soon as I arrive, she ushers me in. Mimi is dressed down today. Her hair, although still purple, is not gelled into a Mohican. She has forgotten to put the safety pin in her nose. I sit opposite her wondering why she’s taken it out. Does it get in the way when she makes love, when she kisses? She smiles at me, and the skin around her eyes crinkles.
‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she says.
I open my mouth and close it again.
‘Don’t look so surprised, I do place people sometimes,’ she says.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
She leans back in her chair and folds her arms as her smile widens. ‘An assignment for the local ice-cream company.’
It’s not a national campaign, but it’s a start. Just the start I needed. A reputable local company. My heart soars.
‘What do they have in mind?’ I ask.
‘A photoshoot. Two days at most. You walking in the local woods wearing a floaty dress licking one of their ice creams, soft-focus lens. “Dreamy and creamy”, will be the tag line, “Making you feel as if it’s summer all year.” They’re intending to run an ad on the back page of the Richmond Magazine, and make a film advert for local cinema.’
‘Dreamy and creamy sounds fine to me. I accept.’
‘Don’t you want to know about the money?’
‘Of course I do, just didn’t like to ask.’
‘Four hundred pounds.’
Four hundred pounds. Not a lot but a job. Something beginning to happen at last. This is a big step up. Maybe my career will take off at last. Maybe one day, in the scale of things, my problem with Jonah will seem irrelevant.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mouse asks, as I sit at his breakfast bar sipping a cappuccino. ‘Your lips are curling downwards. Are you in a mood again?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise, just tell me what’s wrong. That’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? You worry. Then you tell me about it because I am your friend.’
‘It’s just that life’s so unfair,’ I say with a shrug of my shoulders.
He laughs, his strange laugh, like a braying donkey. ‘There’s nothing new about that.’
‘Is that supposed to make it any easier?’ I ask.
He puts his arm cautiously around my shoulders, as if he wants to be friendly but is not quite sure how to be.
‘Please try and explain.’
‘It’s the children. Faye’s children. How come she’s been able to have them when she can’t even look after them properly?’
He looks at me intently and his eyes widen. ‘Is that what’s happening?’ he asks.
Yes, I think, but don’t reply. It is too painful to speak about. A tear begins to trickle down my face. Yes. These children, who’ve had such a good start in life, will not get the backing they need because Faye has become distracted.
Look at what happened to me. Did my life start to go wrong, the minute I was born to a mother who couldn’t look after me? Or was it always a disaster from the start?
No. My mother loved me. She looked after me as well as she could, for as long as she could. As a young child I remember her sweet scent as she held me. Sitting, snuggled up on the sofa together, watching Disney films.
‘Erica,’ she would say, ‘always remember, there is nothing as strong as a mother’s love.’ Then she would pause, and hold me against her more tightly. ‘I want to wrap you in cotton wool and protect you for ever.’
If only she had.
Once upon a time, my mother cooked a mean spaghetti bolognaise and knew how to dip strawberries in melted chocolate. I never had a dad. Mum just had lots of boyfriends who came and went. Mike, Steve, Francis, Robert, Sam, Jake and Rod. Rod was my favourite – funnier and kinder than the rest. He built a Morgan car with a kit, and sometimes took me for a ‘spin’ around the block in it.
I was happy back then. But happiness is a funny word. What does it mean? Is it an idea? A feeling? Is it real? Was it the warm contentment that began in my stomach and radiated through my body, because I had my mother and I knew she loved me? She was the pivot of my life. Maybe she still is, even though she is only a memory now.
The first day my life began to fragment I was walking home from school with my friend Geoffrey. He lived near me and every afternoon when school had finished we ambled along the road together on our way home until we parted at the third corner. Memory plays tricks. I remember sunny afternoons; frost, wind, and rain, all dissolve into oblivion.
On one such sun-dappled afternoon, we heard shouting behind us and turned around to see two boys from the year above marching quickly towards us, shouting, ‘Slag. Slag. Slag.’
Tommy Hall and John Allan. Tommy was large for his age with a broad slack face, always redder than it should have been. Always looking as if he had been running and was out of breath. John was wiry. Petite and mean. Boys to keep away from if you could.
‘Slag. Slag. Slag.’
Getting nearer. Grinning and pointing. Pointing at me. We turned away from them and continued to walk. But they stepped in front of us and blocked our path. Eyeball to eyeball. Eyes scalding ours.
‘Erica Sullivan, your mother’s a slag,’ Tommy said.
‘Like mother, like daughter – slag, slag, slag,’ John continued.
Geoffrey puffed out his pigeon chest and stepped towards them, chin up defiantly. ‘Shut up, you two. I hear you’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Leave Erica alone. She’s worth ten of you.’
Tommy clenched his fist, pulled his arm back and rammed his hand, like a hammer, into Geoffrey’s stomach. Geoffrey bent double. They ran away laughing, and shouting, ‘Slag, slag, pussy, pussy.’
I put my arm around Geoffrey’s bent shoulders. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Just about, I think.’ There was a pause. ‘What a pair of knobs.’
‘Thank you so much for defending me.’
We began to walk slowly along the road, but Geoffrey was struggling, holding on to my arm. ‘Why do you think they said that?’ I asked.
He turned his head and pressed his eyes into mine.
‘Don’t take any notice of them – there’s always a few knobs about in life.’
We
