Читать книгу The Woman Who Upped and Left: A laugh-out-loud read that will put a spring in your step! - Fiona Gibson, Fiona Gibson - Страница 12

Of course I plan to tell Morgan. I’ll do it when I’ve calmed down and feel more kindly disposed towards him. In the meantime, I pull out my wheeled suitcase from beneath my bed, wondering how it’ll feel to be there, on my own – with no Morgan or Stevie or Mrs B making any demands upon me whatsoever. Freedom! That’s what Wilton Grange represents. I’m not even that fussed about the cookery aspect. What is classic French cookery anyway? Steak and frites? Or things slathered in rich sauces? I have no idea. I have never even been to France. We weren’t the going-abroad kind of family but then, hardly anyone was in 1970s Yorkshire.

Plus, I’m not the fancy cooking type. Before having Morgan I pretty much survived on things on toast, and as a mother I’ve been a distinctly workaday cook, intent on providing the kind of meals my ever-ravenous child would approve of. This has tended to involve an awful lot of crumb-coated things to shove in the oven.

I glance at the hotel’s website again. My mild panic about grappling with unfamiliar ingredients is offset by visions of me lying in a huge, claw-footed bath. As for Morgan, it’ll be good for him to fend for himself for a week: a sort of intensive training week in preparation for independent adult life. So in some ways, I’m doing him a favour.

I haven’t told Stevie yet either. As I try to play down the dinner lady aspect of my life, he doesn’t even know about my award; anyway, we haven’t spoken since we said goodbye in the Charnock Richard car park. ‘Crazy busy the next few days,’ was his parting shot. Perhaps, I muse, a little break will do us good. Absence, heart fonder and all that.

As per their custom, Morgan and Jenna spend all morning in his room and, when lunchtime rolls around, they amble downstairs and head out without giving any clue as to where they might be going. I’ll tell him as soon as they come back. I wonder how best to put it? I know you had high hopes for that money, darling, but I’m going to learn to do clever things with mussels instead. Christ, better just get it over with, as soon as he comes home.

I fetch my suitcase and carry it through to my former bedroom, where most of my clothes are stored. So, what to pack for Wilton Grange? Shirley has sent me an email:

Casual, comfy clothes are required in the kitchen (aprons provided)

Flat shoes only

No jewellery please

Long hair must be tied back

Mine needs a cut urgently but unless I hack at it myself there’s no time for that. I dig out trousers and tops, plus a couple of dresses, all found in the PDSA shop: so much more satisfying than shopping in a regular high street chain and just selecting your size off the rail. I mean, where’s the challenge in that?

Not bad, I decide, dropping in my utilitarian navy swimsuit for the spa and surveying my neatly folded clothes. I add underwear and pyjamas and gather together my toiletries. Silly, I know, as the hotel will provide them, but just in case …

And that’s me, all ready and raring to go. It’s been eerily simple, and unhurried, compared to the last-minute packing I tend to do when Stevie calls. I plan to leave at 6.30 tomorrow morning at the latest, allowing extra time so I’m not the one rushing late into the welcome reception, whatever that is. Now I just want Morgan to come home so I can break the news.

Feeling more kindly disposed now, I drive to our nearest, rather uninspiring supermarket and stock up on enough provisions to nourish my son for an entire month, including Rolos and Fondant Fancies and fruit, which I’m bound to find withered on my return, plus industrial quantities of minced beef. Back home, I make an enormous pot of chilli (Morgan complained that my last batch was ‘too oniony’, perhaps food critic could be another career option?) and another of bolognaise, all to keep him going throughout the week. It feels as if I am preparing for impending war. I know it’s ridiculous but it’s making me feel marginally better about abandoning my child. In the same vein I also shape four burgers, wrapping them individually in greaseproof paper, writing ‘1 burger! Enjoy! xx’ in felt tip across the top. I realise my catering has involved an awful lot of minced beef but at least he’s unlikely to become anaemic.

By teatime – still no reappearance of Morgan – the chilli and bolognaise have cooled sufficiently to be ladled into individual cartons and labelled MON/TUE/WED/THUR/FRI: saves him having to make any tricky decisions over what to eat. We also have chicken nuggets which he’s perfectly capable of putting in the oven … and then forgetting they’re there. Plus there’s the Chinese and chippy if he gets really desperate.

Vince would say I’ve lost my mind. He’d point out that my extensive preparations are a small step from cutting up his fish fingers and tucking in his bib. However, as I plan to make the very most of every moment at Wilton Grange, I don’t want to worry for one second that Morgan is suffering from malnutrition. And now – perhaps I really am losing it – I make a batch of fairy cakes, scooping out their centres when they’re done and making them into little wings as if Morgan were seven years old. Sorry for buggering off like this, my butterfly cakes say. Sorry for not getting you the unicycle tyre and for being a mad middle-aged woman who’s probably having some kind of hormonal collapse.

I while away the evening rechecking my suitcase and willing Morgan to show up so I can tell him. I ping him a message: when u coming home? No reply, unsurprisingly. We’ve passed the stage where he felt obliged to keep me informed of his movements.

I text Vince: I’ve won a prize! A week at a cook school in Buckinghamshire. Leaving tomorrow. M will be home alone all week.

Wow amazing! Very proud of you, comes his swift reply.

Thanks, I type, but M will be ALL ALONE. Am I wrong to be terrified?

His reply takes longer this time: He’s a fully grown man, remember?

Easy for him to say, being spared the daily discussions – ‘naggings’, Morgan calls them – about what our son might do next with his life. Rifling through my purse, I dump a bundle of notes on the table, weighted down with the pepper grinder, for emergencies. Guilt money. The one thing I don’t do is gather up all the stray pants. In fact, and perhaps I really am losing it now, I drag out the plastic box of Morgan’s old toys from the cupboard under the stairs. It’s full of ratty old teddies, plus the Action Man I got for a quid on eBay, which he made into a spy – demanding that I made him a tiny Fedora hat, like the dented one here that was pretty much welded to his head during his entire spy phase, and which I found him sleeping in once. There are dog-eared books on codes and cyphers that I’ve been keeping for … what exactly? And here it is, precisely what I’m looking for: the tub of jumbo chalks he’d used to draw mysterious symbols on the pavement outside our house (only other spies would understand their significance).

Selecting the white one, I creep around the living room and carefully draw an outline around each pair of dropped pants. It’s just a joke, I tell myself. He’ll notice when I’m gone and he and Jenna will have a good laugh about his nutty mum. Only … I’m not quite sure it is funny. In fact, I fear that I am overly obsessing about pants, and that simply picking them up and depositing them into the wash might be an altogether more sensible solution.

I put the chalks back into the box and shove it back under the stairs, and get on with the task of clearing up the kitchen. That’s when I spot it, dumped in the bin: the Christmas present from me, carefully chosen as I thought he liked checked shirts, seeing as he wears one slung over a T-shirt nearly every day of his life. It’s red, blue and white, in soft brushed cotton, and is lying there with a couple of wet teabags sitting on it. He has thrown it away. I blink down at it, wondering why it didn’t occur to him that this might be hurtful to me. I mean, okay, get rid of it – discreetly. Stuff it in a litter bin in the park, hand it to a homeless person or drop it off at the charity shop. But don’t dump it on top of the tuna cans and takeaway cartons and – I notice now – the application form for part-time work at the leisure centre that I picked up for him.

The front door flies open, and I hear Morgan and Jenna tottering in. ‘Hi, Mum,’ he calls out tipsily from the hallway. ‘You there?’

‘Yes, I’m here,’ I mutter, fury bubbling inside me.

‘Been at the pub. Just gonna go up to bed, okay?’

I glance at my cakes sitting all smugly under their glass dome. ‘Fine,’ I growl, scrunching up the empty flour packet and dropping it on top of the shirt.

‘Don’t know what’s up with her,’ Morgan remarks as, giggling, he and Jenna make their way up to his room.

I don’t follow them up, and nor do I inform him of my plans when my alarm goes off with a ping at 5.50 a.m., because a hungover teenager – any teenager in fact – is incapable of conversation at this kind of hour. Anyway, what does he care whether I’m here or not? Instead, I shower quickly and slip into a favourite floral print dress, plus a pair of ballet flats. Then, as quietly as possible, I creep downstairs with my suitcase.

Morgan’s wish list is still lying on the kitchen table. The damn cheek of it, and on my birthday as well. On its blank side I write: