Friday, 4 November

Join the PTA, they said. Feel all warm and fuzzy that you are doing something nice for the children, they said. It will hardly take up any time at all, they said. Well, they were LIARS! All of them. Big, fat, filthy liars!

No sooner had the Halloween green faded from my face, than another email popped in from Lucy Atkinson’s Mummy. I had instructed Simon that he could be the one to rush back from work and pick up the kids and shovel their Friday pizza down them, because I was going out for Friday drinks at a cool bar with my new colleagues. A young people’s bar! I would even abandon the car and get a taxi home, so I could be a proper grown-up. I wasn’t therefore best thrilled as I chugged down my third Gibson (a cocktail with pickled onions in it. What bliss!) to see her email. I get a cold chill down my spine when I see an email from Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Fucking Mummy ping into my inbox, as, like with emails from Jessica, there is never any good news to be had there. I really shouldn’t have opened it while I was Out Out and half cut, because sure enough – bam!

Hi,

As you know, I usually organise the collection for the teacher’s Christmas present, but I wondered if you would consider doing it this year, as I am very busy.

Xxxx

Four kisses. This is an indication of the shit storm into which I have just been landed. When people you don’t know very well sign off with kisses, I find the number of kisses is a passive–aggressive indicator of just how much of a ball ache they have just dumped on you – the more kisses, the worse the situation. And the teacher’s present is a bastarding minefield! It should be perfectly simple – everybody stick a fiver in an envelope, and give it to the nominated person, who then buys John Lewis or M&S gift vouchers, which is a polite way of saying, ‘Dear Lovely Teacher, Thank you for putting up with our monstrous offspring. Please accept this small token of our appreciation, which you can now use to buy booze to numb the pain caused by our devil spawn. Or pants, if you so wish. Lots of love, All The Mummies And Daddies.’

But it is never that simple. I have been copied in on eleventy billion of these email threads, because the people who like to fuck the whole thing up also insist on hitting ‘reply all’ for every single message BECAUSE THEY ARE UTTER BASTARDS, and I just know the whole thing is going to descend into a giant clusterfuck – especially if I am in charge of it. Lucy’s Mummy, annoyingly perfect though she is, with her skinnier-than-skinny jeans and her soy lattes on the way to her yoga class and her hair THAT ALWAYS LOOKS PERFECT EVEN WHEN IT IS WINDY was very good at tactfully talking down the mummies who wanted to adopt a Guatemalan orphan for the teacher or buy them recycled earrings made out of Himalayan goat droppings. I am not tactful. There is an excellent chance I will tell them all to go fuck themselves by the third email.

Oh, and joy of joys, another email:

Forgot to say – the person who organises the teacher present usually just organises the Mums’ Night Out at the same time. Looking forward to it!

Xxxxx

Five kisses! Oh, FML. Organising the Mums’ Christmas Night Out. That is a poisoned chalice, if ever there was one (quite literally a poisoned chalice if the Cocktails of Doom on last year’s Night Out were anything to go by). Thirty over-excited women (well, twenty-eight and Sam, who is granted Mummy status by dint of being a gay single father, and Julian, who insists on telling every woman he meets how ‘sensitive’ being a stay-at-home dad has made him, by which he means he’d like to try to get into their knickers. Oddly, Julian’s sensitivity does not appear to extend to actually doing anything useful like helping at PTA events, but he is very good at coming on the Christmas Night Out and being lecherous, and also at dumping his offspring on any other unsuspecting parent who shows even the slightest interest in his ‘photography’ business, as obviously it’s ‘so hard, being a full-time parent and trying to run a business, so actually, if you could just have Phoebe and Marcus for a couple of hours that would be amazing! I could give you a discount off one of my family portrait sessions as a thank you! Oh, you’re a star! I won’t be any later than 5 p.m. to pick them up! 6 p.m. at the very latest. Absolutely definitely no later than 7, for sure, as Susan is home by then. Cheers! See you later! Oh, and you don’t mind giving them dinner, do you? Just remember that Phoebe is gluten-free and Marcus is lactose-intolerant. Super! Byeeeeee!’) crammed in a pub, forced to wear paper crowns against our will while eating over-priced lukewarm turkey and pretending that we have anything in common with each other apart from the fact that we happened to force another human out of our bodies in one or another unspeakable way in the same twelve-month period (apart from Julian and Sam, of course, though Julian has a worrying habit of trying to join in the labour stories by relating Susan’s birth experiences, which doesn’t really seem appropriate given no one has ever met Susan in the two years that his kids have been at the school. I would start to think that Susan is a figment of Julian’s imagination and he just borrowed the children from an unsuspecting friend years ago to try to help him pull the Yummy Mummies, but then I remember that Simon is so rarely seen at the school either that I suspect a lot of people think that I have just made up a husband).

I just wanted ONE night being a grown-up in a nice bar. Just one! Why did all this shit have to land tonight? Along with several whining texts from Simon about when should he put the pizza on?/when would I be back?/did the kids have a whole pizza each or one between them? etc., I was seething quietly about this when Alan brought over a fourth Gibson and winked at me.

‘It’s plain to see you’re single, Ellen,’ he grinned.

‘What? Why? Why would you say that?’ I said. ‘Do I look like some sad old desperate tart or something?’ Oh God, I’ve tried too hard, haven’t I? I should have stuck with what I know and worn ballet flats and a nice cardigan instead of trying to be edgy. I KNEW getting a fringe cut last week was a bad idea.

‘No, it’s just that no one would have four cocktails with pickled onion garnishes if they were going home to snog someone, would they?’ He winked.

‘I might as well have all the pickled onions,’ sighed James. ‘My wife’s either too knackered or too busy with the kids to snog me anyway.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you end up with the old ball and chain,’ sniggered Alan. ‘You could be footloose and fancy free like Ellen and me!’

I rather liked the sound of being footloose and fancy free. Also, after four Gibsons I wasn’t really capable of stringing together a coherent enough sentence to correct Alan, and merely beamed around hazily, hoping I wouldn’t fall over when I had to go for a wee.

Monday, 7 November

So, one month into the new job, and I think it’s safe to say that some cracks are starting to appear. I say ‘cracks’. I mean massive great buggering chasms. In an effort to make sure the household tasks are shared equally between Simon and me, I drew up a careful rota of who does what and when etc., including whose turn it is to make dinner on any given night. I pinned it to the fridge and talked Simon through it. He huffed and he puffed and he sighed and he tutted, but he has been doing his allotted tasks. His allotted tasks and no bloody more, I should add, so if it is his day to drop the kids at school, and they spill Coco Pops all over the floor, he won’t hoover them up if it is not his day to hoover, he’ll leave them to be crushed into the floor until I get home and hoover them up, because it’s ‘my turn’ for that. I would very much like to implement a similar work-to-rule strategy, but I lack his stubbornness and ability to turn a blind eye to the mess.

I spent Sunday afternoon cooking and freezing various dinners for throughout the week, because we are starting a big project this week, the first really big project I’ve been involved in since I started, and I was probably going to have to stay late some nights, so I reckoned that at least if there were some back-up dinners in the freezer I could just defrost something and everyone could still have a decent meal.

When I came home tonight to find that instead of cooking anything himself, he had defrosted not only the tagine that I had intended for tomorrow night but also the chicken casserole I had earmarked for Thursday, because apparently ‘we couldn’t decide what we wanted,’ I lost the plot.

‘FFS, Simon! I made that for tomorrow. You were supposed to make dinner tonight.’

‘I DID make dinner tonight! I heated all that up! What is that if not MAKING DINNER?’

‘CHEATING! It’s cheating! It’s not cooking, it’s heating up the stuff I had made for the rest of the week.’

‘How is it OK for you to just defrost and heat it up, but not for me?’ he demanded.

‘Because I MADE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! Because I spent MY Sunday afternoon making it, while you lay on the sofa in front of Wheeler Fucking Dealers –’

‘I was not watching Wheeler Dealers. I haven’t watched it on point of principle since Edd China left!’ he interrupted.

‘Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you were watching. The point is, you chose to spend Sunday afternoon doing fuck all, while I chose to spend it cooking so I didn’t have to think about it for the rest of the week, and now you’ve gone and CHEATED by using the stuff I made, ALL the stuff I made, and chucking out the leftovers. So you can bloody well cook tomorrow. And the rest of the week.’

‘Why? Why do I have to do that? I am doing my share. Your children are fed, on my night. Tomorrow is your night, YOU bloody well cook!’

‘But you haven’t cooked. I cooked!’

‘Well, if you’re going to cook ahead for the week, I don’t see why you can’t cook enough for every night, instead of just your nights,’ said Simon nastily.

‘Because I shouldn’t have to,’ I said. ‘Because then I’m cooking for every night of the week – and what are you doing? Do you want to do more housework instead?’

‘I’M DOING ENOUGH BLOODY HOUSEWORK!’ roared Simon. ‘Christ, do you have any idea how hard it is trying to hold down a fucking career and having to be a sodding charlady as well?’

‘YES!’ I yelled back. ‘Funnily enough, I DO. I’m only asking you to do your equal bloody share, that’s all.’

‘And do you think my father would have been as successful as he was if HE’D had to think about the fucking hoovering or the bastarding dinners? NO! He got to concentrate on what HE needed to do, because he had my mother to look after him. And how am I meant to be a success when you are constantly nagging me? My father came home to a proper dinner, not some shit out the freezer, and a clean house, and no one ever fucking whined on at him about childcare or ANY of that crap!’

‘What the FUCK does your father have to do with this?’ I demanded. ‘Things have changed. WOMEN WORK NOW, they don’t generally tend to get the option of staying at home, playing the little woman to the big man who goes out into the fucking world and brings home the woolly mammoth to feast on. I CAN BRING HOME MY OWN MAMMOTH, even if your mother couldn’t.’

‘LEAVE MY MOTHER OUT OF THIS!’

‘You started it, going on about your bloody father. And do you think he gives your mother any credit for her part in his success? Can’t you see that your mother has spent most of her life bored and frustrated trying to find a way to validate herself?’

‘My mother is perfectly happy. She enjoyed looking after us all. It’s a shame you don’t feel the same.’

‘Your mother washed your pants and did every bloody thing for you until you moved in with me. She bought you SIXTY PAIRS OF PANTS when you went to university, so you could go home every couple of months and get your washing done, so you didn’t have to do it yourself. Your mother is a big part of why you are such a useless fucker now. And FYI, NO ONE ENJOYS WASHING PANTS, SIMON, NOT EVEN YOUR MOTHER!’

‘You’re being ridiculous. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. All I want is a wife who supports me, and all I get is grief!’

‘All I want is a husband who fucking supports me, and all I get is complaints because I’m not some sodding Stepford wife. Go fuck yourself!’

‘YOU go fuck yourself!’

‘I said it first. I win!’

‘See? You’re impossible and childish.’

We aren’t speaking now.

Tuesday, 8 November

The morning started badly. Sometimes I feel like I might as well be invisible as an actual person – my role is to find missing PE kits and water bottles and homework while everyone else faffs around and expects me to facilitate them. The final straw today, which might not sound much, but sometimes it’s the little things, was Simon vanishing into the en suite just before I had to leave to drop the kids at breakfast club to go for a lengthy and leisurely shit, meaning I couldn’t get in to brush my teeth, despite me loudly announcing that I was going to brush my teeth and then we were leaving immediately after that. Bad enough that he had ignored the chaos around him, focusing only on making and drinking his coffee, while I slapped together sandwiches and filled in permission slips that the children had ‘only just found’ and tested them on their spellings while trying to put on my make-up so that I looked like a calm and presentable professional person. But to pick the bathroom where my toothbrush was for his morning shit, leaving me the choice of being late, or going with unbrushed teeth, was just selfish! I hammered on the door and broke my vow to never speak to him again, as I bade him hurry up, to which he replied these things couldn’t be hurried. I hammered again and told him he would have to take the children to school, and was informed he couldn’t possibly, because he is very Busy and Important, and that would make him late, despite me hammering on the door again and reminding him that I had a big meeting this morning and also couldn’t be late. Finally, he sauntered out, looking pleased with himself, and I was able to dash in (holding my breath against the stench) and have a very perfunctory scrub, before hurling the children in the car and screeching off down the road, while the children asked what the rush was, and I explained once more about my NEW JOB and IMPORTANT MEETING and they looked bored and uninterested. Neither of them wished me luck, or said well done, or that they hoped my day would go well. As far as my loving family are concerned, my sole reason for existence is to serve them. I do not exist as a person in my own right to them. I am just the packed-lunch maker, the clothes washer, the hooverer, the fishfinger cooker and the pants picker-upper.

I hurtled into the office, only just on time, and slid into the Thinking Space about ten seconds before Alan, who was followed by James looking hollow-eyed and yawning.

‘Been out on the piss, James?’ said Alan.

‘No, my fucking five-year-old had nightmares – he was up half the night. Every bloody time my wife came back to bed, she woke me up and I’m knackered!’

‘Doesn’t your wife work too?’ I said.

‘Yeah, apparently she fell asleep on the train this morning and missed her stop or something. She’s blaming me for some reason, FFS!’

Lydia shot in shortly after James, jabbering frantically into her phone.

‘I know, I know, please, Mum, I’ll be back as soon as I can, please just for the morning, OK? I’ll try to get Chris to come home if I can’t get away.’

‘Everything all right, Lydia?’ enquired Alan smoothly.

‘Yes, fine,’ said Lydia shortly.

‘Another domestic crisis, is it?’ said Alan. ‘What is it this time?’

‘My nanny’s sick,’ said Lydia miserably. ‘So my mother is standing in for the morning so that I can be here, but she is not coping very well.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Alan. ‘Are we the only ones keeping it together this morning, Ellen? James over there with eyes like pissholes in the snow. Lydia – Lydia, you’re wearing odd shoes! And Ed and the new client are due in at any moment. And Joe’s not here because he’s at his girlfriend’s first scan, so no doubt he will shortly be joining the ranks of the sleep-deprived zombies too. I bet you’re glad you don’t have kids, Ellen, looking at the state of these two.’

I opened my mouth, and thought of the rows, the ingratitude, the being taken for granted. Although obviously I loved my family, just at the moment I didn’t like them very much. I closed my mouth again, and Ed shuffled in, looking disgruntled at being dislodged from his office, with the VIP client in tow. Lydia hastily shoved her feet under a beanbag.

Wednesday, 9 November

Oh fuckadoodledoo, buggeringratsarses, cockingdogsknobs and twatdiddlingfucksticks. Buoyed up with smug superiority at the wonder of the Halloween Disco I had organised (apart from the green face thing, that was not so good), I had been blithely swanning along, feeling like I had discharged all my PTA duties most splendidly, and could forget all about it now.

Apparently not, because while I hiding in Pret with James, avoiding Alan, who had given us a long lecture on the evils of gluten and why we should all be eating sashimi for lunch (Alan’s ‘clean eating’, I have noticed, seems to take the form of being a sanctimonious cross-fit fucker Sunday to Thursday and drinking his own body weight in anything vaguely alcoholic Friday and Saturday. Apparently, he assures me, this is totally what the cavemen would have done, had they had cave pubs), in came another email from Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy:

Hi Ellen,

Just realised that I hadn’t forwarded you the list of stall holders who have already booked for the Christmas Fayre – here you go. I should probably also remind you that you need to get the posters etc advertising the Fayre up this week, as the hall is booked for Friday 2nd December. There’s quite a few stalls already booked, but you will need at least another ten – try and book different things, as no one wants a Fayre that is only selling scarves and cupcakes. You also need to talk to the nursery about their stall, and the school Fairtrade committee about their stall, and make sure you have enough mulled wine and mince pies for the night, and you’ll need plenty of volunteers to help set up and clear away, ideally some big strong dads to put all the tables up and down. Oh, and you’ll need to get someone to be Santa for the grotto. And you’ll need a grotto. Don’t worry, it’s really nothing a few fairy lights can’t do! Oh, and don’t forget to ask for donations for raffle and tombola prizes! A bottle tombola is always fun, and avoids those donations of 1970s bathsalts!

Good Luck! Xxxxxx

Fuck My Fucking Life. As well as a full-time job and keeping up the façade of being childless to my colleagues, because now it would be officially Awkward to come clean, I have to pull together a Christmas Fayre (FFS, why is it a Fayre? Why not a Fair? Is there some bylaw that we have to use a cutesy ye olde worlde spellinge to make it more Festivitied? I may rebel in my first significant act as PTA Chair and declare it to simply be a Christmas Fair), and I have three weeks to do this. I am almost certainly going to have to use a glue gun to achieve this. Possibly a staple gun as well. And given the difficulty to get the bastards to volunteer for the Halloween Disco, possibly a real gun to dragoon parent volunteers in on pain of death. I will try to look on the bright side and pretend it is an episode of Challenge Anneka, and I am pulling everything together against the odds but with less running around manically while wearing a jumpsuit.

I shall start by sending a Stern Email to all potential helpers. And then I shall abandon James to his crayfish salad and passive–aggressive grumbles about his wife, before I tell him to shut the fuck up and take some responsibility for his kids, and then go and cheer myself up by buying a pair of impractical and probably unethical shoes.

Thursday, 10 November

Well. My Stern Email had mixed results. I suggested a quick meeting at teatime with children welcome and me once again providing the fishfingers in the hope that free fishfingers might entice all the parents who complained they couldn’t come to meetings because they were too late and they didn’t have childcare (my earlier, gloriously optimistic idea of enticing parents in by holding meetings in the pub having fallen at the first hurdle), but unsurprisingly the only people who were able to come were Sam, Katie and Cara Cartwright.

I hurtled in from work, shoved two dozen fishfingers and a bag of frozen chips in the oven, and we cracked on. I agreed if Cara wanted to dress up as a sexy elf, she was welcome to, but on her head be it if people thought we were a sex party PTA, at which point she somewhat lost her enthusiasm for slutty elf costumes. Despite Cara’s obsession with fishnet stockings and skimpy get-ups, nonetheless we were powering through organising it nicely, as we are basically all sensible people with the same goal.

Katie was delegated to price up and buy the cheapest mulled wine that could be found that still had a reasonable alcoholic content without actually endangering eyesight, Sam had grudgingly agreed to be Santa, but only if he was allowed to take the Santa suit home and thoroughly boil wash it first, as it did have some very dubious stains and a whiff about it that suggested it hadn’t seen a washing machine since Mrs P was avoiding PTA swingers in the eighties.

As I could obviously no longer surreptitiously print the posters at work, I volunteered Simon to do it and whack them up all over the neighbourhood, while I tried to drum up some stalls via the wonder that is the local Facebook groups. I say ‘wonder’. Mostly they are a fascinating demonstration of the utter batshit-crazy and thinly veiled racism that lurks within our suburban streets, among the ‘urgent’ requests for recommendations for ‘reliable’ tradesmen (why is it always urgent? I get how you could urgently need a plumber or an electrician, but I am always baffled by the people who need a decorator, stat). Some of my favourite crazy posts, apart from the endless debates about dog shit, were the lady who posted for weeks demanding to know who had stolen her budgie, which had flown out the window and not returned, complete with insisting she was going to involve the police, and the man who started a campaign to stop people trimming their hedges, as it was ‘torturing plants’. Add to that the veiled threats about ‘You know who you are, you, who did that thing, that I’m not going to say what it was, but you know what I am talking about,’ followed by heated rows about how it wasn’t them what done it and I know what YOU done but I’m not saying here, you slag, and what appears to be the general complete and utter lack of any grasp of spelling or grammar in the local populace – an astonishing number of people have trouble with their TV ‘ariels’, and if it’s not their ‘ariels’ playing up, it’s their ‘arials’, plus many a ‘chester draws’ is offered for sale, along with my own personal favourites of a ‘knecklace’ and a ‘Victorian cabinet – stamp says made in 1914’, and you can while away a frightening amount of time and judgement. It’s actually better than Jeremy Kyle. However, it also appears to be useful for finding stallholders for Christmas Fayres/Fairs, so I shall have to dip my toe into the murky waters instead of merely watching agog.

Cara was to menace tombola donations out of unsuspecting parents and purchase the entire contents of Poundland, and we pretty much had it all sorted when Kiki with two Ks appeared.

‘Oh,’ she sniffed, ‘I see you’ve started without me. I was trying to get some photos of Lalabelle and Trixierose playing in the autumn leaves, but they kept crying they were cold, which is useless and a total waste of the tasteful knitwear I bought them. You should have said if it was going to start promptly!’

‘Sorry, Kiki,’ I said. ‘I did say we would be starting at 6.15 sharp and it is … 6.43 now. Do your girls want some fishfingers and chips?’

Lalabelle and Trixierose’s faces lit up at the sight of the delicious beige freezer goodness that the other children were shovelling in, doused in liberal quantities of tomato sauce. Kiki, however, recoiled.

‘GOD, no, Ellen! We are total clean eaters. Don’t you have any micro salad leaves, or pomegranate seeds, or manuka honey?’

‘There’s a token bowl of cherry tomatoes and cucumber on the table for the children to ignore,’ I suggested.

Kiki peered at the bowl. ‘They don’t seem to be multi-coloured heirloom tomatoes?’ she complained.

‘No,’ I said. ‘They are bog-standard ones that were on special offer because no fucker is going to eat them. They are only there to salve my conscience and make me feel like I’ve made a gesture towards nutrition.’

‘Mummy, can we have the fishfingers now?’ pleaded Lalabelle.

‘Darlings, you know we don’t eat things like that, do we?’ sang Kiki.

‘But we do, Mummy,’ said Lalabelle in surprise. ‘We do it all the time. We had chicken dippers and smiley faces last night!’

‘No, darling. Last night we had an avocado and quinoa salad, didn’t we? Mummy took a lovely photo of you and Trixierose enjoying it for Instagram, remember?’

‘Oh,’ said Lalabelle in disgust. ‘You mean the yucky stuff you made us pretend to eat before we had our proper tea?’

‘Ha ha ha!’ trilled Kiki. ‘Such an imagination you have, Lalabelle, aren’t you funny! Oh fine, yes, have the fishfingers.’

‘Right,’ I said, once Lalabelle and Trixierose had helped themselves (since I had failed to ever ask Kiki the inspiration behind her children’s names, she had insisted on telling me anyway – apparently her main goal when naming her children was to find something ‘unique’ that would be part of her ‘brand’ and really ‘stand out’ on social media. I did try not to judge. I failed). ‘Let’s get on then. I think we’ve really got everything pretty much sorted now, Kiki, though any help you could offer would be fantastic, of course.’

‘Well, I’m very busy with work, so I can’t do much,’ said Kiki.

‘What do you actually do?’ asked Cara.

Kiki laughed merrily. ‘I’ve told you Cara, I’m a social media influencer. None of you have followed me yet, though I keep telling you @kikiloveandlife!’

‘And is that an actual job now?’ said Cara. ‘Do you make money?’

‘Well,’ said Kiki, ‘I mean, I’m still building my brand, of course, but the really big influencers can make millions.’

‘Yes, but how do you become one of them?’ said Cara, who I suspected was just winding Kiki up now.

‘Um, well, you build your brand … you network … um … I like to travel. So I offer a really unique view on how to travel with children and then brands get in touch and offer to partner with you for holidays and the like.’

‘So, like free holidays, you mean?’

‘Well, not free, you are working while you are there, you have to take photos and write reviews. It’s harder than it sounds,’ insisted Kiki.

‘So, what sort of places have you been to then?’ enquired Cara silkily (I rather admire Cara’s ability to be quite evil under the guise of being caring and concerned. I lack such subtlety and guile).

‘Well, we went to the Seychelles, all-inclusive, to a luxury resort last month,’ said Kiki smugly.

‘Oh,’ said Cara, the wind rather taken out of her sails.

‘Ugh,’ interrupted Lalabelle. ‘I hated the stupid Seashells. The food was all funny and it was TOO HOT!’

‘Nonsense, darling, you loved it. Mummy has lots of lovely photos of you having a fabulous time,’ hissed Kiki.

‘But what about actual money, to live on?’ said Cara.

‘Well, sometimes they pay me too,’ said Kiki.

‘And is that enough?’

‘Well, it doesn’t really matter. My husband’s a hedge-fund manager.’

Cara muttered something unrepeatable. I don’t think she will be following Kiki on Instagram anytime soon.

‘Right, could we just get back to the Christmas Fair, PLEASE?’ I said in a desperate attempt at assertion, much though I had enjoyed Cara interrogating Kiki.

‘Hang on!’ cried Kiki. ‘I’m going to take a photo of all the children round the table, it’s perfect for a “family chaos” shot for my blog.’

‘Hang on,’ objected Katie. ‘You can’t just take photos of our children as well to put online!’

We all chimed in agreeing that Kiki was not using our kids as content fodder, about which she got quite sulky and said we were being very unreasonable. And Jane wonders why I am trying to discourage her from Instagram!

When we FINALLY returned to discussing the fucking Christmas Fair, Kiki said, ‘What about décor for the hall?’

‘Fuck, yes, good point!’ I said.

‘I could be in charge of that!’ offered Kiki.

‘That would be fabulous, thank you.’ I said gratefully. ‘I think someone said there’s a box of decorations somewhere in the PTA cupboard at school – tinsel and stars and bits and pieces – and I’m sure we could all lend some fairy lights for the night too.’

Kiki blinked slowly. ‘I was thinking more some sort of Scandi chic theme,’ she said. ‘I really want to make this stand out – the Halloween disco was a bit tacky, if you don’t mind me saying so. We should do something really eyecatching for the Christmas Fair. What is the budget for décor anyway? I reckon I could do it all for about two grand, but obviously if the budget can stretch to more I could really make it pop.’

Once we had all finished laughing, we gently explained to Kiki that there was no budget for decorations. If the entire evening RAISED £2,000 we would consider it a job well done. At best, if the tinsel in the school cupboard was particularly threadbare and bedraggled, she might be allowed £5 to run amok in Poundland.

Kiki was wide-eyed with horror, until Cara suggested that she should look on it as a challenge, and use it as an chance to write a blog post about Christmas decorations on a shoestring. Kiki still looked unsure, but Cara had said the magic words of ‘Instagram opportunity’ and so Kiki was unable to refuse. She retreated to a corner to pout into her phone and take some selfies while her children mainlined ketchup and we tied up the loose ends. Once everyone finally left, I cleared tables, loaded washing machines and stared hopelessly into the fridge for inspiration for something for dinner for Simon and me, while snacking mindlessly on leftover fishfingers until he finally got home, having opted to ‘work late’ rather than face the PTA hell of a house full of children.

Friday, 11 November

I had little desire to go straight home after work for another evening of resentful silences and angry sighing at each other, so since the children were both on a sleepover at Sam’s house, I accepted the invitation to go for Friday drinks with the rest of the team (minus Lydia, who was rushing home so the nanny didn’t hand in her notice again, and Ed, who could not come because it would involve speaking to People. I sometimes think I should introduce Ed and Simon – they both seem to have the same fear of People and could sit in a companionable silence, quietly hating everyone around them).

I had the wit to stay off the Gibsons this time, not because of the pickled onions but because they are neat booze, they get you shitfaced in an unseemly short amount of time, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was capable of undoing the complicated fastening of my trousers in time if I was hammered, before I weed myself.

I took a deep breath and braced myself before I opened the front door, ready for the horrible atmosphere inside. All was quiet, apart from Judgy Dog, who hurled himself upon me with joy. One always gets at least ten minutes of unadultered adoration from Judgy when you come home – he is happy you are back because he thought you were gone forever, and then he remembers that you left him and so he sulks for the next hour after that. Out of all of us, though, Judgy seems to be the one coping best with my return to full-time work, as he gets picked up by the dog sitter in the morning and gets to spend the day terrorising (terrierising) her other charges, before being returned in the evening. I love the lovely dog sitter.

‘At least someone is pleased to see me, hey boy?’ I said, scooping him up and burying my face in his fur. People rave about the delicious scent of a newborn baby, but I never really got it. Babies smell of talcum powder and sour milk and Sudocrem and shit. I much prefer the smell of Judgy’s fur, which is sort of biscuity, with a hint of mud and a whiff of fresh air. Unless he is wet, of course, in which case he just smells of wet dog, which is not so nice. He did his favourite thing of snuggling into my neck and making a strange groaning sound, while wrapping his paws round my hand so I couldn’t let him go.

‘Someone loves me anyway, don’t they, Mr Woofingtons?’ I whispered in his ear. He looked at me indignantly. He doesn’t like being called Mr Woofingtons, as he feels it is beneath his dignity.

There was no sign of Simon, who I assumed had either pissed off out since there were no kids at home, or was sulking somewhere, so still holding Judgy I trudged through to the kitchen in search of another glass of wine, and maybe some crisps to act as blotting paper.

I almost dropped the dog when I found Simon in the kitchen, apparently cooking, and through the door into the dining room, which we only use on special occasions, I could see the table was laid for two, with candles lit (and all the crap which is usually piled on the table had also mysteriously vanished. Where was it? Hopefully not thrown out – I had many useful pieces of paper Carefully Filed amongst the piles of shit).

‘Are you expecting someone?’ I enquired coldly.

‘Only you, darling!’ said Simon cheerfully (what did the bastard have to be so cheerful about, I wondered darkly? Throwing out my Important Bits of Paper?).

‘I thought I’d make us some dinner!’

‘Did you actually make it, or did you defrost something I made?’

‘Well, technically I bought it from M&S. Does that count?’

‘You may count that as you cooking,’ I conceded graciously.

‘I thought perhaps we need to spend some time together. Without rushing about and juggling stuff and trying to do eleventy billion other things at the same time, to use your favourite phrase.’

‘“Eleventy billion” is not my favourite phrase. “Arsed-faced cockwombles” is my current favourite phrase!’ I informed him.

‘I quite like that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I thought it might help. To have a meal together, to talk instead of shouting, maybe even to try and remember why we married each other …’

‘Is this about sex?’ I said suspiciously. ‘Are you only doing this because you want a shag?’

‘No! I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but that’s not why.’

‘And are you going to do the dishes as well?’

‘Of course, darling, that’s the beauty of kind Mr Marks and Mr Spencer providing dinner, there will be two plates to go in the dishwasher and the rest can be chucked out.’

‘That’s not very green,’ I grumbled. ‘They would frown upon such a cavalier attitude to sustainability at work.’

‘Well, you’re not at work now, are you?’ said Simon briskly. ‘So why don’t you put down that smelly mutt and come and have a glass of wine and something to eat.’

‘He smells LOVELY!’ I objected. ‘Don’t listen to him, Judgy, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Simon.

Over dinner (beef Wellington, a bit retro, but jolly tasty) he said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that about my mother supporting my father. I just feel … inadequate sometimes, when I look at where my father was at my age, and where I am. Actually I feel like a failure compared to him – we’ll never be able to afford a house like theirs, or to send two kids to boarding school. And I suppose I’m jealous, not only of what he achieved but that he never had to worry about picking up kids or cooking or housework. He cut the grass on Sundays and that was it.’

‘But no one is where their parents were at their age anymore,’ I said. ‘Of course you’re not a failure, it’s just that the world has changed. Most people don’t live like they used to, or live like their parents, and women no longer want to just be housekeepers living off their husband’s money, even if their husband can afford for them not to work. Look at Kiki. Her husband earns a fortune, and she’s still trying to make it as a social media influencer –’

‘A what?’

‘Never mind what it is, darling. The point is that she wants something for herself, achievements of her own, beyond fulfilling her basic biological function. We all do. And if it was all easy and fabulous for your dad, how do you think it was for your mum, always putting him first, thinking of everyone before herself? It must have been quite boring and frustrating for her – she has almost said as much at times.’

‘I suppose so. Oh God, Ellen, when did life get so hard? It all sounded so easy, didn’t it? We got married and we were going to live happily ever after. What happened to us?’

‘I suppose we grew up.’

Later he said, ‘I miss you. I feel like we’re just ships that pass in the night at the moment.’

‘That’s what my parents used to say when they were both working. We could leave each other notes, like they did.’

‘With all due respect, darling, I don’t think that’s the solution, given your parents went on to have an extremely bitter and acrimonious divorce.’

‘No, I suppose not. What is, then?’

‘I don’t know, darling. We’ll think of something.’

Tuesday, 22 November

An email from Jessica today. I suppose at least I should be grateful that she had heeded my instructions not to call me at work (even though I have noticed they are fairly relaxed about personal calls, I just don’t really want to talk to Jessica because she will invariably have something she wants to boss me around about). My heart still sank when I saw her name pop up in my inbox, for there is never any chance that Jessica is just getting in touch for a chat, or to impart good news, or to send me an amusing cat meme. She always wants something, or is ordering me to do something. I am finding it hard to make the transition from eternal optimist to pragmatic pessimist, though, so I remained hopeful, despite the subject header being ‘Christmas’.

Hi Ellen,

Mum says you haven’t answered her yet about whether you are going to her and Geoffrey for Christmas. She says can you get back to her asap, as she is booking her Waitrose delivery slot now and she wants to complete the order so she doesn’t have to think about it again, because she’s got so much else on.

Neil and I and the children are going, of course, and Geoffrey’s daughter will be there too, so I really think you all should come as well.

Please can you email Mum and let her know your plans, because you know those Christmas delivery slots get booked up so fast, and she really doesn’t want to miss out?

Best wishes,

Jessica.

Fuck’s sake! Mum only emailed me yesterday! YESTERDAY! And she made no mention of the urgency to reply to her IMMEDIATELY so she could book her hallowed bastarding Waitrose delivery slot. None whatsofuckingever! In fact, the whole tone of the email suggested that us coming to her for Christmas was pretty much a fait accompli, as she had decided that was what was happening and so we would do as we were told. And now she has gone off complaining to Jessica the Fucking Golden Child about how her second-best daughter has not even bothered to reply, because clearly cruel and uncaring second-best daughter is not concerned about whether or not she gets a prime delivery slot, because second-best daughter is selfish and rude, which is why she loves Jessica the best. Also, what the actual fuck is Mum so busy doing that she has to put her sodding supermarket Christmas order in in NOVEMBER? Is the tennis club going to crumble if she lets her grip on the committee slip for a second? Will the choir mutiny if Mum takes an hour off to put an online order in, and run amok, making the vicar walk the plank? Will the Horticultural Society go mad without a steady hand on the tiller and repeat the dreadful scene of 2013 when they planted geraniums and begonias in the hanging baskets beside the village shop (Mum still shudders at the memory. Apparently it made the village look terribly common, and just ‘awfully municipal, darling’)?

Perhaps she fears that with her watchful eye distracted in the Festive Season, Geoffrey will take advantage and have an extra sherry before dinner and unleash his inner Daily Mail reader, shouting angrily about The Left and The Immigrants and demanding the Return of National Service, instead of just being quietly racist and homophobic in the corner. God only knows. Mummy likes to describe herself as ‘keeping busy’, but really that means she likes interfering and bossing people about. Especially me. Oh, and the joy of Geoffrey’s perfect daughter Sarah, and Piers, her equally perfect husband!

And Geoffrey. Mum was as smug as a smug thing when, having spent fifteen years playing the lead role of Wronged Wife to rave reviews, after she kicked Daddy out when he got caught with his pants down shagging his secretary at the office Christmas party (quite literally, I do hope they disinfected that photocopier afterwards) about thirteen years ago, she managed to bag herself a rich widower (‘So much more convenient than a divorcee, darling, no tiresome ex-wife to bother with or alimony payments to take into account when working out how much of his pension one will be entitled to’) and departed to live in Georgian splendour in Yorkshire, where she takes great delight in playing the Lady of the Manor, and mercilessly organising the rest of the village, whether they want to be organised or not.

But although as far as Mum was concerned, Geoffrey was a catch (all his own teeth, solvent, Tory voter, suitable house – ‘I don’t know how you manage without an Aga, darling, isn’t it terribly difficult? Well, I do think you’re awfully brave. Can you even make anything from Mary Berry, or do you have to rely on Delia, you poor thing. Or do you just use Nigella? I know her father is dear Nigel Lawson, but she’s just so terribly licky when she’s cooking. Like an over-sexed Labrador!’ – that handy dead wife, and best of all as far as Mum was concerned, ‘At least he’s not the sort who pesters one for that!’), I can’t say I have ever really warmed to him. Of course, our relationship probably wasn’t helped when he told me his beloved only daughter had been very active in the Young Conservatives, and I laughed and said what a good joke and he said, no, really, she had found it super fun, and I said what, really, because I didn’t think people actually did things like that unless they were William Hague, and he got a bit huffy. Also, even though I was twenty-nine when they got married, and had in fact been married myself for several years, Geoffrey felt it was his place as my new stepfather to try to give me paternal advice, such as suggesting that I would probably get pregnant quicker if I gave up my job and stayed at home, as he had read an article that suggested that sitting in front of a computer all day would, in fact, speed up my biological clock. Given that Simon and I weren’t even trying for a baby at the time, I wasn’t entirely grateful for this helpful tip.

I am not calling her back yet. I am Very Busy And Important, and I have better things to do than dance immediately to the tune played by Jessica and Mum. I wonder if she has only summonsed us so that Daddy and Natalia can’t have Christmas with us. It wouldn’t surprise me. Usually she and Geoffrey spend Christmas on a cruise, but I could quite see that she would take a malicious pleasure in knowing that it wouldn’t even have occurred to Daddy to start thinking about Christmas yet, so by getting in first and summonsing Jessica and me to Yorkshire she will in effect have thwarted any ideas he might have had about spending Christmas with his daughters and grandchildren. Twenty-eight years after divorcing him, I think it’s safe to say that Mum is still harbouring a grudge. Of course, she forgets that it probably won’t have crossed Daddy’s mind to spend Christmas with us, and he has probably booked a cruise himself.

Wednesday, 23 November

Feeling fat and bloated and sluggish after a surfeit of surreptitious Mint Clubs, I had asked Alan about his gym. He brightly informed me that they do lunchtime classes that last as little as twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! ‘I can totally do a twenty-minute class,’ I thought to myself. ‘In fact, I will probably go and do more afterwards. A mere twenty-minute class won’t be very taxing.’

So it was that this lunchtime I picked up my brand new shiny gym bag and trotted off after Alan, feeling thinner already, just for purchasing new trainers!

‘It’s called a HIIT class,’ Alan told me. ‘It’s about high-intensity work followed by rest periods.’

‘Rest periods?’ I scoffed. ‘A twenty-minute class that included rest periods?’ I was so going to ace this! Back in the day I had often gone to hour-long step classes, with no rest periods. Truly, I thought smugly, these millennials are indeed a snowflake generation.

It turned out to be a tiny bit harder than I had anticipated. There were awful things called ‘burpees’, and also vile things called ‘squat jumps’ where you squat and then have to jump up. There were jumping jacks, which they literally made us do at school as punishments. It was horrible. And the so-called ‘rest periods’ were about two seconds long, which was just about enough time to reflect on how much you wanted to just die before the torture began again.

The worst part came at the end. We finally got to lie down and the sadistic bastard instructor shouted that we were going to do pelvic-floor exercises. I brightened at this. I can do pelvic-floor exercises. A nice gentle finish would be just the job, though I hadn’t realised men could do them too. Perhaps it tightens their prostate or something, I thought.

The bastard man loomed over me. ‘DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES?’ he bellowed.

I haughtily assured him that I most certainly did. Then recoiled in horror as he thrust a large weight at me. What the actual fuck? Were we … were we meant to … insert it? Surely that could not be safe? Or hygienic? Where would the men put it? On second thoughts, I didn’t want to know!

It turned out, to my relief, that by ‘pelvic-floor exercises’ he had meant exercises for one’s lower back and core that are performed while lying on the floor. I considered having a stern word with him about misrepresentation, but mostly I wanted a shower and then to lie curled in a foetal position in a darkened room while whimpering. I wasn’t entirely sure my legs still worked.

As I staggered out, puce and heaving for breath, and Alan smirked and said, ‘Did you enjoy that, Ellen?’ and I wished I had the strength remaining to pick up one of the free weights and smack the smug fucker round the head with it, Mum rang.

‘Hello,’ I gasped.

‘Oh my God, what on earth is wrong with you?’ twittered Mum. ‘Oh Ellen, you’re not having sex are you? Have you become one of those women who finds fulfilment in sordid lunchtime trysts in seedy hotels?’

‘No, Mum, I’m at the gym!’ I protested.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Well, I must say you could probably do with it!’

‘What do you want, Mum?’

‘That’s not very nice! I’m trying to be considerate and call you at lunchtime after you said I wasn’t to call you at work anymore, though I don’t see that what you do is so urgent you couldn’t talk to me, but anyway. You still haven’t replied to my email about Christmas. Didn’t Jessica speak to you? I need to know Ellen, I need to get that Waitrose order in today! ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?’

Simon had actually been quite cheery about the invitation when I’d told him, as usually we end up having Jessica and Neil and the gruesome twosome (I mean my adorable niece and nephew) here for Christmas, along with whoever else I’ve happened to see in December while pissed and have decided it would be a good idea to invite, and so Christmas a) ends up costing an arm and a leg because I’ve invited so many people who need to be fed and watered. (Oh God, the worst year was when Simon’s sister Louisa descended on us for Christmas, along with her six unwashed children and her then husband – the appalling Bardo. If I am never grateful for anything else in my life, I will be eternally grateful for Louisa ditching Bardo and pushing off to live in France next door to Simon’s poor parents, so I am unlikely to ever have to spend Christmas with her again. It was literally the worst Christmas of my life – Louisa and Bardo and the offspring were gluten-free vegans who lived primarily on lentils and the effect of this on my plumbing was nothing short of disastrous.) And b) means that I end up getting myself into a complete state because I have put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself and end up screaming at everyone. One unfortunate year I even hurled a tray of mince pies at Simon’s head after he suggested I should ‘just try to relax a bit’. Simon pointed out that if we go to my mother and Geoffrey’s for Christmas we will save a fortune, and also, because my mother doesn’t trust me in the kitchen (she still insists on bringing up an unfortunate incident in my teens when I managed to set some spaghetti on fire when I left it hanging over the edge of the pot), I won’t be running around like a blue-arsed fly, shouting that ALL I WANT TO DO IS WATCH IT’S A WONDERFUL FUCKING LIFE, WHY IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK? He also remarked I might even manage to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, which would in itself be a Christmas Miracle. Also, if we go to Mum’s I can concentrate on work, not on constant emails from Jessica about gluten-free bastarding stuffing.

So I gritted my teeth and said, yes, Mum, we’d love to come etc., etc., which was when she dropped the bombshell about why they are not going on a cruise this year – Geoffrey’s daughter, Sarah the Wünder Child, the blonde, perfect manifestation of purely distilled smugness in human form, the daughter Mum likes even better than Jessica, is With Child.

‘Isn’t it exciting!’ trilled Mum. ‘Our first grandchild! Such marvellous news!’

‘Errr, Mum, you already have four grandchildren.’ I pointed out.

‘Oh, do stop being difficult, Ellen. You know perfectly well what I mean.’

No, I didn’t have a fucking scoobies what she meant, I rarely do. I was propped up against the wall of the gym by now, and in grave danger of actually falling over.

‘Anyway, Mum, I have to go now,’ I said feebly, while I eyed up the fifty yards I had to totter across to get to the changing rooms.

‘Right, darling, me too. Waitrose orders to do!’ trilled Mum.

I think my legs might fall off.

Saturday, 26 November

Jane has been vile today. A snarling, snapping, shouting bundle of fury (admittedly that isn’t that unusual for Jane – it was pretty much how she came out of the womb), but she took it to a whole new level today. I was torn between fretting that clearly Jane was feeling unloved because she was now an abandoned child who might as well be raised by wolves due to her mother’s selfishness, and being utterly terrified that perhaps this was the beginning of the hormonal horrors. I am not ready for Jane to embark on a monthly round of premenstrual rage – she is too young, and I am not strong enough. However, after much spitting, door-slamming, stamping, shouting and screaming, we finally got to the bottom of it, after Peter made an innocent comment about Jack O’Connor in his class and Jane went proper batshit.

‘Jack O’Connor is HORRIBLE!’ she shouted. ‘And his sister Megan is EVEN WORSE! I HATE her, I hate their whole family!’

‘WTF?’ I thought. The O’Connors had always seemed a perfectly nice family. Oh God, oh God, what if they’re not? What if the children are actually vile and are bullying Jane, and I hadn’t even noticed because I had just assumed the O’Connors were perfectly pleasant on account of driving an Audi and wearing Boden and so being proper middle-class, but actually the children are psychopaths and torment Jane, but she didn’t feel she could tell anyone, because I am a Bad And Uncaring Working Mother (maybe on some level she knows I am pretending not to have any children at work), and so her innocent, childish psyche has been scarred forever, firstly because I left her with a childminder when she was six months old so I could work part-time because, you know, we needed money for luxuries, like food and a roof over our heads, and now I am pursuing my career at my children’s expense, including letting them drop their lovely middle-class extra-curricular activities when they declare themselves bored with them, and even worse not signing them up for more, so now they will never be well-rounded people and, OH FML, I am a terrible mother and I have ruined Jane’s life and IT IS ALL MY FAULT!

While I was agonising to myself about my many maternal failings, and wondering whether to google how to sensitively and empathetically approach the subject with Jane, Peter cut to the chase and simply said, ‘Why don’t you like Jack and Megan anymore, Jane? Is it because you’re a massive bumhead? Who smells of poo?’

‘Peter,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t talk to your sister like that.’

‘But she called me Farticus, the Prince of All Farts,’ whined Peter.

‘I don’t care! I don’t want to hear either of you speaking to each other like that.’ (Oh God, maybe Peter is emotionally traumatised as well. Maybe I am an unfit parent because I didn’t carry them around in a sling until they were old enough to buy a round in the pub. I had somewhat been under the impression that Peter’s world entirely revolved around food, pooing, Pokémon and insulting his sister, but perhaps he has hidden depths that I had failed to plumb. Admittedly, the last time I panicked about him being emotionally stunted and suggested he could talk to me about his feelings, his response was to remark that he could feel a big poo coming on, but even so.)

‘Jane, darling!’ I said, putting on my Caring And Concerned Mummy Face. ‘Tell me what Jack and Megan have done to you, to make you so upset.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ sniffed Jane. ‘And Peter IS Farticus, Prince of All the Farts. Farticus, Farticus!’ she chanted at him.

Oh God. She was trying to distract me from her pain. Admittedly, by causing her brother pain, but it still counted. Perhaps I should get a Barbie and tell her to show me on the doll where they had hurt her?

I tried again, still with the Caring Face. ‘You can tell me, you know. Mummy will understand. I love you, Jane, and you can talk to me about anything.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Jane. ‘Mummy loves ME, Peter, not you!’

‘MUUUUUMMMMMMYYYYYYY!’ howled Peter. ‘She said you don’t love me! That’s not fair!!!!’

Jesus fucking Christ. All those bloody articles about communicating with your children, really talking to them, listening to them, encouraging them to open up to you – not one single bastarding article tells you what to do when your children are more interested in winding each other up than having deep and meaningful heart-to-heart with you. All those sodding children in the articles can’t WAIT to tell their mummies and daddies all about their hopes and dreams and secrets and fears. THEY don’t bloody well think it is more amusing to come up with cruel yet witty nicknames and accuse each other of farting! I don’t believe those sensitive, emotionally balanced children even exist. I think it’s like the girls in the Judy Blume books who would rush home in excitement to tell their mums the minute they got their periods. Like periods were a good thing, and something you wanted to talk about! I mean, who even does that? Especially at a difficult point in your adolescence. I think my friends and I were well into our twenties before we would even admit to each other that we had periods. Certainly the thought of announcing it Loud And Proud when we first came on would NEVER have happened. And I’m pretty sure that the last thing Jane will do when she starts is to dash in the door crying, ‘MOTHER, I AM A WOMAN NOW!!’ I do hope not, anyway. That would be very embarrassing.

‘Of course I love you, Peter,’ I said firmly. ‘Jane’s just being silly.’

‘No, I’m not. Mummy doesn’t love you because you’re not her real child. She found you in a bin,’ crowed Jane.

‘MUUUUUMMMMMYYYYYY!’ screamed Peter.

‘JANE! For FUCK’S SAKE! Shut UP!’ I howled.

‘I thought you wanted me to TALK to you,’ said Jane indignantly. ‘You just said, “You can talk to me about anything.” You LITERALLY just said that RIGHT NOW, and then you told me to shut up. Which is it? You are being very confusing.’

‘Arrrgh! Yes, talk to me. I want you to talk to me. NOT to start tormenting your brother by telling him he was found in a bin. Again!’

‘It’s not fair. I can’t even say anything,’ huffed Jane.

‘But MUUUUMMMMYYYYY!! She said I was found in a bin. It’s NOT TRUE, is it, Mummy? Tell her it’s not true. I hate her. Why can’t we get rid of her, she’s horrible,’ squawked Peter.

‘Of course you weren’t found in a bin, darling. Jane was just being silly,’ I assured Peter, as Jane shrieked, ‘You told me to talk to you and now you are ignoring me and just talking to the BIN BOY!’

Oh, fucking hell. I had a headache now.

‘SHE CALLED ME BIN BOY!’

‘I WISH YOU HAD NEVER BEEN BORN! I WISH I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A BROTHER!’

‘I WISH I DIDN’T HAVE A SISTER! YOU ARE A BITCH!’

‘MUMMY, HE CALLED ME A BITCH!’

‘SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP! BOTH OF YOU JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP CALLING EACH OTHER NAMES! I AM GOING MAD!’

‘But –’

‘But –’

‘No buts! NO BUTS!’

‘She said, “No butts,”’ sniggered Peter

‘YOU have no butt!’ retorted Jane. ‘You have no butt because I unravelled your belly button while you were asleep and it fell off!’

‘ENOUGH!’

I finally restored some sort of order, and tried again, because God knows, I DO try to be a good parent, despite the abandonment issues I have probably caused and the fact I appear to be raising feral hell beasts, not human children.

‘Right, Jane. What exactly is your issue with the O’Connor children?’

‘Nothing,’ said Jane sulkily.

Peter opened his mouth.

‘No, Peter, I’m talking to Jane right now. You can talk in a minute,’ I said, ramming a handful of Jammy Dodgers into his mouth to muffle whatever insult he was about to come out with.

‘Come on, Jane. Something has obviously upset you. Just tell me what it is.’

‘I had a dream …’ mumbled Jane.

‘Sorry, what?’

‘I said, I had a dream. Megan was best friends with Sophie in my dream and she was really mean to me and she took my favourite Smiggle rubber and told Sophie not to talk to me.’

‘Ohhhhkaaaay. Just to clarify, this was all in your dream? Has Megan actually done anything horrible to you in real life?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted Jane. ‘But I just said, she was really mean in my dream. So now I hate her.’

‘Oh Jane, darling. You can’t hate people for things they do in your dreams. They are not responsible in real life for things you dream them doing when you’re asleep,’ I said.

I felt a little bit hypocritical as I tried to explain this to Jane, as I have frequently found myself seething at Simon for days for the terrible and iniquitous things that Dream Simon has done (the worst one was when I dreamt that Dream Simon had run off with Dream Hannah – how could they? My husband and my best friend! I was LIVID with the pair of them for the unspeakable betrayal by their dream counterparts).

Peter finally managed to swallow his mouthful of biscuits and burst out with, ‘You’re BONKERS! You can’t be angry with Megan and Jack for something Megan did in your dream. That’s just WEIRD!’

‘I can so!’ spat Jane. ‘I heard Mummy telling Daddy that she was really pissed off with him about something that HE’D done in one of her dreams. So why can’t I be angry with Megan?’

‘Jane, please don’t say “pissed off”, it’s not very nice,’ I said sternly, in an attempt at maternal discipline.

‘You say MUCH worse!’ retorted Jane.

‘That’s not the point. I’m a grown-up. I’m allowed to.’

‘That is so hypocritical of you!’ protested Jane.

‘Well, tough. Anyway, the point is, you cannot go into school on Monday in a huff with Megan for something she doesn’t even know that she didn’t do.’

Jane looked unconvinced.

Later, I heard Peter talking to Simon.

‘Daddy, are all women just a bit mental?’ he asked gloomily.

‘Why do you ask, darling?’ said Simon.

‘Mummy and Jane are mental.’

‘You really shouldn’t call people “mental”, it’s not very nice,’ said Simon, non-committally.

‘But they are mental! What should I call them then?’

Simon still did not actually deny that his beloved wife and adored firstborn child were ‘mental’, instead suggesting that perhaps ‘highly strung’ might be a better term for Peter to use.

‘Fine,’ said Peter. ‘Are all women as “highly strung” as Mummy and Jane?’

‘Oh, my son,’ said Simon sadly. ‘You have no idea of the deep and all-encompassing crazy that the female sex is capable of. And I’m afraid it is going to get an awful lot worse around here before too long.’

‘How come you can call them “crazy”, but I can’t call them “mental” and have to say they are “highly strung”?’ demanded Peter. ‘And what do you mean it is going to get worse? Do you mean they are going to go even more batshit than they already are?’

‘Peter, please don’t say “batshit”. Where do you even learn words like that?’

‘From Mummy. I overheard her saying that Auntie Louisa was a batshit hippy loon. It’s quite a good word, isn’t it? “Batshit.” She also said that you were going to go batshit when you found out she’d scraped the car again. Did you go batshit?’

Thanks for that, Peter. Thanks a fucking bunch. I was waiting for the right moment to tell Simon that I may have had a bijou tête-à-tête with a small bollard in a car park, but now you’ve dropped me right in the proverbial, you little toerag!

‘Mummy scraped the car again? What the fuck? How? When? When was she planning on telling me?’

‘Dunno,’ said Peter vaguely, having ‘accidentally’ volunteered just enough information to cause trouble and now losing interest with the blue touch paper thoroughly lit. ‘What did you mean about Mummy and Jane getting worse, though, Daddy? I shouldn’t think Jane could get any worse. She is very mean to me. Are you sure we can’t get rid of her, Daddy? We could have her adopted. We’d have to lie, of course, and tell them she was a nice person, because no one would want Jane if they knew what she was really like.’

‘Peter, that is not a nice way to talk about your sister.’

‘But she isn’t nice to me. She threatened to bog-wash me, just because I was in her room LOOKING at something. I didn’t even take anything, or touch anything. I was only LOOKING!’

‘What on earth is bog-washing?’ said Simon in confusion.

‘It’s when you hold someone’s head down the toilet and then flush it. That is the sort of person she is.’

‘Oh.’

‘So you see, I don’t think she could get any worse, but you said she would, so what did you mean?’

‘Errrr, nothing, son. Nothing. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. With your mother too. But just between us, we will probably be wanting to keep our heads below the parapet for the next few years. And hide any sharp objects. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find your mother and see how she has managed to wreck the car this time.’

I have no idea what he means either. I hid in the larder till I heard Simon go out to the garage, so successfully avoided the conversation about the car. It really is only a tiny scrape. And just a bit of a dent. You can hardly notice it.