The Mum Who Got Her Life Back Read online

  All of these questions were whirring around my head, jarring with the angel music. Should I tell him? No, of course not, I decided, my eyes still firmly closed. It’s none of my business …

  A sharp snapping noise halted my racing thoughts. I flicked open my eyes just in time to see that Kiki was now wearing blue plastic gloves. ‘Open your mouth, please,’ she said. I opened up, just like at the dentist’s, and her fingers slipped inside.

  What a weird thing, I found myself thinking, more to distract myself from her pokey movements than anything else. Kiki telling me all that stuff … I mean, why? Was it because she thought I ‘understood’ Danny, or had she simply needed to confess?

  Ow! She delved around, sort of massaging my gums and cheeks from the inside – agh! She was working deeper into the tissue now, pulling at my cheek linings, twanging at the tender parts under my tongue. Christ, it was painful, but it was good pain, surely? She’d already told me Kate Moss has this done – not by Kiki herself, but one of her ‘skincare inspirations’ – and hopefully, this horrendous treatment fell under the ‘no pain, no gain’ banner …

  Tears sprang from my eyes. Perhaps she was trying to unscrew my back teeth? I gagged and worried I might vomit in my mouth. I imagined Kiki’s fingers swilling about in a sort of sicky soup, and wondered if she’d carry on, politely pretending it hadn’t happened, like when someone has food stuck to their lip and you decide not to embarrass them by pointing it out.

  I gagged again loudly, like a frog, and tried not to think about a terrible oral sex episode from my youth. I was eighteen years old and unprepared for what Wayne King was expecting me to do with his appendage. This was worse. Far worse. A young male – even a rampant teenage one – has only one penis and it felt as if thirty-five fingers were at work now, jabbing and thrusting, and no matter how hard I tried, no amount of picturing Kate Moss’s cheekbones (perhaps Kiki was rearranging my bone structure?) could stop the pain.

  The angel music had finished. I was going to die, I decided. Kiki regretted telling me about wanting to be pregnant. She was mortified, and scared I’d tell Danny, and the only way she could see to deal with it was to kill me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I didn’t die, obviously. Red-eyed and traumatised, I staggered after Kiki into the reception area where I fumbled with my purse, trying to pay her. She reminded me that it was her ‘treat’.

  ‘Oh, and the other thing!’ she announced, bobbing down behind the counter. ‘I almost forgot.’ She reappeared clutching an M&S carrier bag.

  ‘The denim jacket!’ I croaked, having forgotten too.

  ‘Yeah.’ She winced. ‘What are you going to do with it, now you and Jack have had a row?’

  ‘Still give it to him, I guess,’ I replied, pulling it from the bag and holding it up. As Danny had already described, it was a classic Levi’s denim jacket, covered in badges: The Stone Roses, The Smiths, Pearl Jam. A musky whiff was coming off it, and I stuffed it back into the carrier bag.

  Kiki grinned. ‘You could sell it on eBay. I would!’

  I chuckled, as much as my violated face would allow. ‘I’ll think about it. Will you tell him thanks?’

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘Oh, hang on – there’s a note with it too …’ She bobbed down again and rummaged about, then stood up and handed me an envelope. I pulled out the small white card, and read: Hope this rank old thing rakes in a few pennies. Fantastic charity, happy to help. Love, Seb xxx.

  ‘Wow,’ I murmured.

  ‘Pretty good, huh?’ Kiki smiled. ‘Sorry if you found the massage a bit painful. It really does work wonders, though. You’re glowing, actually.’

  Hmmm. I very much doubted it. But perhaps my blood was so traumatised, it was trying to flee to the surface and burst out of my face? ‘Well, thanks for your time, Kiki …’

  ‘No problem,’ she said, touching my hand. ‘Thanks for listening to me, warbling on. I shouldn’t have really …’

  ‘You didn’t warble.’

  ‘No, really.’ She smiled, and her pale blue eyes moistened. ‘Sometimes you just need to get things off your chest.’ She paused. ‘You won’t say anything, will you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said truthfully. As if I’d blab to Danny about any of this.

  ‘It’s just …’ She smoothed back her copperish hair. ‘These days, everything revolves around Danny, with his career and all that. Everyone wants him. It’s all his friends. I hardly get time to see my women friends anymore …’

  I studied her lightly freckled face, overcome by a wave of pity for her, despite what she’d just done to me. To think I had always slightly envied her beauty, and that fancy coffee machine of theirs with its many levers and knobs.

  ‘I worry that they’re all falling away,’ she added quickly.

  ‘I’m sure they’re not,’ I said, ‘but please, don’t worry about anything you’ve told me today. I promise I won’t breathe a word.’

  Post-facial, I needed to decompress a little, so I wandered around town in a blurry haze, aware of a wave of sadness sloshing over me as I passed ‘our’ branch of Lush. Although I pointedly looked in the other direction, I still caught a whiff of it, wafting out through the open door, taunting me with its pungent fragrance.

  Never mind that, I told myself, a plan already formulating in my mind. I would drop off the jacket at Jack’s shop – I already knew this was one of his Saturdays off, the last thing I wanted was to see him – and then I would go home to pack, and prepare for my trip.

  The shop was busy, milling with customers all browsing, chatting, trying on hats and clustering around the curtained changing area. It was Mags who took it from me, examining it from all angles, as if I might have been trying to flog her a designer knock-off. ‘Are you sure this is genuine?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’

  ‘So it really belonged to Stan Jeffries?’

  ‘Seb,’ I corrected her. ‘Seb Jeffries. He’s very famous …’

  She shrugged in a ‘whatever’ sort of way.

  ‘And yes, it really belonged to him,’ I added, catching a glimpse of Iain through the open door to the back room. He grinned, and I waved. At least he seemed happy to see me. ‘My ex-husband knows him,’ I went on. ‘They’ve worked together. And look, there’s a note with it …’ I delved into my shoulder bag and handed her the envelope. She scrutinised it, even checking its blank side, as if still suspicious of its authenticity. Why was she being so frosty with me? I couldn’t understand it, and hoped that Jack hadn’t been saying bad stuff about me, or Alfie, to the volunteers. Surely he wouldn’t do that?

  ‘You will keep it safe, won’t you?’ I added.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mags retorted. ‘We have a safe in the back room. I’ll put it in there. Now, I’d better get on.’

  Perhaps I should have flogged it on eBay, I reflected as I travelled home on the subway, my face still tender from Kiki’s ravages. But it was done now, and hopefully it would rake in a huge amount at the auction.

  Would Jack even text to say thank you? I doubted it, but at least he’d know I cared, and that I love him and want to make things right.

  And now, on this hazy Sunday morning, I decide that it doesn’t really matter what Jack thinks, because Alfie and I are driving to the airport on our first holiday together in four years.

  Going away with teenagers just became too grim to continue with. Although they got along pretty well at home, trapped on holiday together, Molly and Alfie tended to bicker perpetually, and I seemed to get on their nerves simply by being there – even though I had paid for it all. For our last trip, I said they could bring a friend each, and booked an apartment sizeable enough for all of us in Majorca. As the lone adult – amazingly, none of my friends had fancied joining us – I felt utterly outnumbered.

  Although I tried to be perky and jolly and pretty much stay out of their way, what woman really wants to go away with four fifteen-year-olds, including two who don’t even belong to her? Corinne, Gus and I have h
ad some pretty raucous city breaks, to Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin, but I haven’t had a ‘couple holiday’ since Danny and I split up. Ryan Tibbles kept referring to our four days together as ‘our holiday’, but the furthest we ventured was to the shop at the end of my street for bread.

  Anyway, who needs holidays to be romantic, loved-up affairs? Not me! I have my son at my side now, and we shall re-bond during our time away, and figure out how to be together as adults. We have arrived at the airport and settled ourselves into a café for a breakfast consisting of coffee and cake: vanilla sponge for me, and a hefty-looking vegan brownie for him (‘Delicious,’ he says unconvincingly). As he munches away and sips his soya latte, I sense him letting down his guard a little. ‘I hope things are all right with you and Jack when we get back,’ he says.

  I look across the table at him, surprised that he seems to be considering my needs – and by extension regarding me as an actual human being. ‘Well, let’s see.’ I pause. ‘It’s fine, love. It’ll be nice for you and me to have some time together.’

  He bites his lip and peers at me. ‘You haven’t split up, have you?’

  I shrug, to demonstrate that I am not remotely troubled by the possibility. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Oh.’ He winces, as if not knowing how to respond. ‘Was it because of—’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I say quickly, turning to check the departures on the monitor. ‘It probably wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Look, we’ll be boarding pretty soon. We’d better go to the gate.’

  As we stride along to departures, and then settle into our seats on the plane, I make a firm resolution to put Alfie’s lactation outburst behind us. It wouldn’t be fair to heap more guilt upon him. And now, as we take off, emerging through clouds to the bright sunshine above, I’m thinking: maybe it really is for the best.

  It was lovely, the thing Jack and I had, from Christmas Eve until just a week ago. I felt fully alive again, and blazingly happy; it felt as if my days and nights were filled with fun and joy and about a zillion orgasms. But maybe everyone has a certain quota of orgasms allocated to them for life, and I’d had the rest of mine in those heady five months.

  Now it looks like it’s over, I can focus on other, equally important aspects of my life – like work. More commissions have been coming in, and I’m aware that I’ll need to crack on as soon as we’re back home. Just as well, then, that I won’t be having sex with anyone! Boyfriends are time consuming, I tell myself now, and I was managing perfectly fine without one. So many of my friends – well, Corinne and Gus – are single, and they function perfectly well. Even the supposedly rock-solid couples, like Danny and Kiki, clearly have their difficulties too.

  I glance at Alfie. As he’s dozing now, he doesn’t see the tears trickling from my eyes. And by the time he wakes up, and we are descending towards Barcelona airport, my eyes are perfectly dry, my face has just about recovered from Kiki’s assault, and I just know we’re going to have a brilliant time.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jack

  Nadia will be in Barcelona by now – on her own. She’ll be fine, I tell myself. Without me distracting her, she’ll be able to mooch around the city, taking photos, making notes, gathering inspiration for her maps.

  In some ways, it’ll be better for her. It was supposed to be a working trip, after all.

  Early on Sunday afternoon, when Nadia has probably just arrived at that apartment we chose, I decide to head out for a run. It’ll clear my head, I reason. The haze has lifted, and the sky is light blue streaked with transparent clouds. I started running a couple of years ago, egged on by my brother, who does marathons and Iron Man challenges and all kinds of mad stuff that guys are often drawn to at a certain age. It’s like men suddenly realise they’re heading for fifty and panic. They can’t just start jogging around the park, or having the odd game of badminton. It has to be seventy-five-mile runs, triathlons, cycling across China and sleeping in huts.

  While I’ve never been the sporty type – unless you count a few brief spells of gym attendance – doing something outside, as opposed to grappling weights in a sweaty room, was vaguely appealing. I thought it might be a sort of antidote to spending so much time in the shop’s back room, sifting through dusty old books and shoes bearing the imprints of strangers’ bunions.

  Gradually, running stopped being torturous and became almost pleasurable in a weird kind of way. However, today it fails to make me feel better about anything. In fact, I just feel like a sweaty, middle-aged bloke trying to fill in some time. Two-thirds of the way round my usual route, I start walking, and when I’m almost home I call Lori, just to say hi.

  ‘I thought you were going away?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah. Well, I sort of had a change of heart …’

  ‘Why?’ she exclaims.

  The TV is blaring in the background. I can picture the living room, with Elaine watching telly, maybe a drink on the go – but that’s not fair. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. ‘Nadia and I just, um, had a bit of a chat, after the thing last Sunday,’ I explain. ‘The thing with Gran and Grandad, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, Dad …’ The TV noise fades, and I gather that Lori has wandered into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m sure we’ll work things out.’

  ‘Alfie probably didn’t mean to upset them,’ Lori adds.

  I unlock my front door and step inside. ‘Yeah. I’m sure he didn’t. So, what’re you up to today?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Is it just you and Mum in?’

  ‘Er, no – Harry’s here …’

  ‘The guy Mum’s seeing?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  In the kitchen now, I unlace my trainers and kick them off. ‘Is he around a lot, then?’

  ‘Quite a bit,’ she replies, doing her usual thing of supplying minimal information.

  I clear my throat, grab a glass from the cupboard and fill it with water. ‘D’you like him?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ she murmurs, and now I hear a deep male voice calling out, ‘Grab us a Strongbow from the fridge, would you, Lor, love?’

  Lor, love? I bristle. ‘Was that him?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, with emphasis, meaning: who else would it be?

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘I’d better go, Dad.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, regretting the tetchiness that’s crept into my voice. ‘Better get him his cider, eh?’

  We end the call on an oddly irritable note, and I’m ashamed now for reacting like that. After all, it’s not as if he told her to help him inject heroin. He only asked her to fetch him a cider from the fridge.

  I head out again, having decided to buy some new running shoes as mine are feeling all flat and done in, as if all their bounce has gone. Or maybe that’s just me? The shop is staffed by cheery young men and women, and a blonde ponytailed girl fetches numerous shoes for me to try. They have gel soles, cushioned insoles and extra buoyancy in the heel, and the girl points out all the ‘quirks’ of my running style as we watch a video of me pounding along on the shop’s treadmill.

  Having bought some ruinously expensive shoes, I’m at a loss as to what to do next. I have no plans to meet anyone, and nothing I really need to do on this sunny Sunday afternoon – because I’m supposed to be in Barcelona. What am I going to do about work this week? Go into the shop and have to explain the whole ruddy thing, or not go in and pretend I’m in Spain? But then, what if I’m spotted out and about? Glasgow is a huge city, but I rarely go out into the centre without bumping into someone I know, even if it’s just one of our regular customers. Oh, and the volunteers will expect me to bring back some kind of interesting treats for them from my holiday, as I do normally. Will I be able to buy Spanish sweets online?

  Sod it, I decide. I might as well come clean tomorrow, and tell Helen I won’t need her to look after the shop this week after all. The alternative – to spend the week in hiding, with nothing to occupy myself – doesn’t bear thinking about.


  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Nadia

  Our top-floor apartment is possibly the cutest place I have ever stayed in. It’s beautifully furnished in mid-century style, with a collection of art books and elegant glassware and ceramics, and filled with light from the tall, shuttered windows. There is a balcony overlooking the street of quirky shops and cafés in this ramshackle but delightful area of town, and Alfie and I are standing on it, gazing down.

  ‘We should get out and explore,’ I suggest. ‘Fancy a stroll down to Barceloneta? It’s the beach area.’

  ‘Uh, okay,’ Alfie says.

  ‘It’s not too far,’ I add.

  ‘Yeah, let’s go,’ he says, clearly having decided to be on his best behaviour as we trot down the steep, narrow stairs. From our neighbourhood, we make our way through the Gothic Quarter. After almost an hour, due to our gentle ambling and the fact that we’ve got lost several times, we still haven’t arrived at our destination. Yet, incredibly, Alfie hasn’t moaned about this.

  ‘Yeah, cool,’ he said, when I suggested stopping to browse in a bookshop crammed with lavish art books, many dumped in teetering piles on the floor. He didn’t seem to mind that I spent twenty minutes in a tiny shop that sold only hand-made soaps, or that it took me an equal length of time to choose an ice cream flavour.

  It’s early evening by the time we reach the waterfront, and it’s buzzing with buskers, strolling tourists and skateboarders. Hungry now, we start to explore the streets a little further back from the water. Happily, Alfie seems pretty relaxed about the fact that this is Barcelona, and Catalan people love their hams and cheeses, and haven’t converted their splendid city to veganism just for him.

  Installed at a café table in a pleasantly shady side street, he orders spaghetti with tomato sauce – I reckon this’ll be his default choice – while I go for a couple of tapas comprising marinated mushrooms and sumptuously cheesy croquettes. We have a glass of wine each, and I notice with relief that my son is already looking less pallid and drawn. We chat about our plans for the week: ‘I’m happy to just go along with things,’ he says. I wonder whether it’s the debacle at Jack’s that’s turned him all pleasant and amenable so suddenly, or if he genuinely doesn’t mind what we do.