Why Mummy's Sloshed Read online

  My final anguished bellow of ‘JAAAAAAANE’ as she belted towards a very shiny BMW parked a few yards away from her perilous progress finally got through to her, and she turned around to say, ‘Yes, Mummy?’

  Luckily, in the process of turning around, she took her foot off the accelerator and by dint of basically rugby tackling the fucking electric jeep, I was able to stop it in time before it ploughed into the shiny and doubtless hugely expensive Beamer. I’ve rarely been so relieved about anything in my life, as Jane crashing a car and causing extensive and expensive amounts of damage at the tender age of four would have given Simon endless ammunition in his ‘amusing’ remarks about ‘women drivers’ (this, obviously, was prior to me kicking him out of the car for being a condescending twat!).

  I nibbled my bun and sipped my tea as the hour slowly passed. Seventeen years ago, it didn’t seem possible that I’d be sitting and waiting to hear if Jane had passed her driving test. What was I doing seventeen years ago? Apart from feeling old and thinking I was already a dried-up husk because I was the ancient and decrepit age of thirty-one, which now, with hindsight, seems utterly ridiculous. I’m forty-eight and look upon women of thirty-one as mere babies! They are but ingénues, so hopeful and young, with not the slightest idea of how much cronedom lies ahead of them, or just how much they yet to have dry up. They’re all hash-tagging madly on Instagram about things I don’t understand, like ‘bulletproof coffee’ and kimchi and starting podcasts. Anyway. Seventeen years ago. Baby Music. I used to go to Baby Music on Friday mornings. Every Friday morning, sitting in a circle on a hard, cold, church-hall floor, attempting to pin a furious and writhing Jane on my lap while clapping along with the other smiley-happy mummies to an irritating song about an old brass wagon.

  What else was I doing? It’s all a bit of a blur, really. I walked a lot. I mean a lot. Hours in the park, pushing Jane on the baby swings, feeding the ducks, although of course now you aren’t meant to feed ducks bread, which means already I’m finding myself saying things like ‘In my day!’ like my granny used to, and I’m mildly terrified that the next step is that I’ll come out with some awful casual racism, and when I’m (rightly) upbraided for it I’ll brush it off by saying something terrible like, ‘But everyone said it in my day, dear.’ And if I do it in public, then someone might overhear and I’ll end up in some grim Daily Mail article about Political Correctness Gone Mad, and they’ll misquote both my age and the value of my house.

  There was a lot of pureeing vegetables and carefully freezing them for Jane to reject. I gradually learnt that the more Annabel Bloody Karmel assured me that all children adored some revolting concoction she’d come up with, the more likely Jane was to point-blank refuse to try it. Finally, one day, after spending an hour coaxing Jane to try the revolting sludge I’d spent the previous two hours peeling, chopping, steaming and pureeing, seasoning it only with my fucking tears, I caught sight of Annabel’s beaming face on the cover of the book and something snapped. I hurled the damn book into the garden, then stormed after it and jumped up and down on top of it while screaming obscenities. I felt so much better for doing that, that I did the same to Gina Fucking Ford.

  And then there was attempting to go back to work, when Jane was six months old, and feeling terribly guilty that I didn’t feel guilty about leaving her at nursery to be Brought Up By Strangers, as my mother put it, as she thought it would be far more suitable if I employed a full-time nanny like my sister Jessica did, instead of risking Jane learning Bad Habits from Common Children when she was at a formative age and thus could never be broken of them. My mother was vague on the subject of what Bad Habits she thought Jane was going to adopt, and even vaguer on the subject of how she thought I was going to pay for a full-time nanny. The bliss, though, of stepping through that door and handing Jane over to someone else for a few hours while I went and had adult conversations and used my mind and got to eat a sandwich without someone screaming for a bit and then spitting it over me when I gave them some.

  Nothing makes you appreciate even the most socially inept of colleagues like the alternative being the company of small children. Of course, it was a logistical nightmare trying to go back to work, but for me it was worth it, if just to feel slightly like myself again. The judgement on all sides was hideous, of course – the stay-at-home mummies tutted about how could the dreadful working mothers leave their babies, the full-time working mothers tutted that I didn’t know how easy it was only working part-time, and the other part-timers all insisted their jobs were the most stressful and no one knew how hard it was juggling everything.

  What was Simon doing seventeen years ago? I don’t really remember. I’ve vague recollections of a shadowy figure who required dinners made and complained about being tired a lot, because Jane was a terrible sleeper who was still up through the night until she was nearly eighteen months old. This was despite never being the one who actually got out of his bed and went to see to her, because he had to go to work and be Busy and Important, even once my maternity leave had finished and I was back at work. And when I was pregnant with Peter and so tired I thought I might actually die from it, he apparently found me getting up and down to Jane very disruptive to his night’s sleep.

  With hindsight, I’m buggered if I know how I even managed to get pregnant with Peter. I don’t recall actually ever having the time or inclination for sex, but at some point I must have put out (possibly for Simon’s birthday), because there’s the evidence in the form of Peter, and although I’d never tell him this, he was in fact something of an accident, because Jane almost broke me. Not only do I not recall any sex, I also don’t recall any conversations we had in those days apart from furious games of competitive tiredness, and one night when he walked into the kitchen while I was chopping carrots, when he started complaining about something, I just stared down at the knife and considered plunging it into his heart. I gave serious consideration to how much force I’d have to use. I was even trying to remember which side the heart was on so I could aim correctly, and working out that I needed to remember to aim for his left, not mine, when Jane started crying and the moment was lost.

  Obviously, it’s just as well the moment was lost, as it’s unlikely Jane would currently be out there sitting her driving test had I murdered her father and spent the rest of her childhood in prison, and of course, if I’d done that, Peter would not have existed at all. A lack of Peter in the world would definitely be very sad, but it would probably have done wonders for our carbon footprint as a family, given the amount of food he eats, electricity he uses on gaming and methane he produces, as he’s farted pretty much constantly from birth and shows no sign of letting up. And then there’s the loo roll. We never have any loo roll, so I’m starting to think he eats it. I’m constantly at the shop buying more – I have to rotate which check-out person I go to, in case they think I have some kind of terrible digestive problem.

  And we won’t even touch on his excessive tissue consumption. Part of me thinks for green reasons I should furnish him with handkerchiefs, but the other part of me thinks the polar bears will just have to take their chances as I cannot actually face the idea of washing the dubious matter out of a teenage boy’s handkerchief, assuming of course that he wouldn’t just use his sock in the absence of tissues. I wonder what the menfolk did about such things in the olden days before tissues. Did they just use their hankies? Or their stockings? Leaves? I’m pretty sure interfering with oneself is not a modern-day phenomenon, but it’s not really the sort of thing one can go into a museum and ask about, is it? ‘I’m interested in research into historical wanking …’ Nor could one really contact climate-change organisations and ask for greener alternatives for teenage boys’ self-love habits.

  These thoughts quite put me off my bun, and I realised my tea had gone cold, when Jane erupted into the café.

  ‘I PASSED!’ she shrieked. ‘I DID IT! I’M ROADWORTHY, MOTHER! LET’S GO!’

  ‘That’
s wonderful, darling!’ I said. ‘I knew you could do it!’ I added untruthfully. ‘Did you have to reverse around a corner?’

  ‘No,’ said Jane scornfully. ‘And now I’ll never have to. It’s, like, a pointless manoeuvre.’

  ‘Have you called Daddy and told him?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet, I wanted to tell you first!’ beamed Jane. ‘Also, you know, thanks, Mum. For taking me out to practise so much and everything.’

  It’s rare that your children thank you, or appreciate you, or see you as anything other than the provider of food and profferer of unwanted and unsolicited and, in their opinion, pointless and incorrect advice. But on those exceptional occasions when the blinkers of teenagerdom fall briefly from their eyes and they see you as a person, not just a parent, and they show an appreciation for the role you play in their life, it makes the sleepless nights, the Annabel Fucking Karmel purees, the eye rolls and door slams and the incessant furious ‘Oh, Mother’s spat at you, almost, very nearly, worth it.

  ‘You’re welcome, darling,’ I beamed, feeling like I was, for once, bloody nailing parenting. Of course, it never lasts, either the sensation that you’re getting things right or your offspring being civil and pleasant.

  We left the café and walked over to where the car was parked.

  ‘So, anyway, I’ll be using the car tonight, obviously,’ Jane said blithely. ‘Just letting you know.’

  ‘Errr, don’t you think perhaps you should ask if you can use my car, rather than just telling me?’ I suggested gently.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have to use your car, would I, if you’d only buy me one of my own!’ said Jane indignantly.

  ‘Anyway, you can’t use the car till I’ve sorted the insurance,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Oh my God, Mother, why are you so difficult about everything!’ snapped Jane, our lovely moment well and truly over.

  ‘I’m not being difficult, it’s the bloody law!’ I reminded her.

  ‘Oh, whatever!’ she huffed. ‘Well, can’t you just get it sorted so I can drive to Amy’s party tonight?’

  ‘I’m really not sure about you driving to a party and coming home by yourself late at night,’ I fretted. ‘You haven’t really driven much in the dark.’

  ‘But I won’t be by myself, will I? I’ll have Sophie and Emily and Tilly and Millie. I’ve promised them a lift!’

  ‘How? How have you promised them a lift? You’ve literally only just passed your test.’

  ‘I texted them on the way across the road.’

  Marvellous. So I wasn’t the first person she’d told after all. I comforted myself that at least I was the first adult.

  ‘Jane,’ I said firmly. ‘No. You’re not taking my car out to drive home at 2 a.m. with it full of your drunken mates. It’s not happening. No. We’ll discuss insurance later, but for now you need to go back to school and I need to go back to work. Anyway,’ I wheedled, ‘if you’re driving tonight, you won’t be able to drink, will you?’

  ‘I know that, OBVIOUSLY,’ said Jane hastily, though I could see from the panic on her face that it hadn’t occurred to her that being the designated driver would mean watching her friends get off their tits while she made do with Coke Zero, and that maybe it wouldn’t be that much fun after all.

  ‘Look, I’ll talk to your dad about us looking into how much it would cost to buy and insure and run a little car for you, but Jane, these things are expensive. I don’t have unlimited money to pay for all this, especially with you going to university soon.’

  ‘I know!’ said Jane. ‘I’ll get a job and pay for my own petrol and … and oil … and stuff.’

  I made a note to have an adult conversation with Jane about basic car maintenance and running.

  ‘For now, why don’t you just call Daddy and tell him you’ve passed?’ I suggested.

  ‘I was literally just about to!’ said Jane.

  She tapped out Simon’s number, and next thing a female voice purred down the line. ‘Hi Jane, this is Marissa. I’m afraid Simon can’t come to the phone right now, he’s driving.’

  Marissa. Marvellous. Simon’s pert, lithe, glossy-haired and youthful witch of a girlfriend. I mean, OK, she’s not that youthful, but she’s thirty-eight, which makes her youthful compared with me, and I suddenly felt very hot and I had my usual panic that I was starting to get hot flushes, but it turned out it was just a surge of the burning rage that Marissa provokes in me.

  I don’t know why I hate her so much. I mean, technically, on paper, she’s not a bad person. In fact, if one is to be objective about it, she’s actually a Very Good Person. She works for a company that produces sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics (admittedly in the accounts department, rather than designing the products, which mainly seem to be very expensive water bottles and coffee cups that they flog to yummy mummies to drink soy lattes out of after yoga class), and she volunteers in her spare time with a charity teaching English to refugees, and she does lots and lots of yoga, too, so much fucking yoga, and she even has a three-legged rescue cat, for fuck’s sake, because she’s Such a Good Person.

  But Jesus FUCKING Christ, she’s also incredibly annoying, and patronising. In fact, she’s the smuggest smuggety smug fucker I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter in my life. I’m not just saying that because I’m jealous of her shiny, swishy hair or her colour co-ordinated Instagram grid where she posts every single goddamned yoga workout and the books she’s taught the poor refugees to read in English in double-quick time (in my mind, Marissa’s refugees’ language skills improve so fast because they too are desperate to get away from her smug little face, but they’re probably incredibly grateful and have shrines in their house to St Marissa). She even manages to make the photos of her three-legged cat annoy me, which is remarkable because I love animals, though obviously my dogs Judgy and Barry are much better than her stupid cat. But surely to make a three-legged cat annoying suggests that your smugness is literally off the scale?

  Part of me fears, though, that my hatred of Marissa (who’s even called Marissa? I thought the only people called that were quirky Americans in the nineties, with interesting haircuts and pixie boots, but clearly not) is not so much about her, but is just good old-fashioned jealousy that while Simon has moved on and found someone, and thus is winning at Who Is Better at Being Divorced, I’m still single.

  But for a while I was smashing that game, winning effortlessly.

  I had my handsome and fabulous boyfriend Jack, and Simon had been rather satisfyingly moony over me still, not least because I’d been an amazing and supportive ex-wife extraordinaire, holding the fort at home and looking after his children almost full-time when he took a six-month sabbatical after his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Simon had to go and stay with his parents, who had retired to France, so he could take his dad to medical appointments because his mother ‘doesn’t do foreign driving’ (I mean, in fairness, neither do I, but I also didn’t move to a country where it would be a necessity), and generally support them. I’d also arranged flights for his children to visit him and their grandparents, and dropped off and picked up from airports, and overall just been a very good person. So really it was only fair that Simon realised what a terrible mistake he’d made in letting me go and had suffered for it, especially when he saw how very happy I was with Jack.

  Then, in a move typical of my luck, my perfect boyfriend Jack packed his bloody thermals and buggered off to his Dream Job in Antarctica, just after Simon came home from France. France had suited Simon. He was all tanned and he’d lost weight, and he’d bought some rather chic clothes and was generally looking annoyingly hot, which might have had something to do with the fact that the next thing I knew was that he popped up with fucking Marissa one day. Marissa, all pert and perky and ten fucking years younger than me, which is actually a terrible worry because she’s still of childbearing age, and will be for some time, as my
best and oldest friend Hannah evidenced by finding herself upduffed at the age of forty-six and producing a rather unexpected bundle called Edward, who’s now two and a wrecking ball in human form.

  I don’t think I could actually stand the smugness from Marissa if she were to get herself impregnated by Simon. I just know she’s the sort of person who would beam things like ‘We’re pregnant!’ rather than ‘I’m pregnant.’ Simon once told people ‘we’ were pregnant, and I snarled that ‘we’ were not fucking pregnant, I was pregnant, but if he wanted to recreate the sensation of pregnancy then that could be arranged by strapping a concrete weight to his stomach, repeatedly punching him in the bladder, denying him anything nice to eat or drink EVER, making him swallow acid to recreate the delightful sensation of pregnancy heartburn, then finishing off the experience by cramming a pineapple up his arse sideways and making him shit it out. And for extra fun, I could rip his dick open and sew it up for him. Then I burst into tears and Simon had to take me home, as everyone else at the party was staring at me oddly. I didn’t cope well with pregnancy. Marissa, though, would doubtless glow when with child, and float around in white cheesecloth dresses, smugly stroking her perfect little bump and not getting piles.

  Anyway. I mustn’t let Marissa wind me up so much. Jane asked her to put Simon on the speakerphone, and duly imparted her momentous news.

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!’ squealed Marissa, before Simon could even say a word. ‘You must be so excited, well done, Jane, darling.’

  ‘Er, yeah, well done, darling!’ echoed Simon.