Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****

‘And anyway, things like that are exactly what we were talking about,’ said Sam. ‘You seem to think that that’s it, that you’re now condemned to some lonely nun-like existence for evermore, but it’s the twenty-first century, people split up, move on, find new partners all the fucking time, babe. Look at me. Look at Colin. Look at Hannah and Charlie. We’ve all had failed marriages or long-term relationships, and we’ve all found someone else. Why do you think you won’t?’

‘I didn’t say I thought I won’t,’ I pointed out. ‘I said I can’t. There’s a difference.’

‘But why not?’ said Colin, looking baffled. ‘Unless you are still in love with Simon and feel you’ve made a terrible mistake, in which case it’s probably not too late to tell him, don’t be like Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, both too proud to admit how they feel. If you want Simon, do something about it. You’re not actually divorced yet – you could just put all this behind you and move on and we’ll say no more about it.’

‘I’m not pining for Simon,’ I said, remembering the very annoying coffee conversation we’d had that morning and his utter uselessness in attempting to galvanise his children into action even when it was officially his time to be responsible for them, and also reminding myself he was probably even now having red-hot contortionist sex to put on Instagram while his children were shut in their cupboards. ‘I just miss the companionship and the shorthand of an established relationship. Anyway, I can’t tell you why I can’t find someone else. You will just have to take my word for it,’ and I took a large slug of my drink.

Two more enormous vodka and tonics later, while Charlie was out getting a curry, I thought maybe, after all, I could tell the rest of them why I was now destined for a life of celibacy and loneliness.

‘I can’t have sex with another man,’ I announced.

‘Why not?’ said Colin.

‘Of course you can!’ said Hannah. ‘It’s hardly like you were some virgin bride when you married Simon, you’d been round the block a few times by the time you hooked up with our Mr Russell! I mean, you’ve even shagged Charlie!’

‘What, your Charlie?’ said Colin in surprise. ‘When did she shag him?’

‘She is here, you know!’ I said frostily. ‘Thank you, Hannah. I thought we’d agreed never to speak of the unfortunate fact that I’d shagged him, not once you two were an item. And it was years and years ago, Colin, before Simon, before any such thing as a hint of Hannah and him.’

Colin, who had obviously been hoping for something a little juicier, looked disappointed. ‘So if you’ve not been averse to a bit of the old casual sex in the past,’ he said, ‘why can’t you go back to your wicked and wanton ways?’

‘Because I can’t be naked!’ I burst out. ‘I cannot take my clothes off in front of a man! Not now!’

‘I know it’s daunting, babe,’ said Sam. ‘Men feel like that too, you know. The fear someone might laugh at the size of our dick (not that that has ever happened to me. I’ve never had any complaints in that department, thank you).’ Colin snorted. ‘Or they might think, I dunno, our balls are weird.’ Colin snorted again.

‘Would you please stop that, darling?’ said Sam. ‘You are the one not helping now. But you know what I mean, Ellen. It’s scary taking your clothes off in front of a new person. But just remember, they’ll probably be feeling exactly the same.’

‘NO!’ I shouted. ‘NO, THEY WON’T! Because it’s DIFFERENT for men!’

‘Of course it’s not,’ said Colin kindly. ‘We might be better at seeming OK about it, but really we do get nervous too.’

‘NO! Seriously, men can never understand what I’m talking about. Your bodies have not been ravaged by child bearing. My stomach looks like an uncooked focaccia –’

‘At least you manage to stay middle class with your metaphors,’ interrupted Colin approvingly.

‘Well, it DOES. All saggy and dimpled and with stretch marks all over it. It’s not a case of just going to the gym, either. No crunches in the world are going to sort the ravages of pregnancy. And my tits. My tits were once perky and firm, but not anymore. Now, I hardly dare take my bra off in winter, lest the floor is too cold, so far south are they migrating.’

‘But it can’t be that bad,’ said Sam. ‘You look all right with your clothes on.’

‘That is rather the whole point of why I can’t take them OFF,’ I shouted. ‘Just because I can cover the ravages in Zara’s finest doesn’t change the horror that lurks beneath.’

‘I’m sure you’re just being self-conscious,’ said Colin kindly. ‘It really can’t be that bad. You’re overthinking this.’

In answer, I pulled up my top and showed them my stretch-marked stomach. They recoiled, and then remembered themselves.

‘It’s fine, really,’ said Sam.

‘It does look a bit like an uncooked focaccia, doesn’t it?’ said Colin, with interest. ‘The stretch marks are like the little holes in the top of the focaccia. Maybe you should just put on some fake tan? After all, a nice baked loaf always looks more appealing than a lump of dough.’

‘COLIN!’ said Sam.

‘I’m trying to help,’ said Colin.

‘But I felt just the same with Charlie,’ said Hannah. ‘And it was fine.’

‘But you already knew Charlie. You’d known him for years. He wasn’t someone new.’

‘Yes, but he’d never seen me naked.’

‘No, but he was Charlie. Lovely, lovely Charlie. You knew he was wonderful and adored you and was a very good person. If I were to have sex again, it would be with a stranger. I mean, not an actual stranger, but in relative terms, when you’ve spent twenty-five years shagging the same person, really, anyone else counts as a stranger. What if I do sex wrong? What if it’s all different now and I didn’t get the memo? I can’t even remember what any other penises look like apart from Simon’s.’

‘Not even Charlie’s?’ said Hannah curiously.

‘Especially not Charlie’s. I have put that right out of my mind. I don’t want to think about what Charlie’s penis looks like.’

‘Why is Ellen thinking about my penis?’ enquired Charlie, coming back at exactly the wrong moment.

‘I’m not thinking about your penis!’ I insisted. ‘Or any penises. No penises. I mean, as far as I recall, I don’t remember being shocked or surprised by Simon’s, so I assume that most penises look like his, but even so, to look at someone else’s? To touch another man’s willy, let alone, well, you know! It would be too … strange. Too intimate. It would feel wrong.’

‘Or it might feel very right?’ suggested Colin. ‘You won’t know until you try.’

‘Anyway,’ I said darkly. ‘My stomach and my willy worries aren’t even the worst of it.’

‘Please don’t show us your tits,’ begged Colin.

‘I’m not going to show you my tits,’ I assured him. ‘The tits are not what I’m talking about anyway. The horror I’m referring to can never be seen by any man. Except perhaps a gynaecologist.’

Sam and Colin looked at me fearfully. Charlie retreated to the kitchen muttering something about heating up the naan bread.

I nodded. ‘Yep. I mean my fanny is the issue. Two human heads have squeezed through it. It has been sewn up twice. Basically, I’ve a fanny that looks like a patchwork quilt and I fear it’s not as … embracing … as it once was, so I can’t ever be naked or Do Sex with another man again. It was OK with Simon, he saw it all happening gradually, the stretch marks and the sagging, and even the baggy tapestry fanny didn’t all happen at once, and also it was mostly his fault. Have you noticed that he has quite a big head that he probably passed on to his children? So that was different. But I could no more inflict my Flaps of Doom on a new man than, well, than I could show them to you. It Just Is Not Going to Happen!’

‘Well, anyway, we’re not advocating you pick up randoms on Tinder and booty-call them,’ said Colin sternly. ‘If you meet someone that you find you connect with enough to want to go to bed with him, then he’ll probably be a nice enough person to not care that you have a few flaws and imperfections. He’ll probably be too busy worrying about his own imperfections anyway. But you can get to know someone first, and then think about bed. There’s no obligation to shag anyone you don’t want to.’

‘But what about dick pics?’ I whimpered.

‘Well, they’re quite useful. Look at it like this, if they send you a dick pic, you can instantly discount them, and not waste any more time on them. Unless, of course, you like what you see …’

‘OK, OK,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll think about it. I’m trying very hard to be a strong independent woman and not need a man, though, but it’s bloody lonely being a single mother and coping with everything on your own.’

‘You are a strong independent woman,’ said Hannah firmly. ‘You’ve always been a strong independent woman, and really, you’ve been coping on your own for years as Simon was always working or away so much.’

‘I know, I know, but I’m starting to realise he did do stuff. It’s the little things, you know – like having someone open a bottle of wine for me after a bad day. Someone to warm my feet on in bed. Judgy won’t let me, in fact he growls at me when I try. I don’t need a knight in shining armour to rescue me, but occasionally I’d so like someone to bring me a glass of wine after a long day.’

‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘in the meantime, remember you’ve always got us. You’re not on your own.’

Monday, 16 April

And at last the children have returned to school after the Easter holidays or the Spring Break or whatever the fuck they call it these days. I thought things would be easier when they were in secondary school. I thought as they got older they’d get more self-sufficient, they’d be able to get themselves up and out the door in the mornings, they’d not need me to find all their stuff (though why I thought that age would bring them the magical ability to locate lost items, I don’t know, given that it had never bestowed that gift upon their father), they’d be able to make their own lunches and breakfasts and possibly even their own dinners sometimes too. Oh, what a poor, sweet fool I was! Trying to get teenagers out the door is possibly even more stressful – more reminiscent of banging your head endlessly against a brick wall – than trying to get bloody toddlers out the door.

The happy fun joy started with trying to get them TO bed last night. I’d duly packed them off at a decent hour, reminding them that they needed their sleep, that they had to concentrate at school today and also that they were still growing, for which I was rewarded with the same whinges about how everyone else gets to stay up as late as they like that I’d been hearing for the last ten years, and which fell upon deaf and unsympathetic ears. Then there had been the arguments from Jane that it was not fair that she had to go to bed at 10 pm, just like Peter, when she was a whole two years older and so should be allowed to stay up much later, to which my only counter-argument was that she bloody well had to go to bed because I was going to bed, followed by me having to sit in the kitchen and guard the fridge until I was sure Peter was safely in bed to stop him downing three pints of milk before retiring for the night and then complaining when there was nothing to put on his vat of Weetabix in the morning. Then there had always been Simon’s role – after I’d shouted in vain at them to go to bed, he’d finally wade in to the argument and bellow that they were to go to bed NOW and they’d be so surprised by him shouting at them, that they’d go. Now that it’s just me shouting, I think they simply tune out.

THEN, when their lights were still on at 11 pm, despite increasingly furious bellows from me, I had to go downstairs and switch the router off, which resulted in further furious bellows from them because Peter had been number one on Fortnite and about to win the battle and Jane had been having a like, really, like, important chat with Millie and Sophie on Snapchat and now her life was ruined. Neither of them seemed the slightest bit concerned that these things had been happening when they were supposed to be sleeping – it was still all my fault according to Jane because Simon apparently let her stay up as late as she wanted over the weekend.

So, after all that, it was no bastarding surprise when the little fuckers showed no signs of wanting to arise from their fetid pits this morning. I banged on the doors, I shouted and I shrieked, all while trying to get myself ready for work. I eventually threatened to go in and dump a bucket of water on them. But all to no avail. Someone needs to invent a special bed for teenagers, so that when their alarm goes off, if they’re still in bed after five minutes they get a mild electric shock. If they STILL don’t get up, the shock increases in intensity, and so on and so on until they finally deign to arise. Some might say this is harsh, and probably contravenes the Geneva Convention, etc, etc, but those people clearly have never had to get a bloody teenager out of bed in the morning …

Jane finally emerged from her room half an hour before we had to leave, and locked herself in the bathroom. This immediately set alarm bells ringing, because Jane is incapable of spending less than an hour in the bathroom at the best of times.

I banged on the door and shouted, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I need to wash my hair,’ she screamed back.

‘But you washed it last night before bed,’ I pointed out.

‘Well, I need to wash it AGAIN, don’t I, Mother,’ she snarled.

‘But we need to go in half an hour at the most if you want a lift to the bus stop,’ I wailed. ‘And if I don’t give you a lift to the bus stop you’ll miss the bus and be late for school and then you’ll get another detention and I’ll probably be summonsed to see your head of year and made to feel like a shit mother because you were late again, when actually it’s not my fault, but Mrs Simmons won’t see it like that, she’ll judge me for being an incompetent single mother and probably have you taken into care because when she starts giving me her judgy look I’ll revert to being a sulky teenager too and huffing and rolling my eyes, and last time I had to go and see her she actually asked me if I was chewing and Jane, please, just be ready in time.’

There was no answer, probably because Jane had her head under the rubber shower attachment I’d purchased as the solution to her hair-washing woes. Jane had looked at it in disgust. ‘WTF is that, Mother?’ she’d enquired in scathing tones. I’d explained that it attached to the taps, to wash your hair with, and that everyone had them in their bathrooms when I was her age. She gave me the same look of blank incomprehension as when I tried to explain to her about telephone boxes. In fairness, I’d forgotten how rubbish those shower attachments were, and despite brightly telling Jane that it was just the same as a real shower, it really wasn’t, not least on account of its ability to choose the most inconvenient time to detach one side from the tap and spray water all over you.

Meanwhile, Peter finally emerged from his room and shuffled downstairs. I abandoned trying to prise Jane out of the bathroom and ran downstairs, as he slouched over the kitchen counter shovelling Weetabix into his mouth.

‘Peter, how many Weetabix have you got in there?’

Peter considered my question as he crammed another shovelful into his mouth.

‘Six?’ he finally offered.

‘And is there any milk left for your sister’s breakfast?’

‘Oh yes,’ Peter assured me virtuously. ‘I put two bananas in as well, so I wouldn’t need as much milk.’

I was unconvinced by his logic, especially when I looked in the fridge and found the milk carton had been put back in empty.

‘PETER! You’ve finished all the milk again!’

‘No, Mum, I haven’t,’ he insisted, ‘Look.’ He took the carton and tilted it, so a tiny dribble ran into one corner. ‘There’s still some left.’

‘No. No, there isn’t. That was a full two-litre carton last night.’

‘Was it?’

‘Well, maybe Jane can just make do with orange juice and toast then.’

‘Oh yeah. I meant to say, Mum, we’re out of OJ.’

‘HOW? That was another full carton last night.’

Peter shrugged. ‘I dunno. I only had a couple of glasses. And now there’s none left.’

I sighed in despair. I’d been fretting for years about how I was going to feed Peter as a teenager, and now the reality was upon me, I was genuinely fearful I might have to remortgage the house. When we were working out how much maintenance Simon should pay for the children, apparently you can’t have ‘feeding giant teenage child with a possible tapeworm and hollow legs who can eat like a plague of locusts’ taken into account to have the amount increased – according to the law, which has never seen how much a teenage boy can eat, he’ll cost no more to feed than Jane. With only one income, the days of blithely flinging anything I fancied in my trolley at Waitrose are long gone, and budget German supermarkets are now my best friends.

Peter turned his bowl upside down and drained the last drops.

‘Mum, I think I’ve left my PE kit at Dad’s,’ he said.

‘What? Why?’

‘You said we’d be at Dad’s for the weekends, so I put it in the box of stuff to go to his, because I thought that would be best. I didn’t know we’d be coming home on Sunday nights. Sorry, Mum. It’s confusing, trying to live in two places.’

I wanted to be angry at him for having no PE kit, but I remembered all too well the confusion of the early days after your parents’ divorce, when something essential always seemed to be at the other parent’s house.

‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about all this. I really am.’

Peter gave me a very brief hug. ‘It’s OK, Mum. It’s just a bit hard sometimes, you know?’

‘I know. You can talk to me about it, if you want?’

‘Yeah, no, maybe you can just give me a note off PE?’

Under the circumstances, that seemed the least I could do, although I gave him strict instructions not to tell Jane, as all hell would break loose if she found out I’d given Peter a note just because he didn’t have any PE kit.

I went and banged on the bathroom door again to no avail. ‘JANE! JANE, HURRY UP! OTHER PEOPLE NEED THE BATHROOM AND YOU NEED TO HAVE BREAKFAST!’

Peter was still in the kitchen playing on his phone and a thought occurred to me.

‘Peter, do you follow your sister on Instagram?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I borrow your phone to check something?’

‘Why?’

‘I just want to look at something quickly, please?’

‘OK.’

I clicked on Instagram and went to Jane’s page. The first six photos were of Jane with a boy, looking very cosy. He was tagged as @harryx9876. I clicked on his page. More photos of him and Jane looking equally cosy. No wonder she’d blocked me!

‘Who’s Harryx?’ I asked Peter.

He peered at his phone. ‘You mean Harry, Mum. That’s just his Insta handle. He’s a boy at school.’

‘In Jane’s class?’

‘Year above. I think he’s like her boyfriend or something?’

Well, that at least explained the incessant hair-washing. What should I do? Should I say something? But then she’d know I’d basically been stalking her. I resolved to say nothing for the time being anyway, and just cajole Peter into letting me stalk her from time to time. Finally, after more hammering on Jane’s door to try to make her come and have breakfast and being loftily informed that straightening her hair was far more important than food (I had hoped that what I save on Jane’s vanity not giving her time to eat might make up for Peter’s tapeworm, except her energy consumption cancels that out too – apparently you don’t have the hours of hot water and hairdryers and hair straighteners running taken into consideration when the final maintenance amount is calculated either) and Peter was semi-ready and looking for a pre-school snack, Jane eventually came strolling downstairs, all glammed up for Harryx, just as I was howling that I was going now, NOW and anyone who wasn’t ready would just have to take their chances themselves.

‘GET IN THE CAR, IN THE CAR!’ I bellowed. ‘JANE! What are you wearing? Where’s the rest of your skirt? OMG, the school’s new uniform policy. You will be sent home!’

‘Chill, Mother,’ said Jane. ‘EVERYBODY wears their skirts like this, don’t be so old-fashioned.’

‘Go and change. No, don’t go and change, we haven’t got time, we’ll just have to hope no one notices.’

‘Make up your mind, Mother,’ huffed Jane. ‘You know that memory lapses and a lack of concentration are symptoms of the menopause, don’t you?’

‘JUST GET IN THE FUCKING CAAAAARRRRR!’

‘Mood swings too,’ she added helpfully. ‘And bloating …’

‘I’m not fucking menopausal, I just need you to get in the car!’ I begged, as Jane sauntered out the door, before screaming in outrage because Peter had beaten her there and was smugly ensconced in the front seat. I wondered if I went to the GP and just whimpered ‘Teenagers’ they’d prescribe me valium? And also gin?

I finally got them to the bus stop, and was just kicking them out of the car when Peter stopped halfway out (‘Darling, please, there’s traffic, what are you doing?’) to say, ‘Oh yeah, Mum, by the way, I need some money on my thumb for lunch.’

‘What?’

‘Y’know! My thumb money. You need to put some on it. So I can get lunch?’

‘Your thumb. Do you perchance mean your ParentPay account?’

‘Yeah. My thumb!’

‘Oh, I need mine topped up too, Mum,’ said Jane, suddenly sweetness and light and dropping the sarky ‘Mother’ now cold hard cash was involved.

‘Right! You didn’t think to remind me of this before?’ I said, thinking, ‘Wave them off with a smile, don’t let them leave on a sour note, be nice, so their last memory of you isn’t as a shrieking harridan,’ and also thinking, ‘Why couldn’t they ask Simon about things like this, just once? Why do I always have to do everything?’

‘We’re reminding you now!’ they said in surprise.

‘I’ll have to do it when I get to work. I’m late. Now please just GO!’ I hissed, before brightly adding, ‘Bye darlings, love you. Have a wonderful day!’

Arrgh! Fucking ParentPay. Or his ‘thumb money’, as Peter confusingly insists on referring to it. In theory, a useful and efficient website that allows you to top up your children’s dinner money accounts (which they then use to pay for their lunches using their thumb print, hence the ‘thumb money’. I do have concerns about this and fear the government might steal their data and keep files on them, although in my children’s case the files would mainly record the fact that they spend inordinate amounts of money on chips and traybakes while at school, because you can also check what they’ve bought with their thumbs. I quickly found it was too depressing to look, and I still marvel they’ve not got scurvy – they must have very sound constitutions, which I expect they got from me), pay for school trips and other extras, all online using your card, instead of scrabbling around to find change/chequebooks/cash to pay for these things. In reality, it’s a constant drain of money. No sooner have you topped up their accounts than they’re unaccountably empty again. It’s very depressing!

Sunday, 22 April

The chatty chickens are here! I’d pondered keeping them in the shed but decided against it (sometimes I wonder how Simon copes without a shed now he’s living in a flat, but I suppose he doesn’t have me to avoid and only has the children one weekend a fortnight. I bet he wishes he had a shed, though. How has it not occurred to me till now that I should really make the most of my shed-bragging rights against poor shedless Simon? I could really rub salt in the wound by laughing that actually, I use it so little that sometimes I even forget that I have a shed! That would go some way to making up for all the times he asked me if I’d had a ‘nice day off’ when I worked part-time when the children were little, when in reality I’d spent the entirety of my ‘day off’ trying to tackle the shit heap of our house, wrangle his feral fuck trophies and cling on to my sanity while trying to have a wee for the last two hours since inevitably someone needed me for something crucial every time I tried to head to the loo, and so now I thought my bladder was going to burst and I probably had a UTI … Hmm, on second thoughts, taunting him with my shed doesn’t even come close. Maybe I’ll burn it down in front of him while laughing maniacally and telling him I don’t need it. No, better to mock him with a functioning but unused shed …).