hOw we Came tO aN UNCOmfOrtaBLe arraNGemeNt

Since then we’ve spent the last forty-eight hours giving each other lots of space. Our house currently has more space in it than the entire solar system. Today, I got home from school at seventeen minutes past four and it’s now forty-three minutes past nine and I’ve pretty much spent every three hundred and twenty-six of those intervening minutes up here in my bedroom with the door closed. I’ve managed to get tons of stuff done though. I’ve done all of my history homework, written down heaps more of my random reflections and philosophical thoughts and joined eighty-seven different groups on Facebook – including:

I can’t remember what the other eighty-three are.

But obviously, I haven’t been shut up in here for all that time. Occasionally I’ve popped down the hallway to check up on Winnie and I’ve visited the bathroom three times and I did also go downstairs for a while and eat tea with my mum but the conversation between us was unnaturally flat and lacked its usual sparkle. My mum asked me how my day had been and I said it was pretty much like most other Mondays and then we had a conversation about the sausages we were eating and how they tasted much nicer than the usual brand we buy but how, actually, they cost a staggering twelve pence less. Ordinarily, this is not the kind of thing that my mum and I would bother to discuss.

But nothing is very ordinary at the moment.

In fact, it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped, wonk-ways and completely downside-up. I don’t know how to behave around my mum and I get the distinct impression that she isn’t exactly sure how to behave around me either.

On Saturday, after I found her note on the fridge, I went into the living room and flopped out in front of the TV. To be honest, I just put it on so that I could hear some other human voices. But then, because every human voice on the television was talking total drivel and irritating my bits off, I ended up switching over to the Welsh language channel. This was actually a lot less irritating because I no longer had the foggiest clue whether anyone was talking total drivel or not. On the screen, a young guy wearing a pin-striped suit was playing a purple guitar and singing to an audience of old folks in an old folks’ home. The titles on the screen told me that his name was Harri Parry and his song was called Lladfa yn y Disgo.11 Even though I couldn’t understand a single word that he was singing, he had quite a nice voice and was strumming a very relaxing tune. Throughout the whole song, the old folks sat with their heads down, blatantly asleep, but when it was over they all jumped up in their seats and started clapping and wolf-whistling and banging their walking-frames on the floor. Then they threw their cushions at him. It was classic! I’m definitely going to try to watch Welsh telly a bit more often.

I don’t think Winnie liked it much though. As soon as the song began, he ran off and hid behind the back of the sofa, leaving me all on my own. So when it had finished and the programme had moved on to an interview with a man who was shovelling piles of poo out of a pigsty, I pressed the mute button to encourage Winnie to come out from his hiding-place and sit with me again. But he wouldn’t. In the corner of the living room, the lights on our Christmas tree were twinkling and changing colour and, after a while of watching them, I struggled up from the sofa and switched them off. And then, because I was in a bit of a dark mood, I turned off the living room lamp as well so that the only light in the room was the flickering light of the silenced television.

An hour or more must have passed like this before finally, I heard the noises I’d been waiting for. The front door creaked open and then slammed shut and my mum’s footsteps moved towards the kitchen. I heard the click of the light switch and then there was a moment of silence which, to me, seemed noisier than all the other stuff put together. This was replaced by the sound of my mum’s footsteps again, and the door of the living room was pushed open. My mum was holding the fridge-note in her hand. Without looking at me, she walked over to the TV and switched it off and then she crossed over to the lamp and switched it on, before moving over to the Christmas tree and switching those lights on as well. Then she turned around and jumped right out of her skin.

‘Hi,’ I said.

My mum said, ‘Why on earth are you sitting in the dark?’

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you jump.’

My mum looked at me. She had a very serious expression on her face. It was the most serious expression I’d seen on her face for ages. Even her glamorous new shade of lipstick didn’t do anything to soften the overall effect of deadly seriousness. After a second or so of total tension, she said, ‘Never mind that – how about a proper apology for the way you talked to me this lunchtime!’ And then she held up the piece of paper taken from the fridge door.

‘That is a proper apology,’ I said.

My mum gave me another long hard serious stare and then, finally, she sat down on the chair opposite me and said, ‘You really upset me, you know.’

I sat with my head down, just like I’d seen the old folks on the TV doing earlier. I was blatantly wide awake though.

My mum said, ‘I’ve been on my own for six years, Lottie. Six years! Is it really so impossible for you to be happy for me now?’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

My mum sniffed.

I chewed my thumbnail for a moment and then I said, ‘I’m not going to find him sneaking around our house in a dressing gown, am I? Because that would really freak me out.’

My mum looked shocked. ‘We’ve only just started seeing each other. What kind of a woman do you think I am?’

I smiled a bit then. My mum smiled a bit too. ‘Sorry,’ I said again, louder this time.

‘Apology accepted,’ said my mum.

And then, because it had been on my mind, I said, ‘Gareth phoned up earlier and invited me to go to the cinema with him tonight. Can I go or am I grounded?’

My mum raised her eyebrows. ‘Am I grounded?’

‘Huh?’ I could hardly believe my own ears. My mum was actually asking me if she was grounded! Confused, I searched her face to see if she was joking. She wasn’t.

‘Well,’ explained my mum, ‘I don’t see why you should get to go out but I have to sit in the house all by myself on a Saturday evening. That doesn’t seem very fair to me.’

I sighed. She’s a very clever woman, my mum. It’s hardly surprising that she manages to out-manoeuvre all those shifty Cardiff criminals. Through gritted teeth, I said, ‘If you want to go out tonight with Stevie Wonder, that’s perfectly fine by me.’

‘Smashing!’ said my mum. ‘So the arrangements for this evening are settled.’ And then, for the second time that afternoon, she jumped right out of her skin because Winnie picked that exact moment to come out from behind the sofa and bounce straight into her lap.