Gill Sims - Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****

‘You don’t drink coffee?’ said Simon. ‘Since when don’t you drink coffee?’

‘I haven’t drunk coffee in the house since I was pregnant with Jane,’ I said. ‘I occasionally, VERY occasionally have a latte when I’m out, but other than that, I barely touch the stuff, because it made me puke like something out The Exorcist when I was pregnant. How have you never noticed me not drinking coffee over the last FIFTEEN YEARS?’

‘But what about the coffee maker I gave you for your birthday a few years ago?’

‘Would that be the coffee maker when I said, “Well, this is a lovely present for you, because I DON’T DRINK COFFEE?”’

‘I thought you were joking. Is that why you let me keep it?’

‘Yes, Simon. Because there’s no point in me having a shiny fuck-off coffee machine cluttering up my kitchen when I DON’T DRINK COFFEE! Are you starting to perhaps grasp why we’re getting divorced?’

‘Because of coffee?’

‘No, the coffee is a METAPHOR!’

‘Are you sure you mean metaphor?’

‘No, no I’m not. Anyway, the fucking COFFEE is symbolic of the vast chasm and divide between us.’

‘Oh,’ said Simon. ‘Should I just have a cup of tea then?’

‘Oh FFS! I don’t CARE what you have. I’m going to see if your children are ready.’

Upstairs, I knocked tentatively on Peter’s door, then left a few seconds and knocked again. I’m too afraid to enter unbidden in case I witness something that means I can no longer look at my baby boy in QUITE the same way again. While I was standing there, I mentally added more Mansize tissues to the shopping list. Eventually I shouted, ‘Peter? Peter, Dad is here! Are you ready?’

Peter finally opened his door and looked at me blankly. ‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Dad is here.’

‘Dad? Here? Why?’

‘To pick you up. You’re going to his house this weekend.’

‘THIS weekend?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, like TODAY?’

‘YES.’

‘But I can’t go yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m at a really good part in my game and I haven’t got a proper computer at Dad’s.’

‘I don’t care, you’re going to his house. Now.’

‘Can I take my computer?’

‘NO! Just pack some pants or something.’

‘Pants? Why?’

‘SO YOU CAN CHANGE THEM. OMG. JUST PACK SOME CLOTHES.’

‘OK.’

I banged on Jane’s door.

‘Are you ready?’ I demanded.

‘I’m doing my make-up,’ Jane shouted. ‘My eyebrows aren’t done.’

Eventually, after an HOUR of toing and froing and shouting and bellowing (during which Simon sat placidly at MY kitchen table, eating MY chocolate HobNobs and playing no part whatsoever in getting HIS children ready to spend the weekend with HIM), I finally waved them all off.

Two days. Two whole days. All to myself. What to do? I could go for a run (ha ha, NO!). Read an Improving Book? Or, first things first, I could finally finish the unpacking and get the house straight.

It was very quiet. I unpacked another box, and found the DVD of Jane’s nursery graduation. So then I had to find a laptop with a DVD drive so I could watch it. And then I cried all over again like I had on the day she left nursery and I thought my baby was all grown up now she was ready to start school. She was so little . In those dark days when they were babies and toddlers, I never thought they’d grow up. I thought they’d be little forever, and God knows, some of those long, long days certainly felt like forever. But all of a sudden, they went and grew up when I wasn’t looking.

I checked my watch. 2.41 pm. Gosh. Was that all? Doesn’t time … drag when you’re not running round like a blue-arsed fly. I’ve spent years longing for this moment – to not be constantly chasing my tail, to have some time to myself, to have some SPACE to myself, to have a room of one’s own, or at least an hour with the house to myself with nobody fighting or complaining they were hungry or demanding I magically increase the broadband speed or provide my credit card to buy something on the internet that they’d definitely pay me back for but hardly ever do. And now I had it – I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself.

A nap, I decided. A lovely nap. When was the last time I had time for a nap? Probably … pre-children. I know, I know, we’re all told that you’re supposed to nap when the baby naps, but then when are you supposed to have a shower, make the dinner, put the laundry on, pay the bills, stare hopelessly into a mirror wondering who this hollow-eyed stranger is staring back at you that bears a vague resemblance to your mother? Exactly. When the baby naps. So, FINALLY, after fifteen years of feeling permanently sleep-deprived, I could start catching up. A nap!

I arranged Judgy Dog and myself on the sofa with a snuggly blanky (Jesus, will I ever be able to say ‘blanket’ again, or are certain words condemned to be forever ingrained in my mind in baby talk – the same way I seem unable to shake off the urge to shout ‘LOOK! COW! HORSEY! WHAT DO COWS SAY? DO COWS SAY “MOOOOOO”? WHAT DO HORSEYS SAY? HORSEYS SAY “NEEEEEIIIIGHHHH!”’ every time I pass a field with animals in?) and we cosied down for a lovely nap.

The more I tried to sleep, the more wide awake I became. I stared at the ceiling, wondering what would happen if I died right now. Who would find me? Would Judgy have started eating me by the time the children came home on Sunday night? Would they then be so appalled and disgusted by his cannibalistic ways that they got rid of him and then he died alone in a shelter, even though it’s not actually cannibalism for a dog to eat a human? The thought of Judgy’s lonely death, all by himself in a cold concrete pen, was almost too much for me to bear.

I gave up hope of sleep and scrolled through Instagram instead. Maybe the children were having a horrible time at Simon’s and their feed would reflect this and I could feel smug. Except Jane had blocked me and Peter had not posted anything in months apart from photos of gaming scores. WHY HAD MY OWN DAUGHTER BLOCKED ME ON INSTAGRAM? I looked at Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy’s page instead. She was on a girly spa weekend. Why was I not on a girly spa weekend, drinking champagne in a hot tub? Even though champagne makes me belch and I haven’t been in a hot tub since I read an article that said they’re basically just heaving cauldrons of bacteria soup. But even so!

What about Fiona Montague? Oh, look, she was training for a triathlon and posting lots of photos of her looking great in skin-tight Lycra with ‘inspirational’ captions. Fuck off, Fiona, you husband-stealing slut. But despite her wanton ways, even Fiona was out and about having fun, and oooh, she’d just posted a new photo – her toes in the bath with a glass of wine because apparently she was about to head out on a ‘date night’. Bitch.

Who else to stalk? What about Debbie from HR? Debbie had been out for ‘brunch with good friends’ and finished her caption with #lovelaughlive. I might have to have Debbie killed. Christina, my erstwhile relationship counsellor, only posted wanky quotes about being true to yourself. That made me feel a little bit better, and I had a bijou judge of Christina.

I searched for Simon’s name again, although he’d always been staunchly anti-Instagram, and lo and behold, there he was! @SimonRussell30 (imaginative, Simon – I assume the ‘30’ refers to a random number, and you weren’t hoping people would think you were actually thirty). Why did he have an account now, after being so scathing about it for all these years? Not many photos yet, obviously, but there was one last night of two beers clinking, just titled ‘#Friyay!’ FFS. Firstly, who even still says ‘Friyay’? Even I know that is totally lame. Secondly, why does he get to go out for beers on Friday night when I spent my Friday night cooking dinner for his children, doing all his children’s laundry so they had clean clothes to take to his house for the weekend and then just as I was about to finally have a glass of wine, having to go and pick Jane up from the cinema because apparently the ‘bus hadn’t come’ – the same bus I assume that passed me heading out of town as I was heading in, as Jane seems to think if she misses the bus that is clearly the bus’s fault and it must have just not come and so I need to solve the problem. All while Simon was quaffing his ‘Friyay’ beer. And thirdly, who did the other beer belong to? Who? It could have been a work colleague, of course, but it was a wanky little bottle of foreign lager, not a Manly Pint, so equally could have been a girl’s. I realised I’d gnawed off what remained of my nails while scrolling through Simon’s photos. #SweetNewPad was another, with an arty shot of what must be his new sitting room (I couldn’t see the sideboard. Where was it? After all the fuss he made about me painting it, had he just got rid of it? RUDE). It looked very nice, and considerably more elegant than my own scruffy sitting room. But ‘#Sweet New Pad’? What was wrong with him? And he did realise you don’t have to hashtag every caption, didn’t he? Twat.