Chapter 8
Svetlana bossing:
Camel pencil skirt
White big-lapelled shirt
Snakeskin heels
Gold and diamond bangle stack
Diamond rings
Diamond earrings
‘So, just talk me through the food you can actually make. Please, just put my mind at rest so I can at least hope you won’t be eating takeaways and junk all of the time. I accept you will eat it some of the time, but please tell me what you can actually make.’
Owen smiled at his mum from the back seat of the car. He gave her that shrug that she knew meant: you’re making a huge fuss, but if this will help to calm you down.
‘OK… let’s see,’ Owen began, ‘the easy stuff first – beans on toast, fried eggs on toast, avocado on toast, tuna and cheese on toast…’
‘That is a lot of toast,’ Annie worried. ‘You need to choose bread that’s good for you. Brown bread, nice thick slices.’
‘OK, Mum. So, moving on to pasta – pasta with red pesto, pasta with green pesto, pasta with cheese and ketchup, which I know disgusts everyone but it is one of my favourite meals, especially covered in black pepper.’
‘Did you pack a pepper grinder?’ Annie asked, causing both Ed at the wheel and Owen in the back to dissolve into laughter. ‘OK, fair enough,’ she admitted, ‘maybe a pepper grinder isn’t an absolute student essential… maybe your flat will have one.’
‘I can also make rice and fry things – bacon, sausages, salmon steaks, chicken breasts, mushrooms, red peppers, carrot batons… I can also boil potatoes, frozen green beans, sweetcorn and peas. I might eat cereal with milk, or Pot Noodles, or sausage rolls some of the time, Mum, but I will not eat them all of the time.’
This was reassuring.
‘Food is really important, Owen. It makes you feel good. It keeps you healthy. Not eating well can make you ill very quickly. And you have to eat yoghurt, Owen, for your microbiome.’
More snorts of laughter from the back seat. ‘Mum, you literally exist on coffees, raisin Danishes and those cinnamon buns. And you seem fine.’
‘I do not!’ she countered. ‘I eat salad and vegetables and fish and even quinoa…’
‘But you do especially like a big noodle fry-up with lots of hoisin sauce,’ Ed reminded her.
‘I do… you have me there.’
‘That is a good one,’ Owen said. ‘Maybe you should send me the recipe for that one, Dad.’
‘Will do,’ Ed replied. Annie looked out of the window.
They were taking Owen to uni… they were taking her precious boy Owen to university…
in Scotland. She knew this was happening.
It was in her mind as a fact, a date, a road trip they’d had to prep for, but somehow, she still couldn’t quite believe it.
Owen? University? She suddenly could only think about him as ten years old, had that image firmly in her mind, but quickly glanced towards her grown-up boy in the back seat, because otherwise, the wave of nostalgia was going to wash right over her and it wouldn’t be good.
Owen looked all smiley and relaxed back there, as if this was nothing, ‘no biggie’ as he liked to tell her multiple times a day.
But his hair was freshly cut and washed and he was wearing his absolutely precious and cherished vintage The Clash T-shirt – the iconic one with the bassist smashing his bass guitar on the floor.
So, she knew that he’d given today lots of thought.
This was definitely a carefully considered version of Owen.
And of course, he was excited to be setting off on this big adventure, but maybe there was a little nervousness behind his smile.
She was much more nervous, emotional and just, well, in danger of being overwrought by this day, much more than she had thought she would be.
She couldn’t help thinking he was woefully unprepared for coping even slightly on his own.
She’d completely spoiled and mollycoddled him and now he was going to bear the brunt.
Random bits of advice kept spouting out of her mouth.
Owen and Ed were beginning to find it funny…
she knew they were. But she couldn’t help herself.
‘You’ve got to look after your feet,’ she was telling him now.
And why? Even she knew she sounded a little bonkers.
‘You can catch things from communal showers. Did you take flip-flops up with you? And make sure your towels get hung up to dry properly. Hopefully, they’ve thought of that and there’s a towel rail in your room, ideally heated.
It’s just… a damp, dirty towel, it smells and you can get skin infections. ’
‘Mum!’ Owen protested again. ‘You’ll be telling me how to put laundry powder into a washing machine next!’
‘And look, you’re to take an Uber home whenever it’s late. I don’t care how expensive it is. You can message me for the money, if you need to—’
‘You’re going to regret that,’ Ed couldn’t help interrupting.
‘No, seriously, you’ve got to be safe, Owen. Really, I don’t care about sausage rolls, athlete’s foot and manky towels nearly as much as I care about that. It’s the most important thing.’
‘Gotcha, Mum. Loud and clear. Be safe, dry my towels, eat fried chicken and green veg… keep my feet fungus-free. Anything else? Are we going to have to endure a sex talk?’ was Owen’s next question.
Annie and Ed exchanged a glance. ‘No,’ Ed said in his calm way.
‘We’ve had all the sex talks we need for now.
The important thing for you to know, Owen, is that you can ask us any time about anything you need to ask us.
It’s just sex. Let’s just try and keep things normal and open and keep talking about stuff.
Don’t bottle up any worries or any questions.
But we respect your need for privacy on this too. ’
‘Phew,’ was Owen’s response. And Annie couldn’t help agreeing.
Wasn’t it quite enough to be worrying about him feeding and caring for himself, without adding thoughts of his sex life into the mix?
‘Anything else you’d like to go over with me, Mum?
Nail care? Ear wax removal… how to wash a kitchen floor, how to clean a toilet? ’
‘What about drugs?’ Annie asked next, in a panic at this thought.
‘Have you got any?’ was Owen’s cheeky response.
‘It’s OK, we’ve talked that over a lot too. Shall we just try and enjoy the journey?’ was Ed’s suggestion from the front seat.
As they were currently surrounded by juggernauts on a particularly unglamorous stretch of the M1, this wasn’t exactly going to be easy.
‘I just feel like there’s so much I want to say,’ Annie blurted out.
‘We’ve taken such good care of you, Owen, for all this time,’ she turned to meet his eyes. ‘I want you to carry on doing that.’
Owen seemed to understand that he needed to be serious now, so he gave his mother a solemn nod.
‘It can be hard,’ Annie heard herself bursting out with more unplanned advice, ‘settling in somewhere new, making new friends, studying. I know you’re a big, handsome, friendly guy, who loves music, so you might find it easier than most – but you’ll have your days, my lovely boy.’
She reached over and Owen let her take his hand.
‘You can always, always call us. Or even get on the train and be with us. You can always do that. Don’t be lonely.
We are always here for you. It doesn’t matter if your worry is huge or just a small, silly thing, you can tell us.
It’s normal to make mistakes and mess up and make a tit of yourself.
Everyone does it at your age. You can tell us.
We are always on your side. I promise.’ She squeezed at his hand.
But somehow still felt that she hadn’t said enough, or done enough, or taught him enough.
She wasn’t sure if Owen was ready and she was pretty sure that she wasn’t ready for this.
‘OK, got it,’ he told her and it sounded casual, but the smile that came with this was warm, genuine and went straight to her heart.
‘Now, please can we put some music on?’ he asked.
‘And we have to stop soon to get Mum her next coffee and Danish fix because I think she might have low blood sugar levels or something.’
‘Ha, ha,’ Annie took another long look at her son, as if she couldn’t get enough of him, as if she had to store up much more in the memory bank before he went away.
‘Nice T-shirt,’ she said.
This seemed to cause him a look of worry, because if his mum liked it, maybe it wasn’t a good T-shirt. Maybe all his potential new friends would hate it. He shrugged. ‘Yeah… comfortable.’ As if that was why he was wearing his carefully considered The Clash top.
Annie’s phone burst into life and she could see it was Svetlana. ‘Models, Annie? We need more models!’ were her opening words, followed by: ‘Are you doing something about this?’
‘Yes!’ Annie insisted and it wasn’t a complete lie. She was going to turn to Ed, just as soon as this call was over and ask him if any of the school athletics team had agreed to be in her show.
‘Let me know,’ Svetlana said. ‘And let me know when you find some items we could put on a catwalk and impress people with,’ she snapped and then, clearly in full tough-boss mode, hung up.
‘Charming,’ Annie said and then made her request about the school’s athletics team.
Ed’s answer was the simple but completely unhelpful, ‘No.’
‘Oh for crying out loud!’ she complained.
* * *
By the time they arrived in the Glasgow street that was going to be home for Owen during his university terms, The Clash T-shirt had already been swapped out for another one and then, at the last minute, swapped back in again.