Me:
Roxster:
Me: <2 U>
Roxster:
Me:
Roxster:
Me:
I will always heart you. Me too you. Great Big Hug. (Or possibly Hamburger.)
I waited. Was he going to leave me as the final one in the final thread? There was a ping.
Then another ping.
Roxby McDuff: a gentleman to the last.
GIVING IN
Saturday 13 July 2013 (continued)
When I got home, there was an hour before Mum was due back with the kids. I sat down, finally, in an armchair, with a cup of tea. And I just gave in and accepted it all. It was really over with sweet, lovely Roxster. And I was sad, but so it was. And I couldn’t hold all these balls in the air. I couldn’t rewrite a film about an updated Hedda Gabler on a yacht in Hawaii, moved to Stockholm by six different people. I couldn’t do Internet dating with weird strangers. I couldn’t keep this mad matrix of schedules and Zombie Apocalypses and Build-a-Bear parties in my head, and deal with nearly-confusingly-snogging married teachers at the school, and wear Grazia-style clothes and try to have a boyfriend and do a job, and be a mother. I tried to stop myself thinking I should do anything. Check my emails. Go to Zumba. Get on OkCupid. Read the latest insane rewrite of The Leaves on His Yacht.
I just sat there and thought, ‘This will just have to do. Me. The kids. Just let the days flow by.’ I didn’t feel sad, really. I couldn’t remember the feeling of not having to do the next thing. Not having to squeeze the last second out of the day. Or find out why the fridge was making that noise.
And I’d love to say something marvellous came out of it. But it didn’t, really. My bum probably got fatter or something. But I sensed a sort of mental clarity emerging. A sense that what I needed to do now was find some peace.
‘I need to be gentle now,’ I thought, blinking rapidly. ‘It’s a gentle time. Never mind anyone else, we’ll just be us – me, Billy and Mabel. Just feel the wind in our hair, and the rain on our faces. Just enjoy them growing up. Don’t miss it. They’ll be gone soon.’
I stared dramatically ahead, thinking, ‘I am brave, though I am alone,’ then realized that the phone was quacking somewhere. Where was it?
Eventually located phone in the downstairs toilet and jumped in alarm, seeing a string of texts from Chloe.
Just then the doorbell rang. Opened it to find Mum with Billy and Mabel – both crying, hot, sweaty and smeared with cake – on the doorstep.
Got everyone downstairs, telly on, computer on, Mum with a cup of tea when doorbell rang again.
Was Chloe, uncharacteristically in tears.
‘Chloe, I’m so sorry!’ I said. ‘I just turned the phone off for a little bit to just . . . get over something and missed all your—’
‘It’s not that!’ she wailed. ‘It’s Graham.’
It turned out Chloe and Graham had taken out a rowing boat on the Serpentine, and Chloe had prepared an immaculate picnic hamper with cutlery and china, at which Graham said, ‘I have something to say.’
Chloe, of course, thought Graham was going to ask her to marry him. And then he announced that he had met somebody in Houston on YoungFreeAndSingle.com and was getting transferred to Texas to go and live with her.
‘He said I was too perfect,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m not perfect. I just feel I have to pretend to be perfect. And you don’t like me either because you think I’m too perfect too.’
‘Oh, Chloe. I don’t! You’re not perfect!’ I said, throwing my arms around her.
‘Aren’t I?’ she said, looking at me hopefully.
‘No, yes,’ I gabbled. ‘I mean, not perfect, though you are great. And’ – I suddenly felt emotional – ‘I know middle-class working mothers always say this but I genuinely don’t know what I would do without you helping me, and being so perfe— I mean, so great. What I mean is, it’s just a relief that everything in your life isn’t completely perfect, though, obviously, I’m very sorry that that FUCKWIT Graham was so FUCKWITTED as to—’
‘But I thought you’d only like me if I was perfect.’
‘No, I was FRIGHTENED of you because you were perfect, because it made me feel so not perfect.’
‘But I always think YOU’RE perfect!’
‘Mummy, can we go up to our room? Granny’s being weird,’ said Billy, appearing up the stairs.
‘Granny’th got a tail,’ said Mabel.
‘Billy, Mabel!’ said Chloe delightedly. ‘Can I take them upstairs?’
‘Great, I’ll go and see to Granny. Check if she’s grown a tail,’ I said, looking sternly at Mabel and adding reassuringly to Chloe: ‘You’re not perfect.’
‘Aren’t I? You really mean it?’
‘No, really, definitely not perfect at all.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ she said. ‘Neither are you!’ and headed up the stairs with the children, looking and being absolutely perfect.
Got downstairs to find Mum, who, if she did have a tail, had hidden it very well beneath the coat-dress, banging through all the cupboards saying, ‘Where do you put the tea strainer?’
‘I use tea bags,’ I muttered grumpily.
‘Tea bags. Durr! I mean, you might have left the phone on! It’s only responsible if you have children who can’t behave themselves. What have you got on your top? Have you been out in that dress? The trouble with flesh pink is it can wash you out, can’t it?’
I burst into tears, straight in her face.
‘Now come on, Bridget, you’ve got to pull yourself together. You’ve got to soldier on, you can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t . . . you can’t . . .’
I literally thought she was just never going to stop saying ‘you can’t’, but then she burst into tears too.
‘You’re not helping,’ I sobbed. ‘You just think I’m rubbish. You’re always trying to change me and think I’m doing it all wrong and make me wear different . . . COLOURS,’ I wailed.
Mum suddenly snuffled to a halt and stared at me.
‘Oh, Bridget, I’m so sorry,’ she said, almost in a whisper. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’
She stumbled awkwardly, knelt in front of me, put her arms around me and pulled me to her. ‘My little girl.’
It was the first time I’d actually felt Mum’s bouffe. It was crispy, almost solid. She didn’t seem to mind it being squashed as she held me close. I really liked it. I wanted her to give me a bottle of warm milk or something.
‘It was so dreadful. So dreadful what happened to Mark. I couldn’t bear to think. You’re doing so . . . Oh, Bridget. I miss Daddy. I miss him so much, so much. But you’ve . . . got to . . . you’ve got to just keep going, haven’t you? That’s half the battle.’
‘No,’ I wailed. ‘It’s just papering over the cracks.’
‘I should have . . . Daddy ALWAYS said . . . he said, “Why can’t you just let her be?” That’s my problem. I can’t let anything be. Everything has to be perfect and it . . . ISN’T!’ she wailed. ‘At least, I don’t mean you, I mean you are, you’re doing so well . . . Oh, where’ve I put my lipstick? And Pawl, you know Pawl – the pastry chef at St Oswald’s? – I thought, you know, he was always bringing me little savoury profiteroles . . . taking me into the kitchen. But he turns out to be one of these . . .’
I started laughing then. ‘Oh, Mum, I could’ve told you Pawl was gay from the moment I saw him.’
‘But there’s no such thi
ngs as gay, darling. It’s just LAZINESS and—’
Billy appeared on the stairs. ‘Mummy, Chloe’s crying upstairs. Oh.’ He looked at us, puzzled. ‘Why is everybody crying?’
Just as Mum, Chloe and I were having a sort of AA-style sharing event over the kitchen table, while Billy played Xbox and Mabel trotted back and forth handing us Hellvanian Fuckoons and leaves from the garden and patting us kindly, the doorbell rang again. It was Daniel, looking desperate and holding an overnight bag.
‘Jones, my dear girl, I have been released from the rehab sin bin. I got back to the flat and I . . . Actually, I don’t want to be alone, Jones. Could I possibly come into the hellhole for a minute? Just to –’ his voice cracked – ‘be in some sort of human company which I know I’m not going to try and shag?’
‘All right,’ I said, trying to ignore the insult, given the sensitivity of the moment. ‘But you have to PROMISE you won’t try to shag Chloe.’
It was quite an odd evening, as social occasions go, but I think everyone enjoyed it. By the time Daniel had finished with her, Chloe thought she was Charlize Theron, and that Graham wasn’t fit to touch the hem of her skirt, which he isn’t, whoever he is. And Mum, as she cuddled Mabel, eating alternate chocolate buttons with her, slurping red wine and getting completely covered in all of it, was quite coming round to the idea of Kenneth Garside. ‘I mean, he’s terribly charming, is Kenneth. It’s just that he’s VERY highly sexed.’
Daniel, while saying, ‘And what on EARTH is wrong with that, Mrs Jones?’ turned out to be really, really good at the Xbox. But then he ruined the whole thing in the hallway at the end by putting his hand right up Chloe’s skirt. I mean, right up to her knickers.
PART FOUR
SUMMER OF FUN
Saturday 31 August 2013
133lb (still! Miracle), boyfriends 0, children 2 (lovely), friends loads, holidays 3 (counting mini-break), screenwriting jobs 0, possibility of screenwriting jobs (slight), days till school starts 4, major shocks 1.
It has been a brilliant summer. I called up Brian the Agent and asked him to get me off The Leaves in His Hair, and Brian laughed and said, ‘Finally! What took you so long?’ And Brian thinks we should have a go with my new screenplay idea: Time Stand Still Here which is an updating of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, only with a bit more structure, set in a former Lighthouse and Coastguards Cottages holiday complex from the Rural Retreats brochure, in which Mrs Ramsay has an affair with a friend of her son James.
Magda and Jeremy invited us to Paxos for a week, where there were lots of friends with kids; and Woney, who has now had liposuction, was parading around in brightly coloured swimsuits and matching sarongs, swinging her hair extensions and frightening Cosmo. And although Rebecca and the kids were away touring with Jake, there were play dates with Jeremiah and his mum, and Farzia and Bikram, and Cosmata and Thelonius. And we tried to do something with the garden, which consisted of planting three begonias.
We went away to a little cottage by the sea in Devon for three nights with Mum and had a great time. And Mum comes over a lot, just to do baking and things with Billy and Mabel, and she doesn’t criticize my housekeeping or child-rearing any more, and we all really like it. And she has them to stay, and they love it, though it is a bit late in the day because I’ve got no one to shag in the empty house now.
But I try to stand like a great tree and take the stick about Roxster – the Love that Could Not Beeeeeeee! as Tom and Arkis have dramatically dubbed it – and just be happy that, even if no one ever loves me or shags me again ever, at least I know it’s not completely out of the question.
Now, however, am trying to deal with a growing alarm about going back to school: the different homeworks which will probably be beyond my capabilities, the different days for show-and-tell and shin pads. More alarmingly, find myself looking back over all my encounters with Mr Wallaker – the tree, the snow, the Sports Day, the Botox, the concert – all his attempts at kindness to me and I feel shallow and think maybe he wasn’t just trying to make me feel stupid. Maybe he did really care. BUT HE WAS MARRIED, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, even if it was to an over-plastic-surgeried drunk lady. He had kids. What was he doing nearly kissing me, and confusing me? And I gave him an earful, and he saw me with Roxster, and he thinks I’m a condom-buying, syphilis-infected, shallow cougar and now we are going to have to face each other every day at school.
4 p.m. Just went round to Rebecca’s, who is back from the touring, and blurted out the whole confusion about Mr Wallaker, and the school concert and the Heath.
‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘None of it adds up. He doesn’t add up. Have you got a photo? Any other info?’
I spooled through the phone and found a shot of the concert and Mr Wallaker accompanying Billy.
I watched as Rebecca stared at the photo, frowning slightly. She spooled through some more.
‘This is Capthorpe House, right? Where they have festivals and stuff?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know exactly who this is. He isn’t a schoolteacher.’
I looked at her in consternation. Oh God. He was a weirdo.
‘He plays a bit of jazz piano?’
I nodded.
She went to the cupboard, slightly dislodging the plastic garden vine woven into her hair, and took out a bottle of red wine.
‘He’s called Scott. He was at college with Jake.’
‘He’s a musician?’
‘No. Yes. No.’ She looked at me. ‘That’s a hobby. He went into the SAS.’
The Special Air Service! He was James Bond! It explained everything. The ‘One, sir! Two, sir!’ Billy jumping and rolling from the tree. The gun reflex at Sports Day. Bond.
‘When did he start at the school?’
‘Last year – December?’
‘I bet it’s him. He went off to Sandhurst, then he was abroad a lot, but they kept in touch in a man-friend – i.e. not-very-often – sort of way. Jake ran into him a few months ago. He’d been in Afghanistan. Some bad shit had happened. He said he was back and “keeping it simple”.’ Rebecca suddenly laughed. ‘He thinks teaching at a London private school is “keeping it simple”? Has he seen your Quadrant Living chart?’
‘And he’s married?’
‘Not if it’s him. He’s got two boys, right, at boarding school? He was married, but not any more. She was a nightmare.’
‘Is she really plastic-surgeried . . .?’
‘Exactly. She turned into a major spender: clothes, charity luncheons, all that bollocks, total plastic-surgery queen. When he went abroad she started sleeping with her personal trainer, filed for divorce and tried to fleece him. That place Capthorpe Hall is the family pile. I think she might have tried to get back with him now she’s made herself look like the Bride of Wildenstein. I’ll ask Jake. Next time I see him.’
BACK TO SCHOOL
Friday 13 September 2013
Minutes late for school pickups 0 (but only as trying to impress Mr Wallaker), conversations with Mr Wallaker 0, seconds of eye contact with Mr Wallaker 0.
9.15 p.m. It seems Rebecca was right. And although I have not breathed a word about any of it (except, obviously, to Talitha, Jude and Tom), the news is out that Mr Wallaker is not married. Which is awful because now there is a feeding frenzy over Mr Wallaker. Everyone is trying to fix Mr Wallaker up with their single friend. Farzia did suggest trying to shove me at him, but it is pointless. Even though my heart leaps now, when I see him on the steps, Mr Wallaker does not come up and tease me any more. Mr Wallaker does not run into us on the Heath. The magic is gone. And it is all my own fault.
Mr Wallaker is in charge of more and more things at the school: sport, chess, music, ‘Pastoral Care’. He is like Russell Crowe in Gladiator – when he was a slave and organized the other slaves into an army and defeated all the Greeks or Romans. It’s like putting ants down in any situation: ants will just do what ants do. If you put someone really cool and capable down anywhere they will just be cool and capable. And
be set up with every unattached woman in sight except me.
Friday 27 September 2013
9.45 p.m. ‘It’s you he loves,’ said Tom, on his fourth mojito in the York & Albany.
‘Look, can we just shut up about Mr Effing Wallaker?’ I muttered. ‘I’ve accepted my life now. It’s good. It’s the three of us. We’re not broke. I’m not lonely any more. I’m a great tree.’
‘And The Leaves in His Hair is going to be made!’ encouraged Jude.
‘What’s left of it,’ I said darkly.
‘But at least you’ll get to go to the premiere, baby,’ said Tom. ‘You might meet someone there.’
‘If I’m invited.’
‘If he’s not calling you, if he’s not texting you, he’s just not that into you,’ said Jude unhelpfully.
‘But Mr Wallaker has never called her or texted her,’ said Tom squiffily. ‘Who are we talking about here?’
‘Can we please stop talking about Mr Wallaker? I don’t even like him and he doesn’t like me.’
‘Well, you did rather give him an earful, darling,’ said Talitha.
‘But there was so much depth to what was building,’ said Tom.
‘When he’s hot, he’s hot; when he’s not, he’s not,’ said Jude.
‘Why don’t you get Rebecca to fix you up?’ said Tom.
10 p.m. Just went round to Rebecca’s. She shook her head. ‘It never works, that sort of thing. They sense it a mile off, by radar. Just let it unfold.’
THE MIGHTY JUNGLE
Friday 18 October 2013
Number of times listened to ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ 45 (continuing).
9.15 p.m. The choir auditions have come round again. Billy is lying in bed singing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’, then going, ‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeoheeeeoheeeeoh’ in a high-pitched voice while Mabel yells, ‘Shut up, Billy, shut uuuuuuuuuuurp.’
This year we have been practising hitting actual notes. Was in fact quite carried away with self this evening, teaching them Doh Ray Me, parroting Maria in The Sound of Music (I actually do know the whole of The Sound of Music off by heart).
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