with Izzy when Dad sent me a text telling me what he’d done, so I came home because I was worried about you. I had no idea he was planning to move out today. Did you?”
“No,” I say, though I’m not sure if Joel hears me, as the word comes out more like a hiccup than a “no”, so I shake my head, for clarity. Then I roll myself into a ball on the sofa and start to cry as if I’ll never stop.
“Oh, Mum,” says Joel, in an unusually quiet voice.
He sounds so sad, it makes me cry all the more, and then he tries everything to make me stop, from patting me ineffectually to pushing a large glass of neat vodka into my hand. It must have been left over from when he and Izzy were “pre-loading” before they went out tonight.
Once I’ve drunk the lot, wincing at the taste, Joel leans over me, slides an arm under my shoulders and pulls me to my feet.
“Come on, Mum,” he says, “I’m taking you upstairs to bed. Everything will seem a lot better if you get some sleep.”
“Will it?” I say, as we make our way up the stairs. “Are you sure?”
Joel doesn’t answer until we reach the landing, and then he just says,
“It has to, doesn’t it? It can’t get worse.”
Well, it’s been two weeks now since Dan left home and my mission to prove to Joel and Pearl that I’m coping is going well. Being single’s a doddle so far, even if I do seem to have signed up for rather more weekly evening classes than there are evenings in a week. In fact, I’m so busy that Joel told me to “take a chill pill and calm down a bit” last night, when I arrived home after mistakenly going to the yoga studio when I should have been at French conversation class. He doesn’t seem to realise that all I’m doing is “getting myself back out there”, like the self-help gurus advise you to – and if you keep busy, there’s no time to think, which is an added bonus.
The Fembot doesn’t know about the lack of thinking, but she does approve of the busy part.
“You’ve been coming into work unusually early, Hannah,” she says, first thing this morning. “I’m impressed. That’s what I expect from a dedicated member of the team. Are you after a promotion or something?”
“God, no,” I say, “I just can’t sleep, so I thought I might as well make myself useful rather than sitting around on my arse at home.”
The Fembot stopped listening at “God, no”, judging by her unamused expression.
Mine is more panic-stricken than unamused, as I probably should be chasing promotion, in case Joel doesn’t pay his new, realistic rent at the end of the month (the one he described as “extortionate” last time I mentioned it), but it’s too late now. The Fembot’s gone off to upload photos of her latest batch of cupcakes to the company blog. They’re owls, with faces made of chocolate icing and chocolate buttons, though I’m not sure about the Fembot’s claims that they denote the wisdom of our users. Most of their opinions aren’t worth having, as I discover when I scroll through the site while eating my lunch.
An hour later, I’ve finished my sandwiches and written a load of answers to questions asked by women worried about ageing, such as, “I don’t think my husband fancies me any more – what do I do?” It’s a lot easier helping other people who are crushed by insecurity than dealing with the same thing in yourself. Even the Fembot’s impressed by the shameless lies I’ve told, of which the most outrageous is “love conquers all”.
The trouble is, I don’t believe a word I’ve said and now I feel a bit depressed, so when Esther asks if I’d like to go salsa dancing after work, I say, “yes”, even though I’ve never been before. It’s got to be better than what I did have planned for this evening: attending a talk on the lifecycle of the electric eel. Much better, when you consider that in a couple of hours, I’ll be salsa-ing my butt off with loads of good-looking, snake-hipped men.
* * *
Esther’s got two left feet, which I know for a fact because she’s the only person who’s asked me to dance all night. The ratio of men to women at this salsa class is 1:20, whether you’re counting ones with snake-like hips or not, and I’m still ranting about why they all refused to dance with any women they weren’t married to by the time Esther drives me home.
When she drops me off, I walk inside and promptly start to rant again, though this time about men in general, not just the salsa-dancing kind. Joel’s broken the tumble dryer and left a mountain of wet washing inside the drum. He’s also left me a note telling me that he’s “just popped out”, together with a totally-useless explanation of what happened to the dryer: “It started rattling like mad, so I turned it off.”
My first thought is that Dan will sort it out, until I recall that he’s not here. At that point I get even crosser, and then I start to cry. Once I’ve stopped, I watch a video about repairing tumble dryers on YouTube and then I have a go myself. It’s not easy when your only equipment’s a knife and fork.
Joel’s obviously been raiding the toolkit I bought from Ikea after Dan moved out because, when I open it, the only things left inside are a full set of screwdriver heads without a single screwdriver to attach them to. Meanwhile, the tumble dryer’s not rattling any more – now it won’t turn on at all.
* * *
“Haven’t you solved the problem yet?” asks Joel, when he walks in at 10pm to find me on my knees, my head virtually inside the drum.
“No,” I say. “And if that’s supposed to be so easy, then maybe you should try.”
“Already did,” says Joel. “Why haven’t you heated this up?”
He points at a pan containing some dried-out pasta sauce he must have made before he went out. It’s the only thing he knows how to make, so I probably shouldn’t keep leaving the cooking to him. The trouble is that Dan always used to do it and I don’t get hungry since he moved out.
I shrug, in answer to Joel’s question about the sauce.
“For God’s sake, Mum,” he says. “You have to eat. I’ll cook you some spaghetti now, and heat this up to go with it.”
While the pasta cooks, Joel explains that he spent several hours trying to repair the dryer but then had to abandon the attempt because he was late to meet someone.
“Who?” I ask, though I’m not really listening any more.
I’m burrowing in the cupboard under the stairs, where the meter is. Maybe the dryer just blew a fuse.
“I met Dad,” says Joel. “Whoa, be careful, Mum! Are you okay?”
No, I’m not. I’ve just banged my head on the shelf that holds the iron and a pile of miscellaneous household goods – all previously broken by Joel – and I banged it so hard that now I’m seeing several Joels, all at once. It’s like looking at a young Henry VIII through a kaleidoscope. After he first grew his hipster beard.
“Did you say you’ve just been for a drink with your dad?”
