tomorrow morning at the latest, allowing extra time so I’m not the one rushing late into the welcome reception, whatever that is. Now I just want Morgan to come home so I can break the news.
Feeling more kindly disposed now, I drive to our nearest, rather uninspiring supermarket and stock up on enough provisions to nourish my son for an entire month, including Rolos and Fondant Fancies and fruit, which I’m bound to find withered on my return, plus industrial quantities of minced beef. Back home, I make an enormous pot of chilli (Morgan complained that my last batch was ‘too oniony’, perhaps food critic could be another career option?) and another of bolognaise, all to keep him going throughout the week. It feels as if I am preparing for impending war. I know it’s ridiculous but it’s making me feel marginally better about abandoning my child. In the same vein I also shape four burgers, wrapping them individually in greaseproof paper, writing ‘1 burger! Enjoy! xx’ in felt tip across the top. I realise my catering has involved an awful lot of minced beef but at least he’s unlikely to become anaemic.
By teatime – still no reappearance of Morgan – the chilli and bolognaise have cooled sufficiently to be ladled into individual cartons and labelled MON/TUE/WED/THUR/FRI: saves him having to make any tricky decisions over what to eat. We also have chicken nuggets which he’s perfectly capable of putting in the oven … and then forgetting they’re there. Plus there’s the Chinese and chippy if he gets really desperate.
Vince would say I’ve lost my mind. He’d point out that my extensive preparations are a small step from cutting up his fish fingers and tucking in his bib. However, as I plan to make the very most of every moment at Wilton Grange, I don’t want to worry for one second that Morgan is suffering from malnutrition. And now – perhaps I really am losing it – I make a batch of fairy cakes, scooping out their centres when they’re done and making them into little wings as if Morgan were seven years old. Sorry for buggering off like this, my butterfly cakes say. Sorry for not getting you the unicycle tyre and for being a mad middle-aged woman who’s probably having some kind of hormonal collapse.
I while away the evening rechecking my suitcase and willing Morgan to show up so I can tell him. I ping him a message: when u coming home? No reply, unsurprisingly. We’ve passed the stage where he felt obliged to keep me informed of his movements.
I text Vince: I’ve won a prize! A week at a cook school in Buckinghamshire. Leaving tomorrow. M will be home alone all week.
Wow amazing! Very proud of you, comes his swift reply.
Thanks, I type, but M will be ALL ALONE. Am I wrong to be terrified?
His reply takes longer this time: He’s a fully grown man, remember?
Easy for him to say, being spared the daily discussions – ‘naggings’, Morgan calls them – about what our son might do next with his life. Rifling through my purse, I dump a bundle of notes on the table, weighted down with the pepper grinder, for emergencies. Guilt money. The one thing I don’t do is gather up all the stray pants. In fact, and perhaps I really am losing it now, I drag out the plastic box of Morgan’s old toys from the cupboard under the stairs. It’s full of ratty old teddies, plus the Action Man I got for a quid on eBay, which he made into a spy – demanding that I made him a tiny Fedora hat, like the dented one here that was pretty much welded to his head during his entire spy phase, and which I found him sleeping in once. There are dog-eared books on codes and cyphers that I’ve been keeping for … what exactly? And here it is, precisely what I’m looking for: the tub of jumbo chalks he’d used to draw mysterious symbols on the pavement outside our house (only other spies would understand their significance).
Selecting the white one, I creep around the living room and carefully draw an outline around each pair of dropped pants. It’s just a joke, I tell myself. He’ll notice when I’m gone and he and Jenna will have a good laugh about his nutty mum. Only … I’m not quite sure it is funny. In fact, I fear that I am overly obsessing about pants, and that simply picking them up and depositing them into the wash might be an altogether more sensible solution.
I put the chalks back into the box and shove it back under the stairs, and get on with the task of clearing up the kitchen. That’s when I spot it, dumped in the bin: the Christmas present from me, carefully chosen as I thought he liked checked shirts, seeing as he wears one slung over a T-shirt nearly every day of his life. It’s red, blue and white, in soft brushed cotton, and is lying there with a couple of wet teabags sitting on it. He has thrown it away. I blink down at it, wondering why it didn’t occur to him that this might be hurtful to me. I mean, okay, get rid of it – discreetly. Stuff it in a litter bin in the park, hand it to a homeless person or drop it off at the charity shop. But don’t dump it on top of the tuna cans and takeaway cartons and – I notice now – the application form for part-time work at the leisure centre that I picked up for him.
The front door flies open, and I hear Morgan and Jenna tottering in. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he calls out tipsily from the hallway. ‘You there?’
‘Yes, I’m here,’ I mutter, fury bubbling inside me.
‘Been at the pub. Just gonna go up to bed, okay?’
I glance at my cakes sitting all smugly under their glass dome. ‘Fine,’ I growl, scrunching up the empty flour packet and dropping it on top of the shirt.
‘Don’t know what’s up with her,’ Morgan remarks as, giggling, he and Jenna make their way up to his room.
I don’t follow them up, and nor do I inform him of my plans when my alarm goes off with a ping at 5.50 a.m., because a hungover teenager – any teenager in fact – is incapable of conversation at this kind of hour. Anyway, what does he care whether I’m here or not? Instead, I shower quickly and slip into a favourite floral print dress, plus a pair of ballet flats. Then, as quietly as possible, I creep downstairs with my suitcase.
Morgan’s wish list is still lying on the kitchen table. The damn cheek of it, and on my birthday as well. On its blank side I write:
I should feel euphoric as I drive south. After all, I deserve this. I should be zipping along, music blaring and a huge smile on my face, like a woman in a movie about to embark on a life-changing adventure. The fact that I’m not is due to one horrible dark thought, currently flooding my senses: I didn’t leave defrosting/reheating instructions. Yes, I’m still angry – but more at myself now for being unable to switch off my maternal concern. Surely Morgan is savvy enough to cope with a Tupperware carton of frozen bolognaise? He’s a bright boy, when he chooses to engage his brain. He’s hardly going to hack away at it with an ice pick. Even so, I keep picturing his crestfallen face as he reads my note, and another alarming thought engulfs me: what the hell am I playing at?
I pull off at a service station – one we haven’t stayed at, I must alert Stevie to this – and buy an Americano and three muffins, one for now and two for later, in case the hotel restaurant’s portions really are as tiddly as they looked on the website. From a small, greasy
