How Hard Can It Be?

2

THE HAS-BEEN

I made Emily go to school the day after the night her bottom went viral. Maybe you think I was wrong. Maybe I agree with you. She didn’t want to, she pleaded, she came up with every reason under the sun why it would be better if she stayed home with Lenny and caught up on some ‘homework’ (binge-watching Girls, I’m not that stupid). She even offered to tidy her room – a clear sign of desperation – but it felt like one of those times when you have to stick to your guns and insist that the child does what feels hardest. Get back in the saddle, isn’t that the phrase our parents’ generation used before making your child do something they don’t want to became socially unacceptable.

I told myself it would be better for Em to run the gauntlet of crude jokes and smirking whispers in the corridors than throw a sickie and hide her dread under the duvet at home. Just as when the seven-year-old Emily came off her bike in the park, the gravel cruelly embedded in her scraped and bloody knee, and I knelt before her and sucked the tiny stones out of the wound before insisting that she got back on again in case the instinctive aversion to trying what has just hurt you were to bloom into an unconquerable fear.

‘NO, Daddy, NO!’ she screamed, appealing over my head to Richard who, by then, had already bagged the softer, more empathetic parent role, leaving me to be the enforcer of manners, bedtimes and green vegetables – tedious stuff lovely, tickly daddies don’t care to get involved with. I hated Rich for obliging me to become the kind of person I had never wanted to be and would, in other circumstances, have paid good money to avoid. But the moulds of our parental roles, cast when our kids are really quite small, set and harden without our noticing until one day you wake up and you are no longer just wearing the mask of a bossy, multi-tasking nag. The mask has eaten into your face.

Come to think of it, you can probably date everything that went wrong with modern civilisation to the moment parent became a verb. Parenting is now a full-time job, in addition to your other job, the one that pays the mortgage and the bills. There are days when I think I would love to have been a mother in the era when parents were still adults who selfishly got on with their own lives and drank cocktails in the evening while children did their best to please and fit in. By the time it was my turn, it was the other way around. Did this vast army of men and women dedicated to the hour-by-hour comfort and stimulation of their offspring cause unprecedented joy in the younger generation? Well, read the papers and make up your own mind. But this was our story, Emily’s and mine, Richard’s and Ben’s, and I can only tell you what it felt like to live it from the inside. History will pass its own verdict on whether modern parenting was a science or a fearful neurosis that filled the gap once occupied by religion.

Yes, I made Emily go to school that day, and I nearly made myself late for my interview because I drove her there, instead of making her ride her bike. I remember the way she walked through the gate, head and shoulders down as if braced against a gale, although there was no wind, none at all. She turned for a second and gave a brave little wave and I waved back and gave her a thumbs-up, although my heart felt like a crushed can inside my chest. I almost wound down the window and called after her to come back, but I thought that, as the adult, I needed to give my child confidence, not show that I, too, was anxious and freaked out.

Did it start then? Was that the root of the terrible thing that happened later? If I’d played things differently, if I’d let Em stay home, if I’d cancelled the interview and we’d both snuggled under the duvet, watched four episodes of Girls back to back and let the caustic, jubilant wit of Lena Dunham purge a sixteen-year-old’s fearful shame? So many ifs I could have heeded.

Sorry, I didn’t. I had to find a job urgently. I reckoned there was enough money in the joint account to last us three months, four at most. The lump of money we put by after selling the London house for a profit and moving up North had shrunk alarmingly, first when Richard lost his job, then after the move back South when we rented for a while until we found the right place. One Sunday lunchtime, Richard casually revealed that not only would he be earning next to nothing for two years but also that, as part of his counsellor training, he was now in therapy himself twice a week, for which we would have to pay. The fees were monstrous, maiming: I felt like ringing the therapist and offering her a potted history of my husband in return for a fifty per cent discount. Who knew every quirk and wrinkle of his personality better than I did? The fact Rich was spending our food-shopping money on sessions where he got to complain about me only fuelled my sense of injustice. To make up the difference, I needed a serious, main-breadwinner position, and I needed it fast or we would be homeless and dining on KFC. So, I made my daughter get back in the saddle, just as I took myself back to work when she was four months old and had a streaming cold, the phlegm bubbling in her tiny lungs. Because that’s the deal, that’s what we have to do. Even when every atom of our being is shrieking, ‘Wrong, Wrong, Wrong’? Even then.

10.12 am: On the train to London, I’m supposed to be going through my CV and reading the financial pages in preparation for my meeting with the headhunter, but all I can think about is Emily, and Tyler’s foul, disgusting message to her. What does it feel like to be the object of such salivating lust before you’ve even lost your virginity? (At least I assume Em is still a virgin. I’d know if she wasn’t, wouldn’t I?) How many of those kinds of messages is she getting? Should I notify the school? How would the conversation with the Head of Sixth Form go: ‘Um, my daughter accidentally shared a picture of her bottom with your entire pupil body’? And what further problems might that cause Em? Isn’t it better to play it down, try to carry on as normal? I may want to kill Lizzy Knowles. I may, in fact, want her entrails hung above the school gate to discourage any future abuse of social media that mortifies a sweet, naive girl. But Emily said she didn’t want her friend to get in trouble. Best let them sort it out themselves.

I could call Richard now and tell him about the belfie, but it will distress him and the thought of having to comfort him and deal with his anxiety, as I have done for the whole of our life together, is too exhausting. No, easier to fix it myself, like I always do (whether it is a new house, a new school or a new carpet). Then, once everything is OK for Em, I will tell him.

That’s how I ended up being a liar in the office and a liar at home. If MI5 were ever looking for a perimenopausal double-agent who could do everything except remember the password (‘No, hang on, give me time, it’ll come to me in a minute’), I was a shoo-in. But, believe me, it wasn’t easy.

You may have noticed that I joke a lot about forgetfulness, but it’s not funny, it’s humiliating. For a while, I told myself it was just a phase, like that milky brain-fug I first got when I was breastfeeding Emily. I was so zombified one day, when I’d arranged to meet my college friend Debra in Selfridges (she was on maternity leave with Felix, I think), that I actually put wet loo paper in my handbag and threw the car keys down the toilet. I mean, if you put that in a book no one would believe it, would they?

This feels different, though, this new kind of forgetfulness; less like a mist that will burn itself off than some vital piece of circuitry that has gone down for good. Eighteen months into the perimenopause and I regret to say that the great library of my mind is reduced to one overdue Danielle Steel novel.

Each month, each week, each day it gets slightly harder to retrieve the things that I know. Correction. The things that I know that I knew. At forty-nine years of age, the tip of the tongue becomes a very crowded place.

Looking back, I can see all the times my memory got me out of trouble. How many exams would I have failed had I not been blessed with an almost photographic ability to scan several chapters in a textbook, carry the facts gingerly into the exam room – like an ostrich egg balanced on a saucer – regurgitate them right there on the paper and, Bingo! That fabulous, state-of-the-art digital retrieval system, which I took entirely for granted for four decades, is now a dusty provincial library staffed by Roy. Or that’s how I think of him anyway.

Others ask God to hear their prayers. I plead with Roy to rifle through my memory bank and track down a missing object/word/thingummy. Poor Roy is not in his first youth. Well, neither of us is. He has his work cut out finding where I left my phone or my purse let alone locating an obscure quotation or the name of that film I thought about the other day with the young Demi Moore and Ally Somebody.

Do you remember Donald Rumsfeld, when he was US Secretary of Defense, being mocked for talking about ‘Known Unknowns’ in Iraq? My, how we laughed at the old boy’s evasiveness. Well, finally, I have some idea what Rumsfeld meant. Perimenopause is a daily struggle with Unknown Knowns.

See that tall brunette coming towards me down the dairy aisle in the supermarket with an expectant smile on her face? Uh-oh. Who is this woman and why does she know me?

‘Roy, please can you go and get that woman’s name for me? I know we have it filed in there somewhere. Possibly under Scary School Mums or Females I Suspect Richard Fancies?’

Off Roy shuffles in his carpet slippers while Unknown But Very Friendly Tall Brunette – Gemma? Jemima? Julia? – chats away about other women we have in common. She lets slip that her daughter got all A*s in her GCSEs. Unfortunately, that hardly narrows it down, perfect grades being the must-have accessory for every middle-class child and their aspirational parents.

Sometimes, when the forgetfulness is scary bad – I mean, bad like that fish in that, that, that film1 (‘Roy, hello?’) – it’s like I’m trying to get back a thought that just swam into my head then departed a millisecond later, with a flick of its minnow’s tail. Trying to retrieve the thought, I feel like a prisoner who has glimpsed the keys to her cell on a high ledge, but can’t quite reach them with her fingertips. I try to get to the keys, I stretch as hard as I can, I brush aside the cobwebs, I beg Roy to remind me what it was I came into the study/kitchen/garage for. But the mind’s a blank.

Is that why I started lying about my age? Trust me, it wasn’t vanity, it was self-preservation. An old friend from my City days told me this headhunter she knew was anxious to fill his female quota, as laid down by the Society of Investment Trusts. He was the sort of well-connected chap who can put a word in the right tufty, barnacled old ear and get you a non-executive directorship; a position on the board of a company that’s highly remunerated but requires only a few days of time a year. I figured if I had a couple of those under my belt, to supplement my financial-advice work, I could earn just enough to keep us afloat while Richard was training, while still taking care of the kids and keeping an eye on Mum and Rich’s parents as well. On paper, everything looked great. Hell, I could do two non-execs in my sleep. Full of hope, I went to meet Gerald Kerslaw.

11.45 am: Kerslaw’s office is in one of those monumental, white, wedding-cake houses in Holland Park. The front steps, of which there must be at least fifteen, feel like scaling the White Cliffs of Dover. Apart from the occasional party and meeting with clients, I haven’t worn a decent pair of shoes in a while – amazing how quickly you lose the ability to walk in heels. On the short journey from the Tube, I feel like a newborn gnu; tottering on splayed legs, I even stop to steady myself with one hand on a newspaper vendor’s stand.

‘Alright, Miss? Careful how you go,’ the guy cackles, and I am embarrassed at how absurdly grateful I am that he thinks I’m still young enough to be called Miss. (Funny how rank old sexists become charming, gallant gentlemen when you’re in need of a boost, isn’t it?)

It’s hard to comprehend how swiftly all the confidence you built up over a career ebbs away. Years of knowledge brushed aside in minutes.

‘So, Mrs Reddy, you’ve been out of the City for how long – seven years?’

Kerslaw has one of those stentorian barks that is designed to carry to the soldier mucking about at the back of the parade. He is bawling at me across a desk the size of Switzerland.

‘Kate, please call me Kate. Six and a half years actually. But I’ve taken on a lot of new responsibilities since then. Kept up my skillset, provided regular financial advice to several local people, read the financial pages every day and …’

‘I see.’ Kerslaw is holding my CV at a distance as if it is giving off a faint but unpleasant odour. Ex-Army, clip-on Lego helmet of silver hair; a small man whose shiny face bears the stretched look of someone who had always wanted to be three inches taller. The pinstripes on his jacket are far too wide, like the chalk lines on a tennis court. It’s the kind of suit only worn by a family-values politician after their cocaine-fuelled night with two hookers has been revealed in a Sunday tabloid.

‘Treasurer of the PCC?’ he says, raising one eyebrow.

‘Yes, that’s the parochial church council in the village. The books were a mess, but it was quite hard to persuade the vicar to trust me to manage their one thousand nine hundred pounds. I mean, I’d been used to running a four hundred million-pound fund so it was quite funny really and …’

‘I see. Now, moving on to your time as Chairman of the Governors at Beckles (is it?) Community College. Of what relevance might that be, Mrs Reddy?’

‘Kate, please. Well, the school was failing, about to go into special measures actually, and it took a huge amount of work to turn it around. I had to change the management structure, which was a diplomatic nightmare. You can’t believe school politics, seriously, they’re much worse than a bank, and there was all the legislation to adhere to and the inspection reports. So much red tape. An untrained person hasn’t got a hope in hell of understanding it. I instigated a merger with another school so we’d have the money to invest in frontline staff and bring down classroom sizes. It made Mergers and Acquisitions look like Teletubbies, quite frankly.’

‘I see,’ says Kerslaw, not an atom of a smile on his face. (Never watched Teletubbies with his kids, obviously.) ‘And you were not working full-time in that period because your mother was unwell, I believe?’

‘Yes, Mum – my mother – had a heart attack, but she’s much better now, made a full recovery thank goodness. I’d just like to say, Mr Kerslaw, that Beckles Community College is one of the fastest improving schools in the country, and it’s got a terrific new head who …’

‘Quite. So what I need to ask you is: if one of your children were to be ill when a board meeting was scheduled, what would you do? It’s vital that, as a non-exec director, you would have time to prepare for the meetings and, of course, attendance is compulsory.’

I don’t know how long I sit there staring at him. Seconds? Minutes? I can’t promise that my jaw isn’t resting on the green leather desktop. Do I really have to dignify that question with an answer? Even when such questions are supposed to be illegal now? It seems that I do. So, I tell the headhunter prat with his trying-too-hard red silk jacket lining that, yes, when I was a successful fund manager, my children were occasionally unwell, and I had always arranged backup care like the conscientious professional I was and that any board could have the utmost confidence in my reliability as well as my discretion.

The speech might have gone down better had a phone not chosen that exact moment to start playing the theme from The Pink Panther. I look at Kerslaw and he looks at me. Funny kind of ringtone for a stuffy old headhunter, I think. It takes a few moments to realise that the jaunty prowl of a tune is, in fact, coming from the handbag under my chair. Oh, hell. Ben must have changed my ringtone again. He thinks it’s funny.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I say, one hand plunged into the bag, frantically searching for the mobile, while the rest of me tries to remain as upright as possible. Why does a handbag turn into a bran tub when you need to find something fast? Purse. Tissues. Powder compact. Something sticky. Uch. Glasses. Come on! It has to be here somewhere. Got it. Switching the errant phone to Silent, I glance down to see one missed call and a text from my mother. Mum never texts. It’s as worrying as getting a handwritten letter from a teenager. ‘URGENT! Need your help. Mum x’

I hope that my face remains both smiley and calm, and that Kerslaw sees only a highly suitable non-exec director opposite him, but my imagination starts to pound. Oh, God. The possibilities swarm:

1 Mum has had another heart attack and crawled across the floor to get her mobile, which has ninety seconds’ battery life left.

2 Mum is wandering around Tesco, utterly bewildered, hair uncombed, wearing only her nightie.

3 What Mum really means is: ‘Don’t worry, they’re really very nice in intensive care.’

‘You see, Mrs Reddy,’ says Kerslaw, steepling his fingers like an archdeacon in a Trollope novel, ‘our problem is that, while you undoubtedly had a very impressive track record in the City, with excellent references which attest to that, there is simply nothing you have done in the seven years since you left Edwin Morgan Forster which would be of any interest to my clients. And then, I’m afraid to say, there is the question of your age. Late forties and fast approaching the cohort parameter beyond which …’

My mouth is dry. I’m not sure, when I open it, whether any words will come out. ‘Fifty’s the new thirty-five,’ I croak. Don’t break down, Kate, whatever you do. Let’s just get out of here, please don’t make a scene. Men hate scenes, this one especially, he’s not worth it.

I get up quickly, making it look like the decision to terminate the interview is mine. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Kerslaw. I really appreciate it. If anything comes up, I’m not too proud to go in at a considerably more junior level.’

The door seems a long way away. And the pile on Kerslaw’s carpet is so lush it feels like my heels are sinking into a summer lawn.

12.41 pm: Back on the pavement, I call my mother and could almost cry with relief when I hear her voice. She’s alive.

‘Mum, where are you?’

‘Oh, hello, Kath, I’m in Rugworld.’

‘What?’

‘Rugworld. Better choice than you get in Allied Carpets.’

‘Mum, you said it was urgent.’

‘It is, love. What d’you think I should go for? For my lounge. The sage or the oatmeal? Or they’ve got wheatgrass. Mind you it’s very dear. Seventeen pounds ninety-nine a square metre!’

One of the most crucial interviews of my entire life has just been derailed because my mother can’t decide what colour carpet she wants.