Megan 3 (8 page)

Ellie shook her head.

‘Because my daughter – Ria – is right in the middle of hers.’

Ellie and I made startled faces at each other. So he did have children! I wanted to ask how many he had, and why he wasn’t living with them, but under Mum’s steely glare I didn’t dare.

Jack got tired of his biscuit, threw it across the floor and went under the table to find his duck. We heard a
quack-quack-quack
as he pushed it up and
down between our legs, and then he emerged at the other end – George’s end – and stood up, putting a sticky hand on George’s smart office-sharp trousers to help pull himself up. George looked alarmed and brushed at his leg to dislodge Jack’s hand. ‘And why isn’t this young man joining us for supper?’ he asked.

‘He’s already had his,’ I said. ‘I can’t keep him going that long – we eat too late.’

Jack, knowing he was being spoken about, gave George a beaming smile, and George just about managed to smile back. Jack then smacked his hand on to George’s thigh. ‘Man!’ he said. Or something like it.

‘That’s right. Man! Another word!’ I said delightedly to Mum and Ellie. ‘That’s about seven altogether now.’

I lifted Jack on to my lap and bounced him up and down. ‘Clever, clever boy!’

Jack chuckled, then he turned and reached towards my plate, trying to grab the pizza. I cut him a tiny slice of it and he wriggled off my lap and went back under the table with it. Ellie and I both laughed, but Mum tutted.

‘Megan!’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Bad habits…’

‘Your mother’s right,’ George said, brushing sticky bits off his trousers. ‘Neither of my children were
allowed to eat anything unless they were sitting up at the table properly.’

Bully for them, I wanted so say.

‘Manners can’t begin too young,’ he went on.

Ellie kicked me under the table and I kicked her back. Nightmare! It was going to be like having another Mum – only worse.

‘And so he just moved in!’ I said dramatically. ‘I came home on Friday and there he was taking up half the flat!’

Claire and Josie gasped, giving me all their attention for the first time that evening. For ages they’d been comparing mobile phones, ringing each other and messing about text messaging, so much so that I’d begun to think that without a mobile phone I might as well be dead.

It was Sunday night and the three of us were in
California’s
with all the beautiful people. Josie was wearing a short stretchy black top and snakeskin trousers and high heels, Claire was wearing similar trousers with what looked like a sparkly bikini top. I was just wearing my jeans and a T-shirt.

‘It must be
lurve
,’ Josie said. ‘Your mum must have had some sort of brainstorm.’

Claire nodded. ‘She must have got it bad. Fancy him moving in already!’

‘It’s really weird. I’ve never even
seen
her with a man before,’ I said.

‘Is he married?’ Josie asked.

I shrugged. ‘Dunno. He’s
been
married, because he’s got kids. And on Thursday night he said he slept in his car – so Ellie and I reckon he must have got chucked out from wherever he was living.’

‘Whoo-ee!’ Josie said. She stood up and I saw that a couple of boys had arrived at the bar just in front of us and she was going to try and get herself noticed. This was what the
whoo-ee
– all cute and perky, accompanied by both arms being stretched out – had been about. She’d had another tattoo done – a butterfly just below her collarbone on the right, and the low-cut top drew attention to it. The boys were all eyes, smirking and eyeing her up and down.

‘I wonder what it’ll be like,’ Claire said. She was looking at the two boys, too, but she wasn’t quite as obvious as Josie. ‘I mean, you’ve never had anyone living with you and your mum before, have you? D’you think he’ll be strict?’

I nodded. ‘He is.’

‘Aw, he’ll be all right,’ Josie said. ‘My stepfather’s brilliant! Like – he’s got money, for a start. We were really broke before he came along, but now we go on
holiday and go out for meals all the time and everything. He got me my job at his firm, too.’

‘I don’t want to work with him and my mum in the estate agents, thank you,’ I said.

‘The two of them are babysitting tonight, though, aren’t they?’ Claire said. ‘So that’s something.’

I nodded, thinking that at least now he was living with us, Mum wouldn’t be out so much. ‘When he suggested it, I couldn’t get out the door quick enough. He even lent me a fiver!’

Josie let out a cackle of laughter. ‘He didn’t volunteer to babysit just to be nice,’ she said. ‘He did it to get you out of the way.’

I looked at her, not knowing what she was getting at.

‘You cramp their style!’ she said. ‘Bet your sister’s out too, eh?’

I nodded.

‘Well, then. They want a little bit of nookie, don’t they?’ She glanced over to the two boys to make sure they were watching her and added loudly, ‘A touch-up in front of the telly!’ before collapsing in giggles.

I thought about it. It wasn’t a nice thought. Not Mum and him. In fact, it made me cringe…

‘Bet they are!’ Josie went on. ‘They’ll be at it
hammer and tongs by now. Don’t go home early – you might get a shock!’

‘Just because your mum and dad are always at it!’ Claire put in. ‘I don’t suppose everyone else’s are.’

‘My mum and dad even did it on the stairs, once,’ Josie said proudly.

‘How d’you know?’ I asked.

‘My brother saw them.’ She shrieked with laughter again. ‘Don’t look all disgusted, Megan Warrell. You’ve done it – why shouldn’t they? I think it’s nice that they still want to do it.’

I thought about this; I didn’t think it was particularly nice. ‘Anyway, we haven’t got stairs in our flat,’ I said.

We began to talk about something else. Josie was staring at the two boys openly now. She might as well have had a notice on her forehead saying,
I’m Josie and I’m up for it
. She got what she wanted, though, because after ten minutes or so of blatant staring, giggling and posturing, the boys came over, asked if we wanted drinks, and then went back to the bar to get them.

While they were getting the drinks I found out that Claire and Josie had seen them there before, but had never managed to get them over. I was instructed to
call both girls by different names: Chelsea and Jonquil, to pretend that they had jobs in a PR agency – and on pain of death to keep quiet about the fact that Claire was still at school. I began to wonder where I was going to fit into this foursome.

The boys came back with drinks and sat down, and told us that their names were Pete and Lou. I thought they looked pretty OK. I mean, I wouldn’t have tried to poach them or anything – not that they were going to fancy me in a grey T-shirt which smelt slightly of baby-sick – and not after all the hard work that had gone into getting them over. Anyway, even if I
had
gone for it with either of them I was put straight out of the running by Josie announcing that I might have to go home early because I had a baby to look after.

Pete and Lou turned to me in surprise. ‘Yeah?’

I nodded, embarrassed to be in the spotlight. ‘He’s just over a year old. His name’s Jack.’

‘Phew!’ Pete said, and immediately made a dismissive gesture with his hand, as much as to say leave him out of it.

‘Aah, it’s a dear ickle baby-waby,’ Josie said, screwing up her face into a stupid expression.

‘I got a little brother called Jack,’ Lou said, but that was about the last thing they said to me. The five of
us got up and had a dance or two together, but a bit after that Lou and Claire went up to the bar and started chatting to each other up there, and Pete and Josie began dancing very slowly and sexily, arms around each other.

I sat there for a while, smiling glassily at nothing in particular. Then I went to the loo for ages, then I walked around seeing if there might possibly be someone else there I knew. Suppose – just suppose – Jon had been there. How good would
that
have been? Of course he wasn’t, though. I sat down again, wishing I’d brought a book with me.

I didn’t feel right in there. I didn’t fit in. It wasn’t just I didn’t have my nails done with little sparkly stones sticking on them, or a tattoo on my shoulder, or snakeskin trousers or the latest shoes, it was more than that. All
this
lot were all in some vast, special gang. They could chat up, get chatted up, have dates, flirt, two-time, sleep with whoever they wanted, if they wanted. They had nothing else in the world to worry about except themselves. Me? I couldn’t do anything – anything – without having a big debate with myself first. Should I be doing this? Could I afford it? Could I fit it into my life? What about Jack? Would whatever-it-was affect him?

As I sat there I began to feel sorry for myself. I’d missed out on a big chunk of my life. Never, ever again was I going to be the same as the other girls there. I’d known this ever since Jack was born, of course, but could usually push it to the back of my mind – when I was shopping, or cooking, or cleaning it didn’t matter. Here, though, I had to face up to how different I was.

The lonelier I felt, the more I missed Jack. I watched ‘Chelsea’ and ‘Jonquil’ falling all over the two boys and wondered what he was doing. He’d been fast asleep when I’d left – had he woken up again and missed me? He was OK with Mum if I wasn’t around, but what with the broken nights he was having lately, neither of us was much good at getting him back to sleep.

I looked at my watch. It was only ten o’clock and I’d told Mum and George that I’d be home on the last bus, which didn’t go until five past eleven. I couldn’t go yet. And anyway, hadn’t I been desperate to get out for ages? If I went home early wouldn’t I regret it later, when I was warming jars of baby food or folding sleeping suits or sorting out the airing cupboard?

I sat with a rigid smile on my face, looking into the distance as if I could see something extremely
interesting in the shadows. When any of the four looked over to me I waved cheerily or pulled a face or did something which meant I was having a bloody good time.

By ten-fifteen I couldn’t stand it any longer. Even if what Josie had said was true, it would be OK to go home now because Ellie was due in at ten, so I wasn’t going to interrupt anything. I said goodbye to the others – by true mistake calling Josie by her real name instead of Jonquil – and set off.

Back at the flats, Witch’s Brew had just come out of her friend’s flat on our floor. It was uncanny really, any coming and going anywhere in our block and she seemed to be there.

‘How’s the new addition to your household?’ she asked.

‘Jack? I’ve had him over a year now,’ I said, deliberately misunderstanding her.

‘I don’t mean Jack – I mean your mum’s fancy man. Settled in, has he?’

I grinned to myself. ‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Be getting crowded in your place now.’

‘It is a bit.’

‘Still, maybe he’ll be buying you a new house soon.’

‘That’d be nice,’ I said, opening the front door.

I was just going to shout out hello when Mum called, ‘Is that you, Megan? About time!’

‘What d’you mean? I’m early!’ I called back, and then there was a thump as Jack jumped down from the sofa and ran along the corridor towards me. He made a noise that was something like ‘Moom!’, hurled his arms around my legs and hugged me tight, and I felt the funny mixture of delight and exasperation that I always felt when I came in and he clung on to me. A part of me was thrilled that he was so pleased to see me, but the other part was irritated at him acting as if I’d been to the Himalayas for six weeks when I’d only been out of the house a couple of hours.

George came out into the hall. ‘We’ve had one
hell
of an evening.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘That child of yours. The door had hardly closed behind you before he was out of bed. And d’you think your mother and I could get him back to sleep again?’

I went past him into the sitting room, Jack still clinging on to me. ‘Where’s Ellie?’

‘Gone to bed,’ Mum said. ‘We really have had an awful time of it. As soon as he knew you weren’t around he started playing up.’

I sat down and lifted Jack on to my lap. He immediately put his head on my shoulder. ‘Bye-byes,’ he said.

‘He’s not really been naughty, then – just awake?’

‘Your mother and I were hoping for a nice quiet night to ourselves,’ George said humpily.

‘You’ll really have to ask the health visitor about his sleeping pattern,’ Mum said. ‘We can’t have this night after night.’

‘He was only bad tonight because I wasn’t in,’ I said defensively.

‘But he nearly always wakes up in the evenings now. Several times, sometimes.’

‘It’s just a stage he’s going through.’ I stood up, hoisting Jack on to my shoulder. ‘I’ll put him down now,’ I said. ‘And then I’ll go to bed myself.’

I said goodnight – I’d stopped kissing Mum goodnight over the last few days because I didn’t fancy having to kiss George, too – and went into my bedroom. Ellie was in bed, listening to music on her headphones. I pointed outside and made a face and she took the headphones off. ‘He wasn’t that bad,’ she said. ‘Just running about a bit.’

‘What time did you get in?’

‘Just after ten.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘It was
weird. As I was coming into the flats it seemed… funny. As if it wasn’t our flat any more.’

I put Jack into his cot, laid his blanket next to him and tucked his duvet round him. ‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘It’s because of George, isn’t it?’ I bent to kiss Jack, saying, ‘Night-night, Jack, see you in the morning’ in the right, firm way, then sat on the bed to take off my make-up (which was actually Ellie’s makeup). ‘Maybe it won’t last very long,’ I whispered. ‘Mum and George, I mean.’

‘Bet it does,’ Ellie said gloomily. ‘She’s never had a boyfriend before so she’s going to hang on to him.’

I shrugged. ‘So if she wants him around, what can we do?’

‘Nothing,’ Ellie said.

Outside in the hall I could hear low talk and footsteps as Mum and George got ready for bed. ‘I’m glad our bedroom’s not right next to theirs,’ I said to Ellie.