I smiled feebly.
‘I love you, Mum.’ He bent down and kissed me on the head as he walked past, this beautiful, wise, compassionate man-in-the-making.
I hoped he was right, that whatever happened – with Sean, with the Gladiators trials, with the absence of Cee-Cee and my ongoing mental health battle – he would not be destroyed, or damaged. I hoped he wouldn’t get hurt at all, but wasn’t that every mother’s wasted prayer?
20
Stop Being a Loser Programme
Day Fifty-Two
Sunday morning, I jogged to the leisure centre to join the Larkabouts for the second time. I may have felt a twinge of disappointment that Nathan wasn’t waiting for me at the end of the road, but it couldn’t dent the joy of being greeted by the Larks as if I was an old friend. I powered through the warm-up with a not-altogether unpleasant combination of nerves and excitement.
Look! Me! OUT! Outside, with OTHER PEOPLE! Pretty much smiling, letting out a giggle every now and then and not all of them faked!
Inside my brain, I wrestled with the constant current of anxiety that could so easily take over my body, too:Well yes, you might look normal now, but what happens if you start to panic? You can pretend your heart isn’t racing and your lungs aren’t wheezing like broken bagpipes, but I’m still here, waiting to strike, to find the worst possible moment to drag you to the ground.
What if a car pulls out too fast, a nasty dog jumps out at you, someone asks you an awkward question about where you like to go or what you like to do or if you are the disgraced swimmer Amelia Piper or whether you just look like a sad, washed-up version of her…
But in another corner of my mind, I lunged and squatted and star-jumped with glee. Two months ago, the thought of jogging across a car park in the freezing dark, surrounded by laughing, chattering women, would have seemed beyond impossible. In this moment, being here, I had a victory. The reams of advice I’d read as part of the Programme research told me not to let fear about what might happen next ruin that.
During one of the walk-periods (most of us mixed up running and walking, with one notable exception being Marjory, who, at seventy-five, could have lapped us all without breaking into a sweat), I found myself alongside Orange Squash Mel. Or, rather, Cherry Coke Mel this morning, hair piled up like a pineapple.
‘Bloomin’ ’eck, I’m strugglin’ today,’ she wheezed. ‘Got next to no sleep. Tate’s got another one of his chest infections. Thought it might be a trip to A&E at one point, but he settled towards mornin’.’
‘Maybe you should have stayed at home, got some rest.’
‘You kidding?’ She wiped her forehead with a mottled arm. ‘Nights like that, I need this the most.’ A few steps later, she added, ‘But Gordon’s with him, in case he takes another turn for the worse. If he’s still right by the time we’ve finished, I’ll stop and have a brew.’
Before we had to start running again, I just said it: ‘Do your younger three ever see their dads?’
The split second it took Mel not to answer was enough to get my anxiety stirring.
I hastily tried to explain the intrusive question. ‘I’m sorry, I know that’s none of my business, it’s just, well, Joey’s dad has been in touch and I’m entering new territory here, trying to avoid any hidden mines. You don’t have to answer, in fact, please forget I asked.’
Mel tossed her pineapple hairdo. ‘Come off it, it’s hardly gunna be a secret if my kids see their dads or not. And, to answer your perfectly acceptable question, Taylor sees hers once a fortnight, they go out for pizza or play footie or summat. The man who happened to provide the sperm for Tate, not a chance. Even without all the extra problems, he wasn’t interested. And Tiff, well, she won’t ever get to know who her dad is, thanks to my shockin’ behaviour at the time. I couldn’t pick him out in a line-up. And I’ve got to live with that, which is fair dos, but she has to an’ all, which is disgusting, and a regret I’ll carry until I’m gone.’
We picked up the pace a bit, in response to Nathan’s hand gestures from a few hundred yards up the track.
‘Well, you were in a tough place, and…’
‘And I had three kids at home, who depended on me as their only parent, and had no right getting smashed out me face on vodka shots and going off with a strange man, riskin’ a whole lot worse than a baby. I was in self-destruct mode.’ She pumped a few more hefty strides. ‘I had no right. But nothin’ to be done except do me best today and tomorrer.’
Wise advice.
Of course, it would help to know what my best actually was.
‘But you want to know about your lad. Whether he should meet his dad or not,’ Mel said.
‘He lives in America, so that’s not currently an option. It’s whether he contacts him at all that I’m freaking out about. And whether that might end up with him wanting to go and meet him. I mean, he’s not dangerous or anything. But, well…’
‘Far as I can tell, danger comes in a lotta different disguises. A word here, broken promise there. ’Specially hard when there’s so much at stake, every bitty thing counts when you’ve all that catchin’ up to do. You’ve done the hard work, now you’re worried this fella gets to swanny in and suddenly his opinion’ll count for everything, Joey’ll be tryin’ to impress, prove his dad wrong for ignoring him all them years. Dad’ll be offering the moon, no matter if he can follow through or not. And where does that leave you? The boring, always there, rule-enforcing, reality-checking, taken-for-granted, must-be-partly-to-blame-for-all-the-years-of-absence, mum!’ Another few huffs and puffs. ‘Well, listen to me, bletherin’ on, it’s your lad, your ex-fella, what do I know?’
Um, everything, it would seem?
Nathan was waiting for us around the next bend, jogging on the spot, his sleeveless T-shirt revealing rock-solid arms that almost succeeded in distracting me from fretting about the subject in hand.
‘If you can make conversation, you aren’t pushing hard enough. Save the gabbing for the Cup and Saucer, and get those legs moving.’ He trotted backwards as he spoke, the flash of a grin as he turned to sprint back up the hill lessening the telling-off.
