Page 14 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
‘Maya’s a biter,’ I say.
‘Are you feeding her enough?’ Emma asks. ‘Could be teething?’
‘But she has all her teeth?’ I say.
‘They grow for years,’ Meg informs me. ‘Then they fall out. Then you have to put braces on them and they hate you for ruining their lives. Tess grew too many teeth. She looked like a shark.’
‘She must have my teeth then. I got my braces stuck on someone’s foreskin once,’ Lucy tells us.
‘I remember that! You had to use tweezers to set him free,’ Beth says, doubling over in hysterics.
Emma and Meg look on in horror while I feel left out at not knowing that story and wondering why Beth was there.
‘Probably someone in her class being a wanker and she’s dealing with it,’ Meg adds. ‘She’s a very capable little girl.’
‘If I was four and a boy was being crap then I’d bite him,’ Lucy adds. This doesn’t surprise any of us.
‘Eve has a streak. She used to give the boys a good slapping if they were out of line,’ Meg tells us, referring to her second eldest.
I see the wrinkle in Emma’s nose. She doesn’t raise feral children but her two survived Emma’s divorce so are the hardiest little girls I know.
‘We are Callaghan women,’ says Emma. ‘It’s the fire in us. Teach her to ignore the idiots. Don’t overthink it.’
WeareCallaghan women. I gave the girls my surname when I adopted them and changed mine back to match. I always feel guilty over that, removing a memory of Tom from me. But I couldn’t face the explanations and the fact it would have been something to further distance myself from my little girls. And all these traits in them, I always wonder to what extent it’s their genes at work, or perhaps it’s being entrenched in a family full of women, full of fire and energy and in-jokes. How much have they taken in through my nurturing, through family gatherings, or when Lucy has taken them aside to teach them all her special turns of phrase?
‘What’s that stack of things behind you, G?’ asks Beth. I hold up one of the invitation cards emblazoned with Tom’s face. The mood drops a bit when they see his image there, almost like a ghost.
‘Tom’s mum is holding a memorial. His old school have named a wing after him so there will be a ceremony thing, do save the date. You’re all invited.’
‘Oh, G…’ Lucy says. ‘You should have said something before this. Are you all right?’
Their stares penetrate through the screen like a collective hug.
‘It’s a nice thing. I just told Joyce I’d help out, sort a guest list and organise people. It’s what I do.’
‘But lean on us, yeah?’ Meg adds. ‘We can help if it’s too much.’
It’s always too much. Bottom line, I became a widow in my twenties. That only happens in movies and the majority of the time the man in question has been at war. This was never supposed to happen. It shouldn’t have happened. He should be here. But he’s not. Instead we’ll celebrate his life over a cocktail sausage, which he would have loved. He was fond of those, me less so.
‘I mean, will there be cake?’ Beth asks, echoing her niece’s question from earlier.
‘I’ll make it happen.’
Beth smiles back, knowing instinctively when I need the focus to shift away from me. Come, have cake. Let’s mourn that wonderful man all over again. Beth is the one who knows that sometimes I don’t want a constant reminder of that pain or for it to be unearthed yet again.
‘So, Lucy…’ Beth pipes up. ‘You’re next… who’s the bloke and why was his crotch seventy per cent pube?’
4
Hey G. I miss you. I’ve got a gig teaching English in Kuala Lumpur with the British Council. It sounds more highbrow than it is but it’s mainly university kids. It makes me think of university when our lives were a bit simpler. Were they simpler? I remember we ate a lot of toasties – like, a criminal amount of melted cheese. I crave toasties now. I also teach kids. Mountains of kids who don’t want to learn English. We bond because I know random things about computer games and dinosaurs. This is when my Jurassic Park knowledge that you said was juvenile and pointless is useful. When in doubt, little kids go batshit crazy for dinosaur-related facts. And these tiny jellies that come in pots. They down those like shots. We used to do those too, eh? I’m thinking of New York soon, soak in some of that big city vibe. I want to see Doug, relive the Brizzle days.
T x
Is there an illegal number of times you can watch a film? For my two it’sMoanaand it’s now at the point where I could enterMastermindon the subject.How long has Moana been standing on the edge of the water? For as long as she can remember; it calls to her, John.I hear the song lyrics drift through the wall and hope the last of the film will babysit the children while I try and finish up with this email to a client. There are numerous kids today as I promised the girls play dates, so in between day-job duties I’ve been trying to ensure one of our house guests, Isaac, has not eaten too many Hula Hoops. How many is too many? Well, it’s lucky I’m an accountant really.
There will never be anything interesting to say about my job other than I work from home and I make my own tea. It used to be bigger than this. It used to be a nine-to-five in London, in an office which overlooked the Thames where I wore trainers on the commute and courted my fair share of sharp tailoring. It was precise work and it suited my personality. I liked achieving, moving forward with a career and seeing it go somewhere, so I threw my all into it. It’s different now. It’s work at a small desk in the corner of my bedroom and I wear a lot of leggings. That said, these clients are taking the piss. I’m not sure you can claim the dog food on expenses. A message of an incoming call pops up on my computer. Can I take this now? Hell, why not?
‘Dougie Doug.’
