“This is it,” said Vix.
What did she mean, this is it!
“It’s what people do,” said Vix. “When they’re married… they try to make each other happy, but sometimes it doesn’t always work and they just make each other miserable, and – and they only get happy when they’re not living together any more. Maybe,” she added.
Mum ought to have been happier, now she’d got rid of Dad and could save up for new cookers without any fear of him gambling her money away on horses that didn’t reach the finishing point. You’d have thought she’d be happier. Instead, she just got crabbier and crabbier, even worse than she’d been before, when Dad was turning her life into turmoil. At least, that’s how it seemed to me and the Afterthought. She wouldn’t let us do things, she wouldn’t let us have things, she wouldn’t let us buy the clothes we wanted, we couldn’t even read what we wanted.
“This magazine is disgusting!” cried Mum, slapping down my latest copy of Babe. Babe just happened, at the time, to be my favourite teen mag. I’ve grown out of it now; but at the age of thirteen there were things I desperately needed to know, and Babe was where I found out about them.
I mean, you have to find out somewhere. You can’t go through life being ignorant.
I tried explaining this to Mum but she had frothed herself up into one of her states and wouldn’t listen.
“DO BLOKES PREFER BOOBS OR BUMS? At your age?”
“Mum,” I said, “I need to know!”
“You’ll find out quite soon enough,” said Mum, “without resorting to this kind of trash… what, for heaven’s sake, is Daddy drool supposed to mean?”
Again, I tried explaining: “It means when people fancy your dad.” But again she wouldn’t listen.
“This is just so cheap! It is just so tacky! Where did you get it from?”
I said, “The newsagent.”
“Mr Patel? I’m surprised he’d sell you such a thing!”
“Mum, everybody reads it,” I said.
“Does Victoria read it?” said Mum.
I said, “No, she reads one that’s even worse.” I giggled. “Then we swop!”
It was a mistake to giggle. Mum immediately thought that I was cheeking her. Plus she’d actually gone and opened the mag and her eye had fallen on a rather cheeky article (ha ha, that is a joke!) about male bums. Shock, horror! Did she think I’d never seen one before???
“For crying out loud!” Mum glared at the offending article, bug-eyed. Maybe she’d never seen one before… “What is this? Teenage porn?”
I said, “Mum, it’s just facts of life.”
“So is sewage,” said Mum.
Was she saying male bums were sewage? No! She’d flicked over the page and seen something else. Something I’d been really looking forward to reading!
“This is unbelievable,” said Mum. “Selling this stuff to thirteen-year-old girls! I’m going to have a word with Mr Patel.”
“Mum! No!” I shrieked.
I wasn’t worried about Mr Patel, I was worried about Babe. How was I going to learn things if he wasn’t allowed to sell it to me any more?
“Stephanie, I don’t want this kind of filth in the house,” said Mum. “Do you understand?”
I sulkily said yes, while thinking to myself that I bet Dad wouldn’t have minded. Mum had just got so crabby.
“She’s an old cow,” said the Afterthought.
Mum and the Afterthought were finding it really difficult to get along; they rowed even worse than Mum and me. The Afterthought wanted a kitten. A girl in her class had a cat that was going to have some, and the Afterthought had conceived this passion.
(Conceived! Ha! What would Mum say to that!) Every day the Afterthought nagged and begged and howled and pleaded; and every day Mum very firmly said no. She said she was sorry, but she had quite enough to cope with without having an animal to look after.
“Kittens grow into cats, and cats need feeding, cats need injections, cats cost money …I’m sorry, Sam! It’s just not the right moment. Maybe in a few months.”
“That’ll be too late!” wailed the Afterthought. “All the kittens will be gone!”
“There’ll be more,” said Mum.
“Not from Sukey. They won’t be Sukey’s kittens. I want one of Sukey’s! She’s so sweet. Dad would let me!” roared the Afterthought.
“Very possibly, but your dad doesn’t happen to be here,” said Mum.
“No! Because you got rid of him! I want my kitten!” bellowed the Afterthought.
It ended up, as it always did, with Mum losing patience and the Afterthought going off into one of her tantrums. I told Vix that life at home had become impossible. Vix said, “Yes, for me, too! Specially after your mum talked to my mum about teenage filth and now my mum says I’m not to buy that sort of thing any more!” I stared at her, appalled.
“What right have they got,” I said, “to talk about us behind our backs?”
The weeks dragged on, with things just going from bad to worse. Mum got crabbier and crabbier. She got specially crabby on days when we had telephone calls from Dad. He rang us, like, about once every two weeks, and the Afterthought always snatched up the phone and grizzled into it.
“Dad, it’s horrible here! When are you going to get settled?”
I tried to be a little bit more discreet, because I could see that probably it was a bit irritating for Mum. I mean, she was doing her best. Dad was now living down south, in Brighton. He said that he missed us and would love to have us with him, but he wasn’t quite settled enough; not just yet.
“Soon, I hope!”
Triumphantly, the Afterthought relayed this to Mum. “Soon Dad’s going to be settled, and then we can go and live with him!”
I
