Monday to Friday Man (7 page)

Later that night, in bed, I can’t sleep.

Is Gloria right? Will I find the perfect Monday to Friday man? If so, why do I have such an uneasy feeling about allowing a stranger into my house?

9

1985

‘I have this uneasy feeling,’ Mum says to the health visitor, when Nick, Anna and I return home from school. Megan is lying on her fleecy rug in the sitting room, toys scattered around her. Mum said Anna could come over for tea before we go off to Brownies together later on in the evening. I’ve just been made chief Elf and I’m taking my House Orderly test tonight; one of my main tasks is polishing a brass doorknob. I can’t wait.

‘She should be sitting up by now, surely?’ Mum insists, as we clamber past Megan and the grown ups and into the kitchen.

‘Mrs Brown, you’re being an over-anxious mother,’ she says. ‘I see it all the time.’

‘But Megan’s seven months old.’

‘I’m sure everything is fine. She’s a happy little baby. Look at her.’

Mum doesn’t say anything.

‘Try not to worry,’ the health visitor stresses as she puts on her coat.

‘Gilly!’ Mum calls up to my bedroom, after the health visitor has left. ‘Can you come here!’

I emerge at the top of the stairs, pen in my mouth, brow furrowed in concentration.

‘Please.’ There’s desperation in her tone.

Reluctantly I follow Mum into the sitting room and crouch down next to Megan, who looks up at me, smiling. Her dimpled legs look like doughy baguettes and she’s wearing soft pink shoes, designed with felt piglets.

I stroke Megan’s dark hair. Everything about my baby sister is big. She has a round face, the shape of a full moon, deep-blue eyes, chubby arms and legs, a mass of thick hair and a wide smile. Dad says she’ll be a super-model when she grows up.

‘There’s something wrong,’ Mum says. ‘I’m worried, Gilly.’

‘Why?’

‘Watch.’

Mum lifts Megan into her arms, holds her briefly, then places her gently back down on the rug. ‘Did you notice anything?’ Mum asks, staring at me.

‘Like what? She’s fine.’ Impatient, I get up. ‘Can I go now?’

But Mum asks me to watch again. Exactly the same thing happens. I shrug.

‘Sorry – go, poppet,’ she says distractedly. As I am about to leave the room I watch Mum picking Megan up again, rocking her in her arms and then putting her back down on the rug and watching carefully, as if Megan’s about to do something different this time, but she doesn’t. She just flops back down like she always does. I hover by the door.

‘Go,’ Mum says. ‘I’m sure I’m just being silly.’

I nod.

‘And Gilly?’

I wait.

‘Don’t mention this to your father, OK?’

10

It’s Sunday morning. I was out last night, on a date. Anna set me up with one of her work colleagues called Harvey and we went to a new restaurant in Soho. The atmosphere was great, and unlike my last date, who’d turned up in a white top tucked into cord trousers, the overhang of his belly on display, Harvey had style. I am going to thank Anna for this one, I thought, as we flirted at the bar. There was chemistry, no doubt about it, but that was soon killed off when, at the end of the evening, he produced his calculator, saying I owed more because I’d eaten a pudding and he hadn’t.

The telephone rings. Normally Mum calls me from Australia at this time of the day, but it’s Susie. Along with Anna, Susie is one of my closest friends in London. She’s married to Mark, who works in property, and they have two children: Rose, three years old and my god-daughter, and Oliver, who’s four months old.

Susie was one of the first friends I made in student halls. We met in the communal kitchen area, where I was about to cook my boil-in-the-bag chicken and Susie was heating something up in the microwave. She had her back to me and was dressed in a miniskirt and knee-high boots. Her hair was short, almost cut in a boy’s style, but when she turned I could see how much it suited her elfin features. The microwave pinged and out came a little white tray filled with brown mush. She peered down at it and we both laughed. ‘Fancy a pizza?’ she said.

She lives in Balham, has worked in insurance, but is now a full-time mum, but luckily has no intention of leaving London just yet.

‘Gilly?’ Susie says with hesitation.

I don’t like the sound of this already. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’ She pauses. ‘I was out last night . . .’

‘And?’

‘Oh God. I heard that Ed got married yesterday. I’m so sorry. Gilly? Are you there? Are you all right?’

Susie asks me what I’m doing today, telling me that she’s meant to be seeing Mark’s granny, but he can easily go on his own. ‘She had an accident recently. She can’t feel her feet but insists on driving, so what does she go and do? Drives into her porch and knocks the whole thing down.’

I can’t help laughing nervously. ‘Oh God, did she hurt herself?’

‘No! Not a single scratch. Anyway, I don’t have to go, if you want to come over.’

I tell her I’m meeting up with Nick and the children in the park.

‘OK. Good. I just didn’t want you to be on your own.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I assure her, stroking Rusk, curled up on my lap. ‘Honestly, Susie, no one’s died, I’ve still got so much,’ I say, not wanting to scream that I’m so lonely and I
hate
it that he’s married someone so quickly. Bastard. I curse my father for his stiff-upper-lip treatment. He didn’t like it when Nick and I showed too much emotion; he’d send us to our bedrooms to calm down.

‘Gilly, you don’t have to be brave, not with me,’ Susie says.

‘I know,’ I stammer. ‘Yesterday?’ I say out loud, thinking.

‘Gilly?’

‘Good.’

‘Good?’

‘It was raining.’ I smile.

‘Oh, Gilly. It was pouring,’ she adds.

I put down the phone. Married yesterday? Ed hated rushing into things. Proposing, engagement and marriage all within a year was not his style. Maybe he met her when he was still with me? I shall never know.

The telephone rings. I pray it’s not my brother cancelling me. I don’t want to be alone today. It’s Nick, telling me Hannah has caught some bug and Matilda has got lice. There’s an epidemic at school.

‘Keep still, Tilda!’ I hear Nancy scream in the background.

‘Come on, Ruskin,’ I tell him. ‘It’s a shitty day, but we mustn’t sit inside and mope about Ed. I deserve better than a coward who didn’t have the courage to tell me face to face, don’t I? Yes I do. Come on, let’s hit the park.’ Ruskin wags his tail as I get his lead and looks up at me with love in his eyes. ‘It’s just you and me today, just the two of us, my angel, and we are going to have a ball.’

As Ruskin and I enter the park the August sky threatens another thunderstorm. I walk past the playground area, water dripping off the swing seats.

Ruskin plunges happily through the muddy puddles.

In the distance I see someone wearing a hat, trainers and a cord jacket. It can only be him. My heart immediately lifts as I watch him chasing his dog round and round in circles. ‘Trouble!’ he calls desperately.

When I reach him Trouble and Ruskin do the usual sniffing of each other, though this time Ruskin takes it a step too far. At my age I shouldn’t be embarrassed, but I find myself pushing Ruskin off Trouble’s back. He laughs, saying they’re playing piggyback. I ask him what he’s doing out here on such a miserable afternoon.

‘I could ask the same of you,’ he says before replying, ‘I’m trying to train Trouble, but she’s not interested, as you can see.’

I come into my element, remembering puppy-training school all those years ago. ‘Plenty of treats because bribery works, and I only have to mention the word chicken or squirrels and he’s by my side. Watch.’ I demonstrate and he seems impressed when Ruskin bolts over to me, ears alert.

‘The other day, I didn’t catch your name,’ I say.

‘Guy. How do you do.’ He shakes my hand.

‘Gilly,’ I say, ‘with a “G”. Careful!’ I squeal, grabbing Ruskin’s collar and pulling him close towards me. ‘Get Trouble! You need to watch out for that man,’ I warn him.

‘Where?’

‘Eleven o’clock, eleven o’clock!’

Guy turns and locates a man with a grey beard and a figure like Santa Claus, walking combatively round the edge of the park dressed in what looks like a bulletproof jacket and camouflage trousers. Behind him is a large black-and-white dog on a lead that looks more like a prison chain.

‘Thanks for the tip,’ Guy whispers, Trouble safe beside him. ‘Is that a dog or a wolf?’

I laugh. ‘Most of the dogs are nice,’ I reassure him, ‘it’s the owners you need to worry about.’

‘I can see that. I wouldn’t like to meet him in a dark alleyway.’

‘How old is Trouble?’

‘Nine months. She’s not mine.’

‘Oh?’

‘My girlfriend’s.’

‘Right.’ Why did I imagine he’d be single? No one’s single except for Harvey with his calculator . . . and me.

‘She’s travelling at the moment.’

‘Really? For work?’

‘Holiday,’ he says awkwardly, adjusting his hat. ‘Long story. Anyway,’ he continues, ‘my life’s not worth living if any harm comes to Trouble while she’s away.’

I smile, telling him about my first experience with Ruskin and how paranoid I’d been about letting him off the lead when he was a puppy. The moment I did, he’d headed straight for the pond where a little girl was feeding the pigeons. Ruskin had jumped up at the girl with auburn curls, grabbed the bread from her podgy fingers, her mother screamed at me, I blew my whistle, the little girl wailed, Ruskin merrily chomped on the bread . . . and then Ed intervened.

‘Ed?’ asks Guy, enjoying the story.

‘An old boyfriend. He was my . . .’ No. I reject the idea of telling Guy the miserable tale, which ends in him getting married yesterday. ‘Long story,’ I smile.

It starts to pour with rain and Guy and I sprint across the park and out of the gates.

At the zebra crossing we stall, a car driver beeps his horn. ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ we ask at the same time, rain slashing against our clothes.

‘Yes,’ we both reply. ‘Come on,’ Guy says, and we clutch onto one another, running down the pavement with our dogs, laughing as we dodge the puddles.

That evening I drive Ruskin over to see my father with a couple of homemade lasagnes for his freezer. Dad still lives by Regents Park, in our old house along Fitzroy Road. When Mum left us all those years ago, he didn’t remarry.

When I arrive, Dad fixes us both a strong drink, smiling as he says his biggest relationship since our mother has been with the gin bottle.

I sit at the kitchen table as Dad cooks us scrambled eggs. Being here always reminds me of my childhood. In this room I see Dad, all those years ago, cooking eggs for Nick and me on a Sunday night. I was assigned to toast duty, Nick had to lay the table and Dad was in charge of the cooking. I also remember us both getting on with our homework at this table.

I can hear Mum telling us the news about Megan that fateful day when she’d returned from the doctor’s clinic. I sat in this chair, facing the garden window. I recall Dad being so strong for all of us that night.

I look at him now. His hair is grey, his pale skin as fragile as tracing paper, but there is and always has been a distinction in the way he holds himself, dresses and talks. He is a proud man. At home, rarely do I see Dad without a tie on; I’ve never seen him in a pair of shorts. I remember him only once dressed in a pair of blue swimming trunks, paddling in the sea with Megan on his shoulders. Mum, Nick and I poked fun at his white legs, but he was still one of the most handsome men on the beach. Mum said the first time she met our father a thousand lights went on in her head.

Dad has been a wonderful father to Nick and me, but he’s always found it hard to express how he feels. When Mum left, something died in our family. Nick and I were eleven and scared, but Dad seemed almost clinical in his ability to carry on.

We had to ‘brace up’ because we had no choice. But behind closed doors I’m sure he wondered how he was going to cope. Would she ever come back? After losing Megan I think he grieved in private and wished Mum was by his side.

Over our scrambled eggs I tell Dad about Edward getting married.

He takes my hand. In the past few years he has shown more affection, as if he understands now there is no weakness in being vulnerable.

‘Oh Dad,’ I sigh, when he keeps his hand clutched around mine. ‘I just want to be happy again.’

‘You will be. I know it’s little consolation right now,’ he begins, ‘but in time you will meet someone else, Gilly.’

I tell him about my date with Harvey.

‘You will meet someone else,’ he repeats, ‘maybe not Harvey,’ he adds with a dry smile, ‘but someone clever enough not to let you go.’

11

Summer 1985

Dad, Nick and I are sitting round the kitchen table when Mum tells us the news.

It turns out Mum wasn’t being silly.

She had just taken Megan to see a paediatrician, praying she was an over-anxious parent, but he told her that Megan had ‘spinal muscular atrophy’.

Megan has no strength in her muscles, which is why she can’t sit up. She’s not going to be able to lead a normal life, run around like Nick and me. She is nothing more than a ragdoll.

I burst into tears.

‘What can she do?’ Nick says, a question I’m not brave enough to ask.

I can’t imagine not being able to toboggan in the snow, collect conkers, bicycle into town and ice-skate with friends. It isn’t fair that Megan will never be able to do all these things that Nick and I do.

‘Well, she can enjoy being with us,’ Mum replies. ‘She can understand every word we say, so we mustn’t treat her any differently and . . .’

‘Beth,’ Dad interrupts.

‘She’ll go to a special school when she’s older,’ Mum continues. ‘She’ll need lots of love and attention and we . . .’

‘Beth, this is no use. Tell them,’ Dad insists. The colour in Mum’s cheeks vanishes. She shakes her head. ‘Not now,’ she says.