Authors: Elaine Johns
Lemonade and Lies
Lemonade and Lies
Elaine Johns
Copyright © Elaine Johns 2015.
The right of Elaine Johns to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events are from the author’s imagination and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental. Some names and places, although real and in the public domain, have been fictionalised.
Contents
Lemonade and Lies
Okay, so I’m not perfect. But is life this complicated for everyone
? I stepped over a mountain of toys and junk, stuck my head in a cushion and screamed. It was better than sticking a fork in your eye.
The cat did a runner. But then I’ve never been fond of the cat. She was a hangover from the days when Bill (my ex) thought the house needed an animal in it. She was his cat, but he’d left her behind. He’d left me and the kids as well.
“When will there be some me-time?” I yelled. But the cushion didn’t answer, had never heard of one parent families.
It sounded like a great idea, time for yourself, where you were number one. And yes, it really did exist, claimed Alice, who’d been my best friend since college.
Sure, Alice
.
If you say so
.
“Get yourself off to a spa, girl”, she’d said. “Do you the world of good.”
Alice is a gem, but she doesn’t get it. She lives in her own bubble. Has a publishing job up in London, gets to take clients out to dinner in real restaurants, not McDonald’s. And doesn’t have to think about what to feed the kids for tea, try to get the boiler working again, write a lesson plan for tomorrow, or figure out how to scrape up this month’s child minding fees. They’d gone up again. Nothing seems to go down. Only your bank balance and your energy.
But things would improve. I knew it. And hey, I can still smile, which makes me an optimist, right? Except not tonight. Not with Millie whingeing on about new trainers, and Tom refusing to eat the macaroni cheese I’d whipped up after collecting these two ungrateful brutes from the after-school childminder.
A glass of wine waited. The saviour. But only after the kids were asleep and I’d written that lesson plan for tomorrow’s class. It’s being observed.
I’m not that fond of lesson-observations. They’re like auditions, as if you have to prove yourself all over again. Prove you can do the teaching job they hired you for in the first place, and that you’re still giving value for money. And they don’t really work, because you’ll always give your best performance for this one-off stellar moment. But how can you keep up that sort of thing all year? Demonstrating
best
practice
. How I hate those words. Seems like I hate everything tonight, but it’s not true. It’s just been a bad day. Tomorrow will be better.
*
“Thought you looked tired yesterday, Jillian.”
“I’m fine,” I said, giving the words an extra little spring in their step, “autumn term’s always a long haul.”
“Sure,” agreed Emily. “For all of us. Soon be half-term though. You’ll be looking forward to spending time with the kids, I expect.”
She could expect all she wanted. She didn’t have kids. Had a husband who paid the mortgage. And she and the old man were off to the Med on a cruise for
their
half-term.
It’s not that I’m bitter. And don’t get me wrong, I really
do
love my kids. But I wouldn’t say no to a Mediterranean cruise myself.
My boss, Emily Thomson, is a decent woman who tries hard to be helpful while doing the impossible job she’s been lumbered with. She insists on calling me Jillian, though. And I’m not a Jillian, more of a Jill.
Jill Webster: Mother, English teacher, cook, cleaner (only in extreme circumstances, when the carpets change colour and the washing up reaches 3-days' worth) payer of bills (not always on time) and sole householder.
I looked at Emily. Her face was expectant, so I nodded. She’d been waiting for some kind of reaction before I’d wandered off inside my head. I sometimes do that and it can be confusing to spectators.
“I could’ve put my observation feedback in your pigeon-hole,” she said.
“Right . . .” I waited for the other shoe to fall, the one that gives you the kick in the rear.
“But I wanted to see you face-to-face. Credit where it’s due, Jillian. That was a great lesson today.”
“Thanks.”
Wow! Still, I was waiting for the ‘but’
.
There’s nearly always a but.
“I wish I saw more like that,” she said. “You had them in the palm of your hand. And all outcomes fulfilled. Excellent.”
“Great.”
Fulfilling ‘outcomes’ isn’t easy. They’re slippery little devils.
“If you were being OFSTEDed it would be a one.”
Good God! Things were looking up. A ‘one’ was the highest you could get, like reaching the summit of Everest.
“Just one small detail and I’ve written that in my comments . . .”
Ah, here it was. The one ‘point for future development’. Something to show that you were never perfect; could always do better. Still, not too dusty – considering the time I’d taken writing the lesson plan last night. And the two glasses of wine that had helped it along.
“Right.” Her eyes flicked over to the clock, and she seemed to be making some sort of weighty decision. “Get yourself off to the staffroom for a coffee break.”
“Okay.”
“Have a chill and while you’re there I’d like you to think about something,” she said.
“What?”
God, not more new initiatives
.
I was still working on the last lot.
“There’s a new vacancy about to come on line.”
“Oh?”
“Mandy’s moving up to Bristol and I’m looking for a new Deputy. I’d rather keep it internal if I can.”
“What, me? Management?”
“Don’t fancy it?”
“Never even thought about it. But all that paperwork.”
“Not much more than you do now, and I’d be right here next door to give you advice. You’d be my second-in-command. More money . . .”
She left the final two words dangling in mid air to work their magic. Emily knew I needed all the money I could get my hands on right now. There was the dodgy boiler for a start. I wish I’d never told her about it now.
*
“But that’s crap. Of course you’re up to it.”
I’d told Alice about the job offer, and my own doubts about it. She’d brought over two bottles of wine and her up-beat, life-is-what-you-make-it attitude.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said.
She knew what I meant
. Of course I could do the job, but it would mean even more time away from home. The child care bill would be humongous, and somebody else would get to know my kids better than me.
Alice sloshed more Merlot into the massive glasses she’d brought with her. She didn’t like my economy wine glasses that, unlike hers, were not hand-blown by some arty bloke in Italy. Mine came from a supermarket, but were perfectly adequate. ‘Adequate’ was a quality I specialized in.
The kids were both on sleepovers with friends, a small miracle that had been thrown my way. Even so, I felt guilty about enjoying this girly night with a takeaway and Alice’s fine Merlot. Guilt was something that dogged me, though I tried to ignore it. But they stamp the word across your forehead when your babies are born.
“What then?” Alice wouldn’t give up.
“I feel . . .
conflicted
.”
“Bollocks,” she said. “That’s a fancy, copout word. You know you want to take it. So take it.”
Everything was so much simpler for my friend. Like now. She’d taken a week away from her desk to stay at a retreat near Land’s End. This was to arm her for the upcoming rigours of the Frankfurt Book Fair.
She’d been driving over to visit me when the spirit moved her. Or when she got bored with life in the tiny village of Saint Buryan where the nearby Merry Maidens Stone Circle was meant to power up her batteries.
I couldn’t imagine Alice at a retreat. She was more of a city girl, like me. Or at least I had been, B.C. Before children.
The arrival of the kids kicked in all sorts of life style changes, most of them driven by me in that headless-chicken-time following birth. Like a migrating bird, I’d dragged the family down to the West Country.
I had this pattern in my head for how children should be bought up. It didn’t come from any parenting book, but had spookily arrived the moment Millie thrust her tiny, quivering body into daylight and set up a wail strong enough to wake the dead.
It seemed a no-brainer that our pokey London flat was no nesting place for kids. But Bill didn’t see it that way, for he was nostalgic about the London borough of Hackney. Don’t ask me why. It used to be one of the most crime ridden places in London, and the words Murder-Mile given to several of its streets. Hardly something I wanted my kids to remember. Note the ‘my kids’. I think that even back then, I realised any off-spring would always be
my kids
and not ‘our kids’.
I was a driven woman, and put my size fours down with all the force of a Jackboot. I marvel now when I think about it, where the strength to oppose him came from. I suppose your children do that for you. Turn you into this fierce tigress protecting her cubs.
Bill finally gave in when Judith - my fire breathing mother-in-law - pointed out that moving to Cornwall would bring us closer to her in Exeter. Nothing’s ever perfect in life.
If it was, I’d be in the Caribbean sipping a rum punch
. She put the thumb screws on him and I pushed from my end. It’s the only time the woman and I have been on the same team.
The insistent buzz at the front door brought two immediate results. One - I yanked myself from inside my head, and two - the wine glass went spinning off into space. Sticky red wine cascaded down my coffee table and onto the beige carpet.
Beige is never a good colour when you have kids, but Bill had insisted on it. It was the one his mother had, so if it was good enough for her etc. . . . The woollen carpet was one hell of an investment at a time when we couldn’t afford it. But as Bill had pointed out, it was there for life. Pity he didn’t apply the same philosophy to our marriage.
“You can chuck some white wine over it,” Alice said helpfully.
Well maybe she could afford to use Chardonnay as a stain remover, but I couldn’t.
“Hey! Is there anybody in there?” a disembodied voice yelled urgently through my letter box.
“Shit no!” I shot Alice a frantic look. Put a finger to my lips in a for-God’s-sake-be-quiet mime. Things were complicated enough without him pestering me again.
“Who’s he?” she asked, in a voice loud enough for the nearest deaf man to hear. She’d never been good at picking up on signals. “Didn’t know you had a man on the go.”
“Shussh,” I hissed. “And I haven’t got a man.”
“Sounds like one to me.”
Alice moved to the window, peering round the side of the lace curtains. They’d been a present from Bill’s mother who had them in every room in her house. I’d been meaning to dump them for ages.
“Get away from there, he’ll see you.”
The ringing in my ears finally stopped, and I figured James had taken the hint and his hand off the doorbell. It was a surprise. The man was usually more persistent.
“Nice car.”
Alice was impressed by cars. Not my old banger, which ran on low-grade petrol and luck. But I lavished love on Jemima, and gave the old girl a friendly pat every day to show her she was just as valuable as Alice’s Beamer.
My friend had offered to buy me a new car. She had a generous heart and her family had mega-bucks, which always helps. They’d given her an expensive flat for her twenty-first and told her to go out into the world and make her own way. She had. But she’d never had to scrimp and save, like the rest of us poor stiffs. Even so, Alice never flaunted her money, or her looks, or her good luck. That’s what I liked about her.
“Looks like he’s gone,” she said. “Go on, give.”
“What?”
“Well,
have you
? And if not, why not?”
Her eyebrows shot up dramatically into her fringe. Alice had a flair for interrogation, something she’d cultivated earlier in life working as a journalist on one of the lesser known scandal sheets. She also had a down-right nosy streak. A gift she’d inherited from her mother.
“Jill-i-an . . . You
have
– haven’t you?”
“No I haven’t!” I said indignantly. “We had one date, that’s all. And now he’s practically stalking me. It creeps me out.”
“Not bad looking, maybe not eye-candy, but he’s got style. And a nice ass.” My friend grinned. She considered herself an authority on asses.
“You got all that from one curtain-twitch?”
“Body language - reading it’s crucial in my job,” she said.
We went back to the wine. Correction, Alice did. Mine was still decorating the beige Wilton. The poor old carpet had taken a hammering lately, but a new one was a distant dream. It would need to line up behind the boiler repair, the gas bill; the phone bill . . . The list got longer every day. And now, Millie’s trainers.
The synapses in my brain hurled across a new thought. Maybe I should take the job offer. Then I wouldn’t have to penny-pinch the way I did now.