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‘I have skimmed milk now, I told you.’
‘You never…’ But Jo was out of the door, slamming it behind her as if I were on a train about to leave the station. If only.
I checked the fridge and there was plenty of ordinary milk there. Not much else, though. I thought about going up to Jo’s room to apologise for shouting but I sensed that might be the wrong tactic. I always felt so apologetic, apologetic for being inadequate, I suppose. But whenever I tried to say sorry or explain myself, Jo looked at me with an adolescent contempt as if admitting my shortcomings was in itself a shortcoming. I have always approached parenting as if trying to work a new washing machine without the instructions—by trial and error. What on earth does anyone else do? Yet part of me suspected that other mothers had received the instruction booklet with their children, while mine had been missing. Still, back to the Waltons…
Imagining is good strategy. It’s so easy to imagine fresh ironed sheets on the bed, an Aga in the kitchen and a nanny in the back bedroom—a perfect lifestyle maybe. But imagining yourself as perfect comes a little bit harder, although it can be done with practice. And back then I was well practised. When the girls were little, I used to walk around with a picnic basket in one hand, a copy of Parenting magazine in the other, smiling confidently should Eliza or Jo fling herself onto the floor at Tesco in a temper tantrum. As if I knew exactly how to handle the situation. As if I were in complete control. Still, I muddled through those early years well enough, a permanent splodge of jam on my blouse like a bullet wound, play dough under my finger nails. I always seemed to be wiping one of the girls down with a licked handkerchief while forgetting even to clean my own teeth some days. I can’t think why Roger left me and quickly moved in with the highly successful, designer-clothed, play-dough-free Alice.
Now I have a teenager, things are very different. I adore Jo, yet sometimes she is barely recognisable as the little girl I once knew. Sometimes she is barely recognisable as a human being, but I still adore her. If I’m honest, I would like to press my remote control and fast-forward her past the teenage years and straight into a mother and daughter bonding session in the spa pool, bypassing hormones completely. I desperately tried to hang on to my ideal vision of the future: shopping together without arguing; eating a meal together without an uncomfortable silence; talking together without…well, just talking together. Properly. I thought all it would take was for Jo to change, I didn’t realise I had to change too. Not then, not before Lily Finnegan.
When we went to Victoria’s wedding, I found myself chatting to a fellow parent-of-a-teenager, whom I’d spotted across the marquee—she had that tired, bewildered, confused expression we all share.
‘What are teenagers actually for?’ I asked her, as we stood looking at her daughter, who was sprawled on the ground in her pink frock and Doc Marten boots, with a Walkman plugged into her ears.
‘To make us feel permanently inadequate,’ she suggested.
‘To make sure we never dare see ourselves as anything more than a taxi driver.’
‘Or cash dispenser.’
As we tried to laugh about it all, I discreetly scanned the marquee to ensure Jo had not slouched off to sit in the car be-cause it was all ‘so sad’. In fact, Jo was in rather a good mood, chatting to all the relatives and smiling from time to time. Not a stray hormone in sight. I almost relaxed.
It was a happy day, as weddings so often are, and when Jo didn’t feel well, I didn’t give it another thought. The unwritten rule of teenage behaviour is to make a drama out of the mundane and Jo was no exception. One slight spot or blemish put her straight into quarantine in her own bedroom. One little tiff with her friend Scarlet had her announcing that nobody liked her, she might as well commit suicide, and when she did nobody would come to her funeral. So a slight period pain at the wedding meant leaving early with a view to hospitalisation later.
Should I have insisted she lie down in George’s spare bedroom so that Eliza and I could carry on enjoying our day out? Did I do more harm than good by giving in to Jo’s foibles? I have no idea, I simply made my decision knowing that it was probably the wrong one. As always.
There are no manuals on how to parent teenagers. It is assumed that once you get them sleeping through the night, using the potty and counting to ten, you can sit back and relax. Surely a parents’ magazine for those of us with teenagers would be snapped off the shelves. We would be able to read articles like ‘A Valium-free Method for Dealing with Your Child’s Mood Swings’ or ‘Just Giving You the Benefit of My Experience’—and other phrases never to say to your teenager. All I could do was carry on with the washing-machine approach to parenting.
When we got home from the wedding, I made a positive decision not to ask Jo accusing questions about her apparent stomach problems.
‘Are you better?You seem to have made a speedy recovery,’ I said, the message from my brain not quite reaching my lips.
I must check the hinges on Jo’s bedroom door, I thought, they may have worked loose by now.
The wedding had exhausted me. You never completely relax when you are out with growing children in an environment containing alcohol and collapsible tables. And I had sole responsibility for anything that might have gone wrong. The burden of being a parent on my own suddenly seemed to weigh heavily on me, for I had nobody to shift the responsibility onto, no one else to take the blame, no one else to share my doubts with. I sensed that the stress of lone parenting was beginning to take its toll on me.
The next day, I decided it was time her father got a taste of what I had to deal with, and time I had a desperately needed break. So I dialled Roger’s number, praying out loud as I held the receiver to my ear, ‘Please don’t let Alice answer, please don’t let Alice answer…’
I hadn’t heard the click on the line.
‘I’m afraid it is Alice,’ came the well-enunciated tones of my ex-husband’s partner.
I put the phone down quickly and stared at it. It rang.
‘Answer it, then,’ sang Eliza as she danced past me and into the kitchen.
‘Hello.’
‘That’s Lizzie, isn’t it?’
‘Well…yes.’
‘It’s Alice. I do believe you’ve just telephoned us.’
‘No, it wasn’t me. I’ve just this minute got in—the girls and I were out shopping.’
‘That’s funny…I pressed 1471 and your number came up as the previous caller. So I made the obvious deduction.’ Ever the lawyer.
‘Oh, it was Jo probably.’
‘I thought she was out shopping with you.’
‘She ran on ahead.’
‘So does she want to speak to her father, then?’
‘Yes. No. She did but she changed her mind. I’ll speak to Roger, though, seeing as you’ve phoned.’
Roger and I have an amicable relationship.
When we split up, we gave each other leaving presents and vowed to remain best friends. I was so delighted when he met his young, attractive partner so soon after our separation that I sent Alice a bouquet of flowers…
Well, it could happen—in certain parts of America, perhaps. In reality, my main aim with Roger was to let him know how miserable he had made me.
‘Hi, Roger, sorry I took so long to get back to you—the girls and I have been out shopping and having a wonderful, wonderful time. Together.’
‘You phoned me.’
‘Did I? Oh, yes. Sorry, I’ve had so many calls to make today—work, the hairdressers, Gordon, of course—just someone I met at Victoria’s wedding. Now, what was it I needed to talk to you about?’
‘Jo and Eliza, presumably.’
‘Oh, yes, would you like Jo to stay for a few days next week?’
‘Yes, that suits me fine. Eliza?’
‘Rehearsals. But she could spend a couple of hours with you when I bring them over. If it’s Sunday. Then I could bring her back again.’
‘Fine. Look, you might as well stay to lunch. There’s no need to go all the way home and come back again.’
‘Fine. The only thing is, I would prefer it if your new partner wasn’t there. Well, Jo would prefer it, I don’t mind. After all, we’re both meeting new people. All the time. Practically on a daily basis.’
‘Alice lives here. Anyway, the girls have met her twice now and they all got on fine.’
‘It’s just something Jo said. About being just with you.’
‘Alice did offer to go to her mother’s but I think—’
‘That’s settled, then. About twelve-thirty.’
‘Fine. Alice should be out of the house by then.’
‘Will you be able to bring Jo back on the following Saturday?’
‘Yes, I should think so.’
‘About five o’clock would be good.’
‘I’d rather make it in the evening. About eight maybe.’
‘Six o’clock would be more convenient.’
‘Between six and seven, then.’
‘Fine.’
‘Can I speak to them now?’
‘They’re busy. You could phone back later.’
‘About six?’
‘Seven.’
‘Fine. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’
‘Bye, Roger.’
Roger had prepared a cold meat salad for us.
‘You didn’t tell me you were a vegetarian now, Jo,’ he said.
‘I thought Mum had told you.’
I had a choice of answers, starting with the fact that I didn’t know myself, or ‘it must have slipped my mind’, or ‘how come you ate my spaghetti Bolognese, then?’ (which was provocative). I decided to remain completely silent and resist saying something meaningless.
‘Well, there’s vegetarian and there’s vegetarian, isn’t there?’ I laughed.
Jo pushed her salad around on her plate as if she were designing a collage. She cut it up into smaller and smaller pieces, rearranged it, poked her fork into tomato and cucumber and hard-boiled egg and pulled it out again. Her mind was in orbit, it seemed, circling the world and searching for significance. When Jo thought, she thought deeply, penetrating her own soul, searching, probing, reasoning, analysing. She was a lot like I was at that age. Teenage angst, they call it. Eventually you learn to live on the surface, it’s safer.
‘Did you sign up for that additional course for next term?’ asked Roger.
‘Yes,’ muttered Jo, glancing at me.
‘What additional course?’ I almost whispered, hoarsely. I cleared my throat.
‘She’s doing an additional course in IT,’ explained Roger. He had clearly already done his additional course—in smugness.
After lunch, Roger sent the girls upstairs so that he and I could spend some quality time together. Maybe.
‘What’s happened to Jo?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She looks like a hat stand, and she hasn’t eaten any lunch.’
‘For God’s sake, Roger, she’s a teenager—that’s what they do.’
‘Only Alice thought…’
‘What the hell does Alice know about having children? She probably thinks ovaries, uterus and fertility are a firm of solicitors.’
‘She’s my daughter, too.’
It is always tempting at such times to launch into the ‘I’m the one bringing them up and you’re the one who walked out’ speech, but I decided against it. Instead, I said nothing.
‘Haven’t you got anything to say on the subject?’ Roger asked, eventually.
‘Not really. I mean, I’m the one bringing them up and you, for whatever reason, decided to leave me to it.’
‘Lizzie, let’s not go over all that again.’
‘No, you’re right. Look, all her friends are the same, it’s nothing to worry about, but if you like I’ll talk to her when she gets back. Don’t make a thing of it.’
‘Fair enough. Does she eat at all?’
‘Of course she does. She had spaghetti Bolognese only yesterday.’
‘I thought she was a vegetarian.’
‘Only a part-time one.’
On the way home, I wanted to think about what Roger had just said, make sense of what he seemed to be implying, but I pushed the thought from my mind as if thinking about it would give it some truth. I screeched to a halt at traffic lights I hadn’t even noticed and banged hard on the steering-wheel, angry with myself for being so distracted, distracted by mere possibilities for nothing had actually happened. I started to sing, and right on cue Eliza joined in. There was a quiver in my voice, a quiver of fear, but I wasn’t even sure what I was frightened of. I slapped my thigh like a pantomime character, grinned and sang louder until everything seemed all right again.
We got home at two-thirty and Eliza had to rush to get ready for her first rehearsal. There was a buzz and excitement about her which rubbed off on me like chalk dust. We sang songs from Chicago all the way to the rehearsal rooms with the car windows open, oblivious to the reactions of passersby. This was what being a good mother was all about and I mentally awarded myself a gold star. I drove back home still feeling exhilarated by Eliza’s buoyant mood, as well as by a sense of freedom as if I had finally deposited my luggage with an airline and could wander around quite unencumbered. What Jo did or did not do for the next six days was not my problem. Or so I wanted to believe.
With both girls occupied elsewhere, I had the house to myself and three hours to do exactly what I wanted. So I chose a particular CD which normally caused groans of complaint, stripped off all my clothes and danced around in the lounge to the thump and grind of Queen. As an afterthought, I quickly closed the curtains then turned the heating up and let myself go.
When I had exhausted myself, I simply wandered aimlessly around the house, looking at the photos on the wall and fingering ornaments as if I were a tourist looking around a stately home.
I found myself in the chaos of Eliza’s room, clothes strewn across the floor like the last day of the January sales, half-finished homework scattered across her desk, an old banana skin on the window-sill. Then I wandered into Jo’s room with its tidy, ordered rows of books and files. An island in our chaotic household. Lists and reminders were drawing-pinned to her notice-board with symmetrical neatness and dated in the righthand corners. The bin had been emptied, clothes folded away, and her dressing-gown hung where it should be, on the back of her door. The walls had been painted magnolia when we had bought the house but the paintwork had become chipped and scuffed in places with the passing of time. Jo deserved some fresh gloss, some new colour and brightness as a fitting background to her tidiness.
I decided to go to the DIY store. Jo would have a surprise waiting for her when she returned from her father’s and I would show her what a supportive, caring mother I really was.
Once at the store, I found myself staring helplessly at row upon row of paint tins, stacked like a child’s cylindrical building blocks, reaching to the ceiling. A small shelf, angled like a lectern, sliced through the endless continuity of tins. On this shelf lay books and leaflets containing square upon square, each labelled with a reference number and name. It was like a colour-coded plan of a cemetery.
The spectrum of colours to choose from was overwhelming, not helped by my difficulty in visualising these tiny squares as complete walls in Jo’s bedroom. It was like being given a daisy and expecting to know what Kew gardens looked like. I stared at the colour charts as if in a hypnotic trance until one square seemed to merge into the next so that all I saw was a swirl of pinks, purples and greens, like melted flavours of ice cream slowly mixing to one murky hue.
‘Too many choices,’ muttered a bewildered-looking man next to me.
‘Like life really,’ I answered philosophically. ‘Easier when the decisions are made for you.’
‘It’s the names that put me off—Cornish Cream, Avocado Mousse, Blueberry Pie. It’s more like a cookery book.’
‘Or a holiday brochure. Look—Blue Lagoon, Californian Sunset, Icelandic River. They’re not even accurate, I’d call that one Polluted Canal and that one Gangrenous Wound. Oh, look, here’s Fungal Foot Infection.’
The man laughed and reached for two large tins.
‘Well, I’m too set in my ways,’ he sighed. ‘It’s Boring Old Fart for me, or Magnolia as it’s known in the trade.’
Jo was not set in her ways, I decided. Surely there was a rebellious side to her that would respond to a black ceiling and purple walls, or clashing colours of orange or mauve. But I knew Jo was practical and sensible for one so young and would immediately see that such dark colours wouldn’t reflect any natural light and would certainly not be conducive to studying. She would want something different, novel and young, but light, subtle and individual. I tried to recall the tone of her car-pet and the shades of her bedroom furniture, but everything I visualised seemed greyer than it should be. I kept returning to the squares of green, one of Jo’s favourite colours. There was a shade called Mint which almost tasted of those squares of mint chocolate. This, I felt sure, would be Jo’s choice.
I put the tins into my trolley and headed for the checkout. Then I heard a familiar voice. I looked up and saw Alice in a grey trouser suit and chiffon scarf helping an elderly lady who was waving a stick and hobbling up the aisle.
‘Come on, Mother,’ she was saying, ‘Let’s get some nice new paint and then I can make a start on your bathroom. I SAID, “LET’S GET SOME NICE NEW PAINT, MOTHER.” Oh, never mind.’
I swivelled my trolley round quickly to escape in another direction. If only the front wheel hadn’t caught the edge of the paint tin at the bottom of the pyramid, I might have made it.
‘Lizzie…Oh, dear. We can’t just leave these here. I’ll go and get someone.’
I couldn’t really leave her deaf, disabled mother unattended so I just stood there awkwardly.
‘Who are you?’ she barked.
‘LIZZIE, ROGER’S WIFE. Ex, I mean.’
‘There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf. My daughter’s staying for a few days. Pain in the arse. Wants to paint my bathroom. I bet she makes me have it done in pink.’
‘You can choose what colour you want. It’s your bathroom.’
‘With Alice in charge? You’re joking. Help me along to the paint area, then we can choose.’
With that, she sprinted down the aisle, holding her stick out in front of her, and was stretching up towards the tins of black and purple paint before I caught up with her.
‘Take me to the checkout,’she said, linking her arm in mine.
Alice eventually caught up with us after her mother had bought the purple and black paint.
‘Mother, my goodness. I see you’ve already purchased your paint. Marvellous.’
Alice’s mother winked at me.
‘Thank you, Lizzie,’ Alice said. ‘I had a feeling you and I would end up very good friends.’
I stopped myself from wincing and made a dash for the car before Alice noticed her mother’s choice of paint and blamed me. With the paint in the boot, I just made it to the rehearsal rooms in time to pick up Eliza, congratulating myself on coordinating my afternoon so successfully. But as we approached the driveway, Eliza asked, ‘What’s for supper, Mum?’
…So I prepared her a farmhouse stew full of goodness and vitamins, went out into the yard to milk the cow and prepared to invite the neighbours round for a game of charades…
Actually, I’d somehow forgotten about the small matter of eating, and Eliza deserved a treat, I told myself. So we phoned for a takeaway pizza, slumped onto the settee and glued ourselves to her favourite film, Chicago. It should have been boring by this, our twentieth viewing, but I never tired of taking sideways glances to watch Eliza watch her two heroines.
If I looked right into Eliza’s eyes, I could almost see her mind turning herself into Catherine Zeta Jones or Renee Zellweger. This time her focus was on Zeta Jones and Eliza was there in the film, tapping out every dance step in her mind, reaching for every note, feeling every emotion. Melted cheese and tomato dripped down her chin as she fed herself by touch, her eyes fixed firmly on the oblong screen in front of her. My vision as a perfect mother did not include slobbing in front of the telly with a pizza. Still, I told myself, it was a special occasion. Was that what it was? A special occasion because we did not have the adolescent tension of Jo in the air? I felt I had failed in some way but I quickly replaced that thought with a vision of Eliza and me singing a duet in a Hollywood musical. In Eliza’s world, everyone would create a song and dance about everything.
Monday morning came and I had to put Jo’s room on hold while I went to work.
I put on my black executive suit, threw some extremely important papers into my executive briefcase and made a quick phone call to ensure my executive car was on its way to pick me up and take me to the city where I would be handling investments of millions of pounds.
I arrived at the sandwich bar and put my vision on hold for later—I did still have that idea of running my own café. I rushed in, late as usual, washed my hands and got stuck into scraping butter across bread and spooning in the fillings for workers picking up their lunch sandwiches on the way in. Trish busied herself by dispensing caffeine to a hundred lethargic businessmen and we kept up this frantic pace for nearly an hour.
It was only later, when Trish went out in the delivery van, that I could no longer ignore my screaming thoughts about what Roger had said. Of course I had noticed that Jo was looking a bit thinner and of course I had been a bit worried. But Jo losing weight? That didn’t fit. She had always been active and healthy, not one of those children who pick up every little cough and cold going round, always with a runny nose and alarmingly pale skin. In fact, I had rarely been to the doctor with Jo, for she had never suffered from anything more than the usual childhood ailments, which she always shook off very quickly, and she had barely missed a day of school. As I chopped up tomatoes and cucumbers, the word ‘cancer’ floated into my mind uninvited, but I soon pushed it out again. I clung to more logical explanations and somehow managed to keep my anxiety in check.
I reminded myself that Jo was pretty good for a teenager. She had largely conformed, and had kept her mood swings firmly locked in her bedroom, never opting for the throwing-crockery-at-your-mother option. I had had many a long chat with Scarlet’s mother, who had torn clumps of her own hair out in the frustration of trying to control her daughter.
‘If I tell Scarlet to be home by half past eleven, she’ll turn up at a quarter to twelve just to prove a point. If I ask her to clear the coffee-cups out of her bedroom, she’ll bring down just the one and then take up a new cup of coffee and a plate.’
Not much to complain about but I had noticed that Scarlet’s mother had started to chew her fingernails lately. Scarlet had a belly piercing, one dolphin tattoo on her shoulder and another on her arm which nobody has dared ask the meaning of, and she had brought home at least three inarticulate, nicotine-stained boyfriends. A tame rebellion compared with many, but more than Jo had succumbed to. Jo didn’t seem to have this drive to battle with authority, she had other priorities. It was much later that I realised she was rebelling in her own way, and I would gladly have swapped what happened next with any number of body piercings.
‘I’m not sure I want this,’ muttered one of my regular customers.
I looked at his sandwich. It did look rather thin and lank. He lifted up the top layer of bread to reveal a very thick spreading of butter but no filling whatsoever. He then lifted up the lid of his coffee-cup where, like a magician, he slowly revealed the whereabouts of the missing filling, which was floating on the coffee like seaweed in the ocean.
‘Sorry, Reg, I was miles away.’
‘Last week you were imagining yourself serving food in a beach bar on Mars. Where were you today?’
‘I was solving the mystery of adolescence, but I think serving coffee on Mars is more realistic.’