Page 27 of The 3am Shattered Mums' Club

4.20 a.m. – Aisha:There’s nothing nice about sperm is there?

4.20 a.m. – Sophy:You’re not wrong there.

6.32 a.m. – Mel:Morning, campers. Why on the night when Sky sleeps for five hours do I miss out on a conversation about sperm?

14

AISHA

Martina laid a large roasted chicken in the middle of the table next to a giant bowl of rice and peas and a platter of festival and fried plantain. Aisha’s cousins Ruben and Marcel oohed loudly.

‘You didn’t need to go to all this trouble for us, Mum.’ Aisha looked at Charley, checking she was okay with this amount of food on the table. She wasn’t a big eater and preferred a very small plate in the evening.

‘It’s ma birthday, and I cook if I want to!’ Martina bellowed her rendition of the classic song by Lesley Gore. Aisha smiled and looked back again at Charley who was smiling as she watched Ruben and Marcel belly laughing, falling about the table, slapping each other on the back and holding their stomachs.

When the boys had settled down, and Martina gave the sign for everyone to help themselves, Charley picked up a serving spoon and put a small amount of rice and peas on her plate. Martina set about slicing through the roasted chickens, which had been marinating all afternoon in a plastic bag filled with jerk spices.

‘It smells amazing, Martina,’ Charley said.

‘Thank you.’ Martina nodded and then looked at Charley. Aisha put her hand on Charley’s knee and Charley took it and squeezed it. Martina left the sliced chicken on the platter for everyone to help themselves. The cousins took a leg each, looking at Martina as if she would tell them off for snatching at the meat – a habit from childhood when there were five hungry mouths to feed and it had been a race to see who could finish first and get seconds.

Everyone ate quietly until one of the twins let out a pitiful cry from the pram, where they were parked up next to Martina’s giant cooker. Martina stood up, scraping her chair back and wiping her mouth with her napkin.

‘It’s okay, Mum. I’ll see to him.’ Aisha went to stand. Martina waved her back down.

‘You sit and eat. I don’t s’pose neither of you get the chance to eat together at the moment.’ Martina was up and with her back to both Charley and Aisha when she spoke, but Aisha felt her heart begin to swell as she felt some meaning in the words coming from her mother. What felt like a sense of understanding for both she and Charley. A sense that maybe her mother was finally taking her relationship with Charley seriously. Aisha had always felt that Martina saw what she had with Charley as more of a ‘good friendship’ than a traditional couple, as she saw it, but now, the way she had spoken of them as a team, as one entity rather than two separate people just living together, made Aisha feel as if maybe, just maybe, her mum was beginning to finally get it.

Aisha hovered between standing and sitting. ‘But, Mum, it’s your birthday.’

‘And I got the best presents right here, these two. I don’t need nothing more.’

‘It should have been me cooking for you, Mum, not the other way around,’ Aisha said solemnly as she thought about all those hours she was at home in her own kitchen; so much time, yet so unable to use it in the way she wanted to.

Carmel, Aisha’s elder sister, reached over and touched Aisha’s hand. ‘It’s fine, sis. You’re busy. Your time will come again.’

Aisha relaxed back into her chair and picked at some plantain. Martina lifted Jude out of his pram and laid him on her chest. She sat back down and carried eating with one fork. Aisha noticed Charley look on with interest at the easy way Martina was with the baby. After a few minutes, Jude let out a loud belch, and the table erupted with laughter, mainly from the cousins who at twenty-four and twenty-six were still juvenile in their ways and minds and found goofy things hilarious.

Aisha watched Charley eat slowly, taking a mouthful of rice, then cutting her chicken up. She would then take a tiny portion of the plantain and carefully cut into it. On the other side of her the cousins were wolfing down their food. Charley was so different to her family that she was proud of her mum for accepting Charley in any way at all for all these years. Martina’s life had been in Jamaica and now in Brixton amongst a close-knit Jamaican community – there had never been any Charley-shaped holes in her mother’s life, but for the first time today, Aisha wondered if Martina had made one.

* * *

After the lunch, Aisha brought out some ginger cake she had managed to make over the weekend whilst Charley had the twins. It was one of those recipes you throw everything in the blender so it hadn’t taken too long, and she had iced it that morning and it had set hard; only a small piece had chipped off on the drive over here this afternoon. Aisha put the cake on a platter in the kitchen whilst the cousins entertained Charley and Martina with their antics about town and then she put four candles in a neat straight line. This was the sort of cake Aisha wanted to serve in her Jamaican/British café and was going to bake it often to perfect the recipe even more.

Martina whooped and slapped her thigh when she saw Aisha bringing in the dessert – she was still holding on to Jude, and Charley was now holding on to Otis. The babies’ eyes were trying to focus on the flickering candles. Everyone sang loudly, and Martina blew the candles out in one blow.

‘Make a wish, Mum,’ Aisha said as she stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder.

Martina patted her hand. ‘I made my wish.’

After cake, the boys were fed a bottle whilst Charley and Aisha did the dishes. Martina’s kitchen was still the same as it was when Aisha lived here over ten years ago. Faded wood cupboards and units, orange and blue walls, turquoise curtains and brightly coloured bowls and platters that had come back with her from Jamaica before the children were born. The familiar scent of incense sticks burned day and night.

‘Why don’t you go out for a walk whilst I give them boys some fresh air in the garden? Reckon they might fall asleep for an hour. I used to keep all of you outside for your naps when you were little,’ Martina said to Aisha. Then she turned her head ever so slightly towards Charley and said, ‘Go on.’

Charley smiled and took Aisha’s hand, and Martina looked at their tight grip before turning away.

* * *

They walked as far as Kennington Park. Charley’s hand slipped into Aisha’s again once they were outside.

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