If a child’s first taste of anarchy is in the playground, then children’s parties are their first taste of revolution. Teachers can do what parents cannot. Crowd control. Not even the clown was up to the job. The adults were outnumbered ten to one. I should have run for the hills. I should not have worn white. And, according to the other mothers, I should not have been there. This was about the only thing that I agreed with them on, but I was there on official duty and it had nothing to do with the princesses that ran amok in flammable outfits.
I stood like a misfit on the outskirts watching for a while, a smile fixed to my face, but no one appeared keen to welcome me into the fold. I had met criminals with less trepidation. I tried smiling directly at a couple of the other women when I caught them eyeing me suspiciously, but they looked away. Obviously, since they hadn’t seen me at the school gate, I didn’t count. I hate how these people make me feel. I hate that I let them. I want to jump up and down and stamp my feet screaming, “No, I don’t have kids. But I am still a person in my own right you bastards!,” since that sort of behavior seems to be the only kind that gets their loving attention. In fact, I have noticed that the worse the behavior in the child, the more mollycoddling and affirmation it receives from its mother. Maybe this is why I am excluded; maybe I haven’t been whining loudly enough. Then again, maybe it’s because I refer to the little darlings as “its.”
There is only so much gore one can handle, so I’ll keep this short. Katie, THE birthday girl, pushed a little boy of unknown parentage off the slide. She claimed it was down the slide, she just missed. But I knew Katie. Nick and Francesca’s eight-year-old is an excruciatingly confident child who likes to get exactly what she wants. There was blood. A woman rushed past, treading on another child, who screamed, scaring a third so much that she careered into a table, upsetting the preservative-laden paper plates that were supposed to remain out of reach until the little darlings had eaten their vegetable sticks. I saw an insipid-looking boy make a dive for a rolling Whopper. His mother grabbed him by the foot and pulled him back, his outstretched hands creating a sweaty squeak along the laminated floor. The mother eyed every single slowly rolling chocolate as fearfully as if it were a miniature grenade. The boy managed to catch one and throw it into his mouth. I gave him a silent hurrah before watching him being returned to his home-made picnic of tofu and green beans.
Nick passed, a child under each arm. “She wouldn’t even give him raisins,” he whispered. “Poor kid.”
This woman was one of the reasons why I didn’t accept dinner party invitations any more. Too many mothers like this one discussing the delights of finding handipacks of antiseptic wipes and the evils of inoculation. Like smallpox was a good thing? I watched the kid reach breaking point. He’d had enough and threw the tofu at his mother. She yanked him up by the arm and headed for the door.
“He doesn’t like parties,” she hissed as she passed.
And who could blame him? The packet of Whoppers was winking at me from the counter. I couldn’t help myself. While the mother said effusive goodbyes to Francesca, which she clearly didn’t mean, I bent down to the miserable little boy and slipped the sweets into his Spiderman backpack. I put my finger to my lips and winked. When he smiled I felt vindicated. God, are you watching? I’m a natural.
I downed my warm white wine and stepped into the fray. Two women were deep in conversation about the devil’s juice, Kool-Aid, so I veered around them and found another woman sitting on the sofa, staring out into the middle distance.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” she managed.
So far so good.
“So which one is yours?”
“None,” I replied, forcing an even, light-hearted tone into my voice. She looked at me. A “wrong answer” buzzer resounded round my head. “I’m Caspar’s godmother.”
“Oh. You have older children?” In other words, was I a slut who got herself knocked up in her teens?
“No. I have no children.”
The woman suddenly stood up. “So sorry. Ben! No! Put that down! I’ve just got to…” She moved away from me in a hurry. Was it catching? Or was her child’s life really being threatened by the balloon she took off it? Him, I mean, him.
I tried a few more times. They all started the same: “Which one is yours?” swiftly followed by “Excuse me one moment, I must (a) remove a plastic item from my child’s mouth, (b) stop my child biting another child, (c) stop another child pinching mine, (d) go and talk to my wife because she is summoning me over because we are having too much fun out in the garden, (e) get away from you because you are a childless potential husband-stealing woman who cannot talk about MMR or the school run, which means I have fuck-all to say to you…” Perhaps it was jet lag, or too much apple juice, but I had a terrible urge to jump on the table and show everyone my panties. But I did not want to embarrass Francesca more than she was already doing herself.
The seventh time I was asked which one was mine and was met with the same curious suspicion when I said none of them, I grabbed a pizza and ventured upstairs. Since Caspar was clearly not going to come down, I would have to enter into the terrifying world of the teenage boy’s bedroom. I didn’t much enjoy it when I was a teenager; I was bound to find it even more disturbing now.
The first thing to hit you is the smell. Man, it smelled bad in there. Do boys ever wash? Or open a window? I have to be honest, I instantly recognized the smell. Sweat. Spunk. And cannabis. Nothing changes, except my boy was growing up.
Poor sod.
“Hello? Smeeeeeeeegal? Anyone at home?”
I heard a panicked clutter from the tiny en-suite shower room. Nick had built it for him in the corner of the room to save his son from Barbie bubble bath. I listened with a smile on my face to the telltale spray of deodorant. Teenagers, bless ’em. They always think they’re the first.
“I bring pizza.”
Caspar emerged fully dressed and told me he’d been having a shower.
“About to have a shower?” I ventured.
“Yeah.”
“How much of that stuff are you smoking?”
“I don’t smoke,” Caspar insisted.
“Right. And I don’t have one-night stands.”
“Tessserrrrr.”
“Casparrrrr. The least you could do is share the spliff that you’re not smoking.”
“It’s not called spliff any more.”
“Oh, sorry. What is it called?” I felt a bit put out. I wasn’t that old, was I? “What about puff?”
“God no, that’s even worse.”
“Enlighten me,” I said.
“Zoot. Draw. Weed.”
“Weed, then,” I concluded.
“What about Mum and Dad?”
“They won’t even know we’re missing. Come on, hand it over.”
“You got that right,” said Caspar, opening up a tin and passing over the half-smoked “zoot.”
“I never thought I’d be dunning draw with a grown-up.” Dunning? A grown-up? The words reminded me how very young he was, and that was why the glimpse I caught inside his tin should have alarmed me. The fact that Caspar was smoking at four in the afternoon in a house full of people should also have warned me. But I chose to ignore everything in the quest for more information. I, the grown-up, settled down on a beanbag and lit up. One inhalation and I knew that it was strong stuff. After the initial booming head rush, I decided to fake it. So, in the presence of my fifteen-year-old godson, I bum-sucked, held the smoke in my mouth, then forced it out of my nose. Caspar, on the other hand, sucked away long and hard and didn’t seem any more affected than me.
Liberated by drugs, Caspar told me about the girls he’d failed to snog. The boys who always got the girls. And the girls who liked him whom he didn’t like. Nothing ever changes. We giggled stupidly about nonsense and then attacked the cold pizza as if it were cordon bleu. I started to think Francesca and Nick were being a little harsh. The cannabis aside, Caspar seemed back to his lovely normal self to me. We were still snuggled up on the beanbag when Francesca walked in.
“Jesus, what’s that smell?” she said, wafting her hand in front of her face.
I have to admit it, I panicked. But Caspar was as slick as they come. “Tessa brought me joss sticks from India.”
“Oh. Thanks, Tessa.”
Little rat. But I didn’t deny it. I didn’t want to get into trouble with Francesca. Or burn my bridges with my boy.
“I brought you some masala tea,” I said. Truthfully.
“How long have you two been hiding up here?” There was a slight edge to her voice that I couldn’t place.
“I did try,” I pleaded. “But those women talk of nothing but children, so I found myself talking to the dads, which was more of a laugh because they didn’t talk about their children, but the women kept coming over and reclaiming their husbands by sending them off on some bogus Kool-Aid run, so I came and found Caspar.”
“What do you expect, turning up in designer white, all flat stomach and blond hair? Women who have had children don’t have stomachs like yours. Not normal women, anyway. You make them nervous, Tessa. You make them feel dowdy.”
“They are dowdy,” said Caspar.
“He speaks,” said Fran. Which I thought was quite annoying, so it didn’t surprise me when Caspar rolled his eyes.
“I thought you hated them too,” I added, unhelpfully.
“I’m just trying to explain it from their perspective. Anyway, they’ve all gone.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s seven o’clock.”
Caspar and I looked guiltily at each other. How the hell did that happen?
“We’ve had a lot of catching up to do. I haven’t seen him for ages.”
“Well, you look all caught up now.”
I got to my feet and followed Francesca out into the corridor. Caspar would have no idea I’d been spying on him after that little scene.
“As the coast is clear, I’ll come down and make you some masala tea,” I said.
“I’d prefer a big fat spliff, actually. Or a mallet.”
Was that Fran’s subconscious playing tricks on her, or was she telling me that she’d not fallen for the joss-stick story? I decided to bluff it out as I walked behind her.
“It’s not called spliff any more,” I said.
“Really?”
“These days it’s zoot, draw, or good old-fashioned weed.”
“Zoot? How the hell do you spell that?”
“Z-o-o-t—I think. I’ll check with one of my friends.”
Francesca stopped walking, turned on the worn carpet and, in the narrow hallway, studied me. “It must be so easy being you,” she said.
“What?”
“No wonder Caspar adores you. Look at you. Stylish. Relaxed. Free…”
“Fran,” I said, a note of incredulity in my voice, “you were the one who asked me over to talk to him. I’m just doing what you asked me to do.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just this is…Oh, I don’t know.” She shook her head. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s fine, Fran. Just a fraction on the rebellious side, but Caspar underneath.”
“Are you sure I don’t have anything to worry about?”
“Pretty sure.”
“He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you, you silly girl. You are a great mother and if Caspar doesn’t know that, then he is a fool. Please don’t take this personally; it’s just hormones. Repeat after me: it’s just hormones.”
But she wouldn’t. She felt she knew him better. Turned out she was right.
Nick was at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for Francesca with a glass of wine in his hand. He handed it over to Fran.
“To survival,” he said, then kissed her on her head. They walked arm in arm to the sofa and collapsed together into a heap. As I said, they just fit, those two. Always have. Could Francesca not see how jealous I was of what she had? Not that it had always been that way. In the beginning I’d felt sorry for her.
That day Francesca appeared on my doorstep in tears was when our paths irreversibly split. Still clutching the pregnancy test in her sweaty hand, she pulled it out of her cheap blue anorak pocket, and showed me the way a child shows their friend a half-sucked gobstopper: two innocuous blue lines that signified so much more than we could ever have imagined.
Nick was as worthy back then as he is now. He marched and protested then. Now he works for a non-profit organization, ensuring large corporations like Nike and Gap don’t use child labor during manufacturing. But Francesca was brighter than both of us put together. She wasn’t only top of her school, she got a letter in the post about being top of the region in three subjects. Her place at the best law firm was affirmed even though we hadn’t done our finals. When she decided to keep the baby they said they’d hold open the place, but she never went back and eventually the offer of articles dried up as new waves of talent swept even her special mark away. They had been so careful, they didn’t know how it happened. And in the end that was what swung it. If a child can be so determined to be born that they can overcome condoms, withdrawal and the rhythm method, then perhaps that child had a right to live. It is a testament to Francesca’s mind that she got a first in her degree because eight days after her last exam she went into labor. Caspar was born a healthy eight and a half pounds. Even that was done with top marks. Ten out of ten in the APGAR test.
Nick and Fran married when Caspar was nine months old. The same day he was christened. I was godmother and maid of honor rolled into one horrendous late-eighties puffball skirt. It was a great day. I crossed my fingers behind my back when the vicar asked me to renounce evil. At twenty I was not ready to make that deal. I was having too much fun. When the bouquet sailed through the air, I abstained again, letting it fall at my feet. Marriage would come later, that I knew; I didn’t want to rush things. I wasn’t going to go catching roses to cement the deal. I was so sure that I would get married and have children that I never even questioned it. I now know a tiny fraction of what I thought I knew then, which is just about enough to realize that I knew nothing.
When Caspar was eight years old, his first sister Katie was born; three years later, another daughter, Poppy, arrived on the scene. Francesca may have given up the law but what she had achieved was far more impressive—a genuinely happy, successful family—and to think I’d felt sorry for her that day I crossed my fingers and ignored the tumbling flowers. I looked over to her, cuddling with Nick on the sofa, watching Katie rip open birthday presents. You are wrong, Francesca. Being me isn’t easy, because all I want is to be you.
I collected my coat and said my farewells. I cast a backward glance at their small terrace house and saw smoke slipping out of the Velux window in the roof. For a moment I saw the lit end of a spliff, or whatever it was called, glowing in the dark and knew Caspar was hard at his new-found hobby. Before starting the car, I sent Caspar a quick text about his birthday. It was subtle. Erudite. Poetic. b at ur bday lunch or the iPod gets it. I drove back through the city with the roof on, playing soppy Sunday night music which I loathe but never switch off. I nearly drove to Claudia’s house, but there was only so much domestic bliss I could take in a day, so I turned the Mini homeward, to face the first Sunday night alone, with no work to focus on for the following day.
As I kicked the door of the studio behind me my phone started to ring. To my surprise it was Samira. Samira didn’t do Sundays. I rolled over the edge of the sofa arm and awaited my apology for the previous night, but not a bit of it. I should know Samira better by now. I think her family motto is “It is better to die than to apologize,” which would explain why none of them speak to each other.
“Suicide watch for single Sunday-nighters,” she said.
Naturally, I was offended.
“Not just you, you daft cat; my single friends and appendages who are in London are coming over for supper. It’s a new thing I invented while you were away. I can’t stand Sunday nights any more. I was about to throw myself off the building, so I’m starting a movement. Are you coming? It’s very casual.”
For a moment I was too disoriented to respond. Being social on a Sunday night was a big ask. On top of which, self-pity had crawled back in and snuggled up in my chest and I was a beat away from singing “On My Own” from Les Mis.
“Come on, Tessa. Crying on your own in the dark is not the way an adult woman should spend her Sunday night.”
That is what I loved about Samira; she never minces her words and she tells you how it is. Of course, if you did it back to her, she wouldn’t speak to you for weeks. But as I have learned over the years, your friends don’t change; you just learn to ignore or embrace the bad bits. So I got up and started the unfamiliar experience of having a clothes crisis on a Sunday evening. I know Samira’s friends. They do casual like George W. Bush does vocabulary.
An hour later I pulled up to Samira’s flat, feeling pretty groovy. The roof was back down on my Mini; I had opted for denim miniskirt, cut low on the hips to show off my two main attributes: a flat stomach and good legs, even better when brown. I had taken the car to keep the goose bumps and men out cruising at bay. It was Sunday night—how raucous could it be? I was wearing a disgusting flesh-colored bra with three-inch straps which looked hideous off but worked wonders under a white T-shirt which in turn showed off my tan and hid my back spots when I had them. Which I didn’t at that moment, thanks to the sun.
I was wrong about Sunday-night abstinence. Samira’s casual Sunday supper turned out to be a boisterous curry for thirty. There was something of the Blitz mentality to it. What did we on suicide watch have to lose?
A couple of waiters from the Indian had been bribed away from their busy Sunday-night delivery shift to feed and water us. That was a nice touch, I thought. Who had curry on Sunday night? Couples. It was a smart middle finger from Samira to the “cozees.” I told her this but she frowned at me.
“My uncle owns the place.”
Oh well, so much for irony.
It was fun because so many singles had brought their single friends, so it wasn’t cliquey or over-bearing. If they had children, they weren’t telling. No one mentioned schools. I drank Tiger Beers happily and chatted to whoever was in my eye line and it was great. In the hours that I was there, no one asked me what I did, which is the sign of a great evening. Small talk evaporated in the presence of big chat. No one wanted to talk about daily lives; they wanted to talk about places and people, books and great hidden-away bars in other cities.
I met a guy called Sebastian. He was tall, with receding hair and bow legs, but handsome. He made me laugh and fetched me more Tiger Beer. When he went to the loo, Samira sidled up to me and told me he was an adviser to the government, a bit of an operator. I thought that was kind of sexy. I’d never been out with a civil servant before. He gave me his card. Modern unmarrieds do that. I glanced down. It was official, he worked for the Department of Trade and Industry. He said he had to go, and I felt quite bereft when he said goodbye. Twenty minutes later, I saw the big and little hand converge on twelve and knew it was well past my bedtime. I thanked Samira, then took the plush lift down to the ground floor. Outside on the pavement Sebastian was talking to a group of people I hadn’t met. He smiled at me as they all waved goodbye.
“I thought you were going,” I said, standing alone on the pavement with him.
“My goodbyes took a little longer than expected.” He smiled. “How are you getting home?”
I waggled my car keys at him. He frowned.
“What?”
“You’ve drunk too much.”
“I haven’t really. I’ve eaten masses.”
“You have and I should know, because I was trying to get you pissed. Where do you live?”
“The Embankment.”
“Fine. It’s on the way. I’m driving you home, then I’ll get a cab,” he said. Which is what he did, except between the driving me home and getting that cab, he ended up in bed with me.