Why Mummy’s Sloshed

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.

‘So Mum says that you and her are like going to buy me a car?’ announced Jane.

‘What!’ said Simon.

‘I did not!’ I said indignantly, grabbing the phone off Jane, as Marissa cooed, ‘A car, Jane, darling? I mean, it’s marvellous that you’ve passed your test, it’s a very useful life skill to have, but getting a car of your own will only increase your carbon footprint and encourage unnecessary journeys. Why don’t you get a bike? It’s a really efficient mode of transport, and super eco-friendly.’

Jane was making mutinous noises about a bike when Simon interrupted Marissa.

‘Why would you say that, Ellen?’ he huffed. ‘You can’t just make promises like that on my behalf.’

‘I just said I didn’t say that!’ I repeated. ‘What I told Jane was that I’d discuss it with you and we’d see if it was financially viable for us to do something between us, that’s all.’

‘And me!’ chirped Marissa. ‘I have a lot of valuable input to offer too.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to contribute to a car for Jane?’

‘Well, no, but I can send you some information about how many miles of rainforest are destroyed per new car built, and also I’ve done a lot of research into bikes, so I can help with that, which I really think is a better solution and –’

‘But I don’t want a bike, I want a car,’ whined Jane. ‘I’ve got a bike. It’s rubbish.’

‘Yes, but Jane, if you had a really super-duper high-end bike, I think that would make a lot of difference,’ insisted Marissa. ‘Just think about it, OK, Jane? Promise me you’ll think about it.’

‘I think Marissa’s right,’ said Simon heartily. ‘A really good bike sounds a great idea, darling.’

Jane made huffing and non-committal noises about thinking about a bike, and decided to move on to the next battle to be fought.

‘Why aren’t you at work anyway, Dad?’ said Jane. ‘Mum says I have to go back to school after this. Do I really?’

I strained my ears to listen.

‘We’ve both taken today off because we’re going on a couples’ retreat in Dorset,’ said Marissa.

‘A couples’ retreat?’ said Jane incredulously. ‘Ewww. Is that, like, threesomes and sex parties and stuff? That’s totally disgusting, Dad!’

‘No, of course it’s not like that,’ said Marissa in her calmest, nicest, I-Am-a-Very-Good-Person-and-Shall-Not-Get-Annoyed-by-the-Inferior-Beings voice. ‘It involves a weekend of connecting as a couple, strengthening and deepening our bond through intense work with counsellors and trust exercises and –’

‘Do you meditate?’ interrupted Jane.

‘What? Yes, yes, couples’ meditation is one of the workshops,’ said Marissa smugly.

‘It sounds a pile of wank,’ said Jane cheerfully.

‘Oh, Jane,’ sighed Marissa. ‘Don’t be so quick to judge what you don’t understand. It’s vital to couples’ well-being to nurture and care for their relationship. You have to be proactive about relationships, you know, if you don’t want to end up alone. You often find that the reason a person has a string of failed relationships behind them is because they just couldn’t be bothered to put the work in.’

Was that directed at me? That was definitely directed at me. Ouch! Oh, Marissa’s good, I’ll give her that – sweetness and light and discreet little barbs, just sharp enough to sting, but subtle enough that if you objected you’d either look paranoid and over-sensitive, or Marissa would look at you caringly and say, ‘Of course it wasn’t about you, but it seems to be resonating with you for some reason. Why do you think you feel that so personally? Would you like to talk about it?’ OF COURSE I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, I’M BRITISH. And if I DID want to talk about it, it wouldn’t be with you, with your stupid shiny hair, and your head on one side doing your special Caring Look. Single I may be, failed relationships I may have, but given the choice between being a sad, lonely, ageing singleton, and going on couples’ retreats filled with people like Marissa, spending the rest of my life with just me and my discreet box from Ann Summers under the bed doesn’t actually seem so bad …

‘It sounds expensive,’ said Jane. ‘Sounds like it probably cost as much as … ooh … say a car? Maybe if Dad wasn’t off spending all his money on wanky weekends, he could buy me a car!’

‘Firstly,’ Marissa said, ‘you can’t actually put a price on emotional health, and secondly I paid for it. It was an anniversary present for your father.’

‘Lucky Dad,’ said Jane sarcastically. ‘Anyway, I was actually asking him a question, not you, Marissa, so if you could, like, stop interrupting? So, Dad, do I have to go back to school?’

‘Don’t be cheeky to Marissa, please. And if your mother says you have to go back to school, then you have to go back to school,’ said Simon firmly, still nonetheless making me out to be the bad cop.

‘She has A levels!’ I shouted down the phone. ‘She needs to work. They don’t pass themselves.’

‘Oh my God, Mother!’ snapped Jane. ‘I know I have A levels. How could I forget? I’ve only just finished my Mocks, and also you’ve literally talked about nothing else for months. Fine! Since no one cares about my emotional health, I’ll just go back to school. Don’t anyone worry about my individuality or being allowed to express myself at any point. No, that’s fine!’

‘Jane, I need to go. There’s a very tricky junction coming up and I need to concentrate. But well done, darling, and I’ll call you tonight, OK?’

‘No mobiles are allowed at the retreat,’ put in Marissa.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Simon sighed. ‘Anyway, bye, darling, talk soon,’ and he hung up.

‘God, Marissa is a fucking annoying cow!’ said Jane.

‘Mmm,’ I said noncommittally, not wanting to make the mistake of bitching about Marissa to Jane, only for Jane to repeat it all back to Marissa at some point in the future when I was in Jane’s bad books and Marissa had bought her goodwill with ASOS vouchers. ‘And don’t swear so much, darling.’

‘Well, she is! Anyway, Mum, seriously, why do I have to go back to school?’

‘Because, darling,’ I repeated for what felt like the eleventy fucking billionth time, ‘this is your A-level year, and your A levels are very important.’

‘The Queen hasn’t got any A levels,’ interjected Jane.

‘That’s because she’s the fucking QUEEN!’ I pointed out. ‘She didn’t need A levels. You don’t become Queen because you were top of your class at Queen School.’

‘It would be more democratic that way?’ suggested Jane.

‘But you aren’t going to be Queen,’ I said despairingly. ‘And all those other hugely successful people who’ve got to the top despite not having A levels are the exception, not the rule. They’d have been successful anyway, and it might have been an easier path if they had had A levels, and for every millionaire A level-less entrepreneur, there are a million other people who never realised their potential because they didn’t get any A levels. In most cases it’s not because they didn’t bother to work for them, but that they never got the chance to, and given that there are billions of people in the world who are forced to work in dangerous, low-paid jobs because for one reason or another they’ll never get an opportunity to get a decent education, who would in fact give their right fucking arm for the educational breaks that you take for granted, then it’s in fact rather morally reprehensible of you to not take your education seriously and make the very most of it that you can!’

I was rather proud of my little speech – it almost moved me to tears – and surely, surely somehow it would get through to Jane that she really needed to knuckle down and start working.

‘Oh my God, Mother,’ sneered Jane. ‘Have you actually just given me the educational equivalent of the “There are starving children in Africa, so eat your peas” talk? Sad!’

‘Just get in the fucking car,’ I said.

Once a still-grumbling Jane was deposited at school, and I’d fortunately received no phone calls from the school complaining about a lack of a Peter, suggesting that through some miracle he’d managed to disconnect himself from the online world and made it to the bus in time, I drove on to work.

I do rather like my job. I worked bloody hard to get there and, as jobs go, I’ve had far worse. I’m good at what I do, plus I have a great team to work with, and – an important point that’s never mentioned in school careers talks – no one in my office has killer BO (it’s astonishing the effect on morale That Person can have).

Our company seems to be full of complicated politics, though, and that side of things is a bit pants, with Shakespearean levels of intrigue and backstabbing over everything from who gets the better desk to who has the more comfortable office chair, and ridiculous levels of virtue signalling over what fucking brand of coffee to buy for the office. (‘This is Fairtrade’; ‘Yes, but this is Fairertrade’; ‘This one is grown by a co-operative of blind orangutans orphaned by the evil palm oil trade’; ‘But THIS one is grown by blind, ONE-LEGGED orangutans orphaned by NAZIS and palm oil’; ‘THIS one is grown by blind one-legged orphaned orangutans still traumatised by Dominic Cummings driving to the zoo where they lived, to taunt them about his SUPERIOR EYESIGHT.’ No one ever seems to make such a huge, show-offy fuss about tea, do they? It’s always the coffee drinkers carrying on.)

If we could all be left alone to get on with our jobs, instead of being summoned to pointless meetings about bastarding coffee, we’d probably be a lot more productive. In fact, if certain people didn’t spend so much time wanking on about stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with what the company does do, just to make themselves look important, we probably wouldn’t have a threatened merger hanging over our heads, potentially risking all our jobs.

I’d thought when I started at my current company that perhaps this would be the job that I found a passion for – it’s an achingly trendy technology company, with ‘thinking spaces’ where creative types draw on the walls (while drinking the hotly argued-over coffee) and have ‘blue sky moments’, whatever the fuck they are. I’m not achingly trendy, nor am I creative, and after years of child-rearing I have to bite my tongue to stop myself shouting at the hipster creatives in their braces and beards and too-short trousers that drawing on the walls is NAUGHTY and I’ll smack their bottom if they do that again. Mainly what stops me is that Daryl, who has the biggest beard and the shortest trousers, looks rather like he’d enjoy a spanking from a woman old enough to be his mother.