Page 24 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
‘Carrie Cantello has a Harry-Potter-themed living room.’
‘And this is someone you want to be friends with?’
I smile and grab a mug to make another cup of tea. Meg takes a lot of sugar in hers, making us worry about the state of her teeth, but they all still seem to be there. I take out a teaspoon from my drawer, which is also labelled. This time she says nothing but I think I can physically hear her bite her tongue.
‘When you moved up North, how did you do it? Make friends and that?’ I ask her, trying to distract her from mocking my organisational skills.
‘Are you telling me you have no friends?’ she asks jokingly.
‘I just… I feel too old to be doing the rounds again, trying to prove myself and work out who I like. I’m not at university any more. New city, new people.’
‘It’s part of the adventure. Just don’t force it. I have a handful of people up North that I really like. Everyone else is just an acquaintance. Think of it as an office: you don’t have to like everyone but you display the civility needed to survive the everyday.’
Meg is such an oracle. Maybe it’s because she was the first daughter, the one who tread the path down life and motherhood before us.
‘Tell me more about this Carrie Cantello. I bet she drives a Renault Scenic and wears midwash jeans.’
‘How did you…?’ I scan through social media and show Meg a picture of her. She scowls. ‘Oooh, and she also has just started this debate on the class WhatsApp group. She’s being pretty harsh on our new teacher.’
Meg navigates through my phone to read the conversation. Her face winces as she scrolls down.
‘There’s always one. Who is Liz?’
‘Her bezzie mate.’
She reads aloud from my phone. ‘It’s important that the children read with the teacher so they can work out if the children need help with specific phonic issues. Bullshit. What a way to show up a teacher just doing her job. This stuff makes my piss boil.’
This is classic Meg, who remains, unbeknownst to her, our kingpin, our pioneer. None of us would have had the courage to leave London were it not for her. I remember when she left her comfort zone and started a life elsewhere. Would I have travelled the world if she’d not persuaded me it were possible? Probably not. I’ve always loved that bravery in her, that steel she seems to find from inside; it’s what all older sisters should be made of. As I watch her, though, I see her fingers deftly move over the screen and a mischievous smile spread across her face. I launch myself at her.
‘What the hell, Meggers?’
She leans back on her chair and nearly falls off as I retrieve my phone and see what she’s written.
Just checking, how many times have your children lost their cardigans/eaten chicken nuggets/wiped their own arses/played Minecraft until they’ve gone cross-eyed in the last week?
‘What have you done?’ I gasp.
‘You fight bitchy with sarcasm. Have we, as sisters, taught you nothing?’
My face blanches as I think what Carrie will do now. Christ. Will she throw me out of the PTA? I mean, that would be no bad thing but she’ll create drama at the gate. Worse, she’ll spread gossip and I’ll have to put up defences to protect me, the girls. We both look down at the screen as laughing and clapping emojis appear from Helen and another telephone number that I don’t recognise. Yikes. Carrie’s going to rear-end me at pick-up, isn’t she?
Are you being serious, Grace? I expect better. Lily may have serious learning difficulties and I don’t take kindly to you mocking my attempts to ensure she has the best possible start in life.
Meg snarls to see it. She grabs the phone back, her fingers moving like lightning.
They’re five. Take your issues up directly with the school. You don’t put a comment like that on a group chat and create a feeling of mistrust in a teacher. We all expect better.
That’s also the problem with Meg. She has a tendency to poke the beehive. She’s not as impulsive as Lucy but she likes questioning authority and calling people out on things. Ask my mother about this. She puts the phone down on the kitchen table and folds her arms.
A message suddenly pops up on my phone.
Feeling brave to take on the Cantello?
Meg leans over to see it and notices the avatar.
‘Ooooh, that’s the school-gate dad? Give!’
Again, we engage in a war of reflexes to see who’ll get to my phone first. This level of snatching is something I’ve not seen since the nineties when we’d do the same over heated tongs and magazines. However, being stronger, and sneakier, she succeeds, her eyes bulging at a particular picture that Sam sent to me a couple of days ago: a photo of him lying in bed with his appendage in his hand.
