Chapter 4
‘Don’t let him bother you, eh?’
‘But I am looking old!’
‘That’s your concern? He’s a bad man.’
She’d come to see her beautician, Wei, for her fortnightly fix. Wei was an open-hearted peach of a man, with a soft face that belied a hard childhood, growing up as openly gay in Jiangsu province. She’d stumbled across him at a nail bar years ago, where he’d regaled her with tales of his second job working in an SM dungeon on the Old Kent Road. He’d joked about how handcuffs should have been a playing piece in Monopoly, although everyone would have to beg him to pass go, and he’d be the one collecting the ￡200. He’d given it up when he met his now-husband David, a financial advisor with a penchant for stocks (not of the restraining kind). Instead he’d set up a mini salon in the spare bedroom of their Crystal Palace flat, where he now offered Gua Sha facials and other delicious treatments. Her nostrils tingled as Wei smoothed lemongrass-fragranced massage oil onto her face.
‘What if he’s right about the other stuff?’ she said.
It still rankled.
‘He’s a woman hater. Men like that, they only like their nannies, the ones who mollycoddle and tit feed. He’s just jealous.’
‘Hmm.’
‘You need a different place to work.’
There were precisely three reputation management companies of such scale in the city: Dickwad Ghastly; a second place run by a pit bull of a bloke famous for worse behaviour than the clients he represented; and the third owned by her walking perineum of a cheating ex-boyfriend. And whilst a lot of water had passed under the bridge since he’d done the dirty on her, given what she’d been told about her own reproductive chances, coming into contact with the child he’d fathered as a result of his affair might prove a little too much.
She tried to relax under Wei’s constantly moving fingertips, the rhythmic stroking acting as a balm to her apprehension. After several delicious minutes, he spoke again.
‘You know it’s Mother’s Day?’
All too well.
‘I called again. No joy for me.’
‘I don’t know why you bother,’ she said.
‘She’ll come round eventually.’
She doubted Wei’s mum would. Homosexuality had been legal in China for over two decades, but Mrs Yang hadn’t got the memo; she continued to consider it the mental disorder it had been classified as up until 2001. She’d even spent a huge proportion of her modest income to pay for aversion therapy, where Wei was instructed to have sexual thoughts about men whilst receiving electric shocks. It didn’t work. He stubbornly continued to fancy men, but now joked that he could only come with his balls in the toaster.
‘Things are changing,’ said Wei.
‘Not that quickly. I saw they opened Bohemian Rhapsody in China without the gay bits. Must have been a short show.’
He wiped away the oil with soft cotton pads. ‘You never talk about your mum. You miss her, eh?’
Wei knew that her mum had died suddenly nearly two years ago, but he had no idea of the circumstances. She hadn’t told anybody the truth of her death; it would invite too much cross-examination and counter-questions, and their terminal earnestness would be entirely at odds with the anger and confusion with which she regarded her mother’s actions. She still hadn’t felt the weight of any grief settle on her – not in the way she’d been consumed by it when her dad was snatched away nearly twenty years ago. It was more surprise at the absence of her mum’s murmurings of disappointment, like finding yourself free of tinnitus after years of affliction. She made non-committal noises.
‘It’s hard for everyone without a mum today,’ he said. ‘It’s in all the shops and everything.’
The fact was, she had always hated Mother’s Day. It was a nonsense, fake-ass, celebration of someone selfishly propagating their genes without consideration for the future feelings of the person to be foisted upon a broken, dysfunctional world. She hated the compulsion to play along with the commercial shitshow, performing a dutiful daughter tap dance with the gifting of overpriced flowers and saccharine cards written by someone with candyfloss for brains. And maybe the tiniest bit of her hated the fact that she’d probably never get the chance to be a crap mother herself.
‘It’s not all bad though’, said Wei. ‘David’s mum is so lovely.’
Lucky David. Whereas there were no Mother’s Day cards that could truly sum up the relationship she’d had with her mother.
Roses are red. Violets are blue. You pushed me out of your vagina. And then expected me to thank you.
You propagated your genes and then blamed me when you could no longer fit into your jeans. #blessed.
Thanks for trying to live your life vicariously through me after you made terrible choices with your own.
She’d have been better off searching in the ‘with sympathy’ area. She made more non-committal noises for Wei and was relieved when he popped her under his photon therapy LED light and told her he’d be back in twenty minutes.
‘So what are you doing for the rest of the weekend?’ he asked when her time was up. ‘Meeting the girls?’
‘They’re away.’ She gathered her belongings.
He tutted. ‘You need a boyfriend. You’re a beautiful lady.’
This was his customary response whenever she didn’t have plans, but then again, he also had no idea about Marcus.
‘I’ll probably do some work.’
He tutted some more. ‘You work too hard. Didn’t Dolly Parton say it’s as important to make a life as it is to make a living? She’s a wise lady.’
‘Who do you think is wiser, Dolly or Confucius?’
He looked at her like she’d grown a second head.
‘How the hell should I know? I reckon Confucius had bigger tits though. That’s why he had long eyebrows and a beard – to try and take attention away from them.’
She laughed.
‘Don’t laugh too much, I only just got rid of those lines.’
There wasn’t much danger of that.
‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, Wei.’
‘You take care.’
She ignored the concern in his voice. Everything was absolutely fine.