Julia Gets a Life (12 page)

            ‘You don’t need to worry about me on that score,’ I say.

            ‘What score?’ he asks, looking shifty.

            ‘The ultra keen, ultra critical parent score. I’m about as laissez faire as they come. I have never, hand on heart, walked into school and queried a reading scheme decision. Honest. Though that’s not to say I’m not a caring or committed parent, you understand. I worry about my kids just as much as the next mum. It’s just that...’

            He looks at me as if I’ve recently touched down in a space pod, then laughs in a really wholehearted way, big on decibels and everything.

            ‘You don’t have to worry about me on that score either.’

            ‘I’m sorry?’

            ‘I love the way you say ‘I’m sorry?’ You say it such a lot, too. No, what I mean is, would you have said all that if I’d been a landscape gardener?’

            Gosh, he’s sharp.

            ‘Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know.’ When can I say ‘I’m sorry?’ again?

            ‘I don’t doubt it. Shall I put a CD on?’

            ‘Why not? What have you got?’ This should be telling.

           
He puts down his coffee and moves in a sort of crouch that culminates in him kneeling in front of the pine-effect CD tower. I can see a chink of hairy leg between the top of his boot and the hem of his trousers. Oh! My stomach!

            ‘How about some Puccini?’ he says over his shoulder.

            Go on.
Anything
. Just kiss me now.

            I didn’t get to kiss Howard, of course. Approximately ten minutes after we’d established a moratorium on our parent/teacher positions and had moved to the marginally more comfortable territory of both privately thinking about having a snog but pretending that we just wanted to chat about
Madame Butterfly
, my mobile chirruped. It was Emma, with the disconcerting news that there was a peculiar smell coming from Max’s bedroom and that could I come home as soon as possible in case the house burned down. Our delicate bubble of breathy abandon popped by a sharp prick of parental responsibility, I rattled straight home. Once there, I found that there was a small piece of bacon lodged on the little transformer thingy at the back of the TV. I cast it into Max’s inflatable dustbin, threw out a couple of homilies about eating in the bedroom, then stomped off to deconstruct myself.

            Then I got into bed, read a page of Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and after thrashing about melodramatically for a while, eventually fell into a fitful sleep, my king size divan feeling as big as a field.

Chapter
11

            la la la la la
la

            la la la la la
hum
hum
hum

           
la la la hum hum
hum

           
la la la hum hum
hum
hum
huuuuuummmmmmm

            dum dum
dum

            dum dum
dum

            dum dum
daaaaa
da
daaaaa

           
la la
la
la la
la

           
la
deeeeeee deee dy........

            Yes, all right. I’m singing a lot. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Well, except if you are listening to it, of course, but then that’s your problem. I have to sing. I cannot help but sing. I sing because I am
in lurve
.

            Okay. I know this is patently ridiculous. I am thirty eight and have enough further education on board to know that this is what most (dreary, boring,
unimaginative
) people would consider to be a silly crush. But I just don’t care. I feel like I have a big ball of custard or cotton wool or meringue or fairy lights inside me, and that I can barely contain it. I feel beautiful,
really
thin, and like I don’t need lunch. I feel sexy (okay, horny) every time I think about him, and I think about him every five minutes or so. I feel, in short,
precisely
the way I felt the morning after the first night that Richard kissed me somewhere other than my mouth. To feel that way again is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Poor, poor Richard. Lucky, lucky me.

            Rani is unimpressed.

            ‘What the hell
is
that?’

            ‘That snowman song. You
know
.’

            ‘And I’m Mother bloody Theresa. Can’t you at least learn the words and how to sing in tune, perhaps?’

            I hug Doodles to my bosom.

            ‘Hmmmm? Oh, yes....well, if it feels good do it, I say. Hum hum hum hum hum
huuuummmm
....’

            She gives me one of those looks which are designed to make you feel stupid and self conscious but which never do, of course, because your consciousness is wrapped up in a little bubble of happiness and won’t allow anything that isn’t fluffy or lovely in. Which is why teenagers don’t feel embarrassed about sending each other padded Valentine cards that are four feet high and have cartoon puppies on, I suppose.

            ‘Anyway, your next family is here.’

            ‘Hmmm?’

            ‘And look comfortably off. Next, Gap, M and S
and
Will & Wanda’s Baby Boutique bags...’

            ‘Hmmm?’

            ‘And the children, of which there are three, are all sitting on the sofa with their hands in their laps and
not
shouting, scowling or hitting each other.’

            ‘Hmmmm?’

            ‘And Howard Ringrose called. Would that be he? I said you were busy and would call him back later.’

            ‘WHAT?’

            God, I
really
hate Rani sometimes.

            11.00 ‘I’m sorry, he’s teaching at the moment.’

            11.37 ‘Sorry, he’s teaching. The bell goes at twelve. Shall I ask him to call you?’ NO!  

            12.01 ‘I’m sorry, he’s out on the field. Lunchtime Cricket club. Try at a quarter to one. He’ll be in for his lunch then.’

            12.46 Clients.
Damn!

           
12.59 Clients still.
Damn, damn!

            13.07 ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ringrose is in class. If it’s urgent I could...’ NO!

            14.31   ‘Oh, dear. Playground duty, I’m afraid. Then he’ll be in class till the end of the day, sorry. Is that Mrs Potter, by any chance?’
Damn!

           
15.45   ‘
Helo! Mae Ysgol Gynradd Cefn Melin nawr ar gae. Oes I chi yn dewis gadel neges......
’ Damn, sod, sod, damn.

            17.12   Usher out clients, turn off lights, sling Milo, Izzles, Doodles et al. into toy box, chew nails. Go into ladies powder room (yes, they do still call it that. This is
some
department store) in preference to hiking two kilometres to staff toilets, sit on loo and feel stressed. Must really get a grip. Must also re-familiarise self with primary school timetable, staff rotas etc. Emerge from loo to find Rani putting on chocolate coloured lipstick, swathes of blusher and new tights (after-work date with unsuitable Caucasian
again
).

            ‘Oh, you’re here!’ she says. ‘That Howard just called again. I told him you’d gone home.’

            Ow, ow, ow, ow,
ow
.

            All in all, a bit of a night.

            I got home, late, and in a complete strop, having realised, in a single gut wrenching moment on the A48, that I did not have Howard’s home number. What to do? What to do?

            Once I got there I was greeted by;

             a)Emma announcing that she was going out with her
friend
(plus prefix, three letters, first letter B) and would not therefore be available to have a Chinese take away at her dad’s flat (as per plan which was democratically arrived at and with her full and enthusiastic support) and could I let him know because he wasn’t in his office when she tried to ring him and she couldn’t get him on his mobile and she really couldn’t wait any longer as the
friend
would be waiting on the corner by the bus shelter and thinking she had decided not to come.

            (The natural conclusion to which would be that he would decide he didn’t want to go out with her any more and would take up with someone else from their class and both would refuse to speak to Emma ever again etc. If he
was
a boyfriend, which, of course, he most definitely wasn’t.)

            And b) a really odd sounding message from Lily on the ansafone saying she needed to speak to me urgently and would come over tonight about nine-ish if she didn’t hear from me otherwise. I was just playing it back for the second time (just in case there was also a message from Howard which had inadvertently got corrupted or something) when Richard arrived to pick up Max.

            ‘Which reminds me, ‘ he said confrontationally, stepping on to the
inside
doormat without so much as a by your leave or invitation from me to do so. ‘The Outgoing Message. What have you done to it?’

            ‘I’ve re-recorded it. So what?’

            ‘Why?’ Terse.

            ‘Because it was your voice. You don’t live here any more, do you? It confuses people.’

            ‘Confuses who, exactly? Everyone we know knows who I am, don’t they?’

            He had a face on. That petulant look that he would often get on Friday nights. The look that said ‘don’t mess with me, I’m in a foul mood; I’ve had a bitch of a day’. The look that said ‘will you please tell the kids to bugger off and leave me alone for a while’ and shut itself in the lounge with a beer and the TV remote control while I tootled round obediently and cooked dinner. Well, tonight he had Max,
X-Men 2
on video and the Wing Wey Happy House set meal B.
And
he had to do his own washing up. Well, har bloody har. SHR!

            ‘It’s not the point,’ I persisted, particularly irritated by his aggressive manner, given the compassionate thoughts I’d bestowed upon him earlier. ‘No one’s going to be leaving messages for you here in any case.’

            ‘They might. Not everyone I work with is fully conversant with my personal life, you know. And it might be something important. The whole point of the OGM was that it gave people my mobile number so they could contact me urgently if they needed to.’

            ‘So? I’ve got a larynx. I can give them your mobile number. Or you theirs. Or tell them to ring you at Malachite Street. Is it such a big deal?’

            ‘Yes it is, frankly. It doesn’t sound very good, does it?’