The Mum Hunt

by Gwyneth Rees

  I thought Dad would yell at him to come back, but he didn’t. He sat and finished his own dinner, and made me finish mine, and then he went through to find Matty in the living room where he was lying on the sofa pretending to watch television. Dad sat down on the coffee table and started speaking to him, quietly, saying his usual stuff about how so long as Matty tried then that was all that mattered to him. ‘Sometimes you have to persevere at things for a while before you get the hang of them,’ he added, giving my brother’s shoulder a gentle nudge.

  Matty looked up then. ‘With Shakespeare, I reckon you’d have to persevere for ever . . . and even then you wouldn’t have a clue what he was going on about!’ he grunted.

  Dad laughed. ‘Come on. I’ve got some time now. Why don’t we look at it together?’ Dad studied English literature at university before he joined the police force, so he’s pretty good at helping Matthew out if he gets stuck with it. Soon, the two of them were sitting at the kitchen table with Matty’s English books spread out in front of them.

  Bored, I took a KitKat upstairs with me and flopped down on my bed, wondering what to do with myself. There was nothing I wanted to watch on television and although I had homework too, I didn’t have much and I couldn’t be bothered starting it now.

  I looked at the photograph of my mother and started to imagine what she was thinking. I reckoned she might be thinking about us and wondering if we would ever find anyone to make us as happy as we had been when she was alive. Of course, I hadn’t really been here then, except as an unborn baby, but I’m sure I must have been a very happy unborn baby with her for my mother.

  ‘Dad’s lonely-hearts advert is coming out tomorrow,’ I whispered to her. ‘What do you think about that?’ She kept on smiling. ‘Of course, he might not get any replies,’ I added. ‘But if he does, we’re going to try and get him to meet them. I think it might be difficult, though. You know what Dad’s like . . .’ Suddenly I had an idea. ‘Maybe you could help?’ I suggested. ‘By making the right person see his ad or something. Can you do that?’

  I listened hard but there was no reply, not even from inside my head.

  Matty came flying in through the front door the following afternoon with the Saturday paper in his hand, looking like he’d just won the lottery. ‘It’s here! In the ‘Men Seeking Women’ column. Fourth from the bottom! Look! Dishy detective with dire daughter seeks—’

  ‘Matthew!’ I screamed at him.

  He laughed. ‘Only joking! Don’t worry. I rewrote your stupid advert. Look . . . It starts with the word, singing.’ He thrust the newspaper at Juliette, grinning.

  ‘Singing?’ I glared at Juliette. ‘What did I tell you? He’s changed everything!’

  But Juliette had already started to read the advert out loud. ‘Singing (in the bath) detective seeks soulmate to join him under the soapsuds. 43, tall, dark with hairy legs, into classical music and practising his French. GSOH essential . . .’ She started to laugh. ‘This is very good! But what is G . . . S . . . O . . . H . . . ?’

  ‘Good sense of humour,’ Matty and I supplied in unison.

  Matthew was looking really pleased with himself. ‘Do you really think it’s good?’

  Juliette patted his shoulder. ‘It is the best advert in the paper! We will get lots of replies from this, I think!’

  I felt tears come into my eyes though I turned my head so they couldn’t see. It wasn’t fair! My advert had been just as good as his! ‘Great!’ I said, sarcastically. ‘Now we’re going to get some real weirdo who just wants to come round and get in the bath and start singing with Dad!’

  ‘Come on, Esmie!’ Juliette laughed. ‘No more disaster stories, please! This is a funny advert! Maybe we will get some funny people answering back!’

  I gritted my teeth. ‘They’ll be funny all right!’

  ‘Let’s listen and see if there are any messages before your father gets back,’ Juliette said. Dad had just left for Sainsbury’s.

  ‘Why don’t you listen to them with Matthew!’ I snapped. ‘Since you seem to be doing this with him now!’

  I stomped upstairs. It wasn’t fair! The lonely-hearts idea had been Juliette’s and mine. It had been our special secret together. And now she had let Matty take it over, as if it was his plan with Juliette and not mine.

  On my way to my bedroom I looked into Dad’s room. The upstairs telephone extension was sitting by his bed. I paused. I had a right to hear those messages too! Ever so quietly, I tiptoed in and picked up the phone. Matthew and Juliette were already listening. So far there were four messages. Luckily you could press a button on the phone at any time if you didn’t want to listen to the whole message and it beeped and moved on to the next one.

  ‘Hello. I’m thirty. My name’s Bianca. I’m a single mum. I like classical music too. I’ve got four kids aged—’

  BEEP!

  ‘Well, hullo there! What a groovy ad! I’ll get in the bath with you and your hairy legs anytime, honey, so ring me! The name’s—’

  BEEP!

  ‘My name is Myfanwy . . . I’m fifty. I’m single . . . I sing in our church choir . . . I’m five foot one inches tall. I won’t tell you what I weigh because I’m just starting a diet. I don’t have any children, thank goodness! Did I say I was single? And that–’

  BEEP!

  ‘This is Gaynor. Me and my girlfriends think you’ve got a very sexy voice . . .’ Giggle. Giggle. Heavy breathing.

  ‘That was my voice, baby!’ Matthew said down the phone at her.

  I couldn’t contain myself any longer. ‘They’re weirdos, Matthew!’ I fumed at him. ‘I’m going to KILL you!’ I stormed downstairs to find both him and Juliette doubled up with giggles.

  ‘They’re all pathetic!’ I shouted. ‘If you’d put in what I wrote they’d be much nicer! What did you say in that message, anyway?’ I was so busy ranting on, I didn’t register Matty hurriedly putting down the phone. ‘I bet you didn’t say anything right about Dad! I bet you never even said what sort of person he wanted! How do you ever expect Dad to—?’

  ‘Esmie,’ Juliette interrupted me, sharply. She nodded behind me.

  I turned round and gasped out loud.

  Dad was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Expect Dad to what?’ he asked. Fortunately he was immediately distracted by spotting his radio pager on the coffee table. ‘Ah! There it is!’ He walked into the room and picked it up. ‘Who were you phoning?’

  We all gazed at him dumbly for several seconds. Then we all started speaking at once.

  ‘Holly!’ I said.

  ‘France!’ Juliette said.

  ‘No one!’ Matthew said.

  Dad stared at us. If he hadn’t been suspicious before then he certainly was now. ‘OK,’ he demanded, briskly. ‘What’s going on?’ He looked at the newspaper lying open by the telephone.

  ‘Oh, we may as well tell him!’ Juliette burst out impatiently.

  ‘NO!’ Matthew and I yelled together.

  Juliette ignored us and picked up the paper where she pointed to the advert we had penned on Dad’s behalf. ‘We are trying to find you a girlfriend. See?’ She shoved it under his nose.

  Dad looked like he thought he must be dreaming.

  ‘But unfortunately it has not produced anyone normal,’ Juliette continued. ‘There is still time, however.’

  Dad was reading the advert now. ‘Who wrote this?’

  ‘Matthew!’ I said, quickly.

  My brother glared at me. ‘It was your idea, Miss Smarty-pants!’

  ‘It was not my idea! It was Juliette’s idea!’ I said, defensively.

  ‘Stop arguing!’ Juliette snapped. ‘I don’t know why you are behaving like this. It is a very good idea – an idea to be proud of! That you should care so much about your father, who has never got over the death of your mother enough to find himself anyone else – that you should do this for him!’ She turned to Dad and added, ‘You are not angry with them, are you?’

  Dad’s teeth were gri
tted. ‘Not with them, Juliette, no.’

  ‘There!’ She smiled at us. ‘What did I tell you? Your father is a reasonable man, is he not, despite how he seems on the surface!’ And seemingly totally unaware that Dad was glaring daggers at her, she flounced out of the room.

  Dad transferred his daggers to Matthew.

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ my brother mumbled. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’

  ‘We just wanted to help you!’ I added, nervously. ‘It’s not a really terrible thing we did, is it?’ I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.

  Dad looked at me. ‘No,’ he finally sighed. ‘I suppose not.’

  The three of us stood in silence for a while longer.

  ‘Dad, it’s not true what Juliette said, is it?’ Matthew began slowly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Dad grunted.

  ‘About you never getting over . . . ? I mean, you just haven’t met anyone else, right? It’s not that you couldn’t . . . you know . . .’ Matty swallowed.

  ‘Matthew,’ Dad replied, thoughtfully. ‘I hope that one day I’ll fall in love all over again. I really do.’ And he walked out of the room.

  ‘Phew!’ I said, flopping down on the sofa. ‘I thought he’d kill us if he found out!’

  My brother didn’t reply.

  ‘None of those women were any good, though, were they?’ I added.

  ‘What women?’ He looked far away.

  ‘The women who answered Dad’s advert!’ I swung out my leg and kicked him. ‘Wake up, Matthew!’

  ‘Maybe only weird people answer adverts after all,’ he murmured.

  ‘We could listen again tomorrow, I suppose,’ I said. ‘I mean, this is only the first day. There’s still time for lots more people to reply.’

  But my brother didn’t seem to be thinking about our Lonely Hearts Project any more. He had gone over to look at the photograph of our mother that sits on the mantelpiece. It’s a picture of her with Matthew on his fourth birthday and it was taken in our back garden. They’re both wearing plastic raincoats with the hoods up. Hers is bright yellow and Matthew’s is bright red. She’s laughing in the picture and cuddling my brother, and you can just make out the big bump under her coat which was me. ‘I wish I could remember her better,’ he said, softly.

  ‘You’re lucky!’ I said. ‘I wish I could remember her at all!’

  He looked at me and said, ‘At least you can’t miss her.’

  I frowned. ‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘I do miss her.’

  Matthew pulled a scornful face. ‘How can you miss someone you’ve never known?’

  I didn’t reply because I didn’t have an answer to that. But you can miss someone you’ve never known. I’m certain of that. I’m certain because I always have done.

  ‘So how come you don’t have to work this weekend, Dad?’ Matthew asked, as we climbed out of the car just round the corner from the cinema. It was only the three of us because Juliette hadn’t wanted to come when I’d asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ I joined in. ‘How come, Dad? Is it because you’ve caught your murderer?’

  ‘Come on, guys,’ Dad said, lightly. ‘You know I’m not going to talk to you about that. Some weekends I’m needed at work and some weekends I’m not, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t see why you have to be so secretive about it,’ Matthew grumbled. ‘There’s this boy in my class whose dad’s a brain surgeon and he tells him everything about his job.’

  ‘I make up stuff about Dad’s job all the time,’ I said. ‘My dad found a severed hand yesterday . . . they’re just doing the fingerprints now . . . Guess what? There’s a murderer around who’s only going for Maths teachers!’ I started to giggle.

  Dad and Matthew were both smiling too, but they stopped abruptly when we saw the size of the cinema queue, which was curving right round the side of the building.

  ‘I told you we should have gone to the multiplex,’ Matthew said.

  Dad had insisted on taking us to the old cinema on the high street because he hates the big multiscreen one on the edge of the town. This cinema only had two screens and the Star Wars film we wanted to see was on Screen One.

  ‘You should have booked the seats in advance, Dad,’ I told him. ‘That’s what Holly’s mum always does.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ Dad said, drily.

  We had to wait in the queue for ages only to hear, just before we got to the front, that there were no more seats. ‘Sorry!’ the guy in the ticket office said to the people in front of us. ‘You can go into Screen Two if you want. The film there is just starting.’

  We looked at the poster that told you what was on. ‘The Sound of Music!’ Dad exclaimed. ‘Well, how about that?’

  Matty crinkled up his nose. I guessed he reckoned it wasn’t very cool. Goodness knows why they were showing it, anyway, since it’s been on TV so much that everyone’s probably watched it by now. Not that I had, though. I’d seen bits of it but I’d never sat down and watched the whole film all the way through.

  ‘How about it, then?’ Dad asked.

  I looked at my brother to see what he was going to say.

  ‘No way!’ Matty scowled.

  ‘It’s too late to drive out to the other cinema,’ Dad said. ‘So it’s this or nothing. We can come back and see Star Wars next week, if you like.’ He started to smile at the poster fondly like it was an old friend. ‘I think the last time I saw this at the cinema, I was with your mother!’

  Matthew sighed loudly, as if Dad was suddenly the child and he was the grown-up who was giving in against his better judgement. ‘Hurry up and get the tickets, then,’ he murmured, gruffly. ‘We’re holding up the whole queue.’

  Dad led the way enthusiastically into Screen Two where, bang in the middle of the screen, a young woman with short blonde hair was standing on top of a mountain, singing, ‘The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music’.

  Matty said, ‘Jeeesus!’

  ‘Shush!’ I hissed, enthralled.

  I had completely forgotten that The Sound of Music is all about a nun called Maria – who looks a bit like Juliette – who goes to look after the children of a widowed sea captain – who’s about the same age as Dad – and ends up falling in love with him. Only neither of them realize they love each other until the horrible Baroness comes along and tries to push them apart. In fact, Maria actually wants the Baroness to marry the Captain at the start because she thinks it’ll be nice for the children to have a mother again.

  And that’s when it hit me . . .

  I mean, it was so obvious that I couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t thought of it before . . .

  Dad and Juliette would make the perfect couple. They were just like the Captain and Maria. The Captain was really strict – just like Dad – and Maria was lots of fun and had all sorts of ideas about the children that the Captain didn’t agree with – just like Juliette. The Captain and Maria had argued all the time at the beginning too, only the whole time they were arguing, they were really in love!

  Well, maybe it was the same for Dad and Juliette! Maybe they were in love too, only they just didn’t realize it yet!

  ‘Don’t you think Maria looks like Juliette?’ I whispered, excitedly, to Matty, as we left the cinema at the end.

  ‘No way!’ Matthew answered, screwing up his nose. ‘Juliette is far more sexy, isn’t she, Dad?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Dad looked dazed, like he hadn’t quite entered the real world again after the film.

  ‘Sexy . . . Juliette is. Don’t you think? I mean, can you imagine her as a nun?’

  ‘Matthew . . .’ Dad gave my brother a warning look, and Matthew grinned.

  I couldn’t contain myself any longer. ‘Dad?’ I asked. ‘Do you think real life ever turns out like The Sound of Music?’

  My father smiled at me. ‘Happily ever after, you mean? Well, I guess it has its moments.’

  ‘But you have to make those moments, though, don’t you Dad?’ I said. That was something else Holly’s mum had told
me but I decided not to mention her right now.

  ‘That’s very true, Esmie,’ Dad laughed, putting his arm through mine.

  And I thought how it would be much easier if Dad and Juliette fell in love than it had been for the Captain and Maria, because Juliette wasn’t a nun.

  I went straight home and phoned Holly to ask her what she thought.

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if your dad did fall in love with Juliette,’ Holly said, sounding extremely calm and collected about it. She went on to list all the movies she’d seen where the single father and the nanny get together.

  ‘Yes, but do you think Juliette could ever fancy Dad?’ I asked her. ‘I mean, he’s loads older than her!’

  ‘Lots of younger women fancy older men,’ Holly said, listing off a whole stream of famous couples where the man was twice as old as the woman. I hadn’t heard of some of them but when I challenged her she had references for them all. (Mostly we were talking Holly’s mother’s Hello! magazine which Holly reads every week.)

  ‘But Dad isn’t famous,’ I protested.

  ‘Well, neither is Juliette,’ said Holly. ‘So that evens it out, doesn’t it? Listen . . .’ She paused to make sure she had my attention. ‘In The Sound of Music, Maria fancies the Captain, doesn’t she? And he’s loads older than her! And she only realizes it when the Baroness points it out to her. So you’ve got to do what the Baroness did. Tell her!’

  ‘But Maria ran back to the convent when the Baroness told her!’ I pointed out in alarm. ‘What if Juliette runs back to France?’

  ‘She won’t,’ Holly said, firmly. ‘Maria only freaked out because she was a nun, and nuns aren’t meant to fall in love with anybody. Juliette’ll be much cooler about it.’

  ‘You think so?’ I still felt sceptical.

  ‘I’m positive. Just do it, OK! After all, what have you got to lose?’

  But before I could do anything, I overheard a conversation between Dad and Juliette that made me think that maybe I did have something to lose – and that I should think twice before I did anything that might scare Juliette off.

  It was late on Sunday night and I’d already gone to bed, but I was going back downstairs to the kitchen to fetch myself a glass of water. On the stairs I paused as I heard Dad and Juliette talking softly in the living room. The door was half open and I had a clear view of Juliette sitting on the settee with a glass of wine in her hand. I couldn’t see Dad, though I could hear him, sipping a drink that was probably his own glass of wine, and talking to Juliette. He sounded sad.