More Than Just Mum

Dylan nods slowly. ‘The uni has got a Facebook page. I can probably use that to start figuring out where the best jobs are. That way I’ll be ahead of the rush when we all start.’

‘That sounds like a great idea,’ I say, forcing myself to smile. ‘And in the meantime, Dad and I will look at our budget and let you know how much we can give you each month.’

Dylan steps forward, giving me a quick hug before loping out of the room. His phone is already out of his pocket, his thumbs speeding over the screen.

‘Oh my god.’ I flop down onto the table as soon as he’s left the room. ‘This is a genuine, arsing disaster. Everything just seems to be going wrong at the moment.’

Although on the plus side, my lip has almost cleared up and the scarring appears to be minimal. Dr Google has reassuringly informed me that the numbness will almost certainly pass with time and at least I’m not going to have to find the money for plastic surgery, which is definitely something to celebrate.

‘Calm down,’ Nick says, standing up and moving across the kitchen. I watch as he fills the kettle and pulls two mugs off the shelf. In a crisis, we drink tea, just like the rest of the population of the British Isles. And if we’re out of tea then we just have to make do with wine. ‘It can’t be that bad.’

I raise my eyebrows. ‘Were you even listening last week when I told you how much he needs for food and stuff? And that was before we knew how pathetically small his loan was going to be.’

Nick turns to face me, looking a bit sheepish. ‘Was that when I was watching Game of Thrones?’ he asks. ‘Because you started talking just as it got to a good bit and there’s a remote possibility that I wasn’t listening.’

I glare at him. ‘Well, let me outline our financial situation once more, for those of you in the back who were too busy fantasizing about scantily clad women riding dragons.’ I stand up and rest my hands on the table. ‘We need to give Dylan at least three hundred pounds each month. Plus, in two years’ time, we’re going to have to do the same for Scarlet. And as it stands, I do not know where that extra money is coming from because we don’t have a secret stash of savings hidden under the bed and every time I think we might be able to put some money away, we seem to have a new disaster.’

I hold up my hand and count off on my fingers. ‘The car breaking down. The oven deciding that it didn’t feel like actually heating up. Dogger hurting her leg and needing the emergency vet, which cost us the equivalent of two week’s food shopping. The school trip that Benji needs to go on unless we want him to be the only child in his class who doesn’t attend.’

I pause for breath while Nick gawps at me. ‘Winter is coming, Nick,’ I tell him, as dramatically as I can. ‘Winter is coming and we don’t have any warm coats.’

There is silence while my husband digests my words.

‘Three hundred quid a month?’ he says eventually. ‘Are you sure?’

I nod and we stare at each other across the kitchen.

‘We’re going to have to rethink a few things around here then.’ He hands me a cup of tea, his fingers brushing against mine. ‘We knew that this day was coming, Hannah. You said it yourself a few weeks ago. We need to increase our earnings.’

He means my earnings, and he’s right. I need to earn a full-time wage.

I need a plan.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_2e74faed-2947-59c4-876b-acca4e21c91b)

I spend days brainstorming ideas for a new career path, letting my mind explore the sensible, the wild and the downright obscure. On Saturday night, Benji has a sleepover at Logan’s house and Dylan is in his room watching god-knows-what on his laptop and talking to god-knows-who on his phone. Scarlet is diligently ploughing on with the ever-increasing amount of homework that she’s been given (I really think I might need to have a quiet word with her teachers; it’s unacceptable how much work that child is getting at the moment). So Nick and I have the kitchen to ourselves, which is a rare event. I’m intending to wait until after we’ve eaten to talk to him about my new plan, but just as we clear away the plates, my mobile pings with a text from Logan’s mum.

That’s her genuine contact name on my phone, along with Nina’s mum and Franco’s mum. And I am very aware that I don’t exist as Hannah in the lives of these people – I am Dylan/Scarlet/Benji’s mum, despite the fact that I have shared some of my most traumatic parenting situations with them while waiting in the school playground at the end of the day. We are all women who have been relegated to the status of ‘someone’s mum’ from the moment that our children started making friends with other kids.

Benji wants to come home. His teddy’s arm has fallen off & I think it’s upset him a bit x

‘Are you kidding me?’ I read the text aloud to Nick and we stare at each other for a moment. ‘Teddy’s arm?’

Nick shakes his head. ‘I sewed it back on after the last time. It must have come loose.’

I slam the dishwasher closed and wait for a second to hear the tell-tale gushing of water. A new dishwasher is not in my budget right now.

‘I think you’re missing the point,’ I tell Nick. ‘He’s going into Year Six in September and then he’ll be starting at Westhill Academy before we know it. How is he going to cope in a world of constant fights and drug-dealing and rampant sex when his teddy’s arm falling off sends him into a meltdown?’

Nick raises his eyebrows at me. ‘I think you’re being a little bit dramatic there, Hannah. He’s got a whole year to grow up and anyway, it’s secondary school, not prison.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ I mutter darkly, pulling my shoes off the rack next to the door. ‘You’re not there all week.’

‘Neither are you,’ Nick points out, slightly unreasonably. ‘I’ll drive – I want to check if Betty’s new windscreen wipers work.’

He hasn’t got a clue. He doesn’t see the kids scurrying down our school corridors like there’s a herd of zombies hot on their heels. He isn’t the one who has to lurk outside the girls’ toilets, ready to catch the smokers red-handed. He isn’t here after school when Scarlet and Dylan (although mostly Scarlet, to be honest) regale us with terrifying stories of crime and punishment that never make it as far as the staff room. And Benji is our baby. It was only two minutes ago that he couldn’t wear shoes without Velcro.

I yell up the stairs, telling the older two that we’ll be back soon, and then we head out into the dark. It’s a clear night without a cloud in the sky and the stars are out in force. I stand for a second, wondering when the world got so big.

The sound of Betty roaring to life jolts me back to the task in hand. I clamber into the Land Rover and we rattle our way up the road, the heater making a complete song and dance about being turned on full. It clearly has little man syndrome because it certainly isn’t producing anything even vaguely warming. Nick flicks the wipers on and they manage two half-hearted swipes of the glass before freezing in position across the windscreen and I have to endure the rest of the journey listening to him mutter about how he just can’t understand it and he fitted them perfectly and he read the instruction manual and watched a YouTube video and there’s no reason at all why they shouldn’t be working.

I love my husband very much but when he gets started on the topic of Land Rover maintenance I am sometimes tempted to shove his diff lock where the sun doesn’t shine.

We get to Logan’s house and his mother opens the door, depositing a teary and rather subdued-looking Benji onto the front step.

‘I’m sorry, Mum!’ he says, the instant that he sees me. ‘I just felt weird and you said to call you if I wasn’t okay.’

I pull him into a hug and Logan’s mum nods understandingly at me over the top of his head.

Oh god. He should be sorry. She probably thinks that he’s a complete wimp and that I have failed in my duty to provide him with the life skills that he should have acquired by the ripe old age of ten. She’ll tell all the other mums and they’ll mock me behind my back, saying that I baby him because he’s my last child and I’m incapable of letting him grow up.

‘It’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘And you don’t need to be sorry.’

Logan’s mum hands me his rucksack. ‘I think all his things are in there. We’ve put Teddy’s arm in a sling but it’s possible that he’s going to need a bit of surgery.’

I look gratefully at her and raise my eyebrows. ‘Kids, hey?’

She smiles. ‘I know – and we haven’t even started on the teenage years with Logan yet! Speaking of which, I saw your Scarlet walking out of the park yesterday morning when I was coming back from yoga. She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Have you thought about sending her photo off to one of those modelling agencies?’

‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea,’ I tell her, shuddering. ‘She’s difficult enough to handle as it is, without getting any big ideas from a bunch of supermodels.’

Logan’s mum laughs gently. ‘And you must join us one of these days. Honestly – one hot yoga session with Orlando and you won’t ever look back!’

I open my mouth with the intention of making a hilarious quip about the fact that yoga is supposed to aid flexibility, and therefore surely my ability to look back would only be improved after a session with hot Orlando, but then I pause. Some of the mothers in the school playground take their exercise regimes incredibly seriously and the last thing I need right now is to piss off the PTA.

‘Maybe one day!’ I trill, trying to look like attending a yoga class isn’t my definition of hell.

I usher Benji towards the garden gate where Nick is waiting. And then a thought hits me and I spin round.

‘Actually,’ I say, ‘it can’t have been Scarlet who you saw, because I dropped her at school myself yesterday.’

But Logan’s mum has closed the door. Benji trips over his own feet and starts to wail.

When we get home, the fairy lights are on outside the front door. I always put them on if Scarlet or Dylan are coming home late but I was in too much of a rush to think about doing it tonight. One of them must have come downstairs and switched them on while we were getting Benji.

We get inside and I’m intending on scooting him upstairs to bed, but as we walk into the living room, I see Scarlet and Dylan draped across the sofa.

‘Hey!’ calls Scarlet. ‘We heard you were coming home. It’s just as well – the house was too quiet without you here.’