Page 15 of If We Were Young

My turn to eye roll. “Okay. Outside the gates. Be safe, okay?”

“Muum.”

Ma’s mouth popped open, ready to tell me that my priority should be to get Hannah to school, but I spun and dashed for the door. Once I had my hand on the latch, jiggling my handbag in the other to double check my keys were in there, I turned back for the kitchen doorway. “I’m trusting you.”

* * *

I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. It burned hot under my skin and ate away at me with the zeal of an ant’s nest over Haribo.

My PG dreams of Matthew had pitched into porno land and I had a sneaky suspicion they’d printed themselves all over my face.

What was that?

The meeting with Supersaver Foods had crashed into ground-zero because I’d sweated so much, Amanda Simpson, the Head of Business Strategy, had asked if I’d had the flu.

Man-flu, in the sense that my fanny had been set alight by nothing more than a wet dream.

“Psst,” Natalie stage-whispered from the office door. I had my back to the desk fan, the cooling air breezing through the chiffon of my blouse to my armpits.

The whole office could hear her famous dulcet whisper that sounded like she was stood in a market shouting, ‘Two punnets of strawberries for a pound. Two punnets of strawberries for a pound’.

“Yes?” I tried very hard to not pull faces around my staff. It was important on a managerial level, to maintain a level of maturity around those on your payroll. Also, the fact that during the first year we were open, when there had only been three of us, I'd got so plastered at the Christmas party I'd fallen over on the dance floor. I knew they still whispered about it now, mainly Natalie whose words always reached my ears regardless of her location.

“It's the school.” She winked at me as I stifled a groan, somehow managing not to drop my head onto the desk and hide my face under a sheaf of A4 paper.

This call, any parents knew, was like someone daubing the outside of your house in red paint stating, ‘Shit Parent Lives Here’. I couldn’t deny it either; the calls were becoming increasingly frequent.

At least Hannah had done as I asked and held off until after the pitch meeting with Supersaver Foods.

I glared at the flashing light on the desk phone—line one. Let’s call it the direct connection to Shit Street. Swallowing hard and letting it pause for five flashes—I mean you never knew they might have hung up—I plastered on a smile and grabbed the handset and sung, “Veronica Childs.”

I um’ed and ah’d in response to words muttered down the line, refusing to look up at Natalie who still leant against the doorframe, her eyes alight with curiosity. Turning, I gave her my shoulder, not that I expected her to retreat to her own desk.

“Sure, I will be there in half an hour.” I said before hanging the phone back in its cradle with a little more force than necessary.

“Problems at the school?” Natalie slipped in and perched a hip on my desk. Her skirt, I noticed for the first time today was miniscule, her tights patterned with diamonds. Usually I noticed her outfits because she matched her lipstick to them.

I groaned, just a little. I couldn’t help it. I wondered if she’d stop me if I dropped to my knees and banged my head in the drawer of the filing cabinet? “Just . . .” I didn’t know what else to say. I bit my bottom lip and pulled myself under control. Tears wouldn’t get me anywhere; they hadn’t achieved anything in the last five years and nor would inducing a migraine with a filing cabinet. This was all laid on me. Only I could deal with this.

Well, I had to. There wasn’t anyone else.

I let her slam up to her room, then followed, making as much noise on the tread of the stairs myself. Each slam of my foot into the worn carpet bashed like another hammer against my heart. It pounded and echoed.

Was there anything I didn’t fail at? Apart from obsessing and stalking?

Without knocking, I opened her door, forcing myself through the barricade of shoes and teddy bears she’d thrown at the door. Her face was turned to the wall; her shoulders high.

“We are talking. Now.” I made my way further into the room, ignoring the sound of snipping coming from outside the window. If I could hear Ma trimming Dad’s old roses, then she’d be able to hear me yelling like a banshee. I hadn’t bothered making eye contact with her as I stormed up the garden path. Feeling her onyx eyes bore through the window as we pulled up in the car was enough. She’d be adding this onto her Ronnie’s failures list.

“Graffiti?” I exploded. I’d kept it calm in Mr Jewson’s office, but this was too much. “Last week it was fighting… this week…” I could barely believe it. “What the hell were you graffitiing?”

My head pounded, my vision blurring around the edges. I could feel the beginnings of a parenting aneurysm coming on.

The hunched shoulders of my daughter didn’t drop as she refused to turn around. I didn’t know where the girl with hazel ringlets and wide eyes had gone, but I’d lost her.

It felt like she’d also slid over the edge of a cliff by a snowdrift, pulled from my grasp as I’d tried to hang on to what we were.

My stomach churned, delving and twisting into a tight knot caused by the ulcer creating illness: parenting.