Nikki Gemmell - With My Body

The time you folded up the push chair and placed it in the boot, only to hear a squeak – baby Pip still in it.

The time Jack rolled off the bed as you were changing his nappy and ended up with a dint in his skull.

The birthday cakes from Tesco, year after year.

The computer games that keep them all riveted, baby included.

The occasional McDonald’s, three quarters of an hour’s drive away on a Sunday night.

Basti, of course, has never had it in his life. He tells you this when he comes to your house. He has inherited his mother’s heightened sense of censorious rightness, about everything in his life, and you fear for what’s ahead of him, how the wider world will chip away at that. Meanwhile Susan bustles about in her flurry of energy, a tiny, dark sparrow of efficiency with an enormous, puffed chest, making you feel deficient in response, that you’re always running and never quite catching up. Have had no role model in life for this. The best mothers are those who had bad mothers, you think, because they know what not to do – but what if you never had a mother? If she died before she was lodged in memory.

Susan’s voice veers you back.

‘Wasn’t that homework hard today? Basti got it, eventually.’

‘Rexi took a while. I had to snap off the TV just to get him to the table …’

‘We don’t miss ours. The kids never ask for it.’

A pause. ‘Lucky you.’

Television, of course, is babysitting for you, your guilty secret. And you didn’t notice exactly what Rexi was doing in his maths book.

‘Just checking you’re still on for Basti this Thursday?’

You’re always scrupulously generous with play dates; it’s why the routine works.

‘Of course … can’t wait.’

‘Did you get the notice about nits? I know you never check their schoolbags, just reminding you. Basti’s never had them. I don’t know who it is …’

You shut your eyes, your knuckles little snow-capped mountains around the phone. Because of bath time, several hours earlier – all the boys, even Pip – and dragging out the lice with all their tiny, frantic legs. And Jack has a pathological aversion to nits, almost vomits with the horror of them, yells like you’re scalping him. Then the pleas, the threats, to finish the homework due tomorrow, to stop the Wii, get to bed. Rexi storming off in frustration, his arms over his head. You feel, sometimes, he’s a great open wound that you’re pouring your love and puzzlement into. What’s going on in there? Does it ever even out? He’s only nine. His teacher says it’s something to do with boys about this age, from seven onwards, their teeth coming through; there’s a huge psychological change in them, hormones swirling. Does he mellow with age, does he strengthen? Is he too much like you, too emotional? You are fascinated and fearful at the depth of his feelings.

You are not responsible for your child’s happiness, Rexi’s teacher in her fifties told you gently the other day.

‘All you’re responsible for is what is said and done to them, as a parent. That’s all. Nothing else.’ You must remember that.

Herein the patient must minister to herself

Nine-thirty. You step outside. Lock the door.

Now you are in control. You inhale a breath of steely night air; the cold never ceases to shock in this place, after all these years, still. The children are all asleep, you know they will not wake, know them well enough. You stood in the quietness of their rooms and breathed them in deep and felt a vast peace flood through you, whispering a soothing through your veins. Everyone down, your day done.

But now.

Walking fast through a stillness that is holding its breath. Feeling an old you coming back. The stone walls, the close woods, the bridge over the stream are all coated in a thick frost that has not broken for several days and it is ravishingly beautiful, all of it, but it will never hold your heart. Because it is not home.

It is flinchingly cold, you are not dressed for it, have not thought, just needed to walk, get away, out. Hugh has a work dinner, he’ll be home in a couple of hours, you’ll be back for him, of course. It is suddenly overwhelming you as you walk, the tears are coming now. You dream of being unlocked. By spareness. Simplicity. Light, screaming hurting light. Dream of tall skies, endless space, of being nourished within the sunlight, of never coming back. The tears are streaming now, great gulps, your mouth is webbed by wet. You are not strong here.

You are on the road now, not properly dressed, cannot go back, cannot face any of it. A car flashes by, swerves, beeps in annoyance. There are no footpaths, only grass verges, the lanes are too narrow, built for carts centuries ago, you shouldn’t be walking in this place. You freeze in terror like a rabbit, can’t go forward, can’t go back. You hold your arms around you and weep, and weep, vined by circumstance – you are no longer you. Lost.

We are able to pass out of our own small daily sphere

More headlights. A van.

Slowing, stopping. You shiver, your heart beats fast.

‘Hello, stranger.’

It is Mel. Another school mum. The one who is different, who never quite belongs. Who breezes in and out of the school like she couldn’t care less, who is … unbound. Who says fuck the quiz night, fuck the summer party, fuck the lot of it: I’ve got better things to do with my life. What, God knows.

She wears real, cool, vintage fur: I don’t do fake anything – coats, fingernails, orgasms.

Everyone suspects she’s been given the school fees for free, the charitable slot. She’s a single mum with a son in Jack’s class. You envy the every-second-weekend-off-from-motherhood that she gets – to sleep in, stay in bed all day, go dancing, potter, drink; to do nothing and everything for once. She runs an antique shop on the High Street – erratic opening hours, bric-a-brac from French flea markets – things you love that Hugh bats away as junk.

Mel picked up her boy, Otis, from a play date once, late. She’d come straight from her pole-dancing class and until that moment you’d had no idea such a thing existed in this place. Mel would have been the girl who wore her school skirt too short and had her dad’s ciggies in her pocket and smuggled dope into the dormitory; it’s all in her face. Appetite and passion and life’s hard knocks and a big open heart no matter how many times she’s pounded upon the rocks. An aura of a woman who revels in life. Who has sex a lot.

Mel always lingers after the boys’ occasional play dates. There’s often been some strange pull, in the silence, you don’t know why; you just want to lean across, it’s ridiculous, she’s not your type, your style. She wears skinny jeans, sometimes Uggs; your palette is the colour of reticence, careful camel or sand or chalk with a dash of black. She’s a woman for God’s sake.

She hath done what she could

‘Hey,’ Mel says soft, frowning, with infinite understanding. ‘Get in.’

You gulp your tears; the car is warm, the heating on.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong –’ you rush out, your voice veering high, off course.

‘Sssh …’

‘The boys, the school gate, Hugh –’

‘I know, I know.’

Mel has pulled over, down a lane, she is not taking you back, thank God she is not taking you back. You barely register what she is doing: she is listening, that’s all, she wants to know. Her hand is on your knee, just that.

‘Sssh,’ and now the tears are coming again, soft, in the stillness, the quiet; cracked by kindness. You begin to talk, in a way you haven’t for so long.

‘But you’re so lucky.’ Quiet, at the end of it. ‘Don’t you see that? You have so much.’