Mummy Said the F-Word

by Fiona Gibson

How terribly cosy. How very grown-up and mature. The park, which a few moments ago had seemed vivid and green and full of life, now seems flat and listless. I want to go home.

  ‘You know how it is,’ Sam continues, ‘when you’ve known someone for ages, and even though it’s obvious it’ll never work there’s still this connection, this … frisson.’

  I don’t know that feeling. A mangy dog sniffs around our bag of picnic supplies and I shoo it away. It growls at me and pees on the grass.

  ‘Isn’t frisson that curly lettuce you get in bags?’ God, I’m a twerp. I deserve to be executed.

  Sam smiles. ‘I think that’s frisée. The purply stuff.’

  ‘No, that’s radicchio.’

  Go on, fuckwit, babble on some more about salad. Just what the situation requires. ‘Or lollo rosso,’ I suggest as a drenched Lola thunders towards us.

  ‘Anyway,’ Sam says with a small laugh, ‘confession over.’

  I don’t know what to do next. Congratulate him? Ask how he feels about it? ‘I suppose we all do those things,’ I mutter.

  He frowns. ‘Can you imagine it happening with Martin?’

  ‘No, I don’t think Martin would sleep with you.’

  Agh. Pathetic joke. ‘I mean,’ he insists, ‘d’you ever wish …’

  ‘Sam, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.’

  We snigger as Lola lands on my lap, soaking me. ‘What’s funny, Mummy?’

  ‘Just a silly joke.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No, hon …’

  ‘Why not?’ She turns angrily.

  Because it’s really not funny at all. ‘Here, let me towel your hair before you get cold.’

  ‘I’m already cold,’ Lola complains.

  I can’t look at Sam as I help her to dry off. This will change everything, I just know it. Me and Sam, doing this kind of stuff together. Him never ticking me off for my shoddy parenting skills. Just being there whenever I need him. Never shaming me by not only owning but using a pasta machine.

  He’ll get back with Amelia. They’ll be a couple again, a symmetrical family with everything as it should be. If I were a faintly decent person, I’d be happy for him, but inside I’m crushed.

  It’s not a pathetic attempt at one-upmanship. It’s not: Listen, Pants-a-Flying Sam Blackwell. You’re not the only who’s seeing some action with the opposite sex. You know what? I am too. Or I shall be. Just you wait. No, I wouldn’t stoop so low.

  Well, it’s only a tiny bit of that.

  One undeniably cute young man is waiting for my call. OK, weeks have passed since our date, but subconsciously, he’s waiting. He could have lost my number, and, anyway, I have nothing to lose – because all was already lost after Sam’s confession in the park.

  With the kids installed in front of the TV, I find Darren’s shop’s number on yell.com and creep towards the phone. My bravado ebbs away as I tap out his number, and my tongue acquires a sandpapery texture. An answerphone plays its message and bleeps.

  ‘Hi, Darren?’ I say tentatively. ‘It’s Caitlin. Caitlin Brown with the, um, disappearing mother …’

  There’s a click. ‘Hi, Cait?’ Darren says, sounding pleased. ‘Great to hear from you. Sorry I haven’t phoned. With your mum and all that, I thought maybe your life’s a bit complicated to have me butting in …’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I blurt out, too eagerly. ‘My life’s … fine.’

  A small silence.

  ‘Was your mum OK? You seemed really worried …’

  Rather belated concern, I’d say, but I don’t want to seem bitter. He sounds so chirpy, so unencumbered by ex-spouses and elderly parents. ‘I found her playing poker in one of the canal boats. I think she’d mistaken it for the Clyde.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘It’s a river …’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Darren laughs. It’s a warm, easy laugh that makes my shoulders un-clench. ‘These mistakes are easily made,’ he adds.

  Lola bounds into the kitchen in her velour Scooby Doo dressing gown, complete with ears, tail and matching paw gloves. ‘Mummy—’

  ‘Shhhh!’ I hiss at her.

  ‘What’s that?’ Darren asks.

  ‘Just my daughter. Hang on a minute … Lola, what d’you want? Are you thirsty or something? You can see I’m on the phone …’ Oh no. I am committing the heinous crime of talking to my child while attempting to conduct an adult phone conversation.

  ‘No,’ Darren says, ‘I mean that weird hissing noise. Sounds like something’s wrong with your phone.’

  ‘Can I speak to Daddy?’ Lola bellows, trying to snatch the receiver with her paw.

  ‘It’s not Daddy!’ I mouth at her.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Go upstairs!’ When will I ever get a smidge of privacy? When?

  ‘Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’ Darren asks.

  ‘Woof!’ Lola barks. ‘Woof, woof, woof!’

  ‘No, um, I think I’m free tomorrow.’ I waggle my eyebrows furiously. Lola whirls round the kitchen, barking and thrashing her doggie tail.

  ‘D’you have a dog?’ Darren enquires.

  ‘No, I … Lola, shush.’

  ‘We could go for dinner or something, try that new place where the Spice Garden used to be.’

  Lola hangs her head like a scolded hound.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I say, cutting her from my line of vision and praying that Holly will be free to babysit. It should be Martin’s turn for the kids, but something’s come up, yet again. They’re going to the theatre. Slapper, the silly cookie, only booked three tickets.

  ‘Eight o’clock?’ Darren suggests.

  ‘Great. See you tomorrow.’

  I bang down the phone.

  ‘What?’ Lola asks.

  ‘What what?’ I can sense my brain cells disintegrating.

  ‘What’ll be lovely? Are we going out?’

  I can’t help smiling. ‘I’m meeting a friend tomorrow night, that’s all. I’ll see if Holly can look after you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her face falls.

  ‘What’s wrong, honey? I thought you liked Holly, and I hardly ever go out.’

  She nods and her velour ears flop dolefully. ‘Are you going out with a man?’

  I pause. ‘It’s no one you know.’

  She grips my hand with her paw. ‘I don’t want a new daddy.’

  I crouch down and hug her, breathing in her bubblegum smell. ‘Lola, I promise there’s no need to worry about that. There’ll never be a new daddy.’

  Her face softens, and she allows me to lead her upstairs. No, Darren certainly isn’t new-daddy material. We’re managing perfectly fine without one, at least most of the time. A bit of fun is all I’m looking for – to feel like Caitlin again, instead of Director-in-Chief of Lunch Boxes.

  Another point in Darren’s favour is that he’s taken my mind off Sam shagging Amelia for, ooh, all of thirty seconds.

  18

  So, tell me about your life.

  R x

  I kick off the strappy sandals that have been biting my ankles all evening. I bought them especially for tonight, as my other pair were scuffed to buggery from clopping along the muddy towpath during my hunt for Mum. Well worth forty-five quid, plus the de-mothering process and babysitter’s fee. Remind me to never indulge in such fripperies again.

  I wince at the ‘R x’. A kiss! How very friendly. How damn forward. Millie’s voice booms in my head: ‘Never reply to emails personally. They’re all crazies out there.’

  OK, R With a Kiss. How about this:

  First you insult me, and now you want to know about my life. Let’s start with yesterday, shall we? My friend Sam and I take our kids to the park. It’s there that he confesses he slept with his ex. Which is allowed, right? They’re both adults and have somehow managed to break up while still liking each other. All very healthy and admirable.

  Not me, though. Oh, no. I skid backwards to adolescence, where I’m driven insane with jealousy – because, you see, I wis
h it was me. That Sam had slept with, I mean. Lately I’ve been spending inordinate amounts of time fantasising about what it would be like and imagining … Oh, let’s not go there. Suffice to say, I am tragically deluded.

  It’s all very sad and pathetic.

  Still with me, R? OK. Fuelled by unhealthy emotions, I phone Darren, who’s extremely cute and about a tenth of my age. I’m so pissed off about Sam and Amelia that I don’t care that Darren clearly isn’t interested in me. Not really. Or he would have phoned after our first date, wouldn’t he?

  Anyway. For some reason – pity probably – he suggests we go out to dinner. It’s a Moroccan place where there’s fruit in with the meat, which Darren’s not so sure about, but the night’s going well nonetheless. Wine’s flowing. He’s quite touchy-feely over the meal. At one point his fingers brush against my leg and I feel a definite stirring below. He is extremely flirtatious and flattering, and these things matter when you haven’t had sex since Henry VIII’s time. Tonight, I think, it’s going to happen.

  I’m not talking the full works. After being dumped without ceremony by my husband, I’m not quite ready to go there. But a snog scenario, bit of a cuddle – that would do nicely. Caitlin Brown, mother of three and former sexless android, is on the brink of feeling alive again. I’m so excited I can hardly swallow my lamb.

  We’re halfway through our main course when this couple walks in. I don’t recognise the man, but the woman I do know – Bev Hartnett, treasurer of the PTA, without whom the very fabric of our community would crumble to dust.

  I type on, splurging it out, hammering the life out of my keyboard.

  ‘Caitlin!’ she gushes, giving Darren a cursory glance. Oh, joy, they’re seated at the next table to us. Bev drags her chair virtually next to mine, ignoring her poor bastard husband because she has far more pressing matters to attend to, like: had I heard that the year-six trip to Provence might be cancelled due to lack of funding? What do I think of that supply teacher, the one with the short skirt and cleavage? Would I be interested in manning the guess-the-stuffed-bunny’s-birthday stall at the summer fête? Failing that, would I volunteer to go in the stocks to be pelted with pies? It’s all for a good cause.

  ‘No thank you,’ I tell her, figuring precisely where the stuffed bunny could be stuffed.

  ‘Would you be our stocks man?’ she asks Darren.

  Like a child, he has lined up his apricots on the side of his plate. They look like slugs.

  ‘It’s not really my thing,’ he mutters, glancing around desperately for an escape route. I can almost hear him formulating a plan to go to the loo and make his bid for freedom through the window. And I wouldn’t blame him.

  ‘Come on,’ Bev gushes. ‘Don’t be a spoilsport! All the kids do is throw pies at you, and they’re not real pies – just paper plates of shaving foam. It’s hysterical!’

  ‘Oh,’ he says weakly.

  ‘A handsome, strapping boy like you! You’d bring the crowds in.’ She licks her lips in a horribly suggestive manner, as if that might swing it.

  She looks middle-aged and desperate. I feel likewise. In contrast, Darren appears even younger. He shoots me a ‘help me’ look, as if he’s in pain.

  ‘You’d look great in the stocks,’ Bev adds. ‘D’you work out? I bet you do. You don’t get a body like that from lying on the sofa with a bucket of KFC, ha, ha, ha.’

  He cringes visibly. By now it’s apparent that she’s pissed. She strikes me as the type who’s rat-arsed on one glass of wine and says ‘aperitif’ without irony.

  ‘It’s for school funds,’ she adds, leaning over and flashing her perma-tanned breasts. ‘Think of your children’s education.’

  ‘I don’t have any children,’ Darren mutters, and I see his life flashing before him.

  ‘Well, one day you might! How long have you two been together anyway?’ She has joined our table properly now, and her husband is pretending to study the wine list for the millionth time.

  ‘We’re, um, not, er …’ Darren starts.

  ‘No, we’re not,’ I say firmly.

  ‘We’re just, um, you know …’ he babbles, wiping sweat from his upper lip.

  ‘Bev,’ her husband hisses, frantically beckoning her back to their table, ‘I think they want to be left alone.’

  She does a cartoon ‘whoops!’ face and hoicks her chair back to their table. But it’s too late. Nothing feels right. We’re not talking any more. Darren’s eyes look a little less melty. I see him glancing furtively at the glass door as if he’s planning to launch himself through it, leaving a Darren-shaped hole.

  As we pay the bill, Bev is talking loudly about the perimenopause. ‘I’m sure it’s happening, Barry,’ she booms, ‘because my face is getting hairier and I’m plumping out in the middle.’

  Darren and I head for the door. We say goodbye on the corner of Bethnal Green Road.

  There’s no kiss. There’s certainly no prospect of getting intimate with him at any point in the future. I suspect that he’d rather share a bed with ferrets.

  I come home, with pulsating wounds on my heels from my sandals, to a message from you.

  So, R, there’s a slice of my life. Is that enough for you?

  I stare at my words. Seeing the night laid out before me makes me feel even more wretched. What a screw-up. To think I’d assumed that tonight might be some kind of turning point, one of those crucial steps that the magazines talk about.

  I don’t plan to send the email and am just about to press ‘delete’ when Lola bursts into the kitchen and flings herself, hot-faced and sticky with tears, into my arms.

  ‘Sweetie,’ I cry, ‘what’s happened?’

  ‘I had a nightmare!’ She scrambles on to my lap. I hold her close and stroke her scorching cheek.

  ‘Shush, darling, you’re OK. It was just a bad dream. I’ll come up and tuck you in.’

  ‘Thanks, Mummy,’ she whispers.

  I can’t help feeling grateful that she needs me so much; she’s a fine antidote to Jake. As her sobs subside, I glance at the screen: ‘Your email has been sent to rp68@yahoo.co.uk.’

  I must have hit ‘send’ accidentally.

  Holy fuck.

  Lola stares up, her eyes still brimming with tears. ‘Mummy,’ she breathes, ‘you said the F-word.’

  PART TWO

  At Bambino, we believe that childhood is to be treasured. Our children do not belong to us, but are merely on loan. So we should cherish every moment.

  Millie Dawson, Bambino editor’s letter, 7 May

  19

  Caitlin,

  May I just say I sympathise completely. This is the prat who, at the ex-wife’s jolly New Year’s Eve gathering (yes, I actually agreed to attend such an event), saw fit to drink himself into a fury, insult her golf-sweater-wearing ‘partner’ and then attempt to snog her in the kitchen. Despite the fact that she has gone all demure since walking out on me and taken to wearing pie-crust collars. Is that what they’re called? They’re kind of pleated and poke up at the neck.

  So, I am no great player in the relationship stakes either. I’m sorry to hear about Sam and Darren, and for the harsh tone of my first email. I’d had a bad day and took it out on the unbearably pompous Bambino magazine, which my wife subscribed to and which won’t stop coming in the post every blasted week, even though I cancelled the direct debit and keep phoning them in what I hope is a masterful manner.

  I’ve tried to tell them that my wife doesn’t live with me any more. That she’s with a halfwit who talks in management-speak – ‘It’s a win-win situation’ – and dyes his hair to cover the grey, for fuck’s sake. It’s like a bit of her plopping through the letterbox every Thursday to laugh in my face for sending Billy (our six-year-old son) over to her place in age three-to-four pants. They still fit him, so what’s the problem?

  Oh, and that day I emailed you, we’d gone to the chemist’s for nit lotion and Billy had unscrewed the top from a bottle of bubble bath and made a little pink puddle on th
e floor, which he then skidded in.

  Regards.

  R x

  This is eerie.

  I, too, have an aversion to the word ‘partner’ and pie-crust collars, which should be rounded up and burned on some specified date. I reply:

  Dear R,

  I would no more try to kiss my ex-husband than a slab of three-week-old haddock I’d found in a park bin. But I sympathise with you too.

  C

  To my surprise, he fires a reply straight back.

  Hello, Caitlin,

  Do people leave haddock in park bins where you live? Sounds like a health hazard. You should get on to the council. Oh, and I hope I don’t sound rude, but … do you always wear as much make-up as is shown in your photo? I’m not criticising … it’s just I’d imagine your face doesn’t need it.

  Thought I’d share that.

  R x

  P.S. Haddock comes in fillets, not slabs.

  It’s 1.27 a.m. and I am not remotely tired. There’s something about R’s tone that I like. He makes me smile. At any rate, he’s doing a fine job of taking my mind off Bev Hartnett and her stuffed-bunny stall.

  Hi, R,

  I’m sure the PTA mob around here will be on to the council directly. As for your kind comments, I usually favour a more natural look. On this occasion I was taken hostage by a maniac with a make-up sponge and shackled to a chair while the photo was taken.

  C x

  P.S. You’re up late.

  Hello, Caitlin,

  Billy’s birthday tomorrow. Trying to get everything ready. Is anything sadder than the aftermath of a kids’ party with those slowly deflating balloons sellotaped to the kitchen door and bits of cake mushed into the carpet? This year, I’ve decided to take Billy and his friends to the park with a load of balloons, games and unsuitable food. No cleaning – genius, wouldn’t you say? Am hoping that spillages will be eaten by pigeons and squirrels.

  R x

  I type:

  I am concerned that cake will prove unsuitable for wildlife, esp. if buttercream icing is used. However, top marks for allowing your son to celebrate his birthday surrounded by nature, instead of some horrid soft-play centre. I do hope you’re supplying home-made boysenberry flapjacks sweetened with organic apple juice.