Can't Live Without (5 page)

But that was when she thought I had insurance, of course. Without it there was no one to record the devastation for. Except myself. I took the photos anyway. And hoped that one day I could put them side by side with photos of a shiny new house and feel proud of what I’d achieved, and of how well I’d coped.

I wasn’t coping very well now.

My house is of the small two-bedroomed variety so common in Milton Keynes. Downstairs there’s a lounge-dining room with French windows at one end and a window overlooking the cul-de-sac at the other, a kitchen and a cloakroom – or downstairs loo, as my mother calls it. Upstairs: two bedrooms and a bathroom.

I pick my way through to the kitchen, once my pride and joy – Cath Kidston eat your heart out. Pink and blue, bunting and kitsch curtains, my beautiful – if rarely used – Kenwood mixer on the counter. And my wonderful, show-stopping, American fridge-freezer with ice maker and enough room to freeze a dead body or two.

To say the room is unrecognisable is the understatement of the year. Everywhere my eyes rest gives up a new horror, from the blistered, peeling paintwork to the twisted remains of the fridge. And everything is a damp, dull brown.

A glint of light in the corner catches my eye, and I step carefully over the debris to reach it. It is the remains of a glass mosaic candleholder, made from blue and green squares, a gift from my mother. Now it is covered in soot like everything else, and the glass has been bent out of shape by the heat.

Funny, I’ve never really admired the thing before. It was just there – just another ornament. I don’t think I’ve ever even bothered to put a candle in it. But suddenly, vividly, I remember how the sun used to flood in through the window and cause the mosaic glass to fling beautiful coloured patterns across the wall.

The thought makes me unbearably sad.

I stumble backwards, catching my bare ankle on a sharp piece of wood sticking out from the remains of my kitchen table. I cry out as it tears through the thin skin. Pain shoots up my leg. As if this fire hasn’t done enough damage, now the remains of it are attacking me.

‘Bastard thing!’ somebody shrieks. (I think it might be me.)

I kick the table hard, sending black soot flying across the room. A sound throbs in my head like a heartbeat, pounding against my ears, and it drowns out the noises I make as I crash about the room, venting a sudden fit of anger. I kick at the nearest kitchen cupboard, reducing it to splinters and ashes. I lash out at the twisted frame of the microwave, and it falls to the floor with a satisfying crash.

I’m whirling around the room now, sweating and out of control. The release feels good in a weird, unhealthy way, and I attack whatever I can reach, wanting to destroy it all. Perhaps I need to put my own stamp on it again, take back the power from the fire. My whirling takes me out of the kitchen and into the lounge, where I attack the remains of my sofa, my fists thumping uselessly at the waterlogged fabric.

My fury doesn’t last very long. Most of the furniture is sodden and heavy with water. The soot I dislodge flies up into my face and sticks to my tears. I breathe it in and it sticks in my throat, making me cough.

Eventually I wear myself out.

Stop in middle of the room, panting loudly.

Become aware of somebody standing dead still in the doorway, watching me impassively.

Joshua.

Terrific.

‘Oh, hi!’ I say, as if thrashing around a disaster zone on a Tuesday afternoon in June is totally normal behaviour.

Joshua stares at me suspiciously out of those impossibly deep brown eyes. ‘I heard noises. I thought someone had broken in.’

‘Like someone would,’ I answer, sarcastically. ‘It’s not as if there’s anything to steal.’

‘Kids, I mean,’ Joshua says, smoothing his hair back with both hands, a habit I’d noticed on our date last night. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh, you know. Just surveying the damage. Seeing if there’s anything salvageable before the decorators move in.’ As you might have guessed, I have kept the small matter of my lack of insurance secret.

Joshua nods sagely. ‘Very wise,’ he says, and then he stuns me by asking me out to dinner again.

I hear myself saying yes before my brain has had a chance to think it through properly. I guess it’s just that there haven’t been so many offers in the last few years that I feel comfortable turning down someone who is, if a little odd, at least very eligible. When you’re a single mum – especially when you’re a single mum who’s a bit past it, as Lipsy likes to tell me – men tend to be thin on the ground. The only ones who notice you even exist are either harassed single dads looking for some help with the kids or slightly desperate bachelors on the lookout for a ready-made family. Only, they’re not so keen on the ready-made variety that comes with a stroppy sixteen-year-old who has serious issues with her frazzled mum. Not in my humble experience, anyway.

Joshua tells me he’s busy for the rest of the week but can make it next Monday evening. I nod vaguely, my attention wandering back to the state of my walls. When he finally leaves me to it, I plonk myself down in the middle of the floor to think. From my battered holdall I extract the list I started last night. There are only two items on it so far and I’m too embarrassed to tell you what they are. (OK! An American double-door ice-maker fridge-freezer and a Kenwood food mixer. Happy now?) Bonnie told me to think of important things that I really need, and I figure this is a reasonable start, but possibly not what she had in mind ...

Shaking out the pink sheet of paper I smooth it onto my lap and, pen in hand, try again. Think, Stella, think. Well, I’m going to need furniture. Lots of it. And clothes, of course. Proper clothes, not this capsule nonsense. Stuff for Lipsy – a new computer, Playstation, iPod, clothes… A new DVD player. TV. I brush my sooty hair out of my eyes and start to scribble:

CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT

American double-door ice-maker fridge-freezer

Kenwood food mixer

Furniture! (Sofa, dining table, chairs, beds, wardrobes …)

Clothes: see sub-list

TV – whatever

Lipsy – computer, Playstation, iPod, clothes …

Oh my God, this is a huge amount of stuff. It’s impossible to think that I’ll ever be able to pay for it all on my tiny salary. And my chances of getting a loan are slimmer than a Hollywood A-lister – my credit rating isn’t exactly what you would call “prime”. Feeling panicked all over again, I rack my brains for anybody I could ask for a loan.

My poor brain comes up empty. Bonnie’s reasonably well-off but I wouldn’t want to put our friendship under the kind of strain that borrowing money might engender. Ditto Paul. My brother, Billy, doesn’t have a pot to piss in as far as I know – and nobody knows where he is anyway. Which just leaves my mum, and that’s a complete non-starter. Lately, she’s had a bit of a blow in the income department. Namely that her one source of income, my father, has been temporarily removed.

And he’s definitely not in a position to lend me money. Unless, perhaps, I wanted some of the “laundered” variety …

No, I don’t want to talk about my father and his stint at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. I don’t visit, I don’t write, and, if I can help it, I don’t talk about him at all. To anyone. Especially not my mother.

***

Later that day I am curled up on my mother’s sofa watching
Calamity Jane
. After a stressful few hours at the house, I decided to finish my afternoon off with some quiet time watching a silly film. My mother is off doing what she does best – shopping – and Lipsy is out with her new boyfriend, apparently. This boyfriend was news to me but my mother knows all about it and seems to approve. Not sure if I should be reassured or worried by this.

Alistair the lodger is at work being slimy and I have the whole house to myself. It feels great.
Calamity Jane
on TV is an added bonus, and for once I am actually benefiting from my mum’s exorbitantly expensive taste. The sofa is soft, the television flat screen and huge, the duvet made from the feathers of the finest baby ducks.

My father had this house in Shenley Church End built in the early days of Milton Keynes’ development, when his construction firm was raking it in and land prices were still relatively low. It looks grand and impressive, if you like that sort of thing. Five bedrooms, two receptions, study, double garage, etc. “Executive Homes” we call them at Smart’s.

He indulged my mum in everything, and as a result the décor is a showy blend of bad taste and no taste. I will grudgingly admit that my father was generous. I have to: he bought my house for Lipsy and me when my daughter was three and I was desperate – a cheap repossession, and I did all the work on it myself, but still. Generous. Although, I was never sure whether he only bought it because he just couldn’t stand all the noise and the mess at home any longer.

But I don’t want to talk about him.

Just at the point when Doris Day reveals to the man of her dreams that she scrubs up quite well I hear the front door open. Bugger, my favourite bit ruined. I look at the clock. It is just after four and I deduce from this that my mother is returning home. How, you ask? No way on earth she’ll miss
Deal Or No Deal
. She adores Noel Edmunds. Well, somebody has to.

I gather up my duvet and creep out of the lounge, hoping to make it to the stairs without being discovered. No such luck.

‘Stella! What a lovely surprise, you’re home already. Oh sweetie, are you not well?’

She drops her bags on the parquet floor and rushes over to put a hand on my forehead. Why do mums do that? I swat it away and glare at the bags.

‘I thought you were broke. Where’d you get the money to buy all this stuff?’

‘Don’t be angry, Stella,’ she pleads. ‘I know I shouldn’t have but I couldn’t resist. Look, this was such a bargain, half price.’

The object she holds out is so hideous I physically recoil.

‘Urghh, what the hell is it?’

Little black eyes stare malevolently out of a shiny round face. (That’s the ornament, not my mother.)

‘Well, anyway,’ she puts the offending item away – half china dog, half Chucky the killer doll – and produces a heap of fluffy baby-blue fabric from yet another bag. ‘I bought you a present too, sweetie.’ Hands it to me.

‘Thanks.’ Jesus, haven’t I suffered enough already?

‘They’re pyjamas,’ she tells me.

‘I can see that.’

‘They weren’t expensive. And you lost the ones I bought you for Christmas in, you know, the
fire
.’

This she whispers as if I could be physically burnt by the word
fire
.

The last lot of pyjamas she bought me had gone the way of all the others long before the fire – to the charity shop – but I say a dutiful thank you and give her the insisted upon kiss. I have so few clothes I can’t afford to be fussy, and I am actually quite touched. They probably were expensive, as she would never shop anywhere cheap, and the fact that she’s spent money on me that she could have spent on herself is nice. Although, then you have to consider that she has no money of her own and everything she spends goes on credit cards – credit cards that I will probably end up having to pay off for her. Then the generosity pales a little.

‘It’s quarter past four! Come and watch
Deal Or No Deal
with me, Stella.’

That I
can
live without.

I make an excuse and retreat upstairs.

Only to find myself pacing around aimlessly like a caged sloth. This room has remained unchanged since the day I went to university and I’d never considered that weird until now. My eighteen-year-old self stares back at me via posters, books and keepsakes. I know that under the bed I will find a box of cards and letters from old boyfriends, and on top of the yellow-pine wardrobe my old record collection: early acid house, Salt-n-Pepa, Duran Duran. The shame!

My door is slightly open, and when I hear noises on the landing I press my nose to the gap. Lipsy and a person I can only assume is her new boyfriend are creeping along the corridor towards her room, hand in hand, stifling giggles. As I’d only heard of his existence a few days ago, you’ll understand that I wanted to have a good look. I make my eye big and peer at them from behind the safety of the door.

The boy is taller than my daughter by a good six inches, but then she is a little mite so he’s probably not that tall. He has that fine wispy hair that always makes a bloke look younger until he loses it, then he ages really quickly. Lipsy has her face close to his and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so beautiful. I feel sorry for them and jealous of them all at the same time. Her bedroom door closes softly and I smile to myself for a moment.

A very brief moment. Something about that picture was wrong and it takes a few more seconds before it sinks in.

That wasn’t a boy going into my sixteen-year-old daughter’s bedroom. Not some pimply youth interested in Playstation games and football. That – that person – was most definitely a man. A fully grown, red-blooded man, probably about to molest my little girl.

I stream across the corridor and burst into her room, knocking both of them flying as I do – serves them right for leaning against the door in a clinch. How dare he? He stands in front of Lipsy as if protecting her from some mad woman, not as tall as I thought and certainly no oil painting. Oh yes, I bet he thought all his Christmases had come at once when he found this nubile teenager in his arms.

‘Mum!’ Lipsy pushes him out of the way and steps up to bar my progress. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? This is my room, get out.’

I’m gobsmacked. Lately, my daughter has been difficult to say the least but this is the first time she’s actually sworn to my face. I take a step back and reach behind me for the door handle. I need support.

Letting the swearing go in the face of other, more pressing matters, I say, ‘Just what do you think you’re doing, madam? Who the hell is this MAN?’ I say the word with feeling. ‘And what is he doing in your bedroom?’