CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Day is night and night is day. I stare at my alarm clock, the neon making my eyes fizz, and watch as numbers change, the house lying static with only Matt’s indigestion and a baby keeping me company. Millie flits in and out of sleep. When she’s out, I sit her in the bed next to me and she seems to pass looks my way that have more meaning than ever before. As we sit in the twilight together, she studies my face and grabs for my nose. As if to say, hey, laugh you daft bint, why so serious? With brothers who have a penchant for treating her like a rugby ball, and having been born into the carnival that is our family, she always seems to have this knowing look about her, like she’s not sure why she’s here, what contribution she makes to this family, but it’s all immensely entertaining. I will hate leaving her tomorrow. This is not what I should be doing. Tomorrow is not about even earning money, which I could balance against abandoning her. While the fee being paid is nominal, enough to keep the kids in shoes for six months, something inside, something that rings strong tells me to just stay here. This is where I should be. Matt wakes every so often reminding me to sleep.

He’s quiet, pensive, and the way he buries his face and curls his body around a pillow is like he might be trying to get some comfort out of it. He went to bed before me last night so we didn’t have to draw out any other painful conversations. I just stayed in the living room and cried on Ben’s shoulder when he came downstairs, trying to palm them off as tears for our mother. He bought it. Gia didn’t.

She stood at the doorway and watched, then looked upstairs to hear Matt slam the bathroom door. She then did what Gia does best and headed into the kitchen to bake a batch of bread for breakfast. My brain feels like the consistency of marshmallow. Questions stab at my temples like arrows. What will I get asked? Will I be expected to cook? Will those yellow shoes make me look like a traffic bollard? Does Gia hate me? Does Matt hate me? Am I the love of Matt’s life? I bloody well should be and he mine. I ask Millie in the monochrome of the room, asking her for her thoughts. But she is quiet, her little hands reaching for mine as she nestles into my chest like she always does, ear against the hollow part where my heart beats the strongest.

By the time it gets to morning, Millie is asleep and I am in the bathroom at 4 a.m., staring at my pallid face in the mirror. I’ve scrubbed my face within an inch of its life trying to draw the colour out, but my skin is still asleep, doughy and pale; my eyes look like they’d like to retreat into my head. Maybe I could just do the sunnies indoors thing. I cross my fingers that the make-up department at the BBC have industrial strength concealer.

When I exit the bathroom, the room is empty and Matt and Millie are downstairs making me coffee and toast. Over the years, Matt seems to have let the sleep deprivation become a part of his constitution. Instead of ageing him, he seems to draw strength from it, even if his hair resembles a ball of mousey tumbleweed. Everything is strangely silent bar the hiss of the kettle, the morning still quiet. Maybe I should just stay here with my daughter and my husband. Next to all of this, supposed tabloid affairs and my views on organic squash seem irrelevant. Matt places a mug next to me dosed with sugar, knowing that I need both that and the caffeine to function. Nine years has taught him that much. When the taxi driver knocks at the door, he bobs Millie around on his knee.

‘I love you.’

If there are three little words you start to resent in a marriage, it’s those. Not even because you don’t hear them enough, but because you hear them too much. They’re bandied about because they fill the silence and heal over the cracks. You don’t have to mean it any more because you reckon to be there in a kitchen at 4.30 a.m. with an insomniac baby on your knee must mean something. That must be love. I look over and decide at such an unearthly hour, it’s the only way forward too.

‘Love you too.’

By the time I’m sitting in my make-up chair I’m still debating about my life with Matt. I’ve made this assumption that he is here to stay, that we will be together for decades to come but for what reason? For the kids sounds like some trite cliché that won’t stand the test of time, but I feel awful that when I file everything that needs to be sorted in my head, Matt always seems to be low on the list. I try to think it’s because he’s mature and understanding enough not to take umbrage with the fact I’m neglecting us, but really it’s more to do with him just not coming up on the radar and that is worrying. Anyway, in amongst the Matt issues are the Mum issues, and they’re all encircled by Gia’s disapproval, and looking at the make-up artist’s silver wet-look leggings wondering if she’d let me buy them off her so I could make the boys some rhino costumes. Luella comes in, sees my face, and clicks her fingers in front of my eyes.

‘Focus, Jools! C’mon, you look grey with worry. More bronzer, I think. Can we do anything about the bags?’

The make-up girl looks like Luella has just asked her to reattach a limb using a Pritt stick. I just think and think and think. Not even noticing the person who’s come in and sat next to me.

‘Morning.’

The last time I saw this man was in the supermarket, striding away from him having laid into him about my fish fingers. He’s dressed in a striped shirt tucked into his jeans and one of those leather watches with a strangely conceived clock face. His hair fashioned into a messy quiff and his blue eyes wide and hypnotic, he looks into the mirror while my makeup girl douses me in foundation.

‘Just some powder for me, I think.’

I want to talk but the large brush and hand in my face prevent me from doing so. So I wave like a six-year-old girl. He doesn’t respond. His make-up girl giggles and drapes her hands over him like shoulder pads, caking his face with her magic dust. Luella glares at him through the mirror. He catches her eye and they look at each other for that moment too long. They would have been an interesting couple, I think; she would have been his equal, telling him what’s what, while he would have admired that tenacity about her. I can see it. She then stares into the empty space where you look to ponder about a moment in your past. She’s angry. The hand clutched around my chair handle tells me that much. He doesn’t say a word. I put my hand on hers and whisper out the corner of my mouth.

‘Focus, Luella … you look grey with worry …’

It makes her smile as he gets up to walk off. I look down at his jeans and see pointy boots. He looks ridiculous, though I think my fledgling pirate sons would quite like them.

‘God, I want to push that man out the window. Please take him down.’

Luella may as well have a spit bucket in her hand. My mental quandary has pushed today and the next half hour out of my mind. This may be a good thing to help calm my nerves but it means I do lack any form of focus. I’m half expecting McCoy to ambush me like last time. Maybe he’ll come out with that basket of vegetables from the supermarket again, maybe the MP joining us today, Ed Hellmann, will speak of legalisation and food policies that will whoosh over my head like a small plane. The fact is, I have nothing to prove – this half hour will mean nothing in the long run. My relationship with Matt will still be peppered with long, unanswered questions, I will be on the cusp of being reunited with my mother, Tommy McCoy could now go on air and tell the world I’m a shit mother and even strip me naked and throw tomatoes at me and I’m not sure how much I’d care. The way I feel is not important right now. Not even that, I don’t even know if I’m feeling anything at all.

Hair and makeup done, I then head down the corridors to the BBC news centre, a weird empty room where all the fake red, swirling logos will be superimposed later. For now, the room is just some large control room, very NASA.

Actually the whole BBC thing has been a slight disappointment. I’m not sure what I was expecting – Daleks and Gary Lineker swanning along the corridors? It’s more a very large rabbit’s warren, lots of doors and corridors and normal people milling around. I might as well be in IKEA.

I’m invited to sit down on a leather, low-backed sofa and someone grabs at my dress to attach microphones and a large battery pack to me. Tommy’s sitting next to me, his arms caressing the back rest, and Ed Hellmann reaches over him to shake my hand. He’s in a suit and has great teeth amidst a bulbous nose and a bobbly cauliflower chin. The presenters, Bill Turnbull being one of them, are being briefed, and flick through inches of A4 paper, ignoring us. Luella stands in a well-positioned place by the cameras so I can see her this time as opposed to her being some leaping shadow. I see a ginger cameraman and can only think of Millie. I wish she was here again as my human shield. I called her Milli Vanilli when she was a baby. During our early hour mornings, I used to tell her about the lip sync scandal of the late eighties just to fill in the quiet and amuse myself. She’d stare back at me like I was completely ridiculous. We hadn’t really worked each other out yet.

‘And Juliet Campbell, an unlikely hero for all mothers, who recently came to media attention after a scrap between her and Tommy was aired on YouTube. So, tell me have you both made up?’

What? We’ve started? Luella is whisking her hands and staring at me while I feel a hand creep onto my knee.

‘Sure we have, Bill. We’re all entitled to our own opinions.’

He’s holding my kneecap like an apple. He is actually quite lecherous this close up. I feel the urge to shrug him off like a pesky fly. I’m pondering whether to question the fact that our reconciliation has been decided by him. I, for one, still want to slap him really hard, not so much for anything food based but for the fact he’s spent the past two weeks trying to damage my good name, caused great big rifts in my family, and used his money to do so. What was that Luella said? When we fight back, we do it clean, we do it noble. Throwing shit back at someone does nothing but sully your good name too. I dig my molars into my tongue, rendering me speechless for two seconds before smiling and nodding. Bill, who’s probably the most sprightly and alert amongst all of us, takes that as his cue to continue.

‘So Tommy, you’ve launched a new campaign, backed up with a new programme concerning families cooking at home. Affordable, back-to-basics cooking, getting people back into their kitchens. Tell us more.’

Blah, blah, blah. Tommy talks a lot with his hands and whips out from under his seat a copy of his new book, featuring him dressed in a mortarboard holding a whisk as a blackboard pointer. The book is called Cooking it Old Skool! I smile to see it, given that Luella told me it’s a simple rehash of all his old books and recipes, with some colour photos added in of his kids simply to cash in on this recent furore. Ed Hellmann intervenes.

‘I think it’s an admirable attempt at getting people back in their kitchens but there is little in the book to make me think you’ve thought about budget, for example. The weekly household only has limited means per week.’

Tommy nods as I sit there flicking through the book, taking in its glossy cover and photos of people with their mouths open in rapturous delight at being in the presence of McCoy and his cooking. I pause at a picture of Tommy in his kitchen, the kids tucking into homemade waffles and fresh fruit, the kitchen resplendent in light wood, and saucepans hanging from the ceiling. Ed has brought with him images of bar charts and graphs about average spends and budgets and lots of numbers that at such an early hour make my brain twitch. Tommy agrees, but counters the argument with organic food being the most important beginning you can give your child, apart from love and time. My nostrils flare. I hear women in the background orgasm a little.

‘Wouldn’t you agree, Juliet?’

I nod. Luella is still whisking her hands about. I’m on mute. I’m really not sure what I should be saying. Bill is getting tetchy with me too. We’re paying you to talk, woman, not browse and respond silently. I think about my four kids sitting around a similar table in my house, the once well thought out colour scheme in the kitchen drowned out by artwork from school, dry cleaning tickets, and streaks of jam. The children less eating than mauling their food, getting it stuck in their hair, talking with their mouths open, or not eating, being grumpy, tearing up bits of food to give the hamster. Where is our hamster? Is he still alive? Talk, Jools. Talk.

‘I’d agree that Tommy here is feeding people hype as opposed to recipes that a real family could use.’

Crumbs, where did that come from? Tommy stares at me. The same death stare that his wife used on me all those weeks ago. How dare you be the fly in my ointment and stop my empire from expanding and taking over the world! I flick through the book and that page with the picture.

‘I mean, whose breakfast table really resembles this? Most mornings I’m gathering the kids ready for school, rushing out the door. It’s chaos.’

Ed Hellmann smiles at me. I think and hope he finds me strangely endearing. Tommy less so.

‘Well, maybe for you. Mornings in my house are actually quite zen.’

I must not mention the hired help. I must not mention the hired help.

‘Well, that’s very nice. Must be all those pastels you have in your kitchen.’

I smile, thinking about my patchwork kitchen, wondering who it is out there whose crockery and table wares aren’t peppered with hand-me-downs, children’s tumblers, and Christmas gift mugs. Luella is jumping but this time with a bit of merriment in her step. I’m impressing myself with my restraint and ability to not get his book and break his nose with it.

‘All I’m saying, Tommy, is that this book, bar being a rehash of your previous books, is quite disconnected from real life.’

Bill is starting to take an interest.

‘In what way?’

I flick through the book, fuelled by my need to make this point as clear and well-founded as possible.

‘Here. Japanese marinated salmon?’

Tommy nods as I hold up the picture of his perfect pink fish on its white square plate, looking so perfect I suspect it’s been airbrushed.

‘With a ginger-infused drizzle, sesame rice, and snow peas?’

Tommy still nods. Ed is finding it hard to contain his giggles.

‘It sounds delicious. But this is restaurant food, this is so removed from my every day. I mean, for a start, I have four kids. That’s six pieces of salmon that would cost me more than a tenner. That’s a big chunk of my weekly budget. You’re asking me to pan fry six pieces of salmon. And mirin? You’re asking me to have mirin in my fridge? A whole bottle of mirin at four quid each for a dish that I’ll only cook once every couple of weeks and will otherwise sit in my fridge doing nothing.’

There’s a moment of silence. Bewildered silence as my rant is processed and pondered. I think through what I’ve just said. Was I offensive to the Japanese in any way? Maybe more so to the salmon. Or not. I hear salmon are on the verge of becoming extinct, maybe I did the species a favour. Bill laughs to try and break the silence.

‘I’m sorry, that was a bit full on. We love salmon in our house but I bake it so it’s less time-consuming, or put it in a pasta dish or fishcakes to make it go further.’

Tommy looks a bit lost for words. I have nothing left to say about salmon except that I like it smoked on Christmas day or on top of a canapé. Do I stick with salmon or move on to something else? Bill is looking to Tommy, whose fingers are digging into the leather like an overzealous cat.

‘You mean the boring way. I’ll think you’ll find that people want new and exciting twists on dishes and to try different ingredients. Mirin is great in salad dressings and for teriyaki marinades.’

I pause for a moment, knowing I don’t have anything else to say about mirin bar the fact I think I may have seen it on a Wagamama menu once. He’s going to trump me with his foodie London culinary college knowledge. Go back to what you know.

‘And you have a section here about making your own pizzas?’

McCoy nods.

‘And you list the tool that every family should have being a wood fire oven in their back gardens.’

He nods again.

‘Seriously? I don’t know what your garden is like but I have a broken swing, a rotting apple tree, and a sandpit/litter tray in mine.’

Bill laughs.

‘I make pizza and I do it in an oven in my kitchen, not in a one-thousand-pound appliance that can only be used four months of the year.’

Tommy sits there, stony faced. I refuse to give him the time to speak.

‘I agree with Ed; you make no allowances for what normal people can afford in terms of kitchen appliances and ingredients, so how this is a reflection of “family cooking” I really don’t know.’

My fingers have become imaginary sardonic speech marks. Bill turns to me.

‘So how would you define family cooking, Jools?’ I smile to have been recognised and given a moment to speak.

‘I guess I want reliable recipes where I’m not standing over the cooker for forty-five minutes. I want to know how to adapt and improvise with good, fresh, reasonably priced produce … I want to enjoy food and meals with my young family and teach them how to eat well …’

Bill nods and smiles at me. Tommy can’t seem to hide his discomfort at being ousted from the discussion. I sense in a moment he will need to rant. There are three people here; the seasoned broadcaster, the sharp-tongued MP, or the lowly housewife – easy to see who will be the target here.

‘And how is this indicative of what everyone wants? I’ll think you find pizza ovens are a great addition to any house.’

‘Yeah, if you’re running a Pizza Express from your garden.’

Ed sits back in the sofa, seemingly happy to have been ousted from the conversation given that it’s much more fun to be a spectator. I watch as Tommy McCoy refuses to face me as he talks, directing his comments elsewhere instead to the person they are truly directed to. I notice his forearms, fake tanned up to his wrists. But there’s something so preened about him, it’s distracting. I look at Luella for a moment and think about this façade he’s built his brand on. Am I really here to bring it down to its knees? To expose him for all his fakery? Or is there something about him which also scratches at my own surface, that resents him for it. I think about one of the first things I ever said to this man. How I knew I was a crap mother and didn’t need reminding of the fact. People are talking while I’m thinking and studying his leather-cuffed watch.

‘I just don’t know how she seems qualified to make such comments.’

I look over at Luella knowing I’ve missed an important sentence in the middle of all of that.

‘God, we know you have four kids, we know you have a busy life but that hardly makes you representative of an entire nation of mothers. The recent tabloids have most certainly told us that.’

I look over at Tommy. The hair. I think it’s the hair that is the most annoying. That and the fact he feels the need to think my life deserves some sort of commiseration or indeed judgement.

‘The papers have been misinformed.’

Tommy shrugs his shoulders. Keep your cool, Campbell.

‘Look, I know I’m no role model for anyone nor am I representative of most mothers. I just don’t think mums want your misplaced pity, thinking you have the solutions to our everyday woes.’

Bill smiles at me. I want to hug him.

‘I just deal with my life each day as it comes. I cook three meals a day with children hanging off my ankles, asking me to check their spellings, sew on name tags, and get bubble gum out of their hair. I’ll think you’ll find cooking is a much different thing when under these sorts of circumstances. No mention of how to cook like that in here.’

Ed is laughing at this point. I think about that last answer. I’ll admit to a lie in there. I don’t sew on name tags any more. I write on labels with special pens or iron them on, sometimes using superglue. Even Bill is gearing up for more of my retorts. I think about what Matt may have put in my coffee this morning, rarely do I feel so energised. Tommy finally turns to face me.

‘So show me. You think I can’t cook under pressure? I was trained in some of the best kitchens in London. Go on, I challenge you.’

The colour drains from Luella’s face as I squint my eyes and look over at him on the sofa. He may as well be wearing chaps and spurs. A challenge?

‘You and me on live national television. Both cooking the same meal, on the same budget, same time, being taste tested by a panel of families.’

Bill looks over at me, telling me to back away. You can have as many retorts and well-informed opinions on food as you like. You can be the poorer, down to earth mother who can tell him how it really is when cooking for a family. But don’t cook against the man. I have no intention to do so in any case. This is him resorting to bullying tactics. He can’t take me down with his tongue and his glossy book, but he always could in the kitchen. I smile and shake my head.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Well, then what she says means nothing, really. I thought this was a discussion about food. Not for some housewife to come on here and spout anecdotal rubbish about her own experiences.’

Bill puts his hand in the air.

‘Now, Tommy, come on. There’s no need for that …’

‘No, Bill. I won’t have some half-arsed mother come on here and tell me how to do my job.’

But at this point, I know what I have to do.

‘And I don’t need you telling me how to do mine. Name your place. I’m in if you are.’