The Only Boy For Me (2 page)

‘Oh God.’

‘Yes. She had a lovely time, actually, giving me a long lecture on how terrible one-parent families are. Honestly, I nearly hit her. Bloody old bat, but if you defend yourself you end up sounding like a harpy.’

‘I know. When we registered at the doctor’s the woman on reception threw a total fit because I left the Father’s
Details blank on the form. She gave me a long speech about how Doctor might need to know in an emergency. When I asked what kind of emergency would require contacting a man who’s never clapped eyes on Charlie, she got really incensed and began a whole new speech about Young Women Today. She was really starting to enjoy herself when that nice one came out from the back, you know, the one with short grey hair and glasses.’

‘Oh yes, she’s lovely.’

‘Well, she said, “What seems to be the problem?” and Mrs Hitler began going into one again. The waiting-room was full of people listening in, having a marvellous time. I was just about to slap her, and claim I thought she was having some sort of fit, when the nice one said, “That’s quite enough, Mavis,” and then turned to me and said, “I’m so sorry about that, she’s just started on the hormones and I don’t think they’ve got the dosage quite right yet.”’

‘Oh, how brilliant.’

‘Yes, it was rather.’

‘But you see what I mean. Nobody goes up to women like my Aunt Marjorie and says, “Look, you loathe your husband and all you really care about is money, so don’t have kids, just stick with dogs. At least you can put them in kennels when the novelty wears off instead of sending them to boarding school.” My cousin George is a complete basket case because of that bloody woman, but nobody would dare tell her she was a selfish old bag who should never have had children in the first place.’

‘No, I don’t suppose they would.’

‘Fackers.’ This is a sign Kate is really agitated. She actually means to say ‘fuckers’, but it just comes out like this. She also says ‘super’ a great deal, and ‘jolly good’. And if you fall down the stairs and slice the top off your head she
is quite likely to say, ‘Oh, what bad luck.’ But despite her disconcerting tendency to lapse into a caricature out of
Horse and Hound,
she’s my best friend in the village. We were thrown together when Charlie and James became friends, ferrying them backwards and forwards for tea, and agreeing what our line was on vital questions like bedtime – because if James is allowed to stay up late to watch a special programme, you can bet your life Charlie will insist on the same. But we became real friends when we discovered a mutual passion for fags and gin.

‘You think
you’ve
got problems. At least you married Phil before you had kids. I have to explain how come I’ve got Charlie, but no divorce, and no hint of a long-standing partner anywhere. Am I a tragic victim of fate like a scullery maid out of a Catherine Cookson novel, or a lesbian who got lucky with the turkey baster?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. It’s so bloody unfair. You know, I reckon my two would be better off if it
had
been a DIY job. I mean, Charlie seems so settled, he’s never seen his dad so he doesn’t feel rejected, whereas my two feel like they’ve been dumped, just like me.’

And with this she starts to cry.

‘Oh, Kate, don’t. I know it’s tough, but you love them and you put up with Phil’s crap so they still get to see him. They’ll be fine, I know they will.’

‘Yes I know. But it’s just not fair. It’s not their fault but somehow they think it is. It’s such hard work, and it never ends. And then you get some old bag telling you you’re a monster.’

‘I think they’re jealous.’

‘What?’

‘Well, think about it. If you spent your life with some boring old bugger who treats you like a doormat, wouldn’t
you get a bit narky with women who just miss out on all that and get on with having lovely babies?’

‘Well, yes, a bit, I suppose. But what about Roger and Sally? They seem really happy.’

‘I know. One day our princes will come. But until then I’m fine, you’re fine, the kids are fine, and that’s what really matters.’

‘God, Annie, you sound like one of those bloody therapy people.’

‘OK, try this. Stop whining and make some coffee.’

‘OK. Do you want Hobnobs?’

‘What a stupid question.’

We drink coffee and eat a whole packet of Hobnobs. I tell Kate about the impact of James and his sausages on my morning, which cheers her up a bit, and soon we’re laughing, chain-smoking and planning an evening out soon. We decide on the local pub because at least we can walk home. But we agree to limit our consumption of booze as last time we ended up singing along to the karaoke machine only to discover that the pub doesn’t actually have a karaoke machine and it was meant to be background music. We suddenly spot that it’s nearly half past one and we both have huge lists of things to do, so I race off to do the shopping, desperately hoping one gin does not count as drunk driving.

I ponder on the usual single-parenting dilemmas during the drive to the supermarket: Will Charlie grow up to be a crack-cocaine dealer due to his tragic lack of a male role model? And what is wrong with me that I don’t have a husband lurking somewhere in the background, at least paying child support if not actually playing happy families? How come I managed to end up with Adam, who was so keen on not becoming a father that he chose to emigrate
shortly after I discovered I was pregnant? Actually we’d only just got back together again after a five-year gap, during which time he’d married someone else. He turned up out of the blue one night, and said he was getting a divorce. Apparently she was boring, and I was the one he loved. He had huge shoulders and bright-blue eyes. He was also fond of telling long stories which didn’t really have endings, but you can’t have everything. A few weeks later it turned out that I was the one who was boring, and she was the one he loved. She’d lost two stone and got a new haircut, they had a grand reunion and I lay about weeping.

They were happily settling back into Mr and Mrs Land, when I rang with my thrilling news. He said they’d agreed they weren’t having kids, and he didn’t want one popping up now, thank you very much. And then he got a new job in Toronto. Facker, as Kate would say. But at least he didn’t bugger about pretending to be interested and then never turning up. I truly think I’d stab anybody who did that to Charlie. And once I got over the initial shock of finding myself going solo, it worked out fine. My sister Lizzie was great, and her partner Matt offered to have a crack at the male-role-model thing because I went on about it so much: he even offered to buy an electric drill if I thought it would help. Mum and Dad were pretty thrown by it at first, but ended up being very reassuring, and Mum spent hours knitting. My friend Leila opened a platinum account at Baby Gap, and then the sheer magic and terror of being pregnant took over, and I spent so long worrying that the baby would have flippers, or hate me on sight, that I stopped obsessing about Adam and started obsessing about scans and due dates instead.

I even dragooned my poor sister into coming to NCT classes with me, and they all thought we were a lesbian
couple for the first few weeks and nobody would sit next to us. Lizzie thought it was hysterical, and kept putting her arm round me. The newspapers seemed to be full of articles saying that children from single-parent families are doomed; but then I read a brilliant piece which said if you took out poverty as a factor and compared like with like then children from single-parent families actually do slightly better than their two-parent counterparts. That cheered me up for weeks. And at least I earn enough to support us both. Working as a freelance producer in advertising does guarantee me a healthy income, and I can do a lot of work from home, even if it gets a bit frantic at times. God knows how I’d cope trying to live on benefits.

I’m still sporadically haunted by the idea that somewhere out there is a perfect dad for my boy, who would teach him to play football and do things with wood. But so far he doesn’t seem bothered. He hates football, and seems perfectly happy with Lego. I’ve shown him photographs of Adam, but he only glanced at them and then asked if we could watch a
Star Wars
video. I do get really jealous of women with perfect loving partners who cook and can entertain under-fives for hours with horse impressions. But I know that for every one of them there are at least six women whose partners rarely make it home before bedtime, and can be heard at weekends shouting, ‘Christ. Can’t you get him to stop doing that.’ I must try to remember this next time I’m feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. In other words, tonight.

Safeway’s is hateful – full of ghastly people going round and round saying, ‘That’s only forty-three pence in Asda.’ Why don’t they all bugger off to Asda then and get out of my way? As usual I’ve forgotten my list so I trot round trying to visualise what is in the fridge and remember what
vital bit of bathroom kit we’ve just run out of. Get home to find we now have seven packs of Flora. But no coffee. I’ll have to go to the village shop on the way to school, so I can avoid taking Charlie in on the way home. I can’t face entering a heated debate, yet again, as to why holding your finger over the 8 does not mean an 18 video magically turns into a 1, and is therefore suitable for rental.

Arrive at school to find the other parents are ahead of me, yet again, and the line of parked cars stretches almost to the other side of the village. I park and jog back to the school, and I’m still clinging on to the fence trying to breathe normally when the doors open and all the kids rush out trailing their bags. There’s no sign of Charlie’s class, but then I remember they’ve gone swimming which means that the coach could arrive at any time during the next hour and a half depending on the mood of the driver. It’s pointless to stagger back to the car as I know from bitter experience that just as I sit down the coach will whizz past, and I’ll fail to catch up with it in time to stop Charlie getting off and looking bereft when he can’t see me. So I stand freezing in the playground with all the other mothers, and a couple of dads.

One of the dads is an Older Father, a regular. He’s very genial and on the parish council, so he’s made a huge fuss of by all the mothers trying to stop their neighbours getting planning permission to build extensions. The other father is young and not a regular, and is also wearing a suit, so he’s left to stand on his own in the furthest corner of the playground. One woman spent half a term stuck there in exquisite clothing, until she switched to jumpers and jeans like the rest of us and was asked to join the zigzag rota. She now stands at the gate longing for someone to park on the yellow zigzags painted on the road, so
she can rush over and stick a rude leaflet under their windscreen wipers.

Where you stand in the playground can be vital. Too close to Mrs Harrison-Black and her gang, and you’ll be down on a list to bake a coffee sponge before you know it. And standing in a playground trying to flog slices of your rather flat cake to people who can make much nicer cake themselves, thank you very much, is no fun. I slide into my usual place, skulking by the bushes, with Kate and Sally. Sally, mother of William, who is Difficult, and Rosie, who is Not, points out that Mrs Harrison-Black is lurking by the gate with her clipboard and so we go on red alert.

Mrs Harrison-Black is a large woman, chairman of the PTA, and formidable. She usually wears blouses tucked into pleated skirts with elasticated waists, which make her look like she’s sitting on top of a smallish marquee. Her sidekick, Mrs Jenkins, the treasurer, has taken to dressing in a similar manner. They have matching padded waistcoats, and both drive Volvo estates with ‘I slow down for horses’ stickers in the back window. I’ve always thought those stickers should actually say ‘I slow down for horses but speed up for ramblers’, since invariably this is what they do. A determined-looking mother who does cooking with Year 3 (Hell. Grey pizza, burnt fingers and it takes hours to scrape the dough off the floor) is making a beeline for us, and we are madly avoiding making eye contact and trying to think up watertight excuses when the coach miraculously appears.

Today’s coach driver is a new one, looks to be about twelve, and is practising his Formula One driving technique. The coach races round the bend on two wheels, and screeches to a halt, catapulting all the children forwards in an extremely dangerous manner which they all naturally
adore. Miss Pike manages to stagger off but looks to be in deep shock. She doesn’t normally do swimming, but Mrs Oliver, who usually goes with them, is off sick. I suspect the coach driver may have finally finished her off after what must have been a very trying afternoon. The parent helpers then get off the coach looking like they have just had roles as extras in
Titanic:
soaking wet, shivering, pale-faced and traumatised.

The children on the other hand are Lively, and I bet they’ve been eating sweets on the coach as they all leap off and begin running round and round the playground screaming, and whirling swimming bags above their heads. We parents split up into our usual groupings, identifiable by different parenting techniques. The Come Here Wayne or I’ll Hit You division win hands down at getting their children into the car quickly. The Hello Darling Was Swimming Lovely I’ve Got Something Interesting to Tell You in the Car approach works fairly well, combined with determined eye contact and firm holding of hands, and Kate, Sally and I are off, madly inventing interesting things to talk about. But the dithering approach of Stop That George mixed with attempts to chat to other parents means that a fair number of people are in for a long night.

‘So, was swimming lovely, darling?’

‘Yes, but Miss Pike said I’m never to go in the deep end again, which is totally not fair as I’m a very good swimmer now and that man should not have got me out.’

‘What man, darling?’

‘The man who sits on the ladder thing. He put a long pole in the water next to me and told me I had to hold it, but I didn’t want to. And then I think he said a swear word, and anyway I did hold it and he pulled me back to the side and said I had to stay in the shallow end until I was a bit bigger.’