The Bad Mother's Handbook Read online

  ‘Nan says you’re getting a Range Rover,’ Ivy called from the lounge.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I shouted back. Total bloody nut-house. I started to examine the toaster.

  Dear Mrs charred bit

  Imagine what you could do with a loan for £10,000! A new charred bit perhaps, charred bit charred bit or maybe the holiday you’ve been promising yourself.

  I extracted the rest of the letter and flipped open the pedal bin where it could go with all the other loan offers we’d had that week. Even Nan gets them. God knows what she’d spend £10,000 on. Pontefract cakes, maybe, except she’s not allowed them because they play havoc with what’s left of her bowels. Then I turned the toaster upside down and gave it a good shake. More flakes came out, devil’s confetti, but there was something still wedged inside. I brought it over to the window and picked a table knife up off the draining board. I could definitely see folded paper when I tilted the slot towards the light. I fished around, got the blade underneath and eased the thing out.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Ivy from the doorway. She moved over to the pile of clothes and automatically began to pick them up one by one, smooth them out and stack them neatly on top of the fridge. ‘Something’s tickled you.’

  ‘It’d take too long to explain,’ I said, unfolding the ruined Keats essay and watching as it disintegrated in my hands. My shoulders shook uncontrollably and tears of laughter started to run down my face.

  ‘Eeh, I like to hear her laugh,’ called Nan. ‘She’s a bonny laugh but we never hear it these days.’

  ‘Well, she’s certainly laughing now,’ commented Ivy as I lay down on the tiles, helpless, and put the essay over my face.

  *

  SHE WENT down to London first, the story was she was going to try for an actress, and I handed my notice in two weeks later. We’d found her a place at a Mother and Baby Home run by a charity, although they wouldn’t tek her till she were six months. So we stayed down t’ road wi’ Bill’s sister Annie in Finchley; she’d been widowed two years before, and she was glad o’ t’ company. She had a funny daughter, Theresa, face like a line of wet washin’. Now she must have been about sixteen too but very backward, and she kept asking why Jessie was so fat. I heard Annie telling her afterwards it was because Jessie had been a Bad Girl, and to watch herself or she’d end up t’ same way. Except I don’t think any man ever went near her, she were so sour.

  Hope Lodge, they called the home. I’d heard about it through the Mothers’ Union: never dreamt I’d ever have anything to do wi’ it. It weren’t a nice place, though. Big Victorian brick house, slippery floors, long dark corridors. I can smell the disinfectant now. They had their own rooms, the girls, but that made it worse apparently. You could hear ’em cryin’ at night, Jessie said, behind the doors. She’d not been there above a fortnight when she announced, ‘I’m not stoppin’ here, Nance. Let me come back to Annie’s wi’ you. It’s awful. We’re not allowed to use t’ front door, did you know? And they make you go to church on Sundays but you have to stand at t’ back so none o’ t’ congregation can see you.’ I talked her round. I said, ‘You have to stay where there’s nurses and doctors. They have to keep a special eye on such as you, with you being so young. You’ll get t’ best care here, love. I’ll come every day, look after you.’ I were terrified she’d change her mind, if you want to know. Or disappear, or do herself a mischief. I knew she hadn’t thought it through.

  When she went into labour, five weeks early, it was at night and I didn’t know. It was quick, too, just over four hours. The nurses said she was mustard. ‘I’ve never known such a foul-mouthed creature,’ one of them told me, ‘and we hear some things within these four walls, I can tell you.’ She said they were cruel, wouldn’t give her anything for the pain. ‘It was unbelievable. I’m NEVER goin’ through that again, I’ll tell you that for nowt. An’ the doctor, he came in near th’ end and never spoke a word, not one word. I hope he rots in hell, I hope they all do.’

  I couldn’t think of anything except that baby. ‘Do you still want me to take her?’ I asked. My heart was in my mouth. ‘Oh, yes,’ she says straight away, ‘you can have her. I don’t want her.’ And I went hot and cold all over.

  Bill came down to bring me home, stayed a week, and when I got back everyone was agog. He’d put it about that I’d been nursing a sick relative. So then I told them that had been a white lie because, although I was thrilled to be expecting finally, I was worried it might go wrong, what with my age. I don’t know if they believed me or not. It didn’t matter. No one ever really asked, whatever they thought in private. A nine-day wonder, that’s all it was. And that first Sunday they said prayers at church for me and t’ little one, and I didn’t feel a bit guilty. ‘It’s our secret,’ I told the Lord. ‘I won’t say owt if you don’t.’

  *

  We have no radiators in our house, of course, nothing so useful, so I had my jeans laid out on the bed with a hair-dryer nozzle up one leg. Downstairs the front door banged and I heard Ivy’s voice, then Mum’s (sounding strangely muffled). I transferred the nozzle to the other leg and thought about meeting up with Daniel, that it wasn’t going to be the ordeal I’d first thought: I could almost say I liked him. Not that way, of course, he was too fucking weird. Funny, though. He seemed to understand me more than anyone else at school. Maybe I was the weirdo.

  I switched off the hairdryer, and in the sudden silence heard Mum’s bedroom door click shut. Ivy shouted up, ‘I’ll bring you some Milk of Magnesia in a sec, love, you get your head down for half an hour. I’ll just hang your mac out on the maiden.’ Another crisis, then.

  When I felt at the ankle cuffs the denim was more or less dry, so I pulled down my trackie bottoms, eased the elastic over my feet, and stepped into my jeans.

  I stopped. Looked at myself in the full-length mirror. Something wasn’t right. Even as they got to my knees I knew they weren’t going to do up over my rounded belly.

  Fate had got me after all.

  Chapter Five

  THIIIINGS CAN ONLY get better. It must be true, it was on TV. But you tell me what political party could sort out my problems. If I thought it would really make a difference I’d be down that polling booth at 7 a.m., but nobody really cares about people like us, stuck at home with only the insane for company.

  We save this country a fortune and where does it all go? Bloody subsidies for bloody London opera houses and the like. I’d vote Monster Raving Loony if I could actually be bothered, but I haven’t got the energy. It’s all right them offering a lift to the polling station, but I bet none of them would be prepared to change Nan’s bag while I was out exercising my democratic right.

  Politicians, they want to try living in the real world.

  *

  ‘You’ll have to do a test,’ said Daniel, his face blurry through my tears. We were sitting in Tiggy’s Italian coffee bar at a Formica-topped table covered with wet ring-marks. I hadn’t meant to say anything, but it was all my head was full of, there wasn’t room for anything else. Besides, somehow I thought he’d know what to do. He seemed that sort.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Look, it’s probably a false alarm. I mean, you don’t look pregnant, if it’s any consolation. How far are you meant to be along?’

  ‘About three and a half months, if I’m right.’ I began to draw miserable lines in the sugar with the end of my spoon. ‘God, I just can’t be. Not me. Anyone else, but not me.’

  ‘It might simply be too many Easter eggs. Or a hormonal imbalance; have you been sprouting hairs on your chin?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Daniel, it’s not something to joke about!’

  He drooped his head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Do you promise not to tell anyone about this? I couldn’t bear the thought of the other girls . . .’

  ‘As if I would.’ He seemed really hurt. ‘I don’t do that sort of thing. Besides, who have I got to tell? Look, if it’s not too personal a question, have your per
iods stopped?’

  ‘Daniel! Honestly!’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit crucial, Charlotte. I mean, I’m only a mere male but even I can see there might be a connection.’

  ‘Well, yes and no. Oh, I can’t start going into details, it’s too gross. And especially not with you. You don’t talk about things like that, it’s not polite.’

  He shrugged. ‘We talk about everything biological in our house. It’s with my dad being a GP. No bodily function is taboo. They used to take us to a naturist beach in Greece every year, until I started getting what my mother called “stirrings”.’

  ‘That’s because you’re Middle Class, probably. In our house everything’s taboo, there are no safe subjects, so mostly we don’t talk. Well, Nan does, but she doesn’t count because none of it makes any sense.’ The knowledge of why I was here settled on my shoulders again and I slumped forward. ‘Oh, Daniel, what am I going to do?’

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Don’t move a muscle.’ And he dived out of the shop.

  I waited and watched through the window. Shoppers crowded past, carefree. Every other figure was loaded with personal irony: the willowy pair of teenage girls with flat stomachs, laughing at some private joke; the smart brisk career woman whose life was clearly going places; the – oh, horror – hugely pregnant mum holding a toddler on reins and peering into the cafe, her hand shading her weary brow. I stared back. Surely it must hurt when your body got to that size? What happened to your skin? Might it not split, like a dropped tomato? How did her trousers not fall down? How could she see what she was doing when she went to the toilet?

  ‘Give the woman a break,’ said Daniel, sitting down again and sliding a Boots bag across at me. I realized I was gaping with horror, and looked away quickly.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Now, nip to the toilets, sort yourself out and then come with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Do as you’re told. Come on.’ He pulled me up and shepherded me to the back of the cafe.

  Once in the cubicle I undid the cellophane, then opened the box. A white plastic felt-tip thing slid out. I had a good look at it, pulled the cap off, then fished out the instruction leaflet and unpleated it. So, you just peed on the end of the stick; two minutes later it was all over bar the shouting.

  When I came out Daniel was waiting. ‘Well?’

  ‘I haven’t looked yet.’

  ‘Good.’

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me out onto the street.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I shouted as he yanked me through the crowds.

  ‘Just come on!’

  We ran and ran, up Standishgate, down Market Street and Parson’s Walk, into Mesnes Park Terrace and through to the park.

  ‘Quick!’ We dashed through the iron gates and dived for the grass. I sort of fell, then rolled over and lay back, gasping. ‘It’s not too wet, is it?’ he asked, patting around with his palm.

  ‘Yeah, it’s bloody soaking but I don’t care.’ I was still panting like mad. ‘What’s going on?’

  He squatted beside me. ‘Unwrap the test. Go on.’ He nodded encouragingly.

  I sat up, drew the bag out of my jacket pocket and held up the box. My fingernail slid under the cardboard flap. ‘I know what I’m looking for, I read the blurb. If the second window’s empty, I’m in the clear . . . Oh, God, Daniel, oh, God. Oh, no.’

  He leaned over to peer at the two blue lines. The air felt still around us. It was one of those moments when the universe pivots and you know nothing’s ever going to be the same again.

  Daniel looked shattered. ‘Oh, Charlotte, I’m sorry. I was so sure it was going to be OK. I was so sure.’

  Don’t touch me! I thought, but he didn’t. He set his jaw and gazed out to the tree tops. I could tell he didn’t have a clue what to say and I wished to God I could snap my fingers and make him vanish.

  I don’t know how long we sat there on the damp grass. I wasn’t thinking proper thoughts, just giving in to a squeezing sensation round my ribcage and a feeling like my heart was going to explode. I just kept staring at the sun going in, out, flirting with the clouds, but there was no heat. I was chilled right through.

  ‘Your teeth are chattering,’ said Daniel, wrenching his focus back to me. ‘Maybe we should go.’

  I hate you, I thought. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have known. It’s your fault, you speccy weirdo bastard. I was waiting for the sky to cave in, or one of those giant pointing fingers to come pushing out of the heavens. It could be YOU – and it IS! How could things be going on as normal around me, the woman walking the Airedale, the kid wobbling around on a bike, when my life was over? It wasn’t fucking FAIR.

  But then I thought, it could still be wrong, the test. It only said 98% accurate. That meant two in every hundred weren’t. So, say they sold, I don’t know, five hundred a week nationwide, somewhere in Britain ten women would be shitting themselves for nothing. And one of them might be me. After all, I had had a period, so that proved it. It was probably OK after all. I’d sneak one of my mum’s water tablets when I got home, see if I could shift some of this pot belly. Because, at the end of the day, I was me, Me, and there was no way I could be pregnant. Encouraged, I began to hunt in my pocket for the instruction leaflet.

  ‘I think,’ said Daniel cautiously, ‘your next step is probably to get checked out at the doctor’s. You might need to act quite quickly, depending . . .’ He trailed off.

  I think I went a bit mental.

  ‘What the FUCK is it to do with YOU?’ I gave him a shove and he nearly toppled. His glasses fell off and landed in the wet grass, and that made me hate him even more. ‘It’s MY body! MY problem! You have NO idea about ANYTHING. Just, just,’ my arms were waving pointlessly, ‘get out of my HEAD!’ As Daniel tried to wipe his spattered lenses on his sleeve I struggled up, clutching the white plastic stick with its parallel lines of doom. ‘And you can FUCK OFF too!’ I told it, ramming it into the soil like a tent peg and stamping it down. I turned and stalked off, towards the wobbly kid.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so cross with me,’ I heard Daniel call, then mutter, ‘I’m not the one who got you pregnant.’

  I broke into a run.

  *

  THE TRAINS IN my head came back again last night. Details change, but the dream’s recurring in its basic plot: I’m trying to go somewhere (although the exact destination’s always pretty vague) but the train I’m on never gets there. There’s always some crisis; I’m on the wrong train, or it won’t leave the station, or it turns into a wheelbarrow. Sometimes it never comes at all. I wake with a terrible sense of panic, and loss.

  Not hard to interpret that particular sequence of symbols, any cod-psychologist could work it out. I wonder, though, if I ever got my life together, would the trains actually Get There, or would the dreams simply stop?

  Sometimes in the morning, before I get up, I lie for a few seconds and my heart’s strung out with nostalgia for something I can’t even identify.

  I got to school at 9.10 that Monday, even though I’m not technically paid till half-past: I wanted a clear field. It was eerily quiet. Everyone was in assembly (except for Sylv who’s let off the daily spiritual injection to man the phones). I tiptoed past the main office, turned the corner and trotted quickly down the long corridor. That morning’s hymn floated out to greet me.

  ‘The trivial round, the common task

  Should furnish all we ought to ask’

  sang the children flatly, northernly. And yes, when I peeped through the double doors Mr Fairbrother was standing at the front, hymn book aloft, a trumpet and a traffic cone at his feet (he likes his visual aids, does Mr F. ‘I hear and I forget, I see and I remember,’ he’s always quoting at us). So I had about five minutes. I hurried back up to the reception area, peered round the corner, All Clear, and scuttled across to Mr F’s office.

  Once inside I dumped the carrier bag containing the cagoule on his chai
r where he couldn’t miss it. I’d wondered about a note with it, but what do you say? ‘Sorry I puked on your shoes’? My eyes travelled round the room for a moment. Shelves of box files and books, union memos and selected children’s art-work displayed on a pinboard; on the floor by the far wall a giant ammonite, an inflatable hammer, a monkey puppet, a hamster cage, a devil mask (as I said, he does like his props); in the corner a box of confiscated footballs, cap guns, poking devices, etc. On his desk was his parents’ wedding photo and a selection of horrible ornaments bought for him by various kids over the years. It was the room of a kind man. Oh how, how, how I had messed up.

  Time to go. I listened at the door, then opened it slowly.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Sylv’s voice made me jump about a mile in the air. She was standing across the corridor, lipsticked coffee cup in hand, waiting for me. ‘He’s in assembly. But you know that.’

  I could have told her. I could have beckoned her into the office, closed the door and taken her through the whole sad story, she’d have loved that. Sworn her to secrecy (a slim chance but a chance nevertheless). But I couldn’t do it. I said, ‘I was just checking Lost Property,’ and she stared at me so hard her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline. ‘Oh, piss off, you poisonous old witch,’ I nearly said. Nearly.

  The morning seemed to last forever. By ten I was sitting in the quiet corner with the remedial group helping them fill in worksheets on Area. We’d all drawn round our hands and agreed that mine was the biggest, and I was trying to count away the recollections of Sunday with square centimetres.