The Mummyfesto (16 page)

‘Will you be as important as the Queen if you win?’ Alice asked.

‘No. I’m afraid not.’

‘What about like a carnival queen?’

‘Yeah,’ I said laughing. ‘That’s probably a bit more like it.’

‘Right,’ said Paul, bending down to Alice and scooping her up in his arms. ‘It’s up to bed for you now, Missy.’

‘Can we finish
Charlotte’s Web
tonight?’ she asked. ‘We’ve only got two chapters to go?’

‘We can if you go straightaway,’ said Paul, putting her back down again. ‘I’ll read you a chapter, then Mummy will be up to read the last one.’

‘Yay,’ said Alice, heading straight upstairs. Paul put his hands on my hips as he squeezed past.

‘Was your mum OK?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. She was in the house, at least, and she’d been fed and watered.’ It was ridiculous really. How you ended up talking about your own mother as if she were the family pet.

Alice called down for him.

‘I’d better see what she’s up to,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk later, OK?’

I nodded. We had gone to the hospital in separate cars so I could go straight to Mum’s house and Paul could pick Alice up from Sam’s. We needed to talk. Though I really didn’t know what there was to say. I was going to have the tube test done whether Paul wanted me to or not – and I suspected it was not. I couldn’t stop now. I needed answers. And there were still too many questions in my head.

I snuggled with Alice under the duvet when I’d finished reading the last chapter of
Charlotte’s Web
. I loved the smell of her, her warm body next to mine, her little legs scrabbling around, trying to get curled in as tight to me as she could.

‘Wouldn’t it have been good if you’d made an egg-sac like Charlotte, when you had me?’ said Alice. ‘Then I would have loads of brothers and sisters to play with.’

I stroked her hair, relieved that I’d turned the bedside lamp off so she couldn’t see my face. ‘Yes, sweetheart,’ I whispered, kissing the top of her head. ‘It certainly would.’

‘So what’s the question today?’ asked Will buttering his third piece of toast as I closed the lid of my laptop. I asked a question every Wednesday on the blog. Big ones usually, the sort of thing they asked in those Sunday newspaper supplement questionnaires: What’s your biggest regret? What keeps you awake at night? What would your epitaph be? It had taken off in a pretty big way, fuelled by Twitter and Facebook, of course. Today’s question was a bit different to the usual ones though. I was rather apprehensive about how people were going to respond out there in the blogosphere. But not half as apprehensive as I was about how my family were going to respond when I told them what it was and why I was asking it.

‘What would you do if you were Prime Minister for a day?’ I said, pouring myself another cup of tea.

‘Easy,’ said Will. ‘Ban school uniform and homework.’

‘I’d cover the world in glitter,’ chipped in Esme. ‘And make a lot of noise because no one could tell me off.’ Charlotte smiled, but made no attempt to add anything. I had a feeling I knew what hers might be though.

David looked at me over his copy of the
Independent
and raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s hardly the usual sort of question, is it? What happened to the on-the-psychiatrist’s-couch stuff?’

‘We’re shelving it for a bit. We’re getting a campaign going, actually.’

‘What sort of campaign?’ asked David.

I suspected my attempts to soften the ground for what I was about to say had been far too subtle for any member of my family to notice. I prepared for the inevitable fallout from the imminent nuclear explosion.

‘We’re forming a new political party. Me, Sam and Jackie. I’m going to stand in the general election.’

David laughed. He actually had a very attractive laugh. I remembered thinking that when I first met him. But on this occasion the shards of laughter cut me as they fell.

‘Very droll,’ he said. There was a silence. Everyone looked at me. Will realised first why I wasn’t laughing.

‘Mum wasn’t joking,’ he said. David put the newspaper down and waited for me to deny it.

‘He’s right,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t.’

David stared at me. A cloud of bafflement and bemusement masked his features. I was waiting for him to ask me if I was going through some kind of mid-life crisis, as
if this were the thinking woman’s equivalent of doing a Shirley Valentine.

Esme finally broke the silence. ‘Are we going to have another protest where I can shout as loud as I like?’

‘Not exactly, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Mummy’s going to be knocking on doors asking people to vote for me.’

‘Please tell me this isn’t true,’ said David.

‘Why?’ I replied.

‘Because if it is, you’re clearly out of your mind.’

I fished my herbal tea bag out of my mug while I waited for my anger to subside and the hurt to sting a little less.

‘What’s so ridiculous about me standing?’ I asked. ‘You stood in the local elections.’

‘Yes, but that was entirely different.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was a longstanding member of the Liberal Democrats and I’d been to every party conference for thirteen years. You can’t just set up a party one day and stand as an MP the next. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Who says it doesn’t? Anyway, we don’t believe in having to serve your time and work your way up. It doesn’t tend to favour women who have families to care for.’

David put his mug down heavily on the table. Will, Charlotte and Esme were still staring at me. I realised we were having a domestic in front of them. I wished I’d done this differently. Told David one night when the children were in bed. If I was honest, really honest, I knew I should have discussed it with him first, like Sam and Jackie had with their partners. Although he was
giving a very impressive demonstration of the reason I hadn’t done that.

‘So what do you believe in? Your party.’

I decided to ignore the patronising tone in his voice. ‘Putting families first. Speaking up for those who haven’t got a voice. Making this country a fairer, more caring place to live.’

‘We all believe in that. How are you going to achieve it?’

‘We don’t know yet. That’s why we’re asking people for their ideas.’

David rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

‘Well, I think it rocks,’ said Will. ‘It’s the most exciting thing anyone in this family’s ever done.’

‘Thank you, Will,’ said David, getting up from his chair and taking his cereal bowl and mug over to the sink.

‘At least they’re asking people for their views and taking notice of what they say. It’s more than this poxy government have done.’

I glanced at Will’s face. He genuinely seemed to enjoy baiting his father like this, knowing how difficult he found it to be one of Cameron’s bedfellows.

‘It’s all very well asking people for their crazy ideas,’ said David, still with his back to us, ‘but some of us have to live in the real world.’

My skin prickled. Although the comment had been directed at Will it was clear there was another intended recipient. I wanted to fire a salvo back, but I knew that doing so would demonstrate that he had got under my
defences and I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. I also knew that I had an able and willing first lieutenant in Will, who wouldn’t have any such reservations.

‘What, you mean like make promises in your manifesto and then ditch them all as soon as you get a sniff of power?’ said Will.

I took a sip of my tea, mainly so David couldn’t see the smile on my face as he turned around.

He looked at me long and hard. ‘I’m off to work,’ he said, ‘in the vain hope that when I step outside the door I’ll discover that this whole thing has been a bad dream, rather like one of Edmund Blackadder’s, and the world will revert to normal. Not fantastically interesting, I’ll admit. But normal.’

‘Wow,’ said Will as the front door slammed shut. ‘That was better than watching Jeremy Kyle.’

‘He’ll come round,’ I said. ‘I think it was simply a bit of a shock.’

‘Why are you doing it then?’ asked Charlotte. I smiled at her, recognising that the peace-keeper in the family was clearly ruffled by this.

‘Because I believe in it, love,’ I said. ‘I don’t like the priorities this country has and I really do want to do something to make things better, particularly for children and young people.’

‘Can we help?’ asked Esme.

‘That would be fantastic. I’ve got a job for you all actually. To come up with a slogan for our party.’

‘What’s it called?’ asked Will.

‘The Lollipop Party.’

Will stuck two fingers in his mouth, pretending to gag.

‘It was Zach’s idea,’ I explained. ‘And actually it’s better than anything we managed to come up with. We want it to be family-friendly, you see, without it sounding boring.’

‘I think it sounds great,’ said Esme. ‘Will there be games and party bags as well as lollipops?’

‘It’s really not that sort of party,’ I smiled. ‘It’s a party where we come up with ideas about how we’re going to make things better.’

‘You’re not even going to have ice cream?’ she asked.

‘If one of us wins the election, we’ll have ice cream,’ I said.

‘Chocolate?’ asked Esme.

‘Double choc chip.’

Esme’s face brightened visibly.

‘Is there a prize for coming up with the best slogan?’ asked Will, finishing off his last piece of toast.

‘Why did I guess you’d be looking for monetary reward?’

‘You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’ Will grinned.

‘We’re offering an internship working for our party in the summer, actually.’

‘Sorry, I’ve got plans.’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of them,’ I said, starting to clear the breakfast table.

‘That’s because they’re top secret at the moment. Anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of an iTunes voucher.’

‘Oh, you were, were you?’

‘Twenty pounds would be nice.’

‘Wouldn’t it? I’ll run to ten.’

‘Fifteen, and that’s a bargain.’

‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘Fifteen, as long as whoever wins shares it equally with the other two.’

‘But you don’t get anything extra for winning then,’ said Will.

‘Oh you do,’ I said. ‘You get the glory.’ Will smiled. ‘Everyone agreed then?’ I asked. Charlotte and Esme nodded.

‘I guess so,’ said Will.

‘I want some good slogans, mind, in return for my investment. And I want you two to help Esme, OK?’

They all nodded.

‘Right,’ I said, glancing up at the clock. ‘Time for school.’

‘Is Daddy going to be allowed to enter?’ asked Esme, following me out into the hall.

‘He’s allowed, love. But I don’t think he will.’

‘Why not?’

Will and Charlotte looked at me. I hesitated before replying. ‘He’s just not interested in iTunes,’ I said.

On Wednesdays I got to wear my other hat. The nutritionist’s one. People were always amazed when I told them I had three jobs and three children. Words like ‘super-woman’ were banded around. Personally, I didn’t see it as anything out of the ordinary. I knew plenty of Mummybloggers who juggled far more than that and had far more stressful lives. Besides, I only had to look at Sam and Jackie to realise how easy I had it.

I worked for a GP practice in Halifax. It had been my decision. I was well aware that Hebden Bridge was a bubble; you couldn’t live and work there and claim that you had your finger on the pulse of the nation. And the reason I wanted to keep practising as a nutritionist was that I wanted to help people who really needed it.

And as I watched the procession of people entering my room that morning there was certainly no doubt that they needed help. A cruel commentator might have said that it looked like an audition for a fat-camp reality TV show. In truth, a trawl of any high street in towns up and down the land could have produced similar results.

A man called Keith sat before me, the overspill on the chair suggesting that we really ought to invest in a bigger one in order to meet our clients’ needs. He was the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to sit next to on a bus. To be honest, you wouldn’t have been able to sit next to him, even if you had wanted to.

He, like all my clients, had been asked to produce a list of everything he had eaten over the past three days. I read through it: the usual catalogue of processed ready meals, fast-food takeaways and sugary snacks.

‘Do you ever eat fruit or vegetables, Keith?’ I enquired.

‘Oh yeah, quite a lot.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘I sometimes have a Hawaiian pizza, with the pineapple on, like, as one of my five a day. And I always ask for extra tomato ketchup in my burgers.’

I nodded, trying hard to keep my expression neutral. ‘Do you cook at all for yourself, Keith?’

‘Oh yeah. I’m a real whiz with a microwave.’

I resisted the temptation to bang my head on the table. It wasn’t Keith’s fault he lived in a society that seemed intent on covering the high streets of the lands with fast-food restaurants and where the only things you learned to cook in school were pizzas and Victoria sponge sandwich cakes. You couldn’t survive on that. Well, you could; you just ended up like Keith.