Mummy Said the F-Word

by Fiona Gibson

  What the hell can I say? ‘Never scrape if you have a new boyfriend staying over as he might assume you have some obsessive tongue-cleaning disorder. Small children, too, might find the process alarming.’

  Apparently, you’re meant to pay special attention to the furry region at the back of the tongue, a factlet that’s causing my mid-afternoon sandwich to shift uneasily in my stomach. I’d always assumed that tongues self-cleaned, requiring no interference from their owners. It’s a small step from colonic irrigation. Maybe that particular delight is yet to come: the Acme High-Pressure Rectal Hose. ‘With the flick of a switch, sluice out those hard-to-reach areas.’ I could dispatch one to Daisy to try out on my beloved ex. That’d liven up their Friday night.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lola leans towards the screen.

  ‘What’s what, sweetheart?’ Please go. Please let me finish.

  ‘A tongoo-scrappa.’

  ‘Tongue-scraper,’ I snigger, winding my arms round her middle. ‘You scrape your tongue with it if you’ve got smelly breath.’

  ‘Ugh. My breath’s not smelly.’

  ‘No, darling. It’s quite orangey, in fact.’

  ‘Let me read more,’ she demands.

  ‘Lols, you wouldn’t be interested. It’s just boring stuff about the things that can go wrong with grown-ups’ bodies.’

  ‘Please. Just a teeny bit. I want to be here, with you.’

  With a sigh, I scroll down so she can learn about high-absorbency deodorising insoles for those whose feet literally gush sweat, flooding their shoes, although not so far down as to expose her to discreet pads for mild bladder weakness.

  ‘I need to get on now, OK? Watch another episode if you like, or do some colouring.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she mutters into her T-shirt.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It, Um … broke.’

  ‘You’ve got plenty more felt pens. There’s that pack of two hundred that Dad gave you.’ My gaze is still fixed on the monitor.

  ‘It’s not pens. It’s the telly.’

  I spin her round on my lap so I can scrutinise her face. ‘What about the telly?’

  ‘My drink went in it.’

  ‘In it? What part did it go in?’

  I lean over her to press ‘save’, not wishing to lose one word of my literary masterpiece, and lift her off my knee. Lola scuttles behind me as I stomp from our basement kitchen up to the living room.

  I loom over the TV and try to peer into the slits at the back. It’s awfully dark in there and smells faintly of synthetic orange.

  ‘What happened?’ I demand, running a hand along the slits and detecting stickiness.

  ‘It just went in,’ she murmurs.

  ‘What d’you mean, it just went in? This is a new TV! TVs cost money – they cost hundreds of pounds. Don’t you understand that, Lola? Doesn’t money mean anything to you?’

  She lowers her gaze. Her eyelashes are so dark and luscious they look permanently wet.

  ‘It didn’t cost money. Millie was gonna throw it away, but you made her give it to us.’

  I sigh. Her lush, wavy hair – reddish-brown, like the outside of almonds – falls around her lightly freckled face. Her lips, which curve beautifully – like her father’s, although it pains me to admit it – are pursed, as if ready to whistle. And she’s right. Millie had donated her unwanted TV to us. Martin took ours when he moved out – can you believe it? It had sentimental value, apparently, and was definitely ‘his’. (It had been presented to him by the senior partners at work when they’d scooped a major award.) I was surprised he hadn’t taken the fucking fridge while he was at it.

  ‘So,’ I say, ‘your drink went in, and then what happened? Was there a bang or a fizzing noise or what?’

  I am trying to remain calm. Since Martin walked out, my formerly extrovert daughter has clung, limpet-like, to me, and I’m loath to upset her. Learning that Daddy wasn’t merely living with Slapper – or Daisy – but also Poppy, her four-year-old daughter, seemed to tear out her insides.

  ‘It just went off,’ Lola says meekly. She regards me with interest while I switch it on and off several times and bang its top with my fist.

  ‘The thing is,’ I rant, ‘getting liquid inside electrical things is really dangerous. You could get a shock and die. That’s why you’re not allowed appliances in the bathroom.’

  ‘What’s an appliance?’ she enquires.

  ‘Like a fan heater or a microwave. An electrical thing.’

  ‘We don’t have a fan-eater.’

  ‘Yes, and now we don’t have a—’ The phone starts ringing.

  ‘Is the phone an appliance?’ Lola asks as I snatch it.

  ‘Hello, Cait.’

  It’s Martin, aka Wandering Dick, or Shagpants, as Millie is fond of calling him. I hold the receiver away from my ear, as if his voice might infect it.

  ‘Hi,’ I say curtly.

  ‘I rang twice yesterday, left a message with Jake. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘Um, I think he mentioned it,’ I say vaguely.

  ‘He said you were in the bath.’

  ‘That’s right. Is that OK with you? Or would you prefer me to be filthy and haggard and stop washing my hair?’

  ‘Is a hairdryer an appliance?’ Lola chirps.

  Martin snorts. It sounds like someone trying to clear a nasal blockage, and causes bile to rise in my throat.

  ‘It was about this weekend,’ he says. ‘It’s quite important.’

  ‘It is this weekend,’ I point out. ‘It’s Friday. TGI Friday. The weekend starts here.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Cait! Can’t we have a normal adult conversation? Why do you insist on acting like a child?’

  I yearn to remind him that his own behaviour has hardly been impeccable of late, but manage to keep a grip on myself for Lola’s sake. ‘Is there a problem,’ I say lightly, ‘about this weekend?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I’m sorry, and I know it’s my turn for the kids, but—’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I snap. ‘Something’s come up.’

  ‘Don’t say it like that.’ Martin emits another priggish snort. I picture his nostrils quivering damply, and wonder what had ever possessed me to have sex with the man, to fall crazily in love with him, to have to stop myself from squealing with joy when we met up at Batters Corner, which is where people around here met in those days. Seeing him standing there, waiting for me, would make me feel that it wasn’t only the night, but my entire life that was just beginning.

  ‘Martin,’ I say coldly, ‘I’m not saying it like anything. This is my normal voice.’

  He exhales. ‘It’s Poppy’s fifth birthday on Sunday. I’m sorry – I’d completely forgotten …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Dad’s electric toothbrush is an appliance!’ Lola announces. ‘Why can’t I have one? They clean your teeth better so you don’t need that scraper thing.’

  ‘Well, Um,’ Martin mutters, ‘let’s not make this difficult …’

  ‘You said you’d take the kids to Thorpe Park on Sunday, remember?’

  ‘Yay!’ Lola beams excitedly. ‘Are you coming, Mummy?’

  I shake my head fervently. Martin favours showy days out: to zoos, theme parks and chocolate factories, thus proving to our children that although he now lives with Daisy and Poppy, in Stoke Newington, he is still Father Superior and cares about his children. He’s the hunky, baby-cradling Athena-poster daddy. He’s so good with our three that strangers’ children flock around him, and grown women weep. No wonder their knickers fly off when he strolls by. He’s the Pied fucking Piper of Stoke Newington. Unfortunately, he is less keen to involve himself in the foraging for nits, or the application of verruca lotion.

  Martin clears his throat. ‘Any other time, it’d be fine, but on a birthday … Poppy wants, you know … one-to-one.’

  ‘Can’t she have one-to-one with her mother?’ I enquire.

  ‘Yes, of course …’

  ‘But you feel you should be
there too. On Poppy’s special day. Just the three of you. I know maths isn’t my strong point, Martin, but I’d make that two-to-one.’ My voice has turned into a croak, which I don’t like at all.

  ‘Cait,’ Martin says gently, ‘it’s not the right time for a huge get-together.’

  So that’s how you think of your kids, I seethe: as an unruly rabble, crowding precious Poppy’s day. What’s she getting for her birthday? I wonder. A pony? Fifteen antelopes? A life-sized gingerbread house with a conservatory fashioned from melted-down clear lollies? That wretched child has everything. First time they’d met her, the kids took great delight in relaying a full inventory of her every plaything.

  ‘So,’ I growl, ‘where are you taking her?’

  ‘Um, Thorpe Park.’

  ‘Jesus.’ So many bad words swirl around in my head I fear they’ll burst out of my ears.

  ‘That’s what she wants,’ he adds. ‘She’s been looking forward to it for ages.’

  ‘So have ours,’ I hiss.

  ‘I’ll take them another time. We’ll sort—’

  ‘I know!’ I blurt wildly. ‘Take ours on Saturday, when it’s not Poppy’s birthday, and take Poppy on Sunday, when it is her—’

  ‘I can’t go to Thorpe Park twice in one weekend!’ Martin blusters.

  Lola sucks a tendril of hair fretfully.

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘Bloody hell, Cait. I hate those places. They’re full of screaming, hyperactive kids dosed up on cheap sweets. They do my head in.’

  ‘Do they? I thought you enjoyed your jolly days out with our children.’

  A pause. ‘You have to twist everything, don’t you?’

  I picture Martin’s neck, with the tufts of fluffy hair growing down the back – greying a little now, I’d been pleased to note – and how I’d like to give that a damn good twist. Right round, until his eyes bulged and his veins stuck out. That would make a pleasant change from being so bloody mature and let’s-be-reasonable-for-the-kids. I’m so controlled at kiddie-handover time that sometimes I fear that my heart will judder to a halt from the effort. That would show him.

  ‘Or,’ I continue, skirting round his remark, ‘you could take all of them together and split up – so Daisy takes Poppy to one part, and you take ours to another, and the two families go around separately …’ I tail off, overcome by the awful realisation that Martin doesn’t view himself as belonging to a separate family from Daisy and Poppy. Of course he doesn’t.

  ‘Space issues’ – his term – mean that he is unable to accommodate his own offspring more frequently than every other weekend. Daisy and Poppy are with him virtually all the time. He’ll have read billions of bedtime stories, the way he used to with ours. They are Martin’s family now. A woman with a glossy black bob, pert young-person’s breasts and a precocious daughter who won’t let Lola lay a finger on My Little Pony’s mane brush. Over eight months on, when I’m supposed to have recovered from the break-up and be moving on, making a new life for myself – all the overly positive crap that fills magazines like Bambino – and I still yearn to stab him between the eyes. We’re not even going through a divorce. I haven’t set anything in motion, for the pathetic reason that being no longer married to me might make life easier for him. Martin hasn’t dared to suggest it.

  I finish the call, mentally totting up our scores: Martin, 1; Cait, O.

  Lola gazes up at me, her dark eyes gleaming like Christmas-tree baubles. ‘Why won’t Daddy take us to Thorpe Park?’ she asks.

  ‘He says he’ll still take you,’ I babble, ‘and he’s really looking forward to it, but he can’t do it this weekend because something else is happening.’

  ‘Oh. What’s happening?’

  She knows, of course she does. She just wants me to say it. I scrabble for the least hurtful answer, my tongue flapping dryly in my mouth. ‘He didn’t say,’ is all I can dredge up.

  ‘He’s taking Poppy instead, isn’t he?’ A tear wobbles dangerously, and I bend down to pull her close.

  ‘It’s her birthday,’ I say softly. ‘She just wants a special time.’

  She fixes me with a stoic look, her brave face. ‘So do I,’ she mutters.

  ‘Listen, we’ll do something special too. I’ve just got to finish my work, OK? Then we’ll pop out and pick up the boys and come back for tea. We’ll have pancakes for afters, all right?’

  ‘With lemon and sugar?’

  ‘We’ll buy a lemon on the way home. You can make the batter all by yourself.’

  Lola musters a weak smile and plonks herself on the rug. I don’t have it in me to go on about the buggered TV, not after her disappointment over Thorpe Park. Summoning every ounce of concentration, she draws a perfect crown on the biggest zebra’s head. No matter what Martin does, or how often he lets her down, he’s still King Daddy as far as his daughter’s concerned. Which strikes me as more than a little unfair.

  Down in the bowels of the house – our shadowy basement kitchen – I try to switch back into work mode, but it’s useless. I can’t face the tongue thing again, let alone corn creams and blackhead exterminators. Martin’s calls often have that effect. It’s as if he’s hatching a plot to make me lose my Vitalworld job on top of everything else.

  It’s not that I want us to get back together. The thought of Martin touching me – or, indeed, inhabiting the same page of the A–Z – makes me want to vomit. No, what concerns me these days is his effect on the kids. It churns my insides to see Lola struggling to be brave and good. Jake has taken to cleaning his bedroom with alarming vigour. The first time I caught him lugging the Hoover upstairs, I assumed he needed it for a game.

  ‘I want my room to be nice,’ he’d muttered.

  ‘But I make it nice!’ I’d protested.

  ‘It’s not nice. It’s horrible and dirty.’

  Shortly afterwards, he’d bought a can of Mr Sheen (Spring Fresh fragrance) with his own pocket money. Whenever he uses it, its smell seems to permeate the entire house. Sometimes I can even taste it.

  And Travis? He’s too young to grasp the ins and outs, but is patently aware that Daddy no longer lives with us, and that another adult female plus offspring now feature in his life.

  He knows that Dad used to put out his breakfast cereal and pour the milk from a great height, making sploshy white waterfalls. And now he doesn’t.

  I check my inbox. There’s an email from Ross at Vitalworld.

  Hi, Cait,

  Hope all’s good with you and the brood.

  He always says ‘brood’; it makes me feel like a plump hen.

  Sorry to be a pain, but could you try a slight change of tone with your new batch of copy and make it bouncier? I’ve had feedback from the big cheeses and they’d like it more upbeat, hard sell – you know the kind of thing. I’m sure you won’t find it a problem. Hope you haven’t done too much work on it already.

  Cheers, Cait, and have a great weekend,

  Ross

  I glare down at my product list:

  • Gloss ’n’ Gleam Anti-Dandruff Conditioning Masque

  I start to write, ‘Is anything worse than spotting a snowstorm on your shoulders?’ and think, Yes! Lots of things are far worse than that. Like your husband announcing that he and his girlfriend are moving to a fancy new flat in Canary Wharf, as they want somewhere that feels like ‘theirs’ instead of just ‘hers’. (Despite the fact that his extortionate maintenance payments – which, being Athena Daddy, he is quite happy to make – have rendered them bankrupt. Allegedly.) A flat with not one but two – count’em! – roof terraces.

  • pile ointment

  • Fresh Zone halitosis pills with extract of liquorice and clove

  • Blackhead-Removal System

  • Redeem Hair-Recovery Programme for Men

  • Corn Care with natural beeswax. Also effective for heels, elbows and other scaly areas.

  Who the hell buys this stuff? Lizards?

  • Wind-Away tablets, to ease the discomfort of fla
tulence and trapped wind.

  God, the human body can be terribly embarrassing sometimes. Having lost momentum with the tongue thing, I move on to the fart pills, trying to muster every upbeat cell in my body.

  Maybe it’s time I found myself a proper job.

  This is all Martin’s fault. I’d have nearly finished by now if he hadn’t cancelled and thrown me off track. All it would need is a little ‘bouncing up’.

  Thorpe Park. It’s opening weekend, to coincide with February half-term. For all I care, he can spend the entire weekend with Daisy and Poppy on the spinny rides he so hates. The kids and I will have a fantastic time doing, er … I’m sure I’ll conjure up something.

  As for Martin choosing birthday girl over his own flesh and blood, I won’t utter one more word about it. Let them have their damn one-to-one. I’ll rise above them like a dignified cloud.

  2

  Thorpe Park is as gaudy as the contents of an upended toy box.

  ‘Come on!’ Travis yelps, tugging his mittened hand free and tearing away.

  I grab him by his dungaree strap. ‘We’ll have to stick together or we’ll lose you. Look how busy it is here.’

  ‘Wanna go on that!’ he rages, indicating a terrifying roller coaster looping the loop.

  ‘That’s for bigger children, Travis. There are lots of other things you can go on.’

  ‘Don’t want baby things. Want big-boy things.’ He juts out his bottom lip like a ramp.

  Sam catches my eye and grins. I am part of a ‘we’ again – albeit temporarily – as, to my surprise and delight, my single-dad friend offered to come with us. Sam’s ex-wife, mother to their ten-year-old son, Harvey, apparently swished off some years ago to ‘find herself’ in Cornwall with an old flame. Like me, Sam has been dumped on with ten tons of horse shit. Unlike me, he doesn’t – as far as I’m aware – harbour resentment and hatred. Things seem to be terribly grown-up and respectful between Sam and Amelia. I once spotted a hand-drawn birthday card on his mantelpiece, in which she’d written, ‘Happy birthday, babe. Love, Melly xxx,’ which hardly hinted at mutual hatred.