Mummy Said the F-Word (8 page)

Millie once explained that
Bambino
offers an alternative, infinitely more fragrant universe to the poo-smeared reality of child-rearing. ‘We only put in parenting features to stop mums feeling guilty about buying it,’ Millie admitted, which sounded a bit screwy to me (like a man pretending he reads
Playboy
for the motoring articles). So, once you’ve read some waffle about sandcastle construction, you can get on with drooling over handbags.

‘So,’ I say when she returns, ‘what shall I do with all the leftover letters?’

Millie picks up her bagel, studies it for a moment and jettisons it into the waste-paper bin. ‘I’ve no idea what Harriet does. Throws them away, I suppose.’

All those heartfelt letters? These people are desperate. Surely you don’t spill your fears to a stranger in an unyielding white shirt unless you’re skidding towards the end of your rope? ‘You mean … put them in the bin with the rubbish?’ I ask.

‘Of course.’ Millie laughs. ‘If they’re emails, just delete them. What else would you do?’

I can see her point, but it seems totally wrong. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Five letters a week. How long d’you think you’ll need me?’

‘Three or four months tops, I’d imagine, until the old trout’s better. Honestly, Cait, I’m so grateful for this. You’re really helping me out.’

I know she doesn’t mean it, and that there are numerous writers who’d be far more suited to this than I am. Millie is being a friend to me, tossing me regular work as a distraction from Martin and Slapper.

It might be just what I need. But can I really advise strangers when I’ve forgotten who I am?

With an hour to myself before I pick up the kids from school and nursery, I rip open the bulging manila envelope that Millie
pressed
into my hands. There are dozens of letters to Pike, ranging from immaculately word-processed documents to barely legible scrawls. Some are blotted with food – chocolate frosting, perhaps, or runny egg. There’s an abundance of blotchy, leaking biros. I wouldn’t have thought that
Bambino
readers, with their pomegranate smoothies for babies, would stoop to using
biro
.

I tip the letters on to the kitchen table and stare at the pile. Heck, at least I’m not the only parent who fears that they’re cocking things up. But where to begin? Closing my eyes, I let my hand hover above them, like that of a medium trying to communicate with the dead.

My fingers find a corner of paper. I open my eyes.

Dear Harriet,

Ever since we’ve had our little boy, who’s now a year old, I have felt as though my husband has become a stranger. He often comes home late after work (via the pub) then settles on the sofa, where he invariably falls asleep. It’s breaking my heart. We were so close and in love before Matthew was born, and had wanted a baby so much. Now my husband won’t lift a finger to help, and I am worn out from alternately nagging and shouting and pretending I am capable of doing everything myself. And then, of course, I seethe with anger. I have turned into an embittered martyr, Harriet, and I hate it. Is it any wonder he never wants sex (mind you, neither do I) when I’m so foul-tempered?

Sometimes I think we’re just clinging together for the sake of our son. I am on the brink of asking my husband to leave, but fear that I’d be making the biggest mistake of my life.

What should I do?

Ginny, Lincs.

Dear Ginny,

How the fuck should I know?

Love, Caitlin

No
, that won’t do. I am agony aunt on Britain’s weekly parenting bible, so I’d better dredge up something.

Should she leave him or not? I study Ginny’s elegantly looped handwriting, awaiting inspiration. Nothing. The sea monkeys drift lazily.

Damn, this isn’t going to be easy. Get it wrong and I could be partly responsible for the break-up of a marriage, which, although not rosy-glow perfect, is probably just suffering from a new-parenthood slump. Could Ginny sue me?
The defendant, an unqualified jobbing journalist, advised our client to begin divorce proceedings. As a result, she has suffered considerable emotional distress
.

I fling down Ginny’s letter and rake through the others for a more trivial problem, but can’t find any. Nadia from Upminster fears that she has obsessive compulsive disorder, often hurrying home from playgroup to check that she hasn’t left a gas ring on. Gutted from North Wales found condoms in her boyfriend’s jeans pocket. Guilt-ridden from Derbyshire is planning to move to Tuscany with her married boss and doesn’t know how to break it to her children. It seems that no one has minor concerns. If they do, they don’t bother writing to Pike about them. These women are on the brink of walking out on their men, of leaving their children, of setting their hair on fire. One woman is sleeping with her sister’s husband: ‘I know it’s wrong, and I hate myself every time I’m with him, but I can’t bear to let go of the one good thing in my life.’

She expects
me
to tell her what to do?

Fury and misery emanate from the pile. I can virtually smell it. It’s probably impregnating our kitchen table, seeping into the cracks. With half an hour before school pick-up, I gather up the letters and dump them beside my PC. My new file entitled ‘Prob Lady’ will, I hope, lend me an air of efficiency and purpose. I start to type:

Dear Ginny,

I’m sorry to hear that things are difficult for you. Have you tried telling your husband about how abandoned and desperate you feel?

Oh, please. Spare the droopy counsellor-speak. I delete and try again:

Dear Ginny,

It’s quite clear that your husband is an utter pig.

No, no. It may be true, but it’s hardly going to help her.

Dear Ginny,

The first year with a new baby is never easy. You are exhibiting definite signs of post-natal depression.

So I’m a doctor now, am I? Despite having spent not one minute studying medicine, I have somehow become a world-renowned expert on post-partum illness.

What
do
I know exactly? How to be a secretary in a magazine office and a half-arsed freelance writer? How to paint Lola’s nails, make Travis squeal with delight with raspberry-blows on his belly and apply Jake’s verruca lotion?

I type:

Dear Ginny,

I suggest that you make an effort to meet other women who will understand what you’re going through.

Right, like the hatchet-faced women at Three Bears parent and toddler group, to which I’d hauled Lola for ‘creative play’? I’d decided it wasn’t for me when Chief Bear, a formidable woman in a vast poo-coloured gathered skirt, had emerged from the kitchen bellowing, ‘Caitlin, did you do teas and coffees today?’

‘Um, yes …’ I’d muttered.

‘You used the sugar bowl from the pensioners’ lunch-club cupboard, not the Three Bears cupboard!’

I hadn’t known whether to apologise profusely or start weeping, so I’d just shrugged and tried not to look scared.

‘You used the WRONG SUGAR BOWL!’ Chief Bear had thundered.

At which point, to avoid being bound to a rack and having boiling oil flung at me, I’d grabbed a startled Lola and stuffed her
into
her buggy. As we’d barged home, I’d decided that being trapped in a dingy kitchen with a grumbling fridge had to be preferable to Three Bears.

Anything
was preferable to Three Bears.

I re-read Ginny’s letter, trying to glean inspiration by breathing deeply, like bellows. I feel quite light-headed as I type a reply.

My mind is racing when I set out to pick up the kids from school and nursery. I am hopelessly out of my depth with these problems, but isn’t it better to feel scared – to feel
something
– instead of muddling through each day with a head full of to-do lists and the various ways in which I could inflict pain on Martin and Slapper?

I realise, with a small stab of joy, that I haven’t thought about them all afternoon.
And
I’ve managed to cobble a reply to Ginny’s letter.

In the street, I spot Sam and hurry to catch up with him.

‘You look pleased with yourself,’ he ventures. ‘Something nice happen today?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I say, proceeding to fill him in on my dazzling new career as we stride towards school.

‘Sounds exciting,’ he says, grinning.

‘I think it could be.’

Yes, I’m a fake, and desperately unqualified to meddle with strangers’ lives. I am also free from writing about tongue fur and the gunk that collects between toes.

Which is a step in the right direction. Isn’t it?

‘You’re going to be a
what?
’ Rachel snorts.

Whoops, I must have inadvertently said that I’m plotting a new career as a pole-dancer or an escort. Rachel is the only woman who talked to me at Three Bears toddler group, consoling me over Sugar-bowl-gate. So grateful was I to see her each Thursday afternoon, we fell into a friendship and soon decided to hang out in the park instead, where no one would tell us off. When Martin left, she invited the kids and me round for numerous suppers and picnics on her lawn. Pummelling some kind of dough on her kitchen table, she is a gleaming example of what might be achieved when I, too, become a Proper Mother.

‘An agony aunt,’ I repeat. ‘You know, replying to problem letters that people send into magazines …’

‘My God, Cait. That’s hysterical. No offence or anything, but who bothers to write to magazines?’

‘Desperate people who have no one else to turn to.’ The thought of all those Desperates out there is quite terrifying.

Rachel shakes her head, causing her curls to dance around her shiny cheeks.

I don’t expect her to understand. Over the years we’ve knocked around together, she has made it clear that she believes motherhood is something that comes ‘naturally’, and that it’d be a whole lot easier for everyone if mothers would simply stop whingeing and get on with the job. She has Eve, an eerily well-behaved six-year-old only child, plus a doting husband. I live in hope that a smidge of her sortedness will rub off on me.

‘What are you making?’ I ask, to swerve her off the agony-aunt track.

‘Oh, just pasta dough.’

‘
Just
pasta dough? You make your own pasta?’

‘Yes, it’s really easy. Flour, eggs, water … But never mind that. You, being an agony aunt …’ Her shoulders start quivering again.

I gawp as she rolls out the creamy dough and proceeds to feed it through a steel contraption. Fresh pasta, I ask you. What’s wrong with the dried stuff in packets?

‘Don’t you think we make such a big deal of bringing up children these days?’ she muses.

‘It
is
a big deal,’ I protest. ‘It’s the biggest deal there is.’

Rachel frowns. ‘We’ve never had
any
problems with Eve.’

‘What, none at all? Ever?’

‘Um, well, I do get a bit annoyed when she loses her gym shoes.’

Bloody marvellous. In this family, that’s as bad as it gets. A mislaid elastic-fronted plimsoll. Sometimes I wonder if being friends with Rachel is actually good for my psyche.

I tune into the chatter drifting down from Eve’s bedroom. Even Jake seems happy here, pottering about in the garden by himself. There’s a wooden sandpit out there that Guy, Rachel’s husband, knocked together in under an hour. In this family, everything seems to work as it should. Guy might not be the most exciting man on the planet – unlike Martin, he doesn’t cause women’s underwear to ping off as he saunters by – but at least he’s
here
.

‘You are lucky,’ I say quietly.

Rachel stops turning the pasta-maker handle and tips her head. ‘Oh, Cait. I’m sorry if I sound smug. I think you’re doing a fantastic job, I really do.’ Kindness emanates from her brown eyes. By rights, Rachel should be filling in for Harriet Pike.

‘Thanks,’ I say, unconvinced.

She re-feeds the dough through the machine. This time it comes out tagliatelle-shaped, just like the tagliatelle you can buy at Tesco for 98p. She tosses the anaemic ribbons into a pot of bubbling water. Herby aromas rise from a simmering tomato and basil sauce.

‘How’s Jake been lately?’ she asks.

‘The usual. All mutters and scowls. It’s as if he’s fast-forwarded to adolescence.’

She smiles sympathetically, looking particularly auntie-ish today with her plump face flushed pink from all the winding and simmering. ‘He’s probably still adjusting to you and Martin living apart. It’s nearly nine months since he left, isn’t it? That’s not so long for a child …’

‘Yes, that’s what Sam reckons too.’

Rachel grins mischievously. ‘Been spending a lot of time with Sam, haven’t you?’

‘Don’t you start …’

‘I know you’re just friends, blah, blah, but—’

‘It’s not like that with Sam and me,’ I cut in. ‘There’s no … sexual chemistry. He’s not interested, and I’m not interested, and—’

‘What’s wrong with him?’ She frowns, as if attending to an injured child.

‘Nothing, but …’

‘Shouldn’t you be open to opportunities?’

‘Rachel,’ I explain, as patiently as I can to someone who’s been with her man for 900 years, ‘there
aren’t
any opportunities.’

She sighs and dishes up the pasta into jaunty striped bowls. ‘Rally the troops, would you? I think we’re ready.’

I call the kids and they clatter downstairs and in from the garden, clamouring around the table with a frantic scraping of chairs. Everyone tucks in without fuss, even though fresh herbs are distinctly visible. (In our house, attempting to sneak greenery into a dish is a crime punishable by death.)

‘So much better than dried pasta, isn’t it?’ Rachel enthuses.

‘Yummy,’ Lola agrees.

‘Lovely,’ I say, thinking: sorry, but it feels like
worms
.

‘Who are my aunties?’ Lola asks as we walk home.

‘You only have one real one,’ I explain. ‘There’s Auntie
Claire
, Daddy’s sister. You’ve got your uncle Adam, but he’s not married any more so—’

‘Who’s my agony aunt?’ she cuts in.

I laugh. ‘You don’t have one, sweetheart, and I hope you’ll never need one. It’s not a real aunt. Not someone who’s related to you. It’s a lady who works for a magazine, and if you’ve got problems you can write to her and she’ll try and help.’