The Only Boy For Me (27 page)

Mack comes down for tea on Sunday, which goes fairly well, although hideous tension mounts over the fate of the
last KitKat. I must try to remember to never ever buy a pack of six of anything when there are five people for tea, and three of them are children. I try to make out that I don’t want my KitKat, but this is overruled as an obvious lie and anyway Mack has already eaten his so that still leaves one child KitKat free. Mack suggests Charlie should have it because he’s not been very well. Charlie thinks this is an excellent plan, but Alfie looks close to tears so I come up with a compromise and cut it up into three pieces, with the children watching very, very closely to see each bit is the same size. The result is declared acceptable by the panel and peace is restored. I attempt a bit of bonding with Daisy and tell her that I think her pink shirt is very pretty. She’s pleased and says her mummy has got one too, just the same. But then she adds that she doesn’t think they do them big enough for me, just in case I was wondering.

The children watch a video after tea, and Mack and I try to work out when we can meet next.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could get up to town, is there?’

‘No, sorry.’

‘I’m sure he’d be OK, you know.’

‘Yes, so am I. But I wouldn’t. I’m sorry, Mack, but I’m just not up to leaving him at the moment. Maybe in a few more weeks. I mean, I’m going to be working and everything; I’ll be away enough as it is.’

‘I know. I just want a bit of time with you on our own. Maybe we could get a weekend away before Christmas?’

‘Maybe. Let’s see how it goes.’

I can tell he’s not very happy about this, and thinks I might be being just a little bit too fussy. But he’s trying really hard not to show it.

‘I know this isn’t ideal, Mack. But I’m going to need time to get over this, and so is Charlie.’

‘Of course you are, don’t be daft. Look, forget I said anything, it’s fine. I’ll come down here, there’s no problem.’ He puts his arms round me and we are just about to kiss when Daisy thunders in. She’s furious because Alfie has said that he’ll be sitting in the front of the car on the way home, because Daddy has promised he can, even though it’s her turn.

Mack looks panic-stricken and it appears he has indeed promised both children that they can sit in the front on the journey home. Daft bugger. A small riot erupts and Charlie joins in with great gusto, saying he wants to sit in the front, even though he’s not actually going in the car. I suggest that they stop halfway and swap over; eventually they accept this and Mack looks eternally grateful as he drives off. Charlie promptly bursts into tears and says he wanted to go too, and sit in the front all the way, and he wants another KitKat. It takes me half an hour to calm him down, two satsumas and lots of back-stroking. He falls asleep in my arms, and I am pinned to the sofa and can’t move. I finally struggle to my feet and get him upstairs and into bed. I’m so exhausted I go straight to bed myself, and then get woken up by Mack ringing. He tells me that the seat-swapping plan was not entirely successful, because Alfie refused to swap and clung on to the car door and had to be dragged out. Daisy was furious and wanted Alfie to be made to spend the rest of the journey in the boot. But they’re now both asleep in his bed, looking angelic.

‘The only problem is I’m far too knackered to go to bed and wrestle with them both for a bit of duvet.’

‘What about going in the spare bed?’

‘I tried that last time. The little bastards climbed in during
the night, and it’s half the size of my bed. Actually I was thinking about the top bunk. I reckon that’d fool them.’

‘Good plan. But be careful. Last time I slept in a top bunk I nearly killed myself falling out in the middle of the night. Kate and I took the kids on a narrow boat for the weekend. It was hell.’

‘I bet. What on earth possessed you to do that?’

‘Well, it looked like fun in the brochure, and Kate loves boats. Or at least she thought she did before we went. But it rained, the kids all got diarrhoea and there were millions of midges. The only thing we could find to stop them biting us was Phoebe’s face paints. We all looked like something out of
Apocalypse Now.
All we needed was old Marlon saying “The horror, the horror” every twenty minutes.’

‘Sounds unforgettable.’

‘Oh it was magic, believe me. Now if you don’t mind I’d like to get back to sleep. Off you go and clamber into your bunk, tie yourself to the rail by your socks and lift up the ladder. You can ring me tomorrow and tell me if it works.’

Charlie is not keen on going to school in the morning, and it takes breakfast with Buzz and Woody, and the promise of a special cake for tea – a ‘proper’ shop one – to get him into the car. Then Ted turns up on his milk-float and blocks the drive, and Charlie bolts out of the car and begs for a lift to school on the back of his float. Ted looks like he might agree, so I have to swiftly intervene and claim it is illegal. This prompts a long complicated conversation about whether it might be possible to report the Government to the United Nations, or failing that
Blue Peter,
for its flagrant breach of human rights in banning children from riding on milk-floats.

I spend the entire day trying to book people and equipment
for the piano job, but only provisionally because we still don’t have a firm date. I pick up Charlie from school and drive home via the local petrol station. It’s a tiny little place with only two pumps, which I usually avoid as the old lady on the till is not keen on credit cards because she can’t work the machine. I pull the lever inside the car to release the petrol flap, and it flies open rather more energetically than usual. In fact it flies right off its hinges. I finally get it back on, but it will not shut, and hangs off the hinges looking pathetic, and makes a terrible grinding noise when I try to shut it. The old lady comes out to help, and gives it a terrific whack which forces it closed. But I feel certain this is only temporary. I wonder if the AA would come out for a recalcitrant petrol flap. But I reckon this is probably not what they had in mind when they decided to call themselves the fourth emergency service. Although from Kate’s recent experiences with them, where they took two hours to arrive and tell her they don’t fix punctures before driving off and leaving her stranded in torrential rain, I’m not quite sure what they do mean.

I decide I’d better go to the garage which services the car, and drive along with visions of the petrol cap flying off and injuring a passing motorcyclist, who then crashes into the back of the car and ignites the petrol tank, which turns us all into toast. Charlie senses all is not well.

‘Is this an emergency, Mummy?’

‘No.’

‘Well, why can’t we go home then?’

‘Look, it’s not an emergency but we need to get it fixed.’

‘So it is a sort of emergency then. Good. Bugger, fuck, bastard, sod. You said you could only say swear words in an emergency, so I’ve said them. I’ve got a new word too – do you want to hear it?’

‘No.’

‘Twat.’

‘Charlie!’

‘That’s my new word. I think it’s a sort of twit mixed in with bottom.’

‘Right. Now, don’t say it again. It’s not that sort of emergency. In fact it’s not an emergency at all. You’re being very silly.’

He glares at me, and refuses to get out of the car when we arrive at the garage. I run into the service department and shout, ‘My flap won’t shut,’ while looking over my shoulder to make sure Charlie has not got out of the car and sneaked off to play in the car wash. I realise with hindsight that yelling ‘My flap won’t shut’ to a room full of bored motor mechanics was not a very good idea. Once they stop laughing they all wander out and tut and shake their heads, and say the entire car will have to be resprayed, and the job will take months and cost a fortune. I tell them to stop buggering about or I will let Charlie out of the car, and he’s tired and hungry and due a major tantrum at any moment. Miraculously they decide that one man with a small screwdriver should be able to manage, and the flap is rehoused on its hinges, squirted with oil, and pops open and shut again as if nothing had happened. I thank them profusely and get my purse out to pay them, but they say, ‘Oh no need for that, it’s all part of the service,’ whilst giving Charlie doubtful looks as he’s opened his door and is yelling, ‘I am hungry, I am hungry,’ at the top of his voice. I tell him to shut up, thank the mechanics and get back into the car.

Charlie and I scream at each other for ten minutes, and then move on to an endless debate as to what might be available for tea. We finally get home and I park the car, and Charlie gets out and slams his door very hard. The
petrol flap shoots open, hovers for a moment, and then falls into the flowerbed. I ring the garage and speak to one of the mechanics we met earlier and book the car in for tomorrow morning. Make supper in a very bad temper, and manage to burn my hand draining the pasta. I sulk for a bit, but Charlie doesn’t notice, so I end up whining about my sore hand until he makes a fuss and then I feel guilty for being so pathetic. Bathtime goes on for ever but I finally get him into bed and settle down with a gin and tonic, and promptly fall asleep. The phone wakes me up at around midnight, and the sound of an animal in distress on the other end of the line makes me sit bolt upright and wonder if it’s some sort of weird agricultural crank caller. Eventually Leila emerges from the wailing and says she and James have split up, and she wants to die. Or kill James and then die. It takes me about twenty minutes to get her to stop sobbing, and then a more or less coherent story begins to unravel.

Apparently James had asked her out to dinner, and made a big show of it being an important occasion. Leila had vaguely imagined a velvet box containing an enormous diamond ring. Instead he said he thought he might be ready to move into her house. He’d rent out his flat for six months to see how things went, and suggested they set up a joint account, although he would keep the rent from his flat, as he was the one facing the upheaval of moving. He also suggested Leila might benefit from a fixed amount of money to spend on clothes each month, and then mentioned a sum Leila says wouldn’t even cover her dry-cleaning bills. Leila told him she would spend her money on what she bloody well liked, and he told her she was out of control and needed someone like him to impose a bit of order in her life.

Then things got really nasty and she ended up throwing her dinner at him and walking out. Apparently she was
having risotto, so her last sight of James was one of him picking rice out of his hair. But not the kind of rice she’d originally had in mind. Whereupon she goes off into sobs again. She finally rallies and says she was getting bored of him anyway, but really what a cheek and men are hopeless and she’s going to become a lesbian because women are so much nicer.

‘I think it’s the perfect solution, except I don’t really want to have to cut my hair. I mean, it’s taken me nearly a year to grow out those bloody layers, and I’ve finally got it how I want it. And actually I don’t really fancy women – maybe I could just become a lesbian who has sex with men. Do you think that would work?’

I tell her I think this describes most women perfectly, and she cheers up a bit and says anyway, she’s going to treat herself and go off somewhere very expensive for a week and would I like to come? I say I would love to, but I have to work, and anyway Charlie might prove a bit of a liability in a posh hotel. She seems much happier by the end of the conversation, but I know she’s really upset and I feel wretched for her. I wish I knew where he worked so I could turn up unexpectedly and slap him. I confide this to her and she says she’s already thought of that, and there’s this brilliant company who send revenge-type gifts like bunches of dead roses and gift-wrapped offal and she’s going to call them first thing tomorrow morning. I think James might be in for a bumpy few days.

It looks like the piano job is on. I spend hours on the phone with Barney, the studio, the stuntman and the carpenter who’s making the special piano. I also arrange childcare with a complicated combination of Edna and Mum, and plan to travel home each night despite the three-hour drive. Or four if there are police cars about. The job should be great if it works, but I have grave doubts, and don’t really feel ready to be so far away from Charlie even though I know he’ll be fine. But I haven’t really got a choice if I want to pay the mortgage this month. Mack is off to New York on business and has been so frantic in the last few weeks he’s only managed a couple of overnight stays – which have been lovely, especially last week when Charlie stayed asleep in his own bed all night and we got to wake up together without a small boy stuck firmly between us.

We’ve promised ourselves a weekend away before Christmas, and Mack is talking about Venice though I’m holding out for the Lake District because I can’t face being out of the country without Charlie. Mack calls from the airport which makes me late for collecting Charlie from school. I rush out of the house grabbing my new smart coat, and arrive at school with two minutes to spare. I spot Kate and we stand
near the bushes trying to avoid the PTA woman who’s organising an auction of promises. So far there are tons of cakes, hours of gardening and offers of babysitting. But the committee is looking for something more exciting to attract higher bids. Kate says we should promise to give them fifty pounds if they’ll leave us alone, but I don’t think this is quite what they have in mind. The children start coming out of their classrooms and Phoebe marches over and says, ‘I hate Natalie and that’s final.’ She looks close to tears so Kate takes her off to the car for a debrief and a cuddle out of sight of the other children. I promise to walk James to the car when he emerges with Charlie.

They’ve been doing PE in the hall, and are consequently still in the classroom trying to find their socks. It starts to pour. My new coat turns out not to be waterproof; in fact it’s the exact opposite of waterproof and absorbs water like a sponge. The special detachable hood unexpectedly detaches itself and blows across the playground. I’m in hot pursuit when Charlie and James emerge half dressed from their classroom and join in the chase. Finally Charlie manages to capture it by jumping on it, in a huge puddle. He is very pleased with himself and thrusts the soaking-wet muddy hood into my hands.