Why Mummy Swears Page 13

  I am not calling her back yet. I am Very Busy And Important, and I have better things to do than dance immediately to the tune played by Jessica and Mum. I wonder if she has only summonsed us so that Daddy and Natalia can’t have Christmas with us. It wouldn’t surprise me. Usually she and Geoffrey spend Christmas on a cruise, but I could quite see that she would take a malicious pleasure in knowing that it wouldn’t even have occurred to Daddy to start thinking about Christmas yet, so by getting in first and summonsing Jessica and me to Yorkshire she will in effect have thwarted any ideas he might have had about spending Christmas with his daughters and grandchildren. Twenty-eight years after divorcing him, I think it’s safe to say that Mum is still harbouring a grudge. Of course, she forgets that it probably won’t have crossed Daddy’s mind to spend Christmas with us, and he has probably booked a cruise himself.

  Wednesday, 23 November

  Feeling fat and bloated and sluggish after a surfeit of surreptitious Mint Clubs, I had asked Alan about his gym. He brightly informed me that they do lunchtime classes that last as little as twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! ‘I can totally do a twenty-minute class,’ I thought to myself. ‘In fact, I will probably go and do more afterwards. A mere twenty-minute class won’t be very taxing.’

  So it was that this lunchtime I picked up my brand new shiny gym bag and trotted off after Alan, feeling thinner already, just for purchasing new trainers!

  ‘It’s called a HIIT class,’ Alan told me. ‘It’s about high-intensity work followed by rest periods.’

  ‘Rest periods?’ I scoffed. ‘A twenty-minute class that included rest periods?’ I was so going to ace this! Back in the day I had often gone to hour-long step classes, with no rest periods. Truly, I thought smugly, these millennials are indeed a snowflake generation.

  It turned out to be a tiny bit harder than I had anticipated. There were awful things called ‘burpees’, and also vile things called ‘squat jumps’ where you squat and then have to jump up. There were jumping jacks, which they literally made us do at school as punishments. It was horrible. And the so-called ‘rest periods’ were about two seconds long, which was just about enough time to reflect on how much you wanted to just die before the torture began again.

  The worst part came at the end. We finally got to lie down and the sadistic bastard instructor shouted that we were going to do pelvic-floor exercises. I brightened at this. I can do pelvic-floor exercises. A nice gentle finish would be just the job, though I hadn’t realised men could do them too. Perhaps it tightens their prostate or something, I thought.

  The bastard man loomed over me. ‘DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES?’ he bellowed.

  I haughtily assured him that I most certainly did. Then recoiled in horror as he thrust a large weight at me. What the actual fuck? Were we … were we meant to … insert it? Surely that could not be safe? Or hygienic? Where would the men put it? On second thoughts, I didn’t want to know!

  It turned out, to my relief, that by ‘pelvic-floor exercises’ he had meant exercises for one’s lower back and core that are performed while lying on the floor. I considered having a stern word with him about misrepresentation, but mostly I wanted a shower and then to lie curled in a foetal position in a darkened room while whimpering. I wasn’t entirely sure my legs still worked.

  As I staggered out, puce and heaving for breath, and Alan smirked and said, ‘Did you enjoy that, Ellen?’ and I wished I had the strength remaining to pick up one of the free weights and smack the smug fucker round the head with it, Mum rang.

  ‘Hello,’ I gasped.

  ‘Oh my God, what on earth is wrong with you?’ twittered Mum. ‘Oh Ellen, you’re not having sex are you? Have you become one of those women who finds fulfilment in sordid lunchtime trysts in seedy hotels?’

  ‘No, Mum, I’m at the gym!’ I protested.

  ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Well, I must say you could probably do with it!’

  ‘What do you want, Mum?’

  ‘That’s not very nice! I’m trying to be considerate and call you at lunchtime after you said I wasn’t to call you at work anymore, though I don’t see that what you do is so urgent you couldn’t talk to me, but anyway. You still haven’t replied to my email about Christmas. Didn’t Jessica speak to you? I need to know Ellen, I need to get that Waitrose order in today! ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?’

  Simon had actually been quite cheery about the invitation when I’d told him, as usually we end up having Jessica and Neil and the gruesome twosome (I mean my adorable niece and nephew) here for Christmas, along with whoever else I’ve happened to see in December while pissed and have decided it would be a good idea to invite, and so Christmas a) ends up costing an arm and a leg because I’ve invited so many people who need to be fed and watered. (Oh God, the worst year was when Simon’s sister Louisa descended on us for Christmas, along with her six unwashed children and her then husband – the appalling Bardo. If I am never grateful for anything else in my life, I will be eternally grateful for Louisa ditching Bardo and pushing off to live in France next door to Simon’s poor parents, so I am unlikely to ever have to spend Christmas with her again. It was literally the worst Christmas of my life – Louisa and Bardo and the offspring were gluten-free vegans who lived primarily on lentils and the effect of this on my plumbing was nothing short of disastrous.) And b) means that I end up getting myself into a complete state because I have put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself and end up screaming at everyone. One unfortunate year I even hurled a tray of mince pies at Simon’s head after he suggested I should ‘just try to relax a bit’. Simon pointed out that if we go to my mother and Geoffrey’s for Christmas we will save a fortune, and also, because my mother doesn’t trust me in the kitchen (she still insists on bringing up an unfortunate incident in my teens when I managed to set some spaghetti on fire when I left it hanging over the edge of the pot), I won’t be running around like a blue-arsed fly, shouting that ALL I WANT TO DO IS WATCH IT’S A WONDERFUL FUCKING LIFE, WHY IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK? He also remarked I might even manage to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, which would in itself be a Christmas Miracle. Also, if we go to Mum’s I can concentrate on work, not on constant emails from Jessica about gluten-free bastarding stuffing.

  So I gritted my teeth and said, yes, Mum, we’d love to come etc., etc., which was when she dropped the bombshell about why they are not going on a cruise this year – Geoffrey’s daughter, Sarah the Wünder Child, the blonde, perfect manifestation of purely distilled smugness in human form, the daughter Mum likes even better than Jessica, is With Child.

  ‘Isn’t it exciting!’ trilled Mum. ‘Our first grandchild! Such marvellous news!’

  ‘Errr, Mum, you already have four grandchildren.’ I pointed out.

  ‘Oh, do stop being difficult, Ellen. You know perfectly well what I mean.’

  No, I didn’t have a fucking scoobies what she meant, I rarely do. I was propped up against the wall of the gym by now, and in grave danger of actually falling over.

  ‘Anyway, Mum, I have to go now,’ I said feebly, while I eyed up the fifty yards I had to totter across to get to the changing rooms.

  ‘Right, darling, me too. Waitrose orders to do!’ trilled Mum.

  I think my legs might fall off.

  Saturday, 26 November

  Jane has been vile today. A snarling, snapping, shouting bundle of fury (admittedly that isn’t that unusual for Jane – it was pretty much how she came out of the womb), but she took it to a whole new level today. I was torn between fretting that clearly Jane was feeling unloved because she was now an abandoned child who might as well be raised by wolves due to her mother’s selfishness, and being utterly terrified that perhaps this was the beginning of the hormonal horrors. I am not ready for Jane to embark on a monthly round of premenstrual rage – she is too young, and I am not strong enough. However, after much spitting, door-slamming, stamping, shouting and screaming, we finally got to the bottom of it, after Peter made an innocent comment about Ja
ck O’Connor in his class and Jane went proper batshit.

  ‘Jack O’Connor is HORRIBLE!’ she shouted. ‘And his sister Megan is EVEN WORSE! I HATE her, I hate their whole family!’

  ‘WTF?’ I thought. The O’Connors had always seemed a perfectly nice family. Oh God, oh God, what if they’re not? What if the children are actually vile and are bullying Jane, and I hadn’t even noticed because I had just assumed the O’Connors were perfectly pleasant on account of driving an Audi and wearing Boden and so being proper middle-class, but actually the children are psychopaths and torment Jane, but she didn’t feel she could tell anyone, because I am a Bad And Uncaring Working Mother (maybe on some level she knows I am pretending not to have any children at work), and so her innocent, childish psyche has been scarred forever, firstly because I left her with a childminder when she was six months old so I could work part-time because, you know, we needed money for luxuries, like food and a roof over our heads, and now I am pursuing my career at my children’s expense, including letting them drop their lovely middle-class extra-curricular activities when they declare themselves bored with them, and even worse not signing them up for more, so now they will never be well-rounded people and, OH FML, I am a terrible mother and I have ruined Jane’s life and IT IS ALL MY FAULT!

  While I was agonising to myself about my many maternal failings, and wondering whether to google how to sensitively and empathetically approach the subject with Jane, Peter cut to the chase and simply said, ‘Why don’t you like Jack and Megan anymore, Jane? Is it because you’re a massive bumhead? Who smells of poo?’

  ‘Peter,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t talk to your sister like that.’

  ‘But she called me Farticus, the Prince of All Farts,’ whined Peter.

  ‘I don’t care! I don’t want to hear either of you speaking to each other like that.’ (Oh God, maybe Peter is emotionally traumatised as well. Maybe I am an unfit parent because I didn’t carry them around in a sling until they were old enough to buy a round in the pub. I had somewhat been under the impression that Peter’s world entirely revolved around food, pooing, Pokémon and insulting his sister, but perhaps he has hidden depths that I had failed to plumb. Admittedly, the last time I panicked about him being emotionally stunted and suggested he could talk to me about his feelings, his response was to remark that he could feel a big poo coming on, but even so.)

  ‘Jane, darling!’ I said, putting on my Caring And Concerned Mummy Face. ‘Tell me what Jack and Megan have done to you, to make you so upset.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ sniffed Jane. ‘And Peter IS Farticus, Prince of All the Farts. Farticus, Farticus!’ she chanted at him.

  Oh God. She was trying to distract me from her pain. Admittedly, by causing her brother pain, but it still counted. Perhaps I should get a Barbie and tell her to show me on the doll where they had hurt her?

  I tried again, still with the Caring Face. ‘You can tell me, you know. Mummy will understand. I love you, Jane, and you can talk to me about anything.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Jane. ‘Mummy loves ME, Peter, not you!’

  ‘MUUUUUMMMMMMYYYYYYY!’ howled Peter. ‘She said you don’t love me! That’s not fair!!!!’

  Jesus fucking Christ. All those bloody articles about communicating with your children, really talking to them, listening to them, encouraging them to open up to you – not one single bastarding article tells you what to do when your children are more interested in winding each other up than having deep and meaningful heart-to-heart with you. All those sodding children in the articles can’t WAIT to tell their mummies and daddies all about their hopes and dreams and secrets and fears. THEY don’t bloody well think it is more amusing to come up with cruel yet witty nicknames and accuse each other of farting! I don’t believe those sensitive, emotionally balanced children even exist. I think it’s like the girls in the Judy Blume books who would rush home in excitement to tell their mums the minute they got their periods. Like periods were a good thing, and something you wanted to talk about! I mean, who even does that? Especially at a difficult point in your adolescence. I think my friends and I were well into our twenties before we would even admit to each other that we had periods. Certainly the thought of announcing it Loud And Proud when we first came on would NEVER have happened. And I’m pretty sure that the last thing Jane will do when she starts is to dash in the door crying, ‘MOTHER, I AM A WOMAN NOW!!’ I do hope not, anyway. That would be very embarrassing.

  ‘Of course I love you, Peter,’ I said firmly. ‘Jane’s just being silly.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Mummy doesn’t love you because you’re not her real child. She found you in a bin,’ crowed Jane.

  ‘MUUUUUMMMMMYYYYYY!’ screamed Peter.

  ‘JANE! For FUCK’S SAKE! Shut UP!’ I howled.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to TALK to you,’ said Jane indignantly. ‘You just said, “You can talk to me about anything.” You LITERALLY just said that RIGHT NOW, and then you told me to shut up. Which is it? You are being very confusing.’

  ‘Arrrgh! Yes, talk to me. I want you to talk to me. NOT to start tormenting your brother by telling him he was found in a bin. Again!’

  ‘It’s not fair. I can’t even say anything,’ huffed Jane.

  ‘But MUUUUMMMMYYYYY!! She said I was found in a bin. It’s NOT TRUE, is it, Mummy? Tell her it’s not true. I hate her. Why can’t we get rid of her, she’s horrible,’ squawked Peter.

  ‘Of course you weren’t found in a bin, darling. Jane was just being silly,’ I assured Peter, as Jane shrieked, ‘You told me to talk to you and now you are ignoring me and just talking to the BIN BOY!’

  Oh, fucking hell. I had a headache now.

  ‘SHE CALLED ME BIN BOY!’

  ‘I WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN! I WISH I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A BROTHER!’

  ‘I WISH I DIDN’T HAVE A SISTER! YOU ARE A BITCH!’

  ‘MUMMY, HE CALLED ME A BITCH!’

  ‘SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP CALLING EACH OTHER NAMES! I AM GOING MAD!’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No buts! NO BUTS!’

  ‘She said, “No butts,”’ sniggered Peter

  ‘YOU have no butt!’ retorted Jane. ‘You have no butt because I unravelled your belly button while you were asleep and it fell off!’

  ‘ENOUGH!’

  I finally restored some sort of order, and tried again, because God knows, I DO try to be a good parent, despite the abandonment issues I have probably caused and the fact I appear to be raising feral hell beasts, not human children.

  ‘Right, Jane. What exactly is your issue with the O’Connor children?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jane sulkily.

  Peter opened his mouth.

  ‘No, Peter, I’m talking to Jane right now. You can talk in a minute,’ I said, ramming a handful of Jammy Dodgers into his mouth to muffle whatever insult he was about to come out with.

  ‘Come on, Jane. Something has obviously upset you. Just tell me what it is.’

  ‘I had a dream …’ mumbled Jane.

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘I said, I had a dream. Megan was best friends with Sophie in my dream and she was really mean to me and she took my favourite Smiggle rubber and told Sophie not to talk to me.’

  ‘Ohhhhkaaaay. Just to clarify, this was all in your dream? Has Megan actually done anything horrible to you in real life?’

  ‘Well, no,’ admitted Jane. ‘But I just said, she was really mean in my dream. So now I hate her.’

  ‘Oh Jane, darling. You can’t hate people for things they do in your dreams. They are not responsible in real life for things you dream them doing when you’re asleep,’ I said.

  I felt a little bit hypocritical as I tried to explain this to Jane, as I have frequently found myself seething at Simon for days for the terrible and iniquitous things that Dream Simon has done (the worst one was when I dreamt that Dream Simon had run off with Dream Hannah – how could
they? My husband and my best friend! I was LIVID with the pair of them for the unspeakable betrayal by their dream counterparts).

  Peter finally managed to swallow his mouthful of biscuits and burst out with, ‘You’re BONKERS! You can’t be angry with Megan and Jack for something Megan did in your dream. That’s just WEIRD!’

  ‘I can so!’ spat Jane. ‘I heard Mummy telling Daddy that she was really pissed off with him about something that HE’D done in one of her dreams. So why can’t I be angry with Megan?’

  ‘Jane, please don’t say “pissed off”, it’s not very nice,’ I said sternly, in an attempt at maternal discipline.

  ‘You say MUCH worse!’ retorted Jane.

  ‘That’s not the point. I’m a grown-up. I’m allowed to.’

  ‘That is so hypocritical of you!’ protested Jane.

  ‘Well, tough. Anyway, the point is, you cannot go into school on Monday in a huff with Megan for something she doesn’t even know that she didn’t do.’

  Jane looked unconvinced.