Mummy Said the F-Word

by Fiona Gibson

  ‘Aren’t you worried we’ll bump into them?’ he asks, as our group straggles through the throng.

  My plan had been to do precisely that, as a kind of up-yours gesture. I know – neither big nor clever. And now I’m not so sure I want to be here at all.

  ‘I don’t think it’s likely,’ I tell him, ‘but if we do, I can handle it.’ I’ve got you, I want to add.

  He drapes a reassuring arm round my shoulders. Sweet, kind Sam. He’d be immensely fanciable – dark, dark eyes, lithe, slender body – to any woman whose libido hadn’t been utterly quashed, as mine has.

  ‘I just don’t want you getting upset,’ he says.

  ‘Sam –’ I turn to face him ‘– I really don’t give a stuff about them. Come on, let’s find the water-ride thing.’

  My spirits have risen – probably due to Jake looking happy for once, instead of wearing his usual droopy ‘yeah, yeah’ face. We spend the morning milling from ride to ride, braving the Rumba Rapids and the tamest of the roller coasters, where two women in the car in front steal lusty glances at Sam when they think I’m not watching. I first met him a year ago, but we’ve been hanging out with the kids for six months or so, since Sam and Harvey moved into the next street and our sons became firm friends at school. Sam has hauled me out of a pit of depression, stopping me from feeling like a crushed eggshell at the bottom of the pedal bin of life. I am now a baked-bean can, roughly halfway up. Naturally, Bev and Marcia and the rest of the PTA mob assume that we’re enjoying a rampant affair, based on the evidence that we hang out together and our sons are friends – plus, single mothers are gagging to shag the pants off anyone, of course. I ran into Marcia in the supermarket last week. She gave the contents of my trolley a quick once-over, as if expecting to glimpse ready-meals and gallons of gin.

  After our café lunch, Sam whisks Travis to the toddler rides, while I jam myself on to the big wheel with the others. Big wheels I can handle. And it’s from there, at its highest point, that I spot him. Martin, wearing a yolk-coloured T-shirt, with a child perched on his shoulders.

  My stomach tightens and I grip Lola’s hand. I shouldn’t have brought them here, at least not today. Now there’s no escape. My kids are about to be faced with their father and Poppy on her special day, and it’s all my stupid, blundering fault. I gawp at Poppy. All I know about Daisy’s little darling has been gleaned from the kids following Daddy Weekends. Poppy has a ‘special’ chair at the table on which no one else is allowed to sit. She shuns any foods that are deemed ‘soft’. She has a dolly’s cot, high chair, buggy and camper van – and probably a timeshare in dolly’s holiday villa in Mauritius. Because Martin ferries our children to and from his new pad, I have yet to have the pleasure of meeting her. Lola has told me that she refuses to wear anything non-pink, hence my private nickname for her, Pink Princess.

  Martin looks utterly at ease with her. Poppy keeps twisting round excitedly, her legs dangling against his chest. He is gripping her ankles, keeping her steady and safe. Anyone would think he was her dad. On top of the dolly’s high chair and timeshare, this child now has our children’s father – albeit in a sick-making yellow T-shirt. Is he trying to look like a children’s TV presenter, or a tub of margarine? The T-shirt is a precise match for those butter-substitute tubs: Utterly Butterly, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter – of course it’s not butter, you thick twit.

  Frantically, I plot our escape route to avoid confronting the charming birthday tableau. What was I thinking, hauling the kids here today? I’d wanted to make a point. (He might feel fine about disappointing our children. I most certainly do not.) I’d wanted to scream out the message: ‘You might think you’re the only one who’s allowed here on Poppy’s birthday … but here we are! We’ve paid our entrance fee and we’re going to damn well enjoy ourselves!’ And I hadn’t considered how wretched they’d feel, seeing Martin with his shiny new family. I am despicable. Imagine using your own children to make a point. They should be removed from my care.

  If only we could escape without being spotted. I know – once we get off the ride, I’ll tell Sam we have to leave immediately. I’ll feign illness, a fainting fit – even death. Anything to get the hell out of this damn place. Fuck, the margarine blob is edging closer. As our big-wheel chair descends, I can see the back of Poppy’s head, her ash-blonde curls clumped up with numerous hairclips and ribbons – a fine example of accessory overload.

  ‘Mummy,’ Lola protests, ‘you’re hurting my hand.’

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t realise.’ I let go and wipe sweat from my palms on to my jeans. I am sweating all over, even though it’s chilly enough for our breath to form pale clouds. Mercifully, there’s no sign of Slapper. I have met her only once, a couple of months ago, when I ran into her and Martin Christmas shopping in Covent Garden. They’d been clutching each other’s hands and had sprung apart as soon as they saw me. At least she had the decency to look horrified. My teeth were so tightly gritted I’d feared that they’d crumble to dust. I’d been so shattered by the effort of being reasonable and mature that I’d dived into a pub and ordered a glass of white wine, which I’d downed virtually in one. If I wound up in the Priory, I would be forwarding the bill to Martin.

  ‘That was brilliant!’ Harvey enthuses. ‘Can we go on again?’

  ‘Maybe later,’ I say quickly. ‘We’re meeting your dad by the teacup ride so we’ll have to get off really fast, OK, and hurry round that way.’ I jab a hand in the opposite direction to the margarine blob.

  ‘Why are we in a hurry?’ Jake narrows his eyes suspiciously.

  ‘Because … we want to go on as many rides as we can, don’t we? There’s so much to see, isn’t there? Isn’t this fantastic?’ I realise I am hyperventilating and try to steady my breath.

  Jake tosses his growing-out fringe from his eyes. I do my damnedest to blot out Martin from my line of sight, but the T-shirt shines gaudily, like a buttercup floating in a river. The wheel judders to a halt and we all clamber out.

  ‘Mum, look!’ Jake yelps. ‘There’s Dad!’ He charges towards him, with Lola tearing after, hair flying behind her.

  I watch them, with Harvey lurking at my side, as they grind to a standstill before their father and stare up at Poppy.

  ‘Hello, Daddy,’ Lola says, less gleeful now.

  The grin spreads unsteadily over Martin’s face. ‘Hi, you guys!’ He flings me a stern look as I approach.

  Harvey, suddenly awkward and shy, has thrust his hands into his pockets and is staring at the ground.

  Lola glares up at the small blonde appendage perched upon her dad’s shoulders. Poppy crunches a sweet. Her unwavering gaze has a touch of smugness about it. She has pale porcelain skin, widely set pale-blue eyes like a doll’s and is done up to the neck in a quilted pink jacket, its hood thickly edged with silver fur.

  ‘So,’ Martin smirks, ‘fancy meeting you here.’

  ‘The kids wanted to come,’ I murmur.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jake asserts. ‘Mum said you couldn’t bring us so she would. Why couldn’t we all have come together?’

  ‘I, er, it was tricky,’ Martin says with a tight laugh.

  I feel myself shrinking and withering inside.

  ‘Well,’ Lola announces, ‘we’re all together now.’

  Martin frowns and hisses, as if Harvey might be hearing-impaired, ‘Isn’t that Sam Blackwell’s boy?’

  ‘Yes, he is. His name’s Harvey. Sam’s taken Travis to the little ones’ rides, so we’d better go. We’re meeting them at—’

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ Martin snaps, ‘is why you had to come here today. To make a point, was it?’

  Clearly, he’s forgetting that an impressionable young person sporting six billion hair clips is drinking in his every word.

  ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ I snap back.

  ‘You really know how to make things awkward, Cait.’

  I start to protest, but he launches a second attack: ‘We could have talked, if it was that imp
ortant. I never imagined you’d do this.’

  ‘Dad, we went on the big wheel,’ Jake mumbles.

  ‘That’s nice.’ Martin responds with a stretched smile.

  ‘Can we do that, Martin?’ Poppy whispers. ‘Can we go on the big wheel?’

  ‘Later, darling,’ he mumbles.

  Darling now, is it?

  ‘Where’s Mummy?’ she asks.

  ‘She’s gone to get—’ He starts, glimpsing a face in the crowd and waving frantically. ‘Look – here’s Mummy now!’

  Poppy swings round, grinning delightedly as Slapper approaches.

  Daisy is smiling and clutching two hot drinks cups, but her smile wilts when she sees me. Oh, fuck, I can see in her eyes. Oh, bollocks. Her jaw has set rigid. She is wearing slim navy trousers, flat lilac pumps with bows at the front and a sheer sleeveless top patterned with tiny pink flowers. I am staring like a pervy old man.

  She wobbles a little as a child buffets her, causing liquid to splosh through the holes in the lids.

  ‘Mummy!’ Poppy cries, but all Daisy can manage is a grimace.

  I gawp at her top. It is wet and has turned virtually transparent. No jacket or sweater, in February! How very silly of her.

  ‘Hello, Caitlin,’ she says, handing a steaming cup to Martin. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’ A tremor appears beneath her left eye.

  ‘Yes, fancy,’ I say, unable to tear away my gaze from her magnificent breasts. These breasts, I notice with a plummeting heart, are unhampered by bra. They jut out like Barbie’s with no visible means of support. They are cartoon breasts, the pneumatic tits of a thirteen-year-old boy’s lurid sketch.

  They do not look real.

  ‘Why are you wet, Daisy?’ Lola asks.

  That’s my girl.

  ‘I know, stupid isn’t it?’ She laughs a little too loudly, swinging her hair, shampoo-ad-style. ‘We went on the Rumba Rapids and my coat got soaked. Thought I’d be better without it.’

  ‘But your top’s wet as well,’ Lola observes, ‘and it’s really cold today. Mummy made us wear gloves.’

  Have a fiver, fabulous daughter of mine.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ I cut in. ‘We went on the Rumba Rapids too and we’re all perfectly dry. Guess we were just lucky.’

  ‘I think it depends where you sit in the boat thing,’ she says coolly.

  I realise that as well as the small blonde appendage on his shoulders, Martin also has a coat jammed under his arm. Must be Daisy’s. I can’t ever recall him carrying my coat.

  Harvey is regarding Daisy with an open sneer. Jake twiddles his jacket zip distractedly. Firing me a look of defiance, Daisy takes Martin’s hand. She grips it so tightly her knuckles whiten.

  ‘Well,’ Martin blusters, ‘we’re heading off for lunch in the café. Enjoy the rest of your day. I’ll see you next weekend, OK, kids? We’ll have lots of fun then. Fancy seeing what’s on at the Science Museum?’

  There’s half-hearted nodding. Jake crushes a Smarties tube with his foot.

  ‘We’ll do something really special,’ Martin concludes, and I glance down to check whether his insincerity is dripping all over the ground, forming puddles of lies.

  Then I see Sam approaching with Travis, scanning the throng for us. He spots Martin and holds back. Our eyes meet and he frowns with concern.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll look forward to that,’ I say stiffly, shepherding the children away.

  ‘Bye!’ Poppy calls after us, her ‘I am five’ badge glinting in the wintry sun.

  She’s only a kid. None of this is her fault. She didn’t choose her mother or insist that she seduced unsuspecting males in their offices. Poppy has nothing whatsoever to do with Slapper’s deluxe after-sales service. I try to smile at her, as any decent adult would, but it won’t come. She’s pointing at the highest roller coaster now, resting her chin on the top of Martin’s head.

  Gripping Lola’s hand tightly, I will my eyes to behave as the birthday threesome disappears into the crowd.

  3

  We’re home, and although it’s dark and bitterly cold outside, the kids insist on surging out to crack iced puddles in the back garden. They dive in and out of the kitchen, demanding further ice-breaking implements. I locate gnarled plastic spades, but draw the line at dishing out ladles and serrated bread knives.

  ‘Hope you’re not depressed about Miss Wet T-Shirt,’ Sam ventures when the kids are out of earshot.

  I am loading fish fingers on to the grill. Daisy’s breasts still shimmer pertly in my brain.

  ‘Of course not,’ I insist. ‘You were right, though. It was a dumb idea to go today.’

  ‘I didn’t say that …’

  ‘No, but you thought it. You tried to warn me. I was trying to prove that I didn’t care and ended up making the kids feel awful.’ My voice trembles. ‘I shouldn’t have put them through that.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t your smartest move,’ Sam says gently, which is marginally better than, ‘I told you so.’

  He smiles and it’s infectious, as if our mouth-raising mechanisms are somehow connected.

  ‘Anyway,’ I add, ‘what did you think of Slapper?’

  The kids are bickering in the garden. Too many children, too few frozen puddles to go round.

  ‘Um … hard,’ Sam murmurs.

  ‘It’s not that hard,’ I retort. ‘I mean, d’you think she’s attractive? I don’t mind. I mean, I know she is …’

  ‘No – hard-faced. One of those brittle faces that looks like it’d crack and fall off if she laughed … Can she laugh, out of interest?’

  Sam cheers me up, despite everything. ‘I’m not sure. Actually, I meant her wet top and no bra and all that.’

  He crinkles his brow. ‘They were, um, very …’

  ‘Pert?’

  ‘Wet. They were very wet. Something warmer, like a polo-neck jumper, would’ve been more suitable.’

  I laugh and tip peas into a pan. It wouldn’t bother me, honestly, if Sam had been mesmerised by Slapper’s display. He’s a man, after all, yet he seems totally uninterested in meeting anyone. Maybe it’s the still-hankering-after-the-ex thing. Or perhaps, like me, he has no urge to do it with anybody. I haven’t slept with anyone – apart from Travis and Lola in the throes of a nightmare or chickenpox – since Martin left, and doubt if I ever will again. It’s been over eight months and the thought of any man pawing my body still makes me feel nauseous. I have tried to fancy Sam, if only to reassure myself that I’m still capable of having lewd thoughts. I have done my utmost to imagine him naked, the two of us kissing passionately and my hands roaming all over his perfectly roamable body, but nothing happens. Not a tingle – not one iota of smut in my head. I have repeated the process with every man I know between the ages of twenty and eighty-five (a pretty generous catchment area, I’d have thought). Still nothing. My libido has died, like a plant that no one has bothered to water.

  Sam mooches out to check on the kids, letting in an icy gust. It feels so right, him hanging out here with us. From the moment we met, sheltering from driving rain beneath the slide in the park, our friendship seemed inevitable.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, jutting his face round the doorway, ‘you really are upset about today, aren’t you?’

  I nod mutely. ‘I used the kids to get at Martin.’

  ‘Oh, Cait. They’re over it, and they had a great time. Just forget about Martin and Slapper.’

  How can I? I think, as Sam comes over and hugs me.

  ‘Listen.’ Sam pulls away, fixing me with a stare. ‘You don’t want him back, do you?’

  ‘God, no.’ I turn away and yank out the grill pan.

  ‘So stop obsessing. She’s an idiot and they deserve each other. She’s probably caught pneumonia by now.’

  ‘Hope so.’ I hate myself for caring, for imagining Martin helping Daisy to peel off her wet things, running her a hot bath, bringing her a glass of wine and administering a post-soak massage …

  More than any of that, I hate it that
I’ve turned into a sexless android at the age of thirty-five.

  Later, after reading Lola and Travis’s bedtime stories, I step into Jake’s room to say goodnight. He has taken the books off his shelf and is wiping it with a yellow duster.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’ I ask faintly.

  ‘’Cause I want to,’ he murmurs.

  Inhaling deeply, I sit on the edge of his bed. Instantly, I’m shrouded in guilt. I should be helping, not sitting watching him; I should have cleaned the shelf, so he doesn’t have to. At ten years old, he shouldn’t fret about dust.

  ‘Jake,’ I venture, ‘I’m really pleased that you’re helping around the house, but you needn’t spend so much time, you know … polishing and stuff.’

  ‘’S’all right,’ he mumbles.

  ‘What was wrong with your bookshelf anyway? You keep your books so tidy these days. Sam couldn’t believe it last time he came into your room and—’

  ‘There was a spider,’ Jake snaps, gripping the duster. ‘It ran over the top of my books.’

  A nervous laugh crackles out of me. ‘Not scared of spiders, are you, hon? You’re always collecting bugs in the garden …’

  ‘It means it’s dirty in here. There’s probably webs and stuff.’

  I open my mouth to speak, but he turns away and gives the shelf another squoosh of Mr Sheen. I feel so empty, watching him rubbing vigorously with the duster. All I want is my old Jake back, who not so very long ago would clamber on to my lap and demand kisses. Jake whose room featured pyjamas strewn on the floor, faintly whiffing of pee, and ancient juice cups left festering on his windowsill.

  Right now, I could kiss a festering juice cup.

  ‘Then he followed me to the bathroom,’ Millie enthuses next day over lunch, ‘and honestly, Cait, you wouldn’t believe it, the size of—’

  ‘Shhh!’ I indicate Travis, who is merrily rapping the table with a teaspoon.