‘Stanley, no!’ I shriek, leaping from my seat while Clemmie, who’s gushing apologies amidst hysterical laughter from the three boys, tries to yank it from her dog’s jaws.
‘Stanley,
drop
,’ she commands.
‘He’s eating your best cardi, Mum,’ Logan says cheerfully.
‘Yes, I can see that …’
‘He’s chewing it to bits!’
‘I don’t want to rip it any more by pulling it,’ Clemmie cries. ‘God, Alice, I feel terrible.’
‘Drop, Stan. DROP!’ Fergus commands.
‘Oh, he won’t,’ Blake says loftily. ‘Tug of war’s his favourite game, this is
fun
to him …’
Clemmie is pulling at it now, using her considerable strength to stretch my cashmere treasure about four feet long. Letting it drop, she bobs down to her knees and expertly prises open Stanley’s jaws.
‘There. Naughty dog. Honestly, he’s never done anything like that before.’ She picks up my cardi and examines it. ‘He’s actually bitten off both of the pockets. Where did you buy it? I’ll replace it as soon as I can …’
‘It’s years old,’ I say quickly, ‘and I hid Mum’s burgers in the pockets and hadn’t got around to washing it—’
‘God, Alice, your
life
,’ Clemmie splutters. ‘Are you sure I can’t buy you a new one?’
‘No, don’t be silly.’
Planting a hand on a hip, Clemmie throws Stanley an exasperated look. ‘Well, if you’re sure. Anyway, I’m so glad you can do those meringues for me. I’ll leave the final flavour choices up to you. And you must come over for lunch in the Easter holidays.’
‘Thanks, I’d love to,’ I say.
‘You can see what we’ve been doing to the house.’
‘Oh yes, Blake mentioned he’s getting a new bedroom …’
‘It’s an
annexe
, Mum,’ Logan corrects me, ‘with enough space for a full-sized pool table.’
‘An annexe?’ I repeat. ‘You mean an extension?’
‘Yeah! It’s got a little kitchen and everything, with a mini fridge and an oven …’
‘An oven?’ I repeat with a laugh. ‘What are you planning to do, Blake? Make Victoria sponges?’
‘Nah, just, like, pasta and stuff,’ he says with a shrug.
Clemmie smiles. ‘It’s not an extension, darling. It’s just the loft conversion we started in the autumn. It’s taken forever to get it right, and cost a small fortune, but we felt it was time Blake had his own space. And the idea of the kitchen is it’s a trial run for fully independent living. I don’t want him living on takeaways when he leaves home, not with their salt content.’ Yes, but couldn’t he learn to cook in the family kitchen?
Blake smirks and looks down at his feet.
‘He’s having the
whole upper floor
, Mum,’ Logan adds. ‘It’s like a flat, all to himself.’
‘Sounds great,’ I say.
Summoning the now obedient Stanley to heel, Clemmie turns to her son. ‘You coming home for dinner, darling?’
‘In a bit,’ he replies.
‘He’s welcome to stay and eat with us,’ I say, at which Blake looks genuinely delighted.
‘Thanks, you’re a darling.’ Clemmie flashes a bright smile before clip-clopping down the stone stairs, with Stanley at her side and a cloud of freesia fragrance in her wake.
Alone now in the kitchen, I drop my ravaged cardigan into the bin.
*
Blake Carter-Jones is the boy who has everything. My eyes watered when Clemmie let slip how much she shells out for his clothing allowance,
and
he’s never dragged halfway across Scotland to his grandma’s to be presented with rotting beef. However, he does seem to be extremely fond of our place, despite his palatial abode at the end of our street, which is pleasing. He also shames my own, slothful offspring by loading the dishwasher after dinner
and
wiping the table while I get cracking with the meringues.
By the time the third batch is in the oven, the flat is engulfed in a sweet-smelling blur. In need of a breather, I run myself a bath. Generously, Fergus had left one millimetre of the L’Occitane Relaxing Bath Oil Ingrid gave me (Ingrid is incredibly generous on the posh present front), so I squirt in the pathetic remaining drops. Why does Fergus use it anyway? A thirteen-year-old boy doesn’t need essence of geranium and tea tree, not when his entire
life
is relaxed.
Into the bath I sink, with a large glass of wine carefully placed in the little porcelain indent, meant for soap. If I were doing this properly there should be scented candles flickering in here too, but I’ve brought in one of Clemmie’s
Stylish Living
magazines and need decent light because, actually, I could do with reading glasses. (Shall I mention this to the intern on our date? Should I also inform him that Abba were at number one with ‘Waterloo’ when I was born?) Luckily, our bathroom is so bright, you could perform surgery in here. On the downside, it’s hardly flattering to one’s naked form, cruelly illuminating every dimple and vein.
Inhaling the sugary aroma drifting in through the gap under the door, I start to flip through the mag. Here we go: an impossibly beautiful living room with pale-grey walls – a shade which would look cell-like if I were to use it, but which in this instance is the height of tastefulness. There’s a darker grey sofa, scattered with cushions in fuchsia and lime, and an elegant wooden seventies-style coffee table on which sits a small stack of jewel-coloured silk notebooks.
Who lives like this? Even Clemmie’s place, with its five bedrooms and two lounges – the annexe – looks a bit scruffy around the edges sometimes, despite her gargantuan efforts to keep it tidy (not to mention a cleaner three times a week). Now, I know homes magazines have stylists to make everything beautiful, but
still
. I’d thought a glimpse of perfection might offer some welcome respite, seeing as I’ll be up baking until at least two a.m., but instead it’s drawing my attention to the almighty clutter of the boys’ Clearasil washes and scrubs and lotions which are crammed on to the single shelf, plus, I notice now, a small white cloth with a brown smear on it tucked behind the loo. I’m not a high maintenance woman, and I like to think my tolerance levels are pretty high. But from where I’m lying – in this rapidly cooling bath – it would appear that someone has nabbed my Liz Earle Hot Cloth muslin square and wiped their arse on it. Dear God – they’re
teenagers
, shouldn’t the wanton destruction of my possessions have stopped by now? Maybe Erica had a point all those months ago when she looked alarmed by the concept of parenting boys. But they’re not all like that, smashing Danish glassware and using their mother’s sole face cloth because they’re too bloody lazy to reach for the cupboard where the loo roll is kept. Look at Blake, wiping down kitchen surfaces. Where have I gone wrong?
I glare back at the magazine, in which no less than ten pages are devoted to the stunning country home. Naturally, the garden is just the right side of wild, with cornflowers and poppies running rampant all over the place. ‘We designed our haphazard planting scheme to say, “Chill out and kick back on the lawn with us”,’ the caption reads. I glance at our bathroom windowsill where Fergus’s beleaguered cactus sits in its red plastic pot. We don’t
design
a planting scheme, we win it at the school tombola (along with a bottle of Lulu perfume which had actually gone off), and if it’s saying anything, it’s, ‘For Christ’s sake, dust me.’
I flick my gaze back to the mag. ‘Patsy grows fresh herbs to add zing to spontaneous suppers with friends’, it goes on. Well, good for Patsy. My own children are primed to reject suspect greenery; they can detect the snipping of parsley even from a different room. My heart slumps even further as I study my unpainted toenails poking out of the water.
Spontaneous suppers.
How long is it since I had one of those? Or a spontaneous anything, come to that? As I work school hours, five days a week, I tend to resort to that deeply unsexy thing of Planning Ahead. As a tactic, it works, in that the three of us generally wind up with something edible on the table at dinnertime. At least, Blake seems to enjoy my offerings. But I can’t deny it’s slightly joyless, knowing you’ll be eating lasagne in five days’ time.
I also batch-cook. How terribly … loin-stirring. I must remember to tell Giles-the-intern about my sessions with a steaming vat of bolognaise when we meet. That’ll get him all revved up – at least, if he nurtures secret dinner-lady fantasies.
In another photo, pastel-coloured bunting is strewn across the perfect garden, and a little blonde girl in a white dress is playing with a syrup-coloured spaniel. Bet
he
doesn’t devour his owner’s knitwear. ‘It’s a gorgeous spring afternoon’, reads the text, ‘as Patsy Lomax, founder of sleepwear company Dandelion …’
PATSY LOMAX???
It can’t be. But it is – it’s my ex Tom’s wife Patsy who grows herbs for spontaneous suppers, and the little girl in the garden is their daughter, Jessica. That’s their rose-strewn home, and their silk-covered notebooks artfully arranged on the coffee table. I flip through more pages, studying each photo in forensic detail, until I reach the final page of the never-ending extravaganza and here he is – Tom, no less, who’d happily inhabit the same ratty Smiths T-shirt for three days running when we were together, and would use our car keys to pick out dirt from between his toes while we were watching TV. Tom, who could barely operate a can opener without severing an artery, is now depicted wearing a chunky cableknit sweater, plus jeans and suspiciously pristine wellies, clutching an armful of veggies: curly kale, purple sprouting broccoli and some particularly knobbly-looking carrots. ‘Tom’s kitchen garden evolves with the seasons’ runs the caption beneath.
I explode with laughter and sling the magazine on to the bathroom floor. Tom, cultivating legumes, when he used to refer to salad as ‘women’s food’ and had never knowingly ingested a tomato. Still sniggering, I clamber out of the bath and wrap myself in a large towel with all the softness of a gravel driveway, then snatch a bit of loo roll to give the cactus a cursory wipe. Maybe it’ll start
evolving
now. Perhaps vivid pink flowers will burst forth, like the tombola lady promised. Then I brush out my hair and pull on pyjamas and a dressing gown in readiness for baking the fifth meringue batch of the evening.
As I emerge from the bathroom, Blake is lacing up his trainers in the hallway (this boy even removes his footwear on entering someone’s house) while Logan fixes me with a stare.
‘Why can’t we extend our place?’ he enquires.
‘Because it’s a flat,’ I reply pleasantly.
‘Is there
nothing
we could do?’
I blink at my son, aware of Blake straightening up and smirking at us. ‘Well,’ I reply, ‘I suppose we could build a kind of sticky-out construction that pokes out over the street, like a giant shelf, and you could live on that.’
Grunting with mirth, Blake remarks, ‘You’re lucky, Logan. At least your mum’s not always on at you like mine is. She’s not obsessed with the house being perfect …’
‘Thank you, Blake,’ I say, wondering whether to take this as a compliment or not.
He grins. ‘Thanks for dinner’ is his parting remark. When he’s gone, I turn back to Logan, hoping to see a glimmer of a smile, or some realisation of how petulant he’s being.
‘I’m fed up with this place,’ he sighs.
‘Logan, you do have your own room. The biggest room, in fact.’
‘There’s not even a TV in it.’
‘So what?’ I counter. ‘There’s one in the living room that you have virtually free rein of. I hardly ever watch it.’
‘You watch
Casablanca
all the time …’
I blink at him, trying to keep a lid on the irritation that’s bubbling inside me. What is wrong with him these days? Why is he being so foul, and is it likely to stop anytime soon?
‘I happen to watch it about once a year at the very most,’ I inform him.
Fergus has appeared now, and is warming to the ‘teasing Mum about her old movies’ theme.
‘There’s that bit,’ he says, ‘when the guy says, “We’ll always have Paris”—’
‘And that’s when you start crying,’ Logan adds. With that, they both bark with laughter, and I stomp to my bedroom, reminding myself that I’m not one of those obsessives who sits glued to the same movie night after night, with a bunch of sodden tissues on her lap. Honestly – I only watch
Casablanca
about once a year, usually around Christmas time. Well, maybe twice. And, anyway, what business is it of theirs?
In the kitchen, I set to work, switching on the radio and cracking eggs until, gradually, my irritation begins to subside. At least Blake likes it here, I remind myself, so it can’t be that bad. As I pipe tray after tray of rosette-shaped kisses, I decide I don’t care that Tom has managed to grab himself a magazine-style life. Bet that picture was staged anyway, and someone brought along those gnarly vegetables that Tom was clutching lovingly to his manly chest. Anyway, it’s not as if I’d be happier if he were huddled in a miserable bedsit, warming his hands on a Pot Noodle; it was my decision to split, which has caused me no small amount of guilt over the years, and Patsy has been good for Tom. Somehow, she has managed to realise his potential. It’s a pretty safe bet that he no longer turns his boxer shorts inside out so he can eke an extra day’s wear out of them.
I’ve just filled the oven with another batch of trays when my phone bleeps – a text from an unknown number.
Hi Alice,
it reads
, Giles here, I work with Viv. Hope ok to get in touch. Wondered if you fancy a drink sometime?
Hell, why not? Tomorrow I’ll be finishing off the meringues – at least, doing the packing and labelling – and it’s the boys’ last night with me before their trip with Tom, not that Logan will regard that as anything significant, but still … I pause before replying, wondering whether to play down my commitments, or to be honest from the start. After all, Viv has told him I have kids. No point in trying to pretend I’m just back from my gap year travels …
Sounds good
, I reply.
Maybe Wed eve as my boys are going away with their dad …
No, no, no!
So we can come back here and have rampant sex
, it implies. Jesus. I delete it, typing instead:
Would Wed eve suit you, about 8?