Chapter 3
On the way home, I am royally pissed off by another idiot who cuts me off despite it being very obvious that it’s my turn to go at the roundabout.
Fine. I fire off a string of curses in my head and then force myself to get over it, rather than leaning on the horn as I normally would have done.
Perhaps I do have the slightest bit of road rage, but despite what my father and Markus say, I can keep my cool.
I don’t have any suppressed anger or whatever it is they think I have.
I simply have a low tolerance for idiots while I’m trying to run around and get chores done.
Oh, great, just great. Obviously not happy enough with the fact that he’s cut me off, he is now deliberately slowing down.
I’m sure he’s doing it just to upset me, forcing me to slow down because if I accidentally hit him, it’ll be all my fault.
All I want is to get home after a long, hard day running around like a headless chicken.
But obviously he doesn’t give a rat’s arse.
What is wrong with these people? And where the hell did he learn to drive?
‘Oi!’ I honk at him, yelling out the window like the best of stevedores. ‘Get a bloody move-on!’
He slows down, looks at me in his rear-view mirror, just staring at me, coming to a slow stop.
I honk again. ‘Get on with it!’
At that point, he stops and gets out of the car.
If he thinks he can intimidate me, he’s got another thing coming.
I am a mother of two, a businesswoman and a daughter of an elderly father.
I am from the sandwich generation. I am the sandwich generation all rolled into one woman, and I will not be taking any crap from some bloke who thinks that driving is a right.
It is a privilege – one that some people don’t deserve.
‘What are you honking for?’ the man demands, utterly disgusted.
He must be in his seventies at least. Jesus, he looks like my dad, who is sixty-nine.
He could be my dad’s twin, with the same scrawny shoulders and age marks on his temples.
I can’t very well yell at someone who reminds me of my poor old Dad, can I?
And yet, I want to clock this bloke like never before.
What’s wrong with me? Have I gone mad? I am this close to passing a limit of decency.
This is not me, in the least. I have always tried to be a decent human being, but, as it happens, things get in the way.
But not this time. This time I’ve got it.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I whisper as I change gears and reverse.
His eyes widen. It must look to him that I am moving my car back to try and run him over, and he stumbles out of the way as I drive past him.
‘You crazy bitch!’ he calls after me.
Well, any man who would call a stranger a bitch deserves a little scare. He shouldn’t have cut me off in the first place. I start to giggle to myself at the look on his face, and the more I think about it, the funnier it becomes until I’m laughing hysterically to myself.
Then suddenly, it’s not funny anymore. At all.
And that’s when I’m ambushed by an onslaught of tears.
The man was right. I am a crazy bitch. Perhaps I should see someone about this.
But it’s normal in this day and age to be a bit stressed, right?
And it’s not like I was actually going to knock him down, was I?
A couple of streets away, I park under a tree to pull myself together.
‘You’ve got this, old stick,’ I say to the ragged reflection in the mirror. My green eyes are wild with stress and my light brown hair looks like I’ve been through the tumble dryer. Sometimes I really don’t recognise myself.
I get back home to find Cassie and her friends upstairs in her bedroom, draped around every piece of furniture, listening to my old records from my ancient stereo that she’s dragged up from the basement. Now that is a blast from the past.
They’re bopping to Duran Duran’s ‘Planet Earth’ in a way we never danced to it.
Their movements are jerky, but there is something fun about it.
Scattered around them I also see my entire Spandau Ballet collection, along with Wham, Culture Club, David Bowie (which was actually my mother’s but I stole it because I’d never heard anything so cool in my life).
These records were already old in my time, but something about the carefree, bouncy music made me happy when nothing else had, if only for the length of the record. Eighties music was like a drug to me, and it had kept me going throughout those tough years.
‘Hi, Mrs D!’ the kids chime in unison as Cassie rolls her eyes.
‘Hey, girls,’ I chime right back, happy to be among nice people again.
‘I got you peeps some nosh,’ I say, hoping they’ll understand me and that they’ll think I’m cool enough to be in their hallowed presence.
If they’d only seen me at that roundabout a few minutes ago, they’d be staring at me in terror.
‘It better not be those healthy snacks again,’ Cassie says, turning her nose up.
‘I like those healthy snacks,’ Rachel says, sitting up as I distribute cups of fruit salad, yoghurt pots, crackers, assorted nuts (I’ve already cleared the list with their mothers) and cheese cubes.
‘Thank you, Mrs D!’ they say obediently, though I dread to think what comes out of their mouths the minute I leave the room.
‘You girls have fun, but don’t forget to do some studying,’ I say as I close the door behind me.
‘Oh my God, your Mum is like, super-nice,’ I hear Nicole swoon behind the door. ‘I wish she was my friend while growing up…’
Oh, Nicole… you poor, innocent little girl. If you only knew…
*
The week goes by without any particular mishaps until Saturday morning when the kids and I are at the shopping centre to get them some school supplies.
We must have bought enough coloured pens and pencils and rulers and glue and binders for the entire school.
I used to do that when I was a girl, and I usually did end up giving away at least half of it, whether to break the ice with someone, or to deter a bully from beating the crap out of me.
I have never, ever in my life fitted in with the In Crowd. I still don’t.
I was always the nerd silently reading my book in the school canteen while the other girls were draped around their boyfriends or snogging in the gym, putting the huge space to what they called good use.
I couldn’t do that. And the result of my never having set foot in a gym showed: I was anything but slender, and it made me an easy target for ridicule.
But I learnt to appreciate my body for what it is, even if nowadays I can hardly climb the steps to the bedroom without wheezing, I’m so out of shape and worn down.
I do need a holiday, I know that. But not now.
And certainly not in the Italian Alps, so far away from my kids.
After our shopping spree we go to McDonald’s, and everything instantly annoys me; the loud music, the smell of fried food, even the people aimlessly milling around. Why don’t they just get out of the way and sit down?
Once I’ve set the Happy Meals on our table, I grab one of the chairs and pull it back, perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary. But when I go to sit down, I completely misjudge it, falling arse over tit and smacking the back of my head against the ceramic floor.
At first I don’t understand what’s happened. One minute I’m standing and the next I’m on the floor with my burger in my lap, stunned, shocked, and with a splitting headache.
The restaurant falls silent as all eyes swivel to the source of the loud noise.
This silence lasts long enough for everyone (me excluded) to get over the shock, and soon a few onlookers are sniggering at me, probably thinking I’m drunk as opposed to dizzy, while others, a tiny percentage, feel sorry for me, judging by the looks on their faces.
Screw them. I don’t need anyone’s pity! All I need is for them to stop looking at me.
I scrabble to my feet as fast as I can, my face and ears burning as the din around me increases to a high pitch, and I’m thirteen again, stumbling to the floor in the wake of Amanda Amherst, the most popular girl in Year 9, taunting me.
My throat tightens and my eyes burn as I dust myself off, but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to cry like I did back then.
‘Oh, my God!’ calls a woman from behind me, and I can sense her making her way over to our table.
The last thing I need is someone fussing over me, making it look like a huge deal and attracting the attention of anyone who may have missed it.
I turn to the sound of her voice, ready to defend myself, but she’s part of the staff. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Quite,’ I say. ‘It’s nothing. Thank you.’
‘Are you sure, Mum?’ Cassie asks with exaggerated kindness, but it is so obvious she is enjoying my embarrassment. She must truly hate me. ‘You went down like a ton of bricks!’
‘I’m all right, thank you, sweetheart.’ I say the last word through gritted teeth for the benefit of the kind worker who’s come to my rescue.
Anyone else probably would have sat down again to finish their meal, the embarrassment passing quickly.
I will never be able to finish my meal now.
And it isn’t because a few people are still watching me, but because, in the space of a split second, the time it took for my arse to hit the floor, I have lost my dignity, and, as a consequence, my appetite.
‘You hit your head,’ the woman says. ‘Are you sure you’re not dizzy? You might even have a concussion…’
‘I’m fine!’ I shout at her, and we both jump.
Now the entire place is staring at me, waiting for the punches to fly.
I know I look like I’m going to lose it.
I feel I’m going to lose it very, very soon, and I don’t even know why.
Is my father right? Should I look up anger management classes? Nonsense. I’m fine. I can handle this.