Mummy Said the F-Word

by Fiona Gibson

  All I can think of now is Sam in a sharp suit, his usually tousled hair freshly cut. Polished shoes in place of his usual battered trainers or baseball boots. A gleaming ring on his finger. I wonder if he still has the one from first time around.

  Amelia will wear … What? Not a veil, surely? There’ll be speeches, toasts, lilac sugared almonds in net bags. Jesus. I can feel a feigned illness coming on. Diphtheria, maybe, or a severe nuptial allergy. ‘I’m so sorry, Sam and Amelia, but being in the same room as a tiered cake brings me out in unsightly boils, and I wouldn’t wish to ruin your photos.’

  After the film, we go to a diner with red Formica tables and music blaring from a chrome jukebox. My burger bun feels like a sponge in my throat. Everyone chats about the film, and Lola draws dragons all over her oily paper napkin. Travis blows noisy bubbles into his lemonade, despite my asking him not to. The restaurant bustles with children and teenagers. Free crayons, colouring books and infinitely tolerant waiting staff make it a favourite family pit-stop.

  I gnaw gamely on my burger. I’m desperate to whisper to Sam that Jake wants to live with his dad, and what the hell should I do about this? But with the kids crammed round our table, it’s impossible. If it weren’t for the impending wedding, I’d have called him in an instant. And now I can’t. He has other, more important stuff on his mind, like seating plans and choosing a suit. The thought of Sam in a suit is as ridiculous as imagining Travis wearing one.

  The air is rich with the aroma of hot chips. I can’t even raise the enthusiasm to sip my Coke. He’ll no longer be my friend, my Sam, my anything at all. I have lost him already.

  ‘Hey,’ he says as we leave, ‘you’re awfully quiet today. Don’t say those problem letters are getting you down.’

  ‘No,’ I say, mustering a smile. ‘Nothing cheers you up like other people’s angst.’

  ‘Were you scared of the film, Mummy?’ Lola asks, grasping my hand.

  ‘Um, yes, sweetheart,’ I tell her.

  ‘Silly Mummy.’ She giggles. ‘Grown-ups shouldn’t be scared of anything.’

  It’s 9.25 p.m., and I’m on the threshold of Jake’s room. ‘Hon, don’t read for much longer. I know you’ve got your torch on under the covers.’

  He extracts it and shines its blueish beam in my face.

  ‘Did you enjoy the movie?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replies, ‘it was cool.’

  I step gingerly towards the torchlight. ‘Jake,’ I venture, ‘can I come in? I need to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’ he asks airily.

  ‘You seem so … so angry with me these days.’

  He flicks off his torch, but an image of its beam still glows on the back of my eyeballs. ‘You don’t keep promises,’ he growls.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That photographer. Those embarrassing pictures for that magazine. You said you’d buy us an enormous wonderful thing.’

  ‘Actually,’ I correct him, ‘the photographer said that. But, yes, I suppose I agreed. We’ll choose something … Could you put on your bedside light for a minute? I can’t talk properly in the dark.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need to see your face.’

  He sighs, flicking on the switch. We stare at each other like strangers. ‘Jake,’ I murmur, ‘I know you’ve said to Dad that you want to live with him.’

  He swallows and nods. I detect a smidgen of shame.

  ‘You know it wouldn’t be like your Daddy weekends. Going to exciting places like the Science Museum and the zoo all the time. It would just be … ordinary. It would be homework and light off when Dad says.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ He fiddles with the edge of his duvet. The spaceman pattern seems silly – too young for him now. I should have bought him a new one ages ago.

  ‘Have you thought about Poppy?’ I ask. ‘Having a little girl pestering you who’s not even your sister? Wanting your toys and books?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I delve for something, anything, to make him change his mind. Pancakes every damn day of the week. Unlimited refined sugar. ‘Do you … like Daisy?’ I ask hesitantly.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘D’you really want to live with her instead of us?’ The ‘us’ comes out as a squeak.

  ‘She’s all right. It’s not really to do with her.’

  ‘So what is it to do with? Why d’you want to do this?’ A tear plops down my cheek and I bat it away furiously. Damn my uncontrollable tear ducts. If only vitalworld.com had marketed some kind of anti-blubbing device.

  Jake’s mouth crumples, and he shocks me by reaching out with his arms. I hurry to him, and he hugs me so tightly I want to stay that way for ever.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ I whisper.

  ‘It’s just,’ he croaks into my neck, ‘I miss Dad.’

  12.07 a.m.

  Oh, Cait. I’m sorry to hear what you’ve been going through with Jake. It must be awful for you. Billy and I had a similar situation. He spent a short time last summer with his mother, having assumed that life with her would be filled with sunshine and chocolate instead of being trapped with his grumpy father and nagged to eat his greens.

  Unfortunately, Jacqui’s new boyfriend had just moved in. He’s a kind of male Harriet Pike, from what I can gather – a strict, no-nonsense, show-kids-who’s-boss type (having no children of his own, naturally!).

  For us, as I hope it is for you, it turned out to be a trial separation. I think Billy had wanted to flex his muscles and kick against me. Three weeks in the love nest proved more than enough. Believe me, Jake wanting to live with his dad doesn’t mean he loves you any less. You are brave for letting him go and I’m sure in time that he will respect that. It might even bring you closer in the long run. And he’ll probably find that he misses you more than he expected.

  Heck, what do I know? You’re the agony aunt!

  Your friend,

  R x

  I’m poised to type that I’ve changed my mind, that I would like us to meet after all. Just for coffee. It won’t mean anything. I’m just curious, that’s all. I need to figure out how he manages to say the right things.

  No one makes me feel better the way he does. Millie doesn’t get it, Sam’s out of bounds now, and it doesn’t feel right to share Jake’s imminent departure with Rachel. ‘We’ve never had any problems with Eve,’ she admitted. How could she possibly understand?

  R knows what it’s like, and I want to make him real.

  I remember Millie’s words: ‘Harriet had email stalkers desperate to be her friend.’

  Obscene missives. Cling-filmed packages of pubic hair. R isn’t like that. He can’t be. Surely I’d know by now?

  My index fingers twitch as one of the kids – Lola, I think – calls out softly in her sleep. All I type is:

  Thanks, R. I knew you’d understand.

  C x

  27

  So many times I’ve imagined the scene as one by one my children flee our family nest. Jake would be first. We’d have packed his belongings in boxes, and I’d have assembled all manner of essentials: bed linen, pans, crockery, one of those studenty cookbooks that details the importance of vitamins and minerals and includes ‘Twenty-Five Ways With a Jacket Potato’, as if this would insure him against rickets and scurvy. I would drive him to his student accommodation and meet his roommates: boys who’d look as if they’d be up for plenty of larking about, but not so far as distracting Jake from his studies or forcing class-A drugs on to him. We’d have had a little chat about dope being OK-ish, but that anything else was seriously scary. He’d roll his eyes in a ‘Yeah, Mum’ kind of way.

  I would drive away feeling sad – probably weeping gently, picturesquely – yet find comfort in the fact that my first-born had blossomed into a bright, independent young man.

  That’s how it’s meant to be. Not like this. For one thing, it’s happening around eight years too soon.

  ‘Cait, are you there?’ Sam’s voice is dulled by the answerpho
ne. ‘Haven’t seen you all week. Hope you’re OK … Bit worried … Look, Amelia’s coming up for the weekend. She wondered – we wondered – if you’re not doing anything, maybe we could all get together, have a picnic in the park or something if the weather holds out, maybe drive over to the heath … Anyway, call me.’

  I fold Jake’s freshly washed football kit and place it in one of the boxes I cadged from the corner shop. Although he’s insisted that he’ll need it, he clearly despises the sport. Every time I have watched him play, he has mooched around the edge of the pitch, gazing at clouds or biting the raggedy skin around his fingernails. Yet when I’ve suggested that he doesn’t have to go – that he can give it up whenever he likes – he brushes me off.

  The phone trills again.

  ‘Cait, hon, it’s me. Are you there?’

  This time I pick up. ‘Millie, hi.’

  ‘You sound harassed, sweetie. Everything OK?’

  I’m surrounded by boxes containing Jake’s precious things. There’s still tons of stuff in his room. He said that he’ll sort through it some other time, which offers a fragment of hope.

  ‘You know Jake’s decided to live with Martin?’ I tell her. ‘Well, I’m just packing up his stuff. It feels so weird, Millie.’

  ‘Oh, Cait.’ She sighs, allowing a respectful silence, as if I have announced the death of a pet. ‘Still, at least he won’t be too far away.’

  ‘That’s not really the point …’

  ‘And you’ll still see him at weekends, won’t you, like Martin does now? It’ll just be the other way round.’

  Such empathy. And what will those weekends be like? R has advised me to play them down, not to cram every second with fun. ‘I hated the idea of being one of those Saturday dads,’ he told me, ‘who bustles his kid from football match to theme park but doesn’t make time for normal stuff, like sharing a baguette in the park. So we fell into a pattern of doing simple things – just being ordinary father and son – and I think that brought us closer again.’

  ‘Millie,’ I say, ‘I really need to get finished here …’

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ she announces. ‘Just wanted to say I’m so pleased with your pages and I was thinking you could maybe do more stuff for us.’

  ‘Yes, fine, can we talk about it another—’

  ‘What I want to do is exploit you.’

  ‘Huh?’

  She laughs, having the decency to sound embarrassed. ‘Not horribly. Not in a bad way. I mean, make the most of your talents … To be honest, you’re just what we’ve needed: a writer who actually has children and understands what it’s like.’

  Well, hello!

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’ I ask, as Lola saunters into the kitchen, drops her ancient teddy into one of Jake’s boxes and plonks herself on a chair, swinging her legs idly.

  ‘Just a few little soundbites,’ Millie explains. ‘Words of wisdom that we can scatter through the magazine with a dotted line and little scissor thingies.’

  Dotted lines and scissor thingies. Millie is paid vast wodges of cash to come up with such ground-breaking concepts. ‘You mean for readers to cut out and keep?’

  ‘Yeah! That’s it exactly. And stick on their fridge or whatever. We could call them something like, like … “Caitlin’s Nuggets”. And whenever they’re having a stressy moment with the kids, like a tantrum or something, they can glance at your soundbite and it’ll make them feel instantly better. Does that sound OK?’

  ‘“Caitlin’s nuggets,”’ I repeat flatly.

  ‘Just a working title. “Nuggets” isn’t right. Ideally, it’d be another C-word so it rolls off the tongue – “Caitlin’s Corkers” or something … Can you think of a C-word?’

  Not one that I can utter in the presence of my daughter. ‘“Chunks”?’ I suggest to get her off the phone.

  ‘“Caitlin’s Chunks” … Nope, that’s not right. How about “lumps”?’

  ‘“Caitlin’s Lumps”? Jesus, Millie, it sounds like a disease.’

  ‘Hmm. I really like “nuggets”. Shame your name doesn’t start with an “n”.’

  ‘I’ll just change it, shall I?’

  ‘I was joking, sweetie,’ Millie says, sounding hurt.

  ‘Sorry. I’m just not feeling very inspired right now. Can I think it over when I’ve helped Jake to pack up and leave home and everything?’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. I’ve called at a really bad time. I was going to tell you about that advertising man I went out with, but maybe we could meet up in the week.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that.’

  Lola eyes me as I finish the call. ‘Have you got a disease?’ she enquires.

  After dinner, we drive to Jake’s sumptuous new abode.

  ‘I can do cartwheels,’ Lola announces from the back seat. ‘Shall I show you, Jake?’

  ‘What, in the car?’ he sneers.

  ‘I mean when we get to Dad’s,’ she says sheepishly.

  No response.

  ‘Jake?’ she tries again. ‘D’you want to see my gymnastics?’

  ‘Could you answer her, Jake?’ I mutter. He sighs dramatically. He is sitting beside me in the passenger seat, staring pointedly out of the side window.

  ‘Jake!’ Her voice peaks in desperation.

  Poor Lola. It’s as if she, like me, can’t bear to let him go. No one ignored Jake when he was Lola’s age. Martin and I would pore over every page in his homework jotter and laugh uproariously at his jokes. If he’d been able to do a cartwheel, we’d probably have videoed it and invited our friends round for a special screening.

  ‘You can show me,’ I murmur, ‘when you’re back from Dad’s on Sunday night.’

  Lola digests this. ‘Why are you taking us to Dad’s? It’s usually Daddy that gets us.’

  ‘I just …’ I begin, realising I can’t tell her that I have to see Martin’s flat – Jake’s new home – for myself. I need to place him in it and picture him there when I’ve gone. ‘We just thought it’d be easier,’ I say lightly.

  And it’s not sumptuous. Martin and famille reside on the third floor of a flimsy-looking development built in sickly-yellow brick. (You say ‘development’ these days, never ‘estate’.) It looks cheap and bleak, and is called Garfield Court, which makes me think of an over-stuffed tangerine cat. Surely Slapper must have insisted on moving here. It doesn’t look like somewhere Martin, architect supremo, would choose to live.

  I buzz the intercom and he lopes downstairs to greet us. ‘Hi, guys,’ he says with a skewed grin, as if this were any ordinary Friday evening. He leads the way upstairs, laden with the heaviest of Jake’s boxes, explaining, ‘Sorry, lift’s broken.’ Surely it’s too new to be broken? The stairwell smells of fresh plaster and is stark white, the kind that dazzles your eyes.

  ‘Hi, everyone! Come in.’ Daisy flicks a tense smile at me, which I return. She hovers in the hall for a moment, clutching a plate of toast, as if she’s forgotten what she’d planned to do with it. Although she’s fully made up, with rather too much coral-coloured blusher, her lips are pale and her eyes faintly bloodshot, as if we’ve arrived during the aftermath of a row.

  ‘Hi,’ I say curtly, busying myself by ensuring that everyone takes off their shoes.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ she insists, but I sense that this is a shoes-off kind of flat. The last thing I want is for her to complain to Martin that we lack manners. We follow her into the living room, where the only decorative item is an outsized mirror on the cream wall, which must come in handy for Slapper’s constant preening. Sofa, curtains, fluffy rug – all are palest cream. Poppy’s toys are presumably banned from seeping out of her bedroom and polluting the rest of the flat.

  ‘Shall we take your things into your room, Jake?’ Daisy asks eagerly.

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ He seems at ease here and has already tossed his (non-cream) jacket on to the back of the sofa, thus marring the muted colour scheme. Good.

  Poppy steps tentatively out of a bedroom and quickly scuttles ba
ck in.

  ‘It’s very, um, compact, isn’t it?’ I remark as Daisy shows us into Jake’s new sleeping quarters.

  ‘Well, we’ve made it as nice as we could. New bed and chest of drawers, though we couldn’t fit in any shelves, Jake, and I know you’re a bookworm.’ She giggles unnecessarily. ‘Perhaps we can find some boxes to fit under the bed.’

  ‘All right,’ he murmurs. The duvet cover is striped purple and grey, typically boyish, and is slightly stiff to the touch, indicating newness. And the room smells new, faintly chemical. It’s so insipid, and clearly furnished in a hurry, that I can’t dredge up one positive thing to say about it. This is where Jake wants to be. Away from the mess, the clutter and the sea monkeys and, presumably, me. My stomach feels like a hollow pit.

  ‘Is this what you’re reading these days?’ Martin asks needlessly, marching in behind us and swiping one of the novels that Jake has tipped on to the bed.

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ he says quietly. He flicks me an anxious glance and I try for a reassuring smile. Then The Simpsons theme tune kicks in and he seems to forget the enormity of what’s going on and flees to the living room, away from all these self-conscious adults.

  Martin creeps away and Daisy and I look at each other. She’s wearing skinny jeans and a grey felted top that skims her youthful figure. Mercifully, her breasts aren’t on obvious display.

  ‘Caitlin …’ she begins, and her cheeks flush prettily.

  Don’t say you’re sorry, or that you’ll take good care of my son, or my tear ducts will spurt into action right here in this crappy cardboard flat.

  ‘That email I sent …’ she adds, lowering her gaze to the biscuit-coloured carpet.

  ‘I was surprised,’ I say coolly. ‘I mean, we’ve never really spoken, have we? Not properly.’ Please don’t start on about your relationship troubles. Not with me, not now – not ever.

  Daisy smiles weakly. ‘I wanted you to know how things are with us. I thought it was important, if Jake was going to come and live here.’