Chapter 2
Morning all! Just a quick one to say there are only a handful of tickets left for the PTA Wine Quiz. Drop me a line to snap one up before they all go – it should be a fabulous night! Also, a quick follow-up to my earlier messages to see if there is anyone else who might be interested in a hamster? They are free to a loving home, easy to look after and very cute! Eight have been rehomed so there’s now only one left. Let me know!
I press send on my WhatsApp message and wonder if the exclamation marks are a dead giveaway for how desperate I am. It already feels like a miracle that I’ve managed to get rid of eight of them within three weeks of their birth. Apparently, if you leave hamsters together any longer than that, they start killing each other or, worse, reproducing.
Obviously, the pet shop where Alan was purchased was uninterested in our plight and, although Brendan said he was horrified and would immediately ask around to see if anyone wanted one, I haven’t heard a peep from him since. So I was forced into the hard sell to anyone with a child, touting my wares at the school gates, Scouts, work, on social media and, in one case, to my neighbour’s acupuncturist. In another life, I could have been a used-car salesman.
Only now the end is in sight – with only a single baby currently homeless – I am completely out of ideas. I even texted my hairdresser, who responded with, No thanks Lisa and don’t try and tip me with one after I’ve done your lowlights! x
Unless I can get rid of it, I’m going to have to buy a second cage tonight after work. Which I really, really don’t want to do. Yet I’m horribly aware that, even now, they could be multiplying; every time I open the front door, I live in fear of being confronted by a scene straight out of Gremlins .
‘Why couldn’t we have just kept them?’ asks Jacob, as I straighten his school tie in the hallway.
‘Because I think 10 pets is too many, even for an animal lover like you.’
‘I’d have looked after them,’ he protests.
I kiss him on the head and push a bit of his fringe that refuses to stay down. He’s got light brown hair, the same shade as his father, but that’s where the resemblance to Brendan ends. Despite being 10, Jacob still has the same lovely squidgy cheeks that he had as a baby, and huge blue, puppyish eyes that occasionally mean he can wrap me round his little finger. But not about pets. On this, I am not changing my view.
‘When you leave 10 hamsters together for longer than a couple of weeks . . . how can I put this? Bad things happen .’
‘What sort of things?’
I wonder what I should break to him first – the cannibalism or the incest.
‘They fight, that’s all. They’re better off on their own.’
‘But that’s so sad. Everybody needs somebody , Mum,’ he says, earnestly.
‘Not everybody. And definitely not Alan. Alan is an independent woman.’ The name has stuck despite it now being clear that our hamster is very definitely female. ‘And she’s really happy that way.’
I glance at my watch and realise we’re nearly 10 minutes late thanks to my teenage son, who has yet to grace us with his presence.
‘That’s it , Leo,’ I yell up the stairs, for what must be the ninth time. ‘Unless you’re down here in 20 seconds, you’ll be walking.’
His school is two miles away. It’s raining heavily. The register will be called in 15 minutes. The likelihood of him making it in any other way than by car is zero. But this is now beyond a joke; enough is enough and he cannot be allowed to go on like this. Which is precisely what I say every morning.
‘Are we really going without him?’ Jacob asks, looking up at me anxiously.
I pull up the hood of his raincoat.
‘I hope not,’ I whisper. ‘Because then I’ll drop you off, feel guilty and have to turn around to go and pick him up. Leo! NOW!’
He finally appears at the top of the stairs, half asleep and looking like a drunk who’s just crawled out of a nightclub. At 15 years old, my son is six foot one, athletic and handsome, which I think is true even taking maternal bias into account. He also currently has no shoes or socks on, his shirt is undone and the top button of his trousers is hanging open. The only element of his appearance that he’s attended to is his dark blond hair, which is styled to perfection. Of course it is.
‘Have you seen the time?’ I say.
He closes his eyes and inhales deeply as he heads down the stairs.
‘Would you please stop shouting.’ He has the air of someone whose patience is being tried by an incompetent customer service operator. I feel my simmering blood rise to a slow boil.
‘I. Was. Not. Shouting. I’m merely trying to get you out of the house without making everyone else late. I’ve got an important meeting first thing.’
‘There’s plenty of time,’ he shrugs, sitting on the bottom step and tugging on a sock in a manner so leisurely you’d think he was lying on a beach in Acapulco.
‘ There isn’t! ’ I say, with rising exasperation.
‘You say that every morning and I’m literally never late.’
‘That’s only because I have to drive like a maniac to make up for lost time!’
He stops and looks at me. ‘ WHY are you shouting?’
‘I’M NOT .’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Well . . . NOW I am! Good God ,’ I huff. ‘Just get in the car. Please .’
I love my eldest son more than I can express. I am often dazzled by how clever, thoughtful and fun he has the ability to be. But he’s none of these things in the mornings. If you catch him before 9am on weekdays – and early afternoon at weekends – he seems determined to forge a reputation for himself as a giant pain in the arse.
He hasn’t always been like this. He was the sweetest little boy you could hope to meet, the first to want a cuddle or a bedtime story. I thought I’d got away lightly with his teenage years at first, but then he hit 15. The transformation happened like the flick of a switch . . . or, more accurately, Godzilla rising from the deep, ready to wreak havoc on everything in his wake.
I turn Jacob around and march him out of the house to the car, clicking the lock and piling in the bags.
‘Have you put anything nice in my packed lunch?’ he asks.
‘What do you mean? You have school meals.’
‘But there’s the museum trip today,’ he reminds me. I feel a gust of breath leave me. ‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’
‘Of course not. You jump in the back and I’ll go and get it.’
In the kitchen, I throw the first edible things I can find into a Tupperware box, before running back outside.
‘What have I got?’ Jacob asks eagerly. ‘We are allowed chocolate as a treat because it’s a special day.’
‘I had to work with what I had available,’ I say, only imagining his disappointment later when he discovers some carrot batons, last night’s prawn crackers and three cold cocktail sausages.
I turn out of our street and head into the centre of the leafy, tree-lined suburb where we live. Roebury Village is full of big Victorian houses and has a tram stop twenty minutes from the centre of Manchester. Thanks to the botanical gardens and pretty shops, it’s always been considered a nice place; when I was growing up, it was where the kids at my school lived if their parents were lecturers, lawyers or, as in the case of one of my classmates, their dad had had a one-hit wonder in the mid-seventies which had led to a brief flirtation with fame and a lifetime of royalties. It’s a few miles from where I grew up, which was in a significantly less posh but nonetheless pleasant neighbourhood with a betting shop on the corner of our street, as opposed to the artisan bakery I’ve managed to acquire these days.
I switch on the Radio 4 headlines as they’re discussing an item about a national shortage of HRT following the ‘Davina effect’. Which is great news when I’ve only just started taking it to combat my own headaches, palpitations, raging PMS and the odd bout of insomnia. I am never sure whether this is caused by my time of life or simply the fact that there really needs to be two of me to run a career alongside our family. But I decided that if there was a tube of gel I could rub onto my arms to lessen any of these problems, I was all in.
‘Jacob, I forgot to say. I’ve got some good news about the club you wanted to join. I heard from the coach last night.’
Jacob has made a hobby out of collecting hobbies. You name it, he’s tried it over the years – football, drumming, Scouts, climbing. I told him after he’d signed up for fencing classes last year that that was it – no more.
But he has been banging on about wanting to join a baseball team for so long now that I promised to at least look into it. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many baseball teams in the UK and it’s been nigh on impossible to get him even onto a waiting list. But it’s been worth the effort for seeing how much his little face lights up now.
‘Did you get me a place?’ he says, so delighted that I can’t help feeling a bit pleased with myself.
‘I did. You’re now a proud junior member of the Manchester Baseball Club.’
His expression falls.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t want to join that.’
‘I’m sorry . . . what?’ I say, failing to keep the exasperation out of my voice. ‘You cannot just keep chopping and changing like this. How many clubs have you joined over the years? Have you got any idea how hard it was for me to get you into this thing? There’re hardly any baseball teams in the UK.’
He blinks, looking a bit shellshocked. ‘I know but—’
‘But what? It’s not on, Jacob. Enough is enough.’
He slinks down into his seat dejected and mutters something under his breath.
‘What was that?’ I snap.
‘It was basketball I wanted,’ he whispers. ‘Not baseball.’
Leo lets out a long, derisory snort. ‘Nice one, Mum,’ he says.