The M Word

by Eileen Wharton

  Devil: It wasn’t snooping, it was self-preservation, you were only trying to set your mind at rest. Angel: You shouldn’t have looked, I told you so. Devil: You could read the whole message, then delete it. He’ll never know you’ve read it, then, and he won’t answer, and Mrs Longlegs might take the huff and never contact him again. Crap. What do I do?

  I click on the message to read the rest of it. ‘Maybe we should do a foursome one night. Me and Dave and you and Roberta. Let me no.’ I hate people who use “no” for “know”.

  Fuck. I hear the chain flushing and his footsteps in the hall. I delete the message and sit the phone back exactly where it was, sitting down on the sofa and pretending to flick through the channels for something to watch.

  ‘Was that my phone?’ Mick asks.

  My cheeks burn. ‘Think so,’ I say.

  ‘Strange,’ he says, picking it up and flicking through. ‘I thought I heard the message tone.’

  ‘Maybe it was mine,’ I say, rifling through my bag. ‘Oh, yes, I’ve a message from Tammy.’

  ‘What’s she say?’ he asks. My mother always told me if you tell one lie, it escalates into another and another.

  ‘Nothing much. Same old, same old.’ My hands are still shaking, and I’m sure he can tell I’m lying. I must never do that again. Never. Ever.

  The next time it happens, I have no control over myself and my emotions. Every time his phone dings, my heart lurches, every time he’s online, I’m wondering who he’s messaging, every time he goes out of the room to accept a phone call, I turn down the TV and listen at the door. I’m turning into an ex of mine who I ended up hating because he followed my every move and made me feel suffocated. He monitored my phone, my emails, my mail, and I hated it.

  I’ve phoned in sick at work as I’ve been up all-night vomiting. I’ve managed to drag myself and a duvet to the sofa to watch crappy daytime TV. Loose Women has really gone to the dogs. If that slapper of a page three girl talks about her nether regions once more, I’m going to write to ITV, and if the least talented Nolan sister pulls that face again, I’m gonna stick my foot through the telly.

  I send Mick a message telling him I miss him. When did I get so soft and slushy? A flashing light from the corner of the room catches my eye, and I realise Mick has left his phone. The devil tells me to check it. Read his messages. Make sure he isn’t playing away. Maybe he’s not at work today. Maybe he’s taken a buxom beauty to a hotel room. The angel tells me to stop being ridiculous. A relationship is nothing without trust. Mick loves you. He tells you every day he loves you. He isn’t doing anything wrong. He’s at work. Ring the office to speak to him. I ring, and his secretary puts me through.

  ‘Hi, hun. I’m a little busy right now, can I call you back?’

  ‘You left your phone at home,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘Just turn it off, if it’s disturbing you. I’m just taking a client to lunch, and I’ll call you when I’m back at the office.’

  ‘Which client?’ I ask, just knowing it will be some attractive woman.

  ‘Melanie Abbot from Franksome’s,’ he says. My gut immediately starts to churn. Melanie is five feet nine with plastic tits and straight white teeth. She and Mick used to go out for a while a few months ago. I feel a surge of fear which immediately turns to anger.

  ‘Enjoy lunch with your ex,’ I snap before cutting the call and throwing my phone across the room, smashing the screen. Shit. I pick it up and burst into tears. My phone rings, and Mick’s office number appears on the cracked screen. I ignore it. He rings four more times, and I continue to ignore him. I feel like a thirteen-year-old girl. An email comes through. ‘Answer your phone, please. What’s wrong? It’s just lunch, Roberta! She’s a client.’

  I know I’m being ridiculous. I can’t justify my actions. I hate how I feel. I want to scream. I spend the next hour agonising that he and Melanie are flirting, drinking, and end up booking into a hotel room. I cry, I throw up, I cry some more. By the time Mick comes home, my eyes are red, and I feel like a dishcloth.

  ‘Jesus, Roberta, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I’m going to bed. Did you enjoy your lunch?’

  ‘Roberta, what’s the problem? It was a business lunch. There’s nothing between Melanie and I.’

  ‘Well, you used to fancy her.’

  ‘In the past,’ he says.

  ‘She’s very attractive.’

  ‘If you like that kind of thing,’ he says. ‘Are you questioning my integrity?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think I’m just going to go out and sleep with every attractive woman I meet?’

  ‘You did before.’

  ‘That was before I was in a relationship. When I’m in a relationship, I don’t mess about. I’m hurt, Roberta, that you would even think it.’ The tears start again. He hugs me. ‘I just want you and no one else.’ I feel reassured and happy. I’m an idiot. He doesn’t fancy Melanie. He doesn’t want anyone else, he’s happy with me. I fall asleep happy and content in his arms.

  If only that feeling of contentment would last. As soon as he leaves for work the next day, all the insecurities come flooding back. I feel fat, frumpy and bloated. My hair’s a mess, my nails are brittle, my legs need shaving. Beautiful young things cavort on Love Island making me feel old and unattractive.

  The house phone rings, and I let the answerphone click in. I’m too ugly to talk to anyone. Melanie Abbot’s sexy tones slither through the sitting room. ‘Mick, daahling, great to catch up with you yesterday, yah. Let’s do it again, sweetie.’ My stomach flips, my hands shake. I pick up the phone and scream, ‘FUCK OFF,’ into the mouthpiece. I feel better for about three seconds, then shame overwhelms me. I cry again. I’ve turned into someone else. Where has the self-contained, composed, emotionless woman gone? I want her back. I feel like my body and brain have been invaded by a tragic teen emo.

  The phone rings again, and Mick’s voice, concerned and serious, enters the house. ‘Hi, Roberta, if you’re there will you pick up please. Melanie rang and apparently someone screamed obscenities at her. Maybe she got a wrong number, but I just wanted to check in on you. Love you.’

  I wait five minutes and ring him. ‘Sorry, baby, I was in the shower. What’s this about Melanie?’

  ‘She rang my mobile. She’d tried me at work, and someone had erroneously told her I was at home today. She rang the house phone and got a load of abuse, apparently.’ My face burns. Lying bitch. Load of abuse. It was one big fuck off, that’s all.

  ‘Like I said, I was in the shower, and I didn’t hear the phone. She must have got a wrong number.’ I’m now wondering why Melanie has his mobile number and the house phone. I try to bite my tongue, but my devil won’t let me. ‘How come she has the home number?’

  ‘No idea,’ he says. ‘Maybe someone at work gave it to her.’

  I want to tell him to tell her to go to hell, but I know I’m being unreasonable. ‘I don’t like her,’ I blurt out. ‘I don’t want her having my number.’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realise you two didn’t get along.’

  ‘Can’t stand her,’ I say.

  ‘She can be a bitch,’ he says. ‘But the contract is really important so…’

  ‘More important than me?’ I ask. Why can’t I bite my tongue? What the hell am I doing?

  ‘What? Roberta, what are you talking about? No contract is as important as you. What’s going on with you? Are you hormonal?’ For some reason, his question incenses me. I want to scream and rail and cry. ‘I’m going,’ I say.

  ‘What’s up?’

  If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘What do you mean, whatever? Don’t you want me to come over?’

  ‘Do you want to come over?’

  ‘Jeez, you’re such hard work today.’

  My temper soars again. ‘Go and see Melani
e instead, then. I’ve heard she’s really easy.’ I slam down the phone and burst into tears again.

  Half an hour later, Mick is letting himself in the front door. I’m eating ice cream and listening to REM.

  ‘For the last time, Roberta. There is nothing going on between Melanie and me. I don’t fancy her, I don’t want her. What do I have to say or do to make you believe me? I feel like you’re doubting me and that hurts.’

  ‘You’re a player,’ I say.

  ‘Used to be,’ he says. ‘When I’m in a relationship, I stay faithful.’

  ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’ve heard it all before.’

  ‘So, you’re judging me by the sins of your former boyfriends and husband. That’s not fair.’ He’s right, of course, it isn’t fair. ‘You wouldn’t like it if I judged you by the mistakes past girlfriends have made. You’d go ape shit if I did that.’

  I would, he’s right. How do I stop feeling like this? It’s killing me. All I want him to do is to hug me and tell me everything will be alright, but I’m as prickly as a thistle so why would he want to?

  ‘Changing the subject, I’ve got a leaflet for an antenatal class at the Crown Hotel. It’s run by an expert in prenatal care.’

  ‘I hate to break it to you, Mick, but I have done this three times before.’ I take the leaflet and see the class is run by a man.

  ‘Yes, Roberta, but I haven’t, and I’d really like to go.’

  ‘You go, then,’ I say.

  ‘It would be good for you. It incorporates pregnancy yoga.’

  ‘I’d rather eat my own entrails.’

  ‘Come on, Roberta, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’

  ‘The last thing I’d like to do is go to a class where a ten-year-old boy mansplains to me how to push my offspring through my own vagina while listening to whale music. When a bloke can push a basketball through the end of his urethra, I might listen to him about giving birth.’

  ‘If you don’t like it, we’ll leave immediately. I promise.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. Never in the history of the creation of all creatures great and small. Out of the question. No. Nein, Non. Nil. Nope. Nah. Never.’

  We’re upstairs at the Crown for the antenatal class. The flyer said to wear something you find it easy to move in, but I feel so heavy, I can hardly move in anything. I’m wearing maternity leggings and a long tunic and sitting next to a girl who’s wearing a green bikini top and thong. Apparently, it’s a thing to let everything hang out. That might be ok when you’re seventeen and six stone soaked through, but I’d have looked like Lumpy Ridge in summertime. I’d have been arrested for crimes against corneas. The reception is soon filled with pregnant women of all shapes, sizes and colours.

  We’re given name badges and ushered into a carpeted room by bottle-blonde baby doll Brenda. Bottle-blonde Brenda “call me Bren” tells us to find a floor cushion and lie in a relaxed position against our baby daddy. Two girls put their hands in the air. They’re wearing matching grubby tracksuit bottoms and have three teeth between them. They wouldn’t even make the auditions for Jeremy Kyle.

  ‘We don’t have a baby daddy,’ the dark one says.

  ‘Would you mind sharing?’ Call-me-Bren says to me and Mick.

  ‘Yes, I bloody well would,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ a mousey girl wearing a tent says. ‘Howard will happily stand in.’ Poor Howard looks like he’d happily do nothing of the sort, but Christine has volunteered him now, so it’s too late.

  ‘I must apologise for the absence of our expert. His wife is about to give birth. You’ll have to make do with me, I’m afraid,’ Call-me-Bren says. Frankly I’m glad. If someone is going to tell me how to push things through my vagina, they should at least be in possession of one themselves.

  We’re lying like something from The Handmaid’s Tale, and Call-me-Bren is telling us to breathe. ‘Well, I wasn’t thinking of stopping for some time yet, you daft tart,’ I mutter under my breath, only Call-me-Bren has hearing like a bat.

  ‘What was that, Bertha?’ she says. I realise she’s talking to me. Unless she has a wonky eye and is looking at the girl behind.

  ‘The name’s Roberta,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, your name badge is wonky,’ she says.

  Just like your eye.

  ‘Let’s get down to business,’ she says. ‘The first thing I want to talk about is the common misconception pregnant women have that they’re going to give birth to a baby.’

  I roll my eyes.

  ‘Roberta!’ Mick says. ‘Be patient.’

  ‘You’re not just giving birth to a baby…you’re actually giving birth to parents.’

  ‘Aw for f–’

  ‘Roberta.’

  ‘I can’t stand any more of this crap,’ I say to Mick, struggling to extract myself from between his legs and sticking an elbow in his delicate area. He yowls like a cat that’s been stood on, and the rest of the ladies stifle giggles.

  ‘Show of hands, please – how many people are in partnered relationships? Anybody else flying solo?’ Call-me-Bren continues, ignoring our outburst. Way to go, Brenda. How to make people feel inadequate.

  ‘Roberta, you promised to try,’ Mick hisses.

  ‘And you promised if the class was crap and I hated it, we would leave,’ I say loudly, amid gasps from the other women.

  Call-me-Bren ignores us and continues to talk about pregnant women in nomadic cultures and squatting. I manage to switch off and let my mind wander so that Mick can listen to all the bullshit.

  Half an hour later, Call-me-Bren gets out the rubber babies and the giant cervix. As one of the babies is being pushed through the cervix, the men start dropping like dominoes. Howard is first to turn green and hit the deck, shortly followed by Mick and a boy at the front who doesn’t look old enough to tie his shoelaces. When Mick has drunk a cup of hot sweet tea, he doesn’t take much persuading to retire to the bar, instead of listening to the delivery of the afterbirth. We begin a mass exodus which Call-me-Bren tries to ignore. Everyone but Howard and Christine turn up in the bar downstairs. I manage to get the barman to sneak a vodka in my orange while Mick is at the loo. It takes the edge off a little.

  26

  #beingnice

  I’m stressing about my relationship with Mick. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t think I deserve to be happy. I blame my mother, in part. She was so cold, so unavailable – which I do now understand, to a degree. The letters served to inform me why she was the way she was and went some way to helping me to forgive her. To some degree, I’d done the same thing myself.

  I haven’t always been this hard. When I first had my children, I was loving and warm. I was married and happy. I was a good person. I want to be a good person again. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be nice. I haven’t been nice since Knobhead walked out to be with Terri-Ann from Thomas Cook. I’ve grown to hate everything. I became disgruntled, dissatisfied and impatient. I convinced myself I hated everyone and everything. I’ve been cold with my kids and hard on my colleagues. I am out of practice being nice, but I’m going to try. I really want this relationship with Mick the Di…Delicious to work.

  ‘What do you think of my new jacket?’ he says today as he breezes in wearing a thing that looks like it should be wrapped around a hobo (oops, sorry, PC brigade. I promised to be nice) – a homeless person (who I’m sure is not a drug addict or alcoholic and who probably lost his home through no fault of his own in some tragic family break-up caused by small business failure in the recession. So therefore, it is not his fault but David Cameron’s, Theresa May’s, or Gordon Brown’s, depending on your political stance).

  Normally, in circumstances such as these, I would be unable to tell a lie. I would have to tell him he looks like something the cat shat. The shiny new improved Roberta, however, says, ‘Er…lovely…er, jacket.’ He looks disappointed. I cannot gush, but I will try. ‘Suits you…brings out the…er…rusty
quality of your eyes.’

  ‘Ok,’ he says in a manner that suggests he’s taken offence. I must practise being nice. It doesn’t come easily. I’ve been grumpy for so long, it’s become second nature. He hands me a copy of a novel he’s been reading. ‘I’ve finished this. Read it and let me know what you think,’ he says. I bloody hate Parsons, but I take it.

  ‘Lovely,’ I say. He looks at me strangely. I’m no good at this.

  ‘I’ll make dinner, shall I? Tuna pasta bake ok?’ I loathe tuna pasta bake. Disgusting mess of rancid goo.

  ‘Er…yes, that would be lovely,’ I lie. Mick narrows his eyes and disappears into the kitchen. He knows I’m lying. I must gush when he’s made the ghastly gunk. I can hear him chopping and cursing. ‘Do you need a hand?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘Fucking onions.’ When I enter the kitchen, he has a small towel wrapped round his bleeding hand.

  ‘Run it under the cold tap,’ I say, taking his arm and sticking it under.

  ‘I said I’m fine,’ he snaps. The hurt must show on my face even though I pride myself on being impassive. ‘What’s wrong, Roberta?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. Still trying to gush. ‘Everything is perfectly peachy.’ When I sit down to the rancid pasta shit-mix, I beam. ‘Mmm, delicious.’ Mick slams down his fork and gets to his feet. ‘Where are you going?’ I ask. He must know I’m lying. I must try harder to be nice.

  ‘I’ve just remembered, I have to work.’ He pulls on his coat and has left before I can attempt to stop him. I can’t do this. The being nice is killing me, and I’m obviously not doing it properly. He’s going to leave me for some bubbly airhead who’d smile if her arse was on fire. Double fuckety fuck.