Why Mummy Swears Read online

  Simon looked blank. ‘Did he?’

  I sighed. ‘No, of course you don’t remember. You weren’t here. You were on yet another trip, which was why I was dealing with everything by myself, yet again, which is why it would be nice if just for once you could help me out and keep the kids out of the way.’

  ‘I’m just saying, I’m not well,’ complained Simon. ‘Yet I’m supposed to look after the kids. You know, my mother would never have expected my father to look after us.’

  ‘What the fuck does that have to do with it?’ I snapped. ‘You are not your father and I am not your mother and this is the twenty-first fucking century, so just get with the programme and LOOK AFTER YOUR CHILDREN because I am going to get ready for my call!’

  ‘But what about dinner?’ Simon wailed plaintively after me. ‘Am I expected to do that too?’

  ‘I’ll make dinner when I’ve finished,’ I shouted over my shoulder. ‘Just keep the kids QUIET!’

  The call started well. Max, the very important boss man, turned out to be American as well as being in America, so he did that lovely American thing of being very jolly and positive and polite. Ed still did not say much, and mostly was a slightly disturbing heavy-breathing presence on the line while Max and I chatted. After about twenty minutes there was a screech from downstairs. I tensed. Shortly afterwards there were thunder footsteps on the stairs, and I braced myself, while seething with fury. Then the hammering on the door and the bellowing began.

  ‘Is everything OK, Ellen?’ asked Max kindly. ‘There seems to be kinda a funny noise coming from your end?’

  ‘Yes.’ I said desperately. ‘It’s, err, it’s a crossed line, I think.’

  ‘A crossed line?’ said Max in confusion. ‘Isn’t this your cell phone though? I didn’t think you could get crossed lines on a cell. Heck, I didn’t think you still got crossed lines at all!’

  ‘It’s, um, it’s a British thing.’ I improvised as the screaming increased, and I thanked my lucky stars that at least the bedroom door had a lock so the little fuckers couldn’t get in. ‘We still get them because our networks … errr … the war … you know?’

  Ed made what could have been a snort of derision, or possibly just a snore because he had fallen asleep, having not said anything for the last fifteen minutes, and Max said, ‘The war? Um, OK, I didn’t know that, that’s interesting.’

  I tried desperately to concentrate and sound calm and professional for the brief remnants of the rest of the conversation, but I think the damage was done by my frantic babblings about the war. Everyone knows you Don’t Mention the War. I know almost every episode of Fawlty Towers off by heart, so why the FUCK would I mention the war instead of just apologising and explaining that it was my delinquent hell-fiend children?

  I stormed downstairs afterwards to find Simon sauntering out of the loo with a self-satisfied expression on his face.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you were doing?’ I yelled. ‘You just had to keep the kids quiet for a bit. That was all. Where were you?’

  ‘I had to go for a shit,’ said Simon indignantly. ‘I TOLD you I wasn’t well. I’m all out of sorts. Usually I only shit in the mornings – I’m very regular – but clearly the Ebola has affected my digestion.’

  ‘And you couldn’t wait? You couldn’t hang on till I was off the phone, so I could actually have what is possibly the most important call of my life in peace without the children fighting outside the door because apparently Peter has taken some fucking keyring of Jane’s and so her honour was impugned and she had to scream the house down about it, despite neither of them having a key to put on it? You couldn’t have just left it for a FEW BASTARDING MINUTES?’

  ‘When you have to shit, you have to shit!’ said Simon. ‘So, what’s for dinner?’

  ‘Oh, go fuck yourself!’ I snarled.

  Thursday, 22 September

  Well, I went to the PTA AGM. I dragged Sam with me too, on the basis that if I was going down, I was taking as many people as I could with me. He objected strenuously to this, pointing out that I should really have known better than to have succumbed to the pressure of Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy and Fiona Montague, even though everyone knows how hard it is to resist them, especially when they are holding their Very Important Official-Looking Clipboards. He tried to wriggle out of it by sighing that sadly, as he was a single parent, he had no childcare. But I was prepared for that and had already told Simon that he would be looking after Sophie and Toby, as well as his own darling poppets, and so, finding himself outmanoeuvred, poor Sam had little choice but to accompany Katie and me to the school hall, down the corridors scented with an eternity of school dinners – that heady whiff of cabbage and stale chip fat – to find Lucy Atkinson’s Mummy and Fiona Montague presiding over a hall containing a grand total of eleven people, out of the approximately seven hundred parents at the school. I felt very bad about never coming along before – I had always assumed these meetings were brimming over with enthusiastic voluntary-type people who had filofaxes and liked organising things and knew how to use glue guns. I had never realised how poorly attended they were, which certainly shed some light on why Lucy’s Mummy and Fiona could be slightly militant when trying to drum up PTA support.

  Lucy Atkinson’s Mummy kicked off proceedings by tendering her resignation as Chair and inviting someone to come forward to take her place. A deafening silence met her words.

  Cara Cartwright was sitting beside me and whispered, ‘Don’t worry. She resigns every year, and no one has yet dared try and replace her. She just likes to feel needed.’

  Lucy’s Mummy, however, shouted, ‘Come ON! Someone must be willing to replace me. I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE. If no one will step up and replace me, there will be no PTA. There will be no Halloween disco, no Christmas Fayre, no Summer Fete, AND NO FUCKING MONEY FOR SCHOOL TRIPS, NEW WHITEBOARDS OR ANY OTHER BASTARDING THING! This is my daughter’s last year at primary school and all I really want to do is spend ONE school event with her. Actually WITH her, not throwing another pound coin at her to go and have a few more shots on the tombola because I’m too busy running the event to do anything with her. Is that so much to ask?’

  The silence was really quite awkward now.

  ‘RIGHT!’ bellowed Lucy’s Mummy, slamming her Important Clipboard down on the table. ‘FUCK THIS SHIT! I am out of here. Hell mend the lot of you!’

  ‘Me too!’ said Fiona Montague.

  Ohhhhhh, this was MEGA awkward. I do hate a pregnant pause, and so before I really knew what I was doing, just to end the tense atmosphere, I somehow found myself putting my hand up and mumbling, ‘Errrr, I’ll do it. If no one else wants to, that is?’

  Fuck it, I thought to myself. I clearly had blown all chance of the Dream Job and so I might as well do something useful with my time in between the eating biscuits and inventing abortive apps.

  ‘Will you, Ellen?’ said Lucy’s Mummy, a slightly manic look in her eye. ‘Oh, that’s marvellous news! Now we just need a treasurer to replace Fiona, and a secretary.’

  ‘Umm, Sam?’ I hissed, nudging him in the ribs. ‘And Katie, you got me into this.’

  Sam sighed. ‘I’ll be the treasurer then.’

  ‘And I’ll be the secretary!’ said Katie.

  ‘Oh wonderful!’ cried Lucy’s Mummy. ‘We’re FREE. I mean, that’s marvellous of you to offer. Technically you should be proposed and seconded, etc, but to be honest it’s so hard to get people to volunteer in the first place that we haven’t bothered about that in years. Now, would anyone else like to join the committee?’

  ‘Oh, go on then.’ said Cara Cartwright. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound!’

  ‘I’d like to join as well,’ said a new voice from the back of the hall. Everyone craned round to see who it was. A tall woman with immaculate hair and full make-up had walked in, with two very clean children in tow.

  ‘Sorry we’re late,’ said the new woman. ‘I’m Kiki. I was just taking some photos of Lalabelle and
Trixierose playing outside. Yes, I would like to join. I think there’s a lot of things that could be improved.’

  Lucy’s Mummy had looked nonplussed for a moment, but she ralled enough to interrupt. ‘Errr,’ she said, ‘I just need to stop you there. The thing is … sorry, was it Coco?’

  ‘Kiki. With two Ks.’

  ‘Right. Kiki. This is the PTA. We only deal with fundraising for the school, not school policies. You want the Parent Council for that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kiki with two Ks (it’s hardly Anne with a bloody E, is it? Also, isn’t Kiki a parrot’s name?). ‘Well, I’m here now, so I might as well stay, as I’m interested to see what the PTA funds are used for. I’m sure there are better ways of spending the money – for example, the playground is very grey. It’s really hard to get a decent photo of the girls out there. If some money could be spent on some nice paving, maybe some plants, and obviously a mural wall is a MUST.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Lucy’s Mummy.

  ‘Because everyone loves a mural wall as an Instagram backdrop!’ cried Kiki. ‘Instagram is the future. Schools really need to get on board with this.’

  Lucy’s Mummy turned puce at this, as Fiona Montague nudged her, and I distinctly heard her whisper, ‘Let it go. Not our circus, not our monkey anymore! Let’s wrap things up quickly and go to the pub. She’s Ellen’s problem now.’

  Kiki ploughed on oblivious. ‘While we’re on the subject, why isn’t the school on Instagram? Maybe I could help with that. I’m actually a social media influencer, with over 300 followers. I’m @kikiloveandlife if anyone wants to follow me – it’s about children and lifestyle and travel. People tell me I’m an aspirational inspiration, which is humbling!’

  The first icy realisation of what I may have done began to dawn on me.

  The rest of the meeting mainly consisted of the outgoing committee handing over to us, the new, slightly daunted committee, with proceedings only minimally held up by Kiki interrupting to tell us her latest Instagram stats, and asking for another pause while she took more photos of her daughters colouring in and then suggested a group selfie, which everyone politely declined, and reminding us again that we all really should follow her, as a lot of people have told her she is inspirational.

  The only saving grace was that Kiki didn’t actually seem interested in volunteering for any position within the PTA other than starting an Instagram page, which I am pretty sure the school will veto.

  When I got home and ’fessed up to Simon about how I was not only on the PTA committee, but was in fact the new Chair, he looked at me in disbelief.

  ‘So what you are telling me is that Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy actually gave her resignation by publicly shouting “FUCK THIS SHIT” and that was the point at which you decided it would be a good idea to take on the role that had reduced her to that?’

  ‘Ummm, well, it was such a very awkward silence. Someone had to say something. I panicked! I hate silences.’

  ‘Usually you fill any perceived awkward silences by babbling hysterically about how otters have opposable thumbs, not by volunteering for what appears to be the most thankless task in the history of humanity.’

  ‘I did consider my otter soliloquy, but it didn’t really seem appropriate. And how bad can it be, when I have Sam and Katie helping me? And Cara, she seems perfectly nice, and normal. It will be fine, Simon, I don’t know what you are worrying about. We have already agreed that it would be a much better idea to hold our meetings in the pub – I bet that will get lots of people along!’

  ‘Hmmmm,’ said Simon doubtfully. ‘Well, I will try not to say “I told you so” when it all goes tits up.’

  Friday, 30 September

  I GOT THE JOB! I don’t know HOW, but I got the job. Gabrielle just said that Max had found me very ‘creative’ (Gabrielle didn’t sound totally convinced by this). Maybe being able to make up bullshit on the spot is a positive life skill now, instead of being frowned upon? And because I don’t have to hand in my notice anywhere else, they want me to start a week on Monday, which, oh fuck, is just over a week away.

  Obviously I am now totally totally panicking about everything. Am I up to the job? Can I actually do it? How am I going to manage juggling being the Chair of the PTA with working full-time and everything else? Will my children now be emotionally stunted and traumatised for life? And most importantly, what if I can’t find the toilets in the new office? I spend a lot of time worrying about toilets; toilets are important to me. If I can’t find them it will be distressing. I still recall my first job, where everything was fine for the first six months because I knew where the toilets were, but then they moved me to another department, a department with no obvious toilets, where everyone else was male and I didn’t like to ask anyone where the ladies’ were, so I spent the next six months trailing back and forth to my old department so I could have a wee, until I had the bright idea of following another woman who worked on the same floor as me, and finding the toilets like that. It’s not just me who has toilet issues; Hannah once went so far as to turn down a job because she was worried the building was too big and she would never find the loos (I mean, there were other factors too, obviously, but the toilets were definitely a part of it). Also, they are a modern and innovative company, so what if they have gone all Ally McBeal and have unisex toilets? I don’t want unisex toilets, I don’t want to listen to Brian from Marketing grunting as he shits out last night’s biryani while I’m trying to change a tampon, and what if they talk about wanking while I’m trying to put my lip gloss on? Do men talk about wanking in the toilets? I have no idea. How would I possibly know what men talk about in the toilets, and that’s the way I like it! And if I can’t even wee while there are other women in the ladies, how on earth am I going to be able to ‘go’ if there are men in there? (Although I would at least be able to blame the farting on them, should I accidentally let one rip.)

  I felt rather nostalgic for the familiar, comforting surroundings of the loos in my old office, the loos I knew the exact location of, where Brenda the cleaning lady would leave the cupboard with the spare loo rolls unlocked for me because she knew I got anxious if we were down to less than half a roll in the holder. You couldn’t do that in a unisex loo, with Brian and his biryanis. Everyone knows men would not respect such bog-roll privileges. But then I cheered up. I had got the Dream Job! In the face of everything, including the cock and balls on the wall, Simon’s general lack of enthusiasm, the wrong sort of coffee cup, the feral screaming children and the toast crumbs in my bra, I HAD GOT THE FUCKING JOB! Obviously I would need a smart new capsule work wardrobe. Hopefully they wouldn’t expect me to wear those stupid heels all the time, and maybe I will finally master how to wear the cropped trousers with funky boots without looking like a fanny.

  OCTOBER

  Saturday, 1 October

  I got an email from my father today, suggesting we all ‘get together’ for lunch soon, which was quite unexpected as I thought he was still living in Portugal. Apparently he has a ‘surprise’ for me. I am dubious about this, because although part of me is an eternal optimist and thus immediately thinks perhaps he is coming to tell me that he has decided to transfer a large sum of money to me, or that he has put his house in Portugal into my name now to avoid death duties and because I need it more than my sister, no good ever comes of his ‘surprises’, as they inevitably take the form of his announcing that he is either getting married again or divorced again.

  If one were feeling generous, Daddy could be described as something of an aging roué, with a rather Leslie Phillips vibe going on, but really as he gets older, his habit of getting married and divorced on what seems like an almost annual basis is getting rather embarrassing. We did think that his last wife, Caroline, had finally got him to settle down, and she did stick it out a remarkable seven years, before throwing in the towel when she caught him in bed with her ironing lady, at which point he decamped to Portugal, claiming that it was for the golf, and not, as Mummy waspi
shly suggested, that he had run out of shags in Sunningdale, since he was reduced to bedding the staff.

  My fears over his latest ‘surprise’ were confirmed with a call from my dear sister Jessica, who had received a similar email, also summonsing her to the meet-up. Jessica, trying as ever to be the condescending elder sister, poo-pooed my concerns that we were about to be introduced to our latest stepmother.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Ellen. He’s seventy-five years old. Why on earth would he want to get married again at his age? Surely he’s learned by now.’

  ‘Maybe not. Remember Carrie Barker? Her granddad got married three times after his first wife died when he was seventy-five!’

  ‘Yes, but his wives kept dying of old age, so he had to get another one because he’d never washed his own pants. That’s hardly the same as Daddy. He’s spent enough time between wives to be reasonably self-sufficient.’

  ‘Well, what do you think he wants then?’

  ‘How should I know? Maybe he’s decided to move back to the UK so he can spend more time with his grandchildren.’

  ‘He hates children. He didn’t even really like us that much when we were little, and pretty much went out of his way to avoid us. He is immensely proud of the fact that he has never changed a nappy, and still complains about the time Jane vommed on him when she was a newborn. That’s been the only saving grace in the revolving door of wives. At least his general dislike of children meant that there were no new brothers and sisters to take a share of our inheritance!’

  ‘He likes Persephone and Gulliver.’ said Jessica, with the indignation of a mother’s love. ‘Everyone likes Persephone and Gulliver – I’m constantly told how charming they are. Maybe it’s just your children he doesn’t like!’

  ‘He does not like your children!’

  ‘HE DOES!’

  ‘NOT!’

  ‘STOP being so petty!’

  ‘SHAN’T!’