Happy Families Read online

  ‘All cashed up?’ he asked.

  ‘Yup,’ said Lisa.

  ‘Well done, love. I knew you’d do really well.’ That was nice, because no one else seemed sure. ‘Here.’

  Mark pushed a bunch of flowers under Lisa’s nose. They were a mixture of roses and that tiny white-flowered stuff called babies’ breath.

  ‘They’re so lovely,’ said Lisa. She gave him a great big kiss. She usually didn’t like to kiss in public. But today she thought it was OK.

  The roses were pink.

  ‘Pink is my favourite colour,’ said Lisa.

  ‘I know,’ said Mark.

  ‘What’s your favourite colour, Mark?’

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘And what’s your favourite band?’ asked Lisa.

  ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers,’ he said.

  On the way home Mark listed his five favourite movies. Lisa and Mark had three in common. Not bad!

  8

  24 October

  When Lisa had said she’d look after the café for the week, she’d forgotten it was half-term. She’d had to farm out the kids to anyone who’d have them or drag the youngest two into the café with her. Jack was pleased. He’d live off chips if he could. But Paula had suddenly become a vegetarian. She had found out that pretty much everything sold in the café had animal fat in it. Then she started to tell the customers all about killing animals for food. It wasn’t pretty to listen to. Lisa lost three sales in five minutes. So she gave Paula a fiver and sent her to the paper shop. Dave needed a business to come back to.

  Dave and his wife were on a boat, sailing to Norway. They wanted to see ice and things. Lisa didn’t see the point. You might as well save your cash and wait for winter. They were usually snowed in until about May round here. Besides, Lisa was not a water-baby. Feeding ducks in the park often made her feel seasick. But then, pretty much everything made her sick at the moment. The vitamins hadn’t helped much.

  Lisa was just wondering whether to fry more chips for the lunchtime rush when Carol called. Carol only ever called if someone had died, or Lisa had done something Carol didn’t like. It meant they talked often. Lisa answered with some fear.

  ‘Gill has told John, and John told me. How could you?’ Carol said.

  Lisa wondered what was wrong. Since she’d last seen Carol Lisa had visited Gill’s hairdresser. She’d had blonde highlights put in. And she’d bought a new winter coat. Why would these things make Carol angry?

  ‘Gill told me about the hairdresser. Mum’s hand isn’t as steady as it was. She can’t keep cutting my hair. You are always saying I should take care of myself,’ said Lisa.

  ‘I’m not talking about your haircut. That’s good. I mean getting pregnant,’ said Carol.

  ‘Pregnant?’ Lisa said. She was shocked. Jack stared at her. He looked shocked too!

  ‘Who’s pregnant?’ he asked.

  ‘No one.’ Lisa took the phone into the back. ‘Gill should write books. She has a wild imagination. It’s the menopause. It’s early. You said so yourself!’ Lisa said.

  ‘Oh. Yes, I did, didn’t I?’ Carol was pleased. Her confidence in her own diagnosis had returned. ‘Thank God for that.’ She hung up.

  Thanks for your concern!

  On Wednesdays the café closed after lunch. Paula told Jack that this was a pre-World War tradition.

  ‘You know, like when Mum was a girl,’ she said.

  Lisa was too tired to be hurt by this statement. She just wanted to go home. She wanted to drink tea and eat biscuits, and perhaps wrap a blanket around her legs like a really old person. But she felt the kids needed her time.

  Then in a flash, like a genie, Mark turned up again. He seemed to have a habit of doing that. He offered to look after the kids for the afternoon.

  ‘You need a break,’ he said. That was kind.

  ‘What about your work?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Terry can manage on his own,’ said Mark.

  Lisa didn’t think so. Terry looked about the same age as Kerry. He was in fact twenty. But then, to Lisa, policemen and footballers didn’t look old enough to tie their own boots.

  They decided to visit the cinema, all of them together. Paula agreed as long as everyone walked behind her and didn’t talk to her. Jack, on the other hand, was really chuffed. He was very happy when Mark bought a family ticket. Lisa liked buying a family ticket too – mostly because it saved three quid and they supersized the popcorn.

  The moment the lights went down Lisa fell asleep. She missed all the film. She only woke up when Mark gently nudged her. Jack said she’d been snoring. Nightmare! The nightmare was made worse when Mark said, ‘Maybe you should get a test done. Gill might be right.’

  Gill must have talked to Mark too! Lisa stared at him. She was too stunned to reply. Her mind was full of slow and painful ways to kill her ex-friend. Lisa didn’t feel in control. Not one bit.

  9

  31 October

  It was Hallowe’en, and Lisa was fighting demons of her own.

  Keith had called to ask when the kids’ half-term was. It made her feel fed up.

  ‘Last week,’ Lisa said crossly. She’d left him a lot of messages asking if he’d help out with looking after the kids. The kids liked to go to his place, because you couldn’t spit without hitting a flat-screen TV. Keith had not called Lisa back.

  ‘Oh. What a shame. I’d have loved to have them stay,’ said Keith.

  Clank, clank, what’s that I hear? The binmen collecting the rubbish he spouts. She didn’t believe him. It was a sort of progress. Now she knew every word he said would be a lie.

  ‘Where were you last week?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘The Canary Islands. It’s the only place to get any sun this time of year,’ said Keith.

  The kids would have loved that. Suddenly, her week filled with mornings in the café and afternoon trips to her mum’s, the cinema and the swimming-pool seemed dull. Lisa wondered if she could prevent the kids from hearing about Keith’s holiday. No, Keith and the Big Breasted Woman probably looked bright orange. And they would make everyone sit through a slide-show of photos of the two of them drinking Bacardi. The poor kids! They’d be hurt.

  ‘How’s the DIY course going?’ asked Keith.

  Mostly Lisa was enjoying it. Although she wasn’t talking to Gill any more, since Gill had wrongly told everyone she was pregnant. But she liked the idea that she could cope if she had a DIY problem. Still, she wished it hadn’t been Keith’s idea to do a course in the first place. He’d been very smug ever since.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Lisa said. She didn’t want to give too much away. But she sounded a bit like Paula.

  ‘I was wondering if you knew much about overflow. We’ve got a back-up in the downstairs loo. Do you think you could fix it?’ asked Keith. ‘It really stinks but I don’t want to pay a plumber.’

  Lisa thought her sawing skills might finally come in useful. She could cut Keith up into little bits and feed him to wild cats – not that you got many wild cats around there. Luckily the beep-beep of ‘call waiting’ cut the chat short. Keith was saved by the bell.

  The person on the end of ‘call waiting’ was Lisa’s mum. Lisa moaned that Keith could offer the kids more than she could. It left her feeling bad. Lisa’s mum pointed out that even though Keith could offer the kids more, he never did.

  Lisa then confessed to feeling jealous of the Big Breasted Woman’s curtains. In fact she was also jealous of her trim size-ten body, her clothes, the hours she spent at the beautician’s and her foreign holidays. But Lisa knew she’d have the best chance of her mum understanding if she stuck to curtains.

  ‘Stop looking over your shoulder at what Keith has. Or what you might have had. Or what you once had. Think about the here and now. You’d be better for it. We all would,’ said Lisa’s mum. She sounded really cross.

  Lisa’s mum never got snappy with Lisa. So Lisa felt about an inch tall. She got off the phone as quickly as possible.

  Lisa sat still for quite a
few minutes and thought about her mum’s words. She might have a point. In an effort not to think about Keith’s holiday to the Canary Islands, Lisa popped out to the local vegetable shop. She bought a pumpkin to carve with the kids. It would be fun.

  Two Elastoplasts and some very bad language later, Lisa had carved a lopsided cat’s face. It looked funny, not scary. She told her kids it was the effect she wanted.

  ‘To avoid scaring little kids,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ asked Kerry. ‘Very thoughtful.’

  All three kids agreed to go trick or treating. After all, free sweets are free sweets. Even when you’re fifteen. They were less happy with the costumes Lisa had made that afternoon. Wool-worths had been emptied by the mums who buy Hallowe’en costumes in August. Lisa’s kids had to make do with old sheets and black tights.

  While Lisa was out trick-or-treating with the kids, Mark called her on her mobile.

  ‘Have you done the pregnancy test yet?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s no need,’ said Lisa.

  ‘Why, have you er… ‘ said Mark.

  ‘No, not yet. But I’m late because I’m menopausal. I wish everyone would stop going on about it. Why can’t I sink into my old age without all this fuss?’ Lisa asked crossly. Luckily the kids were fighting over mini Mars bars. They were not paying Lisa much attention.

  ‘Lisa, you’re too young to be menopausal. Besides, you look great at the moment. Really glowing. You’re being sick and you’re late. Those are signs of pregnancy, not the menopause. Why won’t you admit it? Would it be so awful?’ asked Mark.

  At that moment Jack rushed across the road to catch up with his friends. He didn’t look for cars.

  ‘Jack, for goodness sake. How many times do I have to tell you? Be careful on roads.’

  ‘Is that your answer?’ asked Mark.

  ‘No.’ Lisa said.

  ‘Well, what then?’ he asked.

  ‘This is nothing to do with you,’ said Lisa.

  ‘Lisa, if you are pregnant, this has everything to do with me. Or at least I hope it does. Why are you always pushing me away?’

  Was she? Lisa couldn’t answer his question. After what felt like about five years of silence, he said, ‘Well? Is the idea of being pregnant with my child so terrible? Is that why you are in denial?’ He sounded cross, but that couldn’t be right. Mark was never cross.

  Of course the idea of being pregnant with Mark’s child wasn’t terrible. The idea was wonderful. But it was a fantasy. It couldn’t be true. Lisa thought it was a daft question. She didn’t dare tell Mark she’d love to be having his baby. She didn’t dare tell him that the idea of starting again was too much to hope for. She no longer dared to want anything that much. So she said nothing. They were both silent for ages.

  Then Mark coughed and said, ‘I see. Well, call me if you need anything.’

  Then he hung up.

  Suddenly the ghosts and goblins looked really scary to Lisa.

  10

  4 November

  Kerry came home from school earlier than usual. Lisa was pleased to see her daughter. She could do with a distraction. She had so much that she didn’t want to think about right now. Mostly she didn’t want to think about Mark.

  Hadn’t she been proved right after all? He had let her down. He’d vanished: one row and then goodbye. She’d heard nothing from him today. She’d expected him to call the following morning, or at least by lunchtime. It had been four days. Why hadn’t he called? It was a good thing she’d never fallen for him. Or at least that he didn’t know she had. She would have a cup of tea with Kerry and forget all about Mark. Men – who needed them? She and Kerry would have a chat and a giggle.

  But Kerry looked sad and tired. It was clear that she was not in the mood for a giggle.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Lisa.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Kerry.

  ‘You keep saying that. But I don’t believe you.’

  Kerry gave her mum a ‘dirty look’ and then said, ‘I have homework to do.’ She went upstairs without another word.

  Clearly something was very wrong. Kerry never did her homework when she first came home from school. Normally she had really urgent things to do, like watch TV and talk on the phone to her friends. Sometimes she’d be very, very busy indeed, experimenting with new make-up.

  Lisa was about to follow her daughter upstairs when she heard the phone ring. It only rang once before Kerry picked it up upstairs. Kerry would now chat to her friends as normal. Lisa knew better than to try to have a talk with her daughter when Kerry’s friends were available. Lisa knew her place!

  Lisa killed some time reading the big DIY book that she’d bought. She was now very behind with her homework for the course, which was not a very good position to be in as a mum. She could hardly yell at the kids when she was setting such a poor example.

  She needed Mark to explain how to plumb in a washing-machine. Where did the hot pipe go? She wondered if she could ring him. He had said, ‘Call me if you need anything.’ No. No. She did not need him to explain her homework.

  Lisa could not keep her mind on the book. Gill’s words about Mark kept coming back to her. What did she mean, Lisa should enjoy new love? Was what she felt for Mark love? And what had he felt for her?

  She’d only been seeing him… well, a year. A year. That surprised Lisa. She hadn’t realized it had been so long.

  But they were casual. They only met up about once a week. Lisa thought about it. That wasn’t true. Mark stayed at her house most nights now. When he wasn’t there she looked for him.

  But they’d never talked about love – except when Lisa said she didn’t believe in romantic love, which she often said.

  Lisa knew what she must do. She had to confront this. She must get straight on the phone and call… Gill. To ask her exactly what she meant.

  Lisa picked up the phone and realized straight away that Kerry was still on the line. She was about to hang up when she heard Kerry say, ‘A baby will ruin my life.’

  A baby!

  Lisa knew it was a bad thing to listen in to other people’s phone calls. But this was her fifteen-year-old daughter talking about a baby ruining her life. All rules were made to be broken!

  Lisa hardly breathed. If Kerry knew she was listening she’d go mad, and most importantly she’d stop talking.

  The other voice on the telephone was Amanda, Kerry’s best friend.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘All the symptoms are there. Tiredness, mood swings and the usual one.’

  ‘Late?’

  ‘Yes. The worst of it is Mum hasn’t even noticed! Or if she has she’s not saying anything.’

  Lisa gasped. Her little girl was pregnant! How could this be? Well, she knew how it happened, but how had it happened to Kerry? They’d talked about this sort of thing last year. Lisa had said if Kerry ever wanted to have sex she should come to her first. They would go to the doctor’s together. She’d thought she’d been an open and friendly mum.

  But then she had also said that she really, really didn’t think Kerry should have sex until she was twenty-five! Maybe that had been a bit unrealistic. Maybe she had sounded too scary. And now look! Kerry had slept with someone and got pregnant.

  The stupid girl! The poor girl!

  Lisa wanted to run straight upstairs and fling her arms around her little girl. Or fling something heavy at her. She wasn’t sure which. She wanted to hold Kerry tightly in her arms and tell her it would be all right. She wanted to kill her.

  Lisa took a deep breath and did nothing.

  Amanda said, ‘What about the dad?’

  ‘He’s OK. I actually quite like him,’ said Kerry.

  Lisa wanted to scream. Kerry quite liked the dad! Quite liked. What the hell was she doing sleeping with someone she quite liked? Shouldn’t they have been madly in love? That would have been better. But would it? They were children. How could this be made better at all?

  ‘I just never thought h
e’d be around forever,’ said Kerry. She didn’t sound sad. Surprised was more like it.

  Stupid, stupid girl. Of course he’d be around forever now! Lisa put down the phone and thought about what she should do next.

  11

  4 November

  Lisa’s first thought was that she wanted to ring Mark. He’d know what to do, what to say. He didn’t have kids of his own but he always made things better with her kids. He’d been doing just that for a year now.

  But she couldn’t call Mark. Yes, he’d said she should call if she needed anything. And yes, this was way more important than help with homework. But Lisa could not call. She had pushed Mark away. She had taken him for granted, just like Gill said. Even Carol had noticed Mark’s strengths before Lisa had. Now Lisa had noticed them, and it was too late.

  She could not land this trouble at his door. Kerry wasn’t even his daughter.

  Should Lisa call Keith? Kerry was Keith’s daughter. But Lisa knew that the idea of calling Keith was a joke. He didn’t return her calls when she wanted to talk to him about childcare over the half-term holiday. He was unlikely to return her calls over something so big. He wasn’t good with responsibility.

  It was up to her, and her alone. That was OK. She was a good parent, but perhaps not good enough, considering her teenage daughter was pregnant. Lisa couldn’t help but blame herself. But Lisa was all Kerry had right now. So she’d have to do.

  Lisa slowly climbed the stairs. It was the most terrible walk of her life. How had this happened? Had she let Kerry down? Had she failed to spot the signs that this was going to happen? But what were the signs she was supposed to look for?

  A big, flashing one would have been handy.

  Kerry was a bright, hard-working, kind girl. Yes, she had the odd teenage tantrum. There were moments when she was selfish with her brother or sister. There were times when she lost her temper, and she had lost her phone more times than Lisa could remember.

  But Kerry wasn’t daft.