Chapter Twenty-Two: A Bun in the Oven
Chapter Twenty-Three: A Touch of Salt
Chapter Twenty-Four: Breakfast at Natalie’s
Chapter Twenty-Five: Dinner for One
Chapter Twenty-Six: Emergency Booze
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Fish Bone
Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Hail of Falafel
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Tea and Sympathy
Chapter Thirty-One: Sparkling Sundaes
Chapter Thirty-Two: Contraband Chocolate
Chapter Thirty-Three: Sunshine Crêpes
Chapter Thirty-Four: Mr Whippy Ice Cream
Chapter Thirty-Five: Classic French Cuisine
Pants. There’s a lot of them about. Tomato-red boxers are strewn on the sofa, while another specimen – turquoise, emblazoned with cartoon palm trees and pineapples – has come to rest under the coffee table like a snoozing pet. A third pair – in a murky mustard hue – are parked in front of the TV as if waiting for their favourite programme to come on. I’m conducting an experiment to see how long they’ll all remain there if I refuse to round them all up. Perhaps, if left for long enough, they’ll fossilise and I can donate them to a museum.
Yet more are to be found upstairs, in the bathroom, slung close to – but crucially not in – the linen basket. The act of lifting the wicker lid, and dropping them into it, is clearly too arduous a task for a perfectly able-bodied boy of eighteen years old. It’s infuriating. I’ve mentioned it so many times, Morgan must have stopped hearing me – like the way you eventually become unaware of a ticking clock. Either that, or he simply doesn’t give a stuff. Not for the first time I figure that boys of this age and their mothers are just not designed to live together. But I won’t pick them up, not this time. We can live in filth – crucially, he’ll also run out of clean pants and have to start re-wearing dirty ones, turned inside out – and see if I care …
Beside the scattering of worn boxers lies a tiny scrap of pale lemon lace, which on closer inspection appears to be a thong. This would be Jenna’s. Morgan’s girlfriend is also prone to leaving a scattering of personal effects in her wake.
I stare down at the thong, trying to figure how such a minuscule item can possibly function as pants. I have never worn one myself, being unable to conquer the fear that they could work their way actually into your bottom, and require an embarrassing medical procedure to dig them back out. I know they’re meant to be sexy – my own sturdy knickers come in multipacks, like loo roll – but all I can think is: chafing risk. And what am I supposed to do with it?
Although Morgan has been seeing Jenna for nearly a year, I’m still unsure of the etiquette where her underwear is concerned. Should I pick it up delicately – with eyebrow tweezers, perhaps – and seal it in a clear plastic bag, like evidence from a crime scene? Tentatively, as if it might snap at my ankle, I nudge it into the corner of the bathroom with the toe of my shoe.
Stifled giggles filter through Morgan’s closed bedroom door as I march past. He locks it these days, i.e. with a proper bolt, which he nailed on without prior permission, irreparably damaging the original Victorian door in the process. We’ve just had a Chinese takeaway and now they’re … well, obviously they’re not playing Scrabble. Having known each other since primary school, they’ve been inseparable since a barbecue at Jenna’s last summer. Favouring our house to hang out in, they are forever draped all over each other in a languid heap, as if suffering from one of those olden-day illnesses: consumption or scarlet fever. They certainly look pretty flushed whenever I happen to walk into the room. ‘Yes, Mum?’ my son is prone to saying, as if I have no right to move from room to room in my own home.
‘Morgan, I’m off now, okay?’ I call out from the landing.
Silence.
‘I’m meeting Stevie tonight. Remember
