Diary of an Unsmug Married (10 page)

Now I don’t know
what
to say, especially as I really fancy a back rub. I’m sure I pulled something, trying to spin around the curtain pole Max left propped up in the hallway. I
told
him it would cause an accident if he didn’t put it in the shed.

TUESDAY, 22 JUNE

I’m getting really tired of Mr Meeeeurghn now, and not just because his name is so bloody hard to spell.

At lunchtime, he phones and starts screaming that he is being mistreated. ‘You protect me,
now
!’ he says. ‘I am
refugee
!’

Then he puts me on to someone else, who identifies herself as a member of staff at Primark. It turns out that Mr Meeeeurghn is trying to claim a refund on a pair of jeans that he insists he’s never worn.

The weary-sounding girl says that the jeans are
covered
in bleach; and that Mr Meeeeurghn is threatening to kill all the staff if she does not give him his money back immediately. He apparently told her that he would phone his MP who would
make
her do it.

Meanwhile, the queue of waiting customers is now so long that it reaches down the stairs, and out of the shop, but none of
them
can be served until Mr Meeeeurghn has been dealt with – by me, presumably. Some people have all the luck.

So, I tell her to put the screeching Mr Meeeeurghn back on the phone to speak to me; tell
him
that I cannot help him, and then go and check that the new office door is double-locked. Primark have security staff. We don’t – and nor do we have bulletproof glass.

WEDNESDAY, 23 JUNE

Greg is out of the office in the morning, ‘raising awareness’. He texts me at 11:30am to say that he has found a solution to all our problems with difficult constituents. ‘Nuke ‘em’, is his measured response.

He comes back shortly afterwards, but tells me that he is so traumatised by his run-in with Miss Harpenden and her hypothetical rats that we need to treat ourselves by nominating lunchtime as
Writing Honest Letters Hour
.

This is a luxury in which we occasionally indulge. A typical example would be my reply to Mr Ellis’ repeated threats to kill himself, if we don’t get him what he wants:

Dear Mr Ellis,

Thank you for your letter threatening to throw yourself off the multi-storey car park if we do not stop your next-door neighbour from turning off her light switch so noisily.

I regret that I will not be able to be present tomorrow at 4:00pm as you requested, as I have to be in the House of Commons from Mondays to Thursdays. However, if you could possibly arrange to reschedule the event for 4:30pm on Friday, I shall be more than happy to attend.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Sinclair, MP for Lichford East

Meanwhile, Greg is composing a response to Mrs Underwood, who has written in to ask whether there are plans to increase spending on public benches on the short route between her house and the betting shop:

Dear Mrs Underwood,

Further to your recent letter, I regret that there are currently no plans to increase spending for accessible seating in your area, as any additional funds are earmarked for tax cuts for me.

Yours, etc.
,

Andrew Sinclair, MP for the hardworking people of Lichford East

It’s almost heartbreaking to have to shred our literary masterpieces as soon as we’ve finished reading them out but, even so, WHLH has cheered us both up no end. I’ve even managed to forget that Max has jet-setted off to Germany on his business trip, and that he won’t be home tonight – until I get home, and have to deal with Josh and Connie all by myself.

Do kids
ever
grow out of sibling rivalry? As I let myself in at the front door I hear yelling and incredibly loud banging, only to find Connie calmly listening to her iPod, while Josh is kicking the hell out of the back door. From the outside.

It turns out that he has been stuck in the back garden for the last two and a half hours, and has missed the whole of the England match as a result. It probably serves him right, though, if he really
did
call Connie ‘a freak who has no friends’ before she decided to lock him out. God knows what the neighbours must have thought. The air was positively blue.

Josh used to be able to escape when this sort of thing occurred, but now he can’t – not since we added barbed wire to the six-foot walls around the garden and padlocked the gate, to which Max has the only key. (I’m
sure
it was Steve Ellington who burgled us both times, but still can’t prove it.)

So Josh is in a foul mood; while Connie says that she is depressed as, not only does she have the most vile brother on the planet, she didn’t get the H&M job either – even though the manager did write and thank her for a ‘most entertaining interview’.

She and Josh spend all evening in their respective rooms, each furiously complaining about the other to their friends on Facebook. The only thing they are agreed on is that I am guilty of outrageous favouritism, though they disagree on which of them I apparently prefer.

I’m not too keen on either of them tonight, if truth be told; and I’m positively
dreading
tomorrow evening – Max and I have always spent our wedding anniversaries together until now. He’s left me a note on my pillow, though, so that cheers me up. For a second or two, until I read what it says:

Darling, we’re out of milk. Can’t find details of hotel but will phone you tomorrow and let you know then. All love, Mx

Can’t find details of hotel?
What sort of stupid statement is that?

THURSDAY, 24 JUNE

I’m a bit surprised today when Johnny emails to tell me that he’s back in London, ‘standing in for an embattled colleague caught up in the oil spill fall-out’ – and to ask whether I’d like to meet up while he’s there.

When I hesitate, he says what a shame it is that Max and I can’t be together for our wedding anniversary, and then asks whether I don’t think I am being taken a little for granted. I forget to ask him what he and his wife did for
their
anniversary in my rather non-committal reply, but I bet it was preferable to the way I spend my evening: completely on my own.

Both kids are still in self-imposed exile upstairs, and I haven’t got any friends to go out with, or none who won’t insist on making me feel like a poor relation, anyway – and even Annoying Ellen isn’t in when I pop round to check she doesn’t need to borrow the corkscrew again. (I think she must have gone away, as I don’t seem to have seen her for a couple of days.)

I do speak to Dinah on the phone, which cheers me up a bit – especially when she tells me that she has found two women who might be suitable for Dad amongst the mothers of her friends.

‘Brilliant,’ I say. ‘That’s the best news I’ve had all day. At least we don’t have to worry about a Thai bride now.’

‘Hold your horses, Molly,’ says Dinah. ‘I haven’t finished yet. You really must learn not to interrupt.’

Then she goes on to explain that Dad has ruled both women out, without even taking either of them on a date. Apparently, he told Dinah that they were ‘too old’ for him.

‘Well, I suppose Dad
is
quite youthful for his age,’ I say. ‘How old were these women, anyway?’

‘The oldest one’s fifteen years younger than him.’

By the time I’m capable of a response to that, Dinah has lost patience and hung up on me – which is what I feel like doing to Max, when he finally phones me some time after midnight, and then forgets to say ‘Happy Anniversary’
anyway.

He sounds as pissed as a fart, and is still claiming that he doesn’t know the phone number, or even the
name
of the hotel he’s staying in. When I say that I need it, in case of emergencies, he says there’s nothing I can’t handle, given my job – and that he’ll see me tomorrow night. Then he rings off, as if that was that.

What kind of halfwit doesn’t know the name of his hotel – when he’s been
staying
in it for the last twenty-four hours?

If anyone told me that their husband had told them that, I know
exactly
what I’d think was going on – but I don’t want to think the same thing about mine. Though a weekend in London is starting to sound very attractive, all of a sudden.

FRIDAY, 25 JUNE

Sometimes it feels as if Fridays occur
much
more often than other days. It certainly doesn’t feel as if a whole week has passed since The Boss was last in the office, sitting with his feet up on my desk and helping himself to my breakfast. I do wish he wouldn’t swear so loudly while I’m on the phone to constituents. They all know it’s him, because of his Birmingham accent.

He’s being particularly demanding today, which is really saying something. ‘Molly, get me Paul Whatsisname on the phone.’

‘Andrew, you have the phone in front of you,’ I say. ‘Have you lost the use of your hands?’

‘Find me his number then.’

So much for manners maketh man – but I rise above all provocation. ‘Andrew, I have never heard of Paul Whatsisname.
Who
is he?’

‘
I
don’t know. You’ll have to write to him instead. I’ve got
totally
incompetent staff.’

The Boss rolls his eyes and finishes my croissant. There are crumbs absolutely everywhere, but unfortunately he doesn’t choke on any of them.

I’m starting to worry about him a bit, actually. Not just because he’s becoming so rude that someone is
bound
to punch him fairly soon; but why he’s got this notion that someone from the Party is spying on him, God only knows. He can’t possibly have any secrets which would make it worth the effort – given that he makes his views known to anyone who stands still for more than a second. But there’s no reasoning with him this week, at all.

He insists that we hold our usual Friday briefing in the corridor today, and that only
I
attend. Then next week will be Greg’s turn. The Boss reasons that, this way, Greg and I will be less dangerous if we turn out to be moles, as we will only know
half
of what is going on. I suspect that the person who
actually
only knows half of what is going on is The Boss himself, but it’s probably wiser not to point this out.

It’s an effort not to, though, when Roger Fennis comes in for his surgery appointment. Apparently he is being paid far less than his much-younger colleague, whom
he
trained to do the job. You’d think that would sound familiar to The Boss – but of course it doesn’t. Instead, he’s shocked to the core.

‘That’s bloody
outrageous
, Roger. I’m not having that. You leave it with me and we’ll get it sorted.’ He pats Roger on the back, then says, ‘
Disgusting
. Oh, and make sure you join the union too.’

‘I will,’ says Roger. ‘And thanks very much. I knew you’d see my point of view.’

I don’t know
how
I don’t push Roger out of the door when I show him out. Though I do slam it behind him, just a little.

‘Molly,’ says Andrew. ‘Get onto that case, straight away. I can’t
stand
bloody bad employment practices.’

Honestly, I can’t believe it. The Boss is a Marxist where other people’s employers are concerned, but a veritable Thatcherite when it comes to staff of his own. I wonder if Roger will have any more luck with his union than I’ve had with mine? I haven’t heard a thing from Martin about my latest idea to work to rule.

I don’t hear anything from Max, either, until I get home from work, at around the same time as his plane lands at Heathrow. Then he suddenly seems to recall that he is married; and begins sending a flurry of texts which give a blow-by-blow account of the rest of his journey home. He chooses that moment to share the name of the German hotel, too – now that the damn thing is bloody irrelevant.

I
had
been intending to keep his meal warm, but after that I burn it to a crisp by ‘forgetting’ to turn the oven down; and then I go upstairs to take an exceedingly deep bath. This ensures that Max will be both hungry
and
unable to have a shower, as I have used up all the hot water. I can’t take the plant back that I bought him for our anniversary, though that’s what I feel like doing – so I tell Connie where his secret stash of Ferrero Rochers are kept, and authorise Josh to drink the only can of beer that’s left in the fridge, instead.

I even go to bed before Max finally arrives. I can’t get to sleep, though, so I watch him fall over the pair of shoes I deliberately left in our bedroom doorway – and the subsequent trouser dance – through one sneakily half-open eye. Then I do a very convincing
stretch
and
turn
manoeuvre so that my back is to him, just as he tries to snuggle up.

Half an hour later, he’s snoring like a steam train and I’m back downstairs making cocoa. I look everywhere for the Valium that Dad left behind when he came to stay after Stepmother Mark III left him, but I can’t find it anywhere, so it’s shaping up to be two sleepless nights in a row.

The phrase, ‘I don’t know the name of my hotel’ will
not
stop running through my head.

SATURDAY, 26 JUNE

I’m quite glad there isn’t a supermarket surgery again this week, as it allows me a lie-in and postpones the moment when I have to talk to Max.

When I do get up, he’s weirdly attentive, and jumps around making cups of tea and a cooked breakfast. He doesn’t even mention Germany. I really hate how he does that – makes
me
have to broach any subject that he knows is going to lead to an argument. It makes me look
so
confrontational.