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Press send, then dial Ben.
He’d better not have no issues with me!
Homestay – Pat
I push open the meeting room door to a blast of stale air stirred by the fan. The others are slumped around the table.
‘Hi, I forgot we had a meeting.’ I plonk myself next to Charlie. He’s busy texting but pauses to smile at me.
‘Jeanelle’s not here yet, probably held up with something important,’ Rehana raises her eyes.
‘It’s unprofessional conduct when I’m five minutes late for my one-to-one,’ Pauline moans. ‘Even though I was dealing a difficult customer.’
‘Well, it’s good to be back.’ I fan myself with a pile of agendas. ‘Still no sign of the air conditioning being fixed?’
‘Now you are being funny,’ Pauline says. ‘So how was your time off?’
‘Yeah, Pat.’ Charlie looks up. ‘How’d the show go?’
‘Oh, it hasn’t started yet, I was just setting up. But I’m not sure I’m fitting their concept of Cuttin’ Edge, you know?’
Charlie says I would say that, as I explain how it was billed as a venue to showcase art that’s marginalised by commercial galleries. ‘But it’s mostly what I call Conceptual Bollocks, to tell you the truth. I don’t think I’m obscure enough.’
Charlie, seemingly undeterred, asks when they can we get to see it. I tell him when it opens, with serious stomach clenching at the idea of people from work looking at my art.
Pauline starts on the next sore point. ‘So how was Gethin’s birthday?’
‘Crap.’ I shoot her a Don’t Ask look, which she chooses to ignore.
‘What’s it like then, to have a grown up for a son?’ She smiles in that cutesy way of hers, with her even teeth and pearly pink lips.
‘Like I’ve lost a child?’ I say, shocked by the truth of this.
Pauline’s smile snaps shut as she pushes back her chair and walks out of the room.
Rehana fiddles with her purple headscarf. Charlie raises an eyebrow at me.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Pauline is sensitive, you know?’ Rehana says gently.
‘Well, I’m bloody sensitive, she insists on asking when I’ve already said it’s crap.’
Rehana flinches at my outburst. I can’t say anything right in this place.
‘She had a miscarriage, didn’t she, Pat?’ Charlie says.
Deep breath. ‘OK, fair enough. I’ll go and apologise,’ I say, feeling both ashamed and resentful.
Perhaps Charlie sees this. ‘Leave her be for a bit,’ he says as his phone beeps a text in. ‘Oh Jesus, what now?’ He reads the message. ‘Sorry.’ He grimaces. ‘Just Ex Number One telling me what to say at Chloe’s school review today. Not that she’d dream of turning up.’
Rehana giggles. ‘I thought she was really keen, making notes at parents’ evenings.’
‘No that’s Ex Number Two with Danny. She draws up a list of targets for him that I’m supposed to enforce. Ex Number One doesn’t do school meetings. She just likes to write stroppy letters and then I have to go and fight it for her. Hey-ho, c’est la vie. Oh, for the life of the single parent, eh Pat?’
Charlie’s grin disarms me, and I nod my agreement. It’s my single parent soapbox. You get to make all the decisions, none of this quibbling over every mouthful of chocolate cake that two parent families get into. I didn’t live with Karen when Gethin was little, but I was happy to have her support, the best of both worlds, perhaps. How did that change to feeling she was constantly sticking her oar in, judging my parenting? Telling me I was too possessive when I didn’t want Gethin passed around her streams of friends all wanting a slice. How I was making a rod for my own back letting him sleep in my bed. And now, years later, when she’s hardly made any effort to see him, she slings this letter at us. I’m meeting her at lunchtime and I’ve really no idea what I’m going to say.
The thick air stirs as Jeanelle makes an entrance with her usual flurry. Today she’s ushering in Hussain complete with flipchart. She holds the door at a half profile angle, her dyed black hair curling just so over her bare tanned shoulders, her cotton shift dress hitched well above the knee: look at me, still sexy at fifty! I catch Rehana’s eye and she looks down to suppress her grin.
