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

Peter considered my question as he crammed another shovelful into his mouth.

‘Six?’ he finally offered.

‘And is there any milk left for your sister’s breakfast?’

‘Oh yes,’ Peter assured me virtuously. ‘I put two bananas in as well, so I wouldn’t need as much milk.’

I was unconvinced by his logic, especially when I looked in the fridge and found the milk carton had been put back in empty.

‘PETER! You’ve finished all the milk again!’

‘No, Mum, I haven’t,’ he insisted, ‘Look.’ He took the carton and tilted it, so a tiny dribble ran into one corner. ‘There’s still some left.’

‘No. No, there isn’t. That was a full two-litre carton last night.’

‘Was it?’

‘Well, maybe Jane can just make do with orange juice and toast then.’

‘Oh yeah. I meant to say, Mum, we’re out of OJ.’

‘HOW? That was another full carton last night.’

Peter shrugged. ‘I dunno. I only had a couple of glasses. And now there’s none left.’

I sighed in despair. I’d been fretting for years about how I was going to feed Peter as a teenager, and now the reality was upon me, I was genuinely fearful I might have to remortgage the house. When we were working out how much maintenance Simon should pay for the children, apparently you can’t have ‘feeding giant teenage child with a possible tapeworm and hollow legs who can eat like a plague of locusts’ taken into account to have the amount increased – according to the law, which has never seen how much a teenage boy can eat, he’ll cost no more to feed than Jane. With only one income, the days of blithely flinging anything I fancied in my trolley at Waitrose are long gone, and budget German supermarkets are now my best friends.

Peter turned his bowl upside down and drained the last drops.

‘Mum, I think I’ve left my PE kit at Dad’s,’ he said.

‘What? Why?’

‘You said we’d be at Dad’s for the weekends, so I put it in the box of stuff to go to his, because I thought that would be best. I didn’t know we’d be coming home on Sunday nights. Sorry, Mum. It’s confusing, trying to live in two places.’

I wanted to be angry at him for having no PE kit, but I remembered all too well the confusion of the early days after your parents’ divorce, when something essential always seemed to be at the other parent’s house.

‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about all this. I really am.’

Peter gave me a very brief hug. ‘It’s OK, Mum. It’s just a bit hard sometimes, you know?’

‘I know. You can talk to me about it, if you want?’

‘Yeah, no, maybe you can just give me a note off PE?’

Under the circumstances, that seemed the least I could do, although I gave him strict instructions not to tell Jane, as all hell would break loose if she found out I’d given Peter a note just because he didn’t have any PE kit.

I went and banged on the bathroom door again to no avail. ‘JANE! JANE, HURRY UP! OTHER PEOPLE NEED THE BATHROOM AND YOU NEED TO HAVE BREAKFAST!’

Peter was still in the kitchen playing on his phone and a thought occurred to me.

‘Peter, do you follow your sister on Instagram?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I borrow your phone to check something?’

‘Why?’

‘I just want to look at something quickly, please?’

‘OK.’

I clicked on Instagram and went to Jane’s page. The first six photos were of Jane with a boy, looking very cosy. He was tagged as @harryx9876. I clicked on his page. More photos of him and Jane looking equally cosy. No wonder she’d blocked me!

‘Who’s Harryx?’ I asked Peter.

He peered at his phone. ‘You mean Harry, Mum. That’s just his Insta handle. He’s a boy at school.’

‘In Jane’s class?’

‘Year above. I think he’s like her boyfriend or something?’

Well, that at least explained the incessant hair-washing. What should I do? Should I say something? But then she’d know I’d basically been stalking her. I resolved to say nothing for the time being anyway, and just cajole Peter into letting me stalk her from time to time. Finally, after more hammering on Jane’s door to try to make her come and have breakfast and being loftily informed that straightening her hair was far more important than food (I had hoped that what I save on Jane’s vanity not giving her time to eat might make up for Peter’s tapeworm, except her energy consumption cancels that out too – apparently you don’t have the hours of hot water and hairdryers and hair straighteners running taken into consideration when the final maintenance amount is calculated either) and Peter was semi-ready and looking for a pre-school snack, Jane eventually came strolling downstairs, all glammed up for Harryx, just as I was howling that I was going now, NOW and anyone who wasn’t ready would just have to take their chances themselves.

‘GET IN THE CAR, IN THE CAR!’ I bellowed. ‘JANE! What are you wearing? Where’s the rest of your skirt? OMG, the school’s new uniform policy. You will be sent home!’

‘Chill, Mother,’ said Jane. ‘ EVERYBODY wears their skirts like this, don’t be so old-fashioned.’

‘Go and change. No, don’t go and change, we haven’t got time, we’ll just have to hope no one notices.’

‘Make up your mind, Mother,’ huffed Jane. ‘You know that memory lapses and a lack of concentration are symptoms of the menopause, don’t you?’

‘JUST GET IN THE FUCKING CAAAAARRRRR!’

‘Mood swings too,’ she added helpfully. ‘And bloating …’

‘I’m not fucking menopausal, I just need you to get in the car!’ I begged, as Jane sauntered out the door, before screaming in outrage because Peter had beaten her there and was smugly ensconced in the front seat. I wondered if I went to the GP and just whimpered ‘Teenagers’ they’d prescribe me valium? And also gin?

I finally got them to the bus stop, and was just kicking them out of the car when Peter stopped halfway out (‘Darling, please, there’s traffic, what are you doing?’) to say, ‘Oh yeah, Mum, by the way, I need some money on my thumb for lunch.’

‘What?’

‘Y’know! My thumb money. You need to put some on it. So I can get lunch?’

‘Your thumb. Do you perchance mean your ParentPay account?’

‘Yeah. My thumb!’

‘Oh, I need mine topped up too, Mum,’ said Jane, suddenly sweetness and light and dropping the sarky ‘Mother’ now cold hard cash was involved.

‘Right! You didn’t think to remind me of this before?’ I said, thinking, ‘Wave them off with a smile, don’t let them leave on a sour note, be nice, so their last memory of you isn’t as a shrieking harridan,’ and also thinking, ‘Why couldn’t they ask Simon about things like this, just once? Why do I always have to do everything ?’

‘We’re reminding you now!’ they said in surprise.

‘I’ll have to do it when I get to work. I’m late. Now please just GO!’ I hissed, before brightly adding, ‘Bye darlings, love you. Have a wonderful day!’

Arrgh! Fucking ParentPay. Or his ‘thumb money’, as Peter confusingly insists on referring to it. In theory, a useful and efficient website that allows you to top up your children’s dinner money accounts (which they then use to pay for their lunches using their thumb print, hence the ‘thumb money’. I do have concerns about this and fear the government might steal their data and keep files on them, although in my children’s case the files would mainly record the fact that they spend inordinate amounts of money on chips and traybakes while at school, because you can also check what they’ve bought with their thumbs. I quickly found it was too depressing to look, and I still marvel they’ve not got scurvy – they must have very sound constitutions, which I expect they got from me), pay for school trips and other extras, all online using your card, instead of scrabbling around to find change/chequebooks/cash to pay for these things. In reality, it’s a constant drain of money. No sooner have you topped up their accounts than they’re unaccountably empty again. It’s very depressing!