trying to get hold of Tom. Is everything all right?’
‘Erm, it’s fine,’ she says, in the kind of brittle tone that says things are patently not fine, then she adds, ‘Sorry, Alice, bit caught up at the moment. I’ll ask Tom to ring you, okay?’ And she clonks the phone down. While I don’t want to read too much into our brief exchange, it sounds as if they were possibly in the middle of a row. Wasn’t that the main reason I split from Tom – so the boys wouldn’t grow up in an atmosphere of seething resentment? I knew it would be tough, and they’d miss out on dad-type stuff – but then I figured that we could possibly survive without his day-to-day input. This, of course, was long before his reincarnation as Monty Don.
The boys arrive home tired and faintly grumpy, and although I try to give Logan some space, I can’t help prowling around him, like a cat.
‘I just need to understand why you’ve come to this decision,’ I blurt out as we clear the table after dinner.
‘I don’t want to talk about it now.’
‘It’s just, you do know their house is in a tiny village—’
‘Yeah, I’ve been loads of times, haven’t I?’
‘And you don’t even like the countryside. You think it’s boring. You said you couldn’t see the point of it, remember?’
‘Yeah, that was different. That was near Grandma’s.’
‘It’s still countryside, isn’t it?’
He eyes me disdainfully as if I am an irritating child, then shuts the dishwasher with a bang and disappears to his bedroom. If you’re so fond of the country, I want to shout after him, how about living at Grandma’s for a while with the malfunctioning septic tank and her delicious lunches – see how you get along there? There’d be no pancakes or takeaway pizzas, no Xbox to boggle your brain for hours at a time … I don’t, of course. I just stomp off and do lots of silent swearing in the bathroom, marvelling at – on top of the grey hairs this morning – the new facial crevices which seem to have appeared since Logan’s announcement. Perhaps I should get back in touch with Anthony, see if he’d do me some fillers in exchange for a smack on the arse with my spatula. I look exhausted, frankly, like a particularly tragic ‘before’ picture in a makeover, under which the caption would read, ‘Alice had completely let herself go …’ Is it really only five days since I was giggling tipsily in the Marais and snogging Charlie in the street?
The next evening, mainly by keeping my mouth clamped tightly shut, I manage to not mention Tom’s glorious outhouse at all, even to suggest that, post-renovations, it’ll probably still stink of horse shit. Right now, the best tactic seems to be to carry on normally as if nothing untoward is happening at all. Logan heads out to his usual Tuesday guitar lesson down the road, and when he comes back, he actually invites Fergus into his private lair to play on the Xbox. There’s the sound of rapid gunfire and many explosions, and part of me wishes that my kids had grown up like Kirsty’s wholesome trio, or Ingrid’s daughter Saskia, happy to while away the hours making flapjacks and little clay owls and tinkle away on the piano. But at least they’re hanging out together. That’s a good sign, surely. Maybe Logan is softening, and all that living-with-Dad stuff was just a whim after all. I spend the evening trying to build on this glimmer of hope.
First, I try to woo him by baking one of his favourite treats – not my tedious meringues, but apple crumble. While the crumble is great, the custard is less successful, but at least the vigorous beating required helps to dispel any lingering tension in my brain. I even transport bowls of pudding to the boys in Logan’s room, gliding back and forth with a beatific smile on my face, like a stoned waitress.
‘Thanks,’ they mutter, eyes glued to the screen. Then, instead of throwing Logan’s laundry from the dryer into a basket, I actually fold each item – even his pants, like he’ll really appreciate that. I’m about to return his fragrant clothes to his room when I catch a snippet of conversation from behind the closed door: ‘She tries to be nice and everything but she’s such a Nazi.’ That’s Fergus speaking. Fergus, who I actually thought still liked me, perhaps because I managed to ‘rescue’ Rex, ahem.
‘Yeah, she is a bit,’ Logan replies.
‘She’s like one of them top Nazis, the ones in the long coats and the caps with the shiny peaks …’
‘Haha,’ Logan guffaws as my blood starts to curdle, not unlike the custard I just made.
‘What d’you call the top Nazi?’ Fergus asks.
‘Commandant?’
‘Nah, something else …’ The rim of the heavily laden plastic laundry basket digs into my fingers as I stand, motionless, outside Logan’s room. How dare they? Do they have no idea of how incredibly
un-fascist I am? They have friends around constantly, watch virtually anything they want to on TV, and there’s no consequence to speak of when someone sullies my cleansing cloth in the most degrading manner imaginable.
‘Obergruppenführer!’ Fergus exclaims.
‘Yeah, that’s it.’ There are peals of raucous laughter as I back away with my basket, heart pounding, face burning hot. At least they’re having a bloody fine time, insulting me, after I made a crumble and folded twelve pairs of Topman boxer shorts – who needs so many pants anyway?
‘Spoilt, spoilt, spoilt,’ I mutter, storming back to the kitchen, dumping the basket on the floor and grabbing my jacket from a chair.
‘I’m going out,’ I bark, back in the hall now.
‘Where’re you going?’ Fergus yells.
‘Out.’
Logan’s bedroom door opens and Fergus’s head appears around it. ‘Are you going to the shops?’
‘Yes.’ I soften momentarily at the sight of his perky face. ‘D’you want something?’
‘Could you get those chocolate sticks, the ones you dunk in hot milk?’
‘They only do those in Pascal’s. I wasn’t planning on going there.’
He frowns. ‘Why not?’
Because everything costs eight thousand pounds … ‘It’ll be shut,’ I reply, heading for the door and clattering downstairs, realising I don’t have the faintest idea of where I plan to go.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I don’t have my purse with me either, but never mind that. I march down our street, grateful for lungfuls of cool evening air after all the cooking and pant-folding and being likened to a senior-ranking Nazi. While the high street is usually bustling – there’s a decent selection of pubs and restaurants as well as our collection of rinky-dinky shops – our residential road tends to be quiet. There are tenement flats on either side, and three large, creamy-stone detached houses at the high street end; Clemmie’s is the biggest and finest, the one with the walled garden and the annexe on top. I could pop in and have a good old grumble, but wonder if being in her gleaming kitchen with its island the size of Fiji and special fridge just for wine will actually make me feel any better about my own life.