Diary of an Unsmug Married (11 page)

I’m determined not to fall into that trap today, though, so I decide to get the parental phone calls over and done with instead. Mum and Ted aren’t in – probably on the first of their twice-daily visits to Waitrose. Dad
is
at home, but says he hasn’t got time to talk to me, because he’s about to leave on a trip: he’s going away for a few days to Cousin Mike’s.

I thought Cousin Mike was dead, but Dad assures me he’s alive and well, and living near Heathrow with his second wife.

‘I’m at the age when family becomes more important,’ he says, when I ask why he’s suddenly taking an interest in second cousins, once removed – if not departed. Then I ask for Mike’s phone number and he gives it to me, though he says he thinks they’ll be ‘out and about’ for most of the weekend.

The duty calls have taken a fraction of the time they usually take, and now the rest of the day is stretching unappealingly ahead – so I ring Dinah, just for a chat.

‘Dad’s gone to visit Cousin Mike,’ I say.

‘Thought he was dead,’ says Dinah. ‘We went to his funeral. Remember?’

‘That’s what I thought too, but Dad says
that
was Cousin Fred.’

‘Christ,’ says Dinah. ‘We have far too many bloody relatives, living
or
dead. Why’s Dad suddenly decided to visit him?’

‘He says family’s becoming more important to him,’ I say.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Dinah. ‘Give me Mike’s phone number and hurry up.’

Dinah is
so
bossy sometimes – but I don’t
have
to do as she says, do I? Not without question, anyway.

‘Why?’ I say, mainly because that’s the best I can do.

‘Well, Dad’s obviously up to something,’ she says. ‘God, you’re dim, given what you do for a living. No wonder the country’s in such a mess.’

I give her Mike’s number, but I don’t want to know what’s going to happen next. Why are women automatically suspicious of men? Is it because we’re genetically paranoid, or is it actually because of the stuff they get up to, if left unsupervised?

When I finally crack and ask him about his trip, Max makes his inability to recall the name of his hotel, for the whole of the twenty-four hours that he was staying in it, sound perfectly understandable. It was booked for him; the company guide had all the details; they were driven there from the airport by coach; and it was dark by the time that they arrived. Then he couldn’t read the name from the hotel signage or stationery because it was in a completely over-the-top Gothic script. Or so he says.

When I still look a little dubious, he gets cross and falls back on that positively
antique
old chestnut: ‘If you don’t trust me after all these years, then what the hell is the bloody point?’

The ‘after all these years’ bit
is
the point, but I’m now so confused that I drop the subject. I almost wish there had been a surgery today. I know exactly what to do to help constituents with
their
problems.

SUNDAY, 27 JUNE

Max still isn’t talking to me after the ‘after all these years’ conversation, so I spend the day helping Connie with some job applications. She’s decided she’d be better off in a call centre job, as she wouldn’t be able to tell whether people had thin hair and poking-out ears over the phone.

I can’t believe the hourly rate that some of them pay – it’s almost as much as Max gets, since the two pay cuts he’s had to accept during the last year; and yet he is
twice
Connie’s age, if not more. I sometimes wonder if we wouldn’t be better off if we separated, especially as all my single parent friends manage a holiday at least once a year. I have no idea how they do it.

Talking of single parents, Dinah phones in the evening – to discuss the one she and I are lucky enough to share. ‘Dad
was
up to something, the bastard,’ she says.

‘Why?’ I say. ‘How d’you know?’

‘I phoned him on his mobile at lunchtime – pretended I’d just remembered it was Father’s Day – but he sounded a bit flustered, and didn’t try to guilt-trip me.
At
all
.’

‘Unusual, I grant you, but what’s your point?’

I want to finish waxing my upper lip, and I’m a bit worried the strip won’t
ever
come off if Dinah doesn’t hurry up.

‘Well,’ she says, taking a deep breath as if in readiness for a very long explanation. ‘He said he was in the pub having lunch with Cousin Mike, so I said, “Put Mike on, then, so I can say hello.” Then Dad says, “I can’t, because Mike is in the loo”!’

‘Still clear as mud,’ I say. ‘Mike’s allowed to go to the toilet, like the rest of us.’

‘Shut
up
, Molly! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Just stop interrupting and listen for a minute!’

Honestly, unreasonableness runs in the family but, even so, no one
ever
manages to interrupt Dinah, so that is really, really unfair of her. Not that she’s bothered – she just carries on: ‘So I get off the phone to Dad, and then I phone the number you gave me for Cousin Mike’s house and—’

‘Oh, God,’ I say, as Dinah shrieks, ‘It’s Mike who answers!’

Sometimes Dinah is
so
tiring. Now she’s not speaking to me, because she wants
me
to phone Cousin Mike and ask to speak to Dad, and I just can’t be bothered. We’ll know eventually if we’re going to get a Stepmother Mark IV, seeing as the whole family always has to attend Dad’s weddings. The most recent one was when I last saw Cousin Mike, now I come to think of it.

Max seems to find the whole thing funny when he overhears me telling the kids about it, but Josh doesn’t, much to my surprise. He’s
disgusted
by his grandad’s carryings-on. Maybe I should ask
him
what he thinks about Max and the mystery of the hotel
without
a
legible
name?

Oh, but parents can’t do that sort of thing, though – can they?
Their
relationships are supposed to be rock-solid, as well as entirely platonic, so I’d either just worry Josh or make him squirm with revulsion. And anyway, I can’t do it at the moment. I’ve still got to get that wax off my face somehow or other.

MONDAY, 28 JUNE

Today sees the arrival of the first contender in The Boss’ long list of summer interns, who usually fall into one of three distinct categories: purely decorative additions to the scenery; sixth-form leavers with their sights set on PPE
^fn7
at Oxford and then government; and/or those representing favours to Andrew’s mates who want us to babysit their recalcitrant teenagers.

Today’s is one of the PPE batch: James. He’s expected to get five A*s at A-level, and appears to be quite without a sense of humour. This may be because he expected the constituency office to be a little more impressive than it is.

I think he was hoping for something less depressing than a view of the YMCA, not to mention his encounter with the bus driver from South Park, also known as Joan who works in the Labour Party office. She does take a bit of getting used to, but there was no need for James to demonstrate
such
an exaggerated startle response.

I always get saddled with inducting interns, though I’m not sure why. Greg’s far closer to them in age, if not degree of earnestness – but much better than me at getting out of things. So it’s down to me to obtain James’ signature on the usual confidentiality agreement, and then to explain the security measures.

Which wouldn’t take long, if I only mentioned those that The Boss has put in place but, of course, I don’t. I am
far
more responsible than that –
and
I have kids of my own, so I always feel obliged to look out for other people’s too.

First I explain that you never exit the security door before checking that there isn’t anyone lurking to either side of it; then I move on to Special Branch’s advice that we always look under our cars before getting into them, and check for people following us either to or from our homes. James starts looking a little concerned at this point.

I’ve just begun to detail the various personalised arrangements for handling the usual suspects when I’m interrupted by the phone. It’s Miss Chambers, so James is exposed to the
risk to hearing
issue rather more quickly than I’d intended. When I glance up at him, he’s already copying Greg, who has both hands pressed against his ears. I’m impressed. This kid learns fast.

Even so, I’m not sure what to do with him for the rest of the day, as we don’t have a spare computer and now he seems oddly reluctant to answer the phones. The Boss never thinks about this sort of thing when he accepts applications – but James looks to be an intelligent person, so it should be safe to entrust him with some filing. Not that he seems any more impressed by that than he does by the office. Or by Joan, for that matter.

He seems even less keen when he sees the number of live files that we have; and the sight of the archive cupboard makes him blanch. But he gets on with it without complaint, though he does seem to go to the loo an awful lot – which may be due to the weird healthy tea he brought with him in a Tupperware box.

On that basis, I can’t help feeling he’d be better off at the Council. The staff there
all
drink fruit tea which, along with the wearing of Ecco sandals and long swishy skirts, is an accurate predictor of woolly-headed liberalness and Council employment, at least in the case of women. Or so Greg says, anyway.

While James is filing, I check my email, only to find a message from Johnny. He’s back in Russia, but wants us to meet the next time he’s in the UK. Then he asks whether I have any more photos I can send him, preferably ones with my eyes open, to ‘keep him going’ until then. (Going
where
, he doesn’t say.)

My arse would take a much better photo than my face, but that’s hardly helpful, is it? Someone once told me that, after forty, you can either have a great face or a great arse, and I fall into the latter category – which does make sending anyone a flattering, but non-pornographic, photo rather challenging. Like a fool, I mention this in my reply.

Johnny’s response arrives with indecent haste – he would be ‘very happy to receive a photo taken from whatever I deem the most flattering angle, and of any body part I think he’d appreciate’.
Now
what the hell have I done?

At least someone doesn’t object to looking at me, though – unlike Max, who’s avoiding all eye contact this evening. One minute his explanations for his hotel name amnesia ring true, but then the next minute I think I must be insane to believe them. I’m just about to google ‘How to tell if your husband is being unfaithful’ when I’m distracted by yet another call from Dinah.

‘He’s f*cking incredible,’ she says, without preamble.

She can only mean Dad – so there’s probably no need to respond.

‘He
was
up to something, as usual! Visiting Cousin Mike, my arse.’

‘Up to what, though?’ I say. It could be almost
anything
.

‘He was on a date,’ says Dinah. ‘With my friend Annie’s
mother
! He spent the entire weekend shagging her, the bloody hypocrite – she’s one of the ones he said was too old when I first gave him her number.’

‘So what happened?’ I say.

I may as well know the worst, I suppose. Max obviously wants to, seeing as Dinah’s yelling loudly enough for him to hear every word.

‘This morning, Dad told her he didn’t think it was meant to be, and just got into his car and left,’ says Dinah, taking the volume up a notch. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to face her, I’m
so
embarrassed. Apparently she thought he was
the
one
.’

‘Good God,’ I say. ‘Poor woman’s obviously unwell. What does
Dad
say about it? I assume you’ve asked?’

‘He still says he was at Cousin Mike’s. Denies absolutely
everything
.’

‘That man wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him on the arse,’ I say, staring hard at Max.

He
remembers that he needs to clear out the loft – urgently – and disappears. It’s a startle response worthy of James.

TUESDAY, 29 JUNE

Honestly, I can’t bloody well believe it. What kind of f*ck-witted, supposedly-A*-pupil thinks that you only file by the
first
letter of someone’s name? It’s going to take months to find anything now.

Once I’ve stopped swearing under my breath, I ring The Boss and demand that he finds James something totally harmless to do – so he thinks up a ‘special’ project: something to do with finding out how many teenage pregnancies there have been in Lichford in the last ten years. James brightens up for a minute at the prospect. He probably thinks this will gain him access to my computer, but I send him to the library instead, much to Greg’s relief. At least
they’ve
got more than one male loo.

I tell James to be back in time for a meeting I’ve arranged with a local manager from the Mental Health Trust, on the basis that it will be educational. He reverts to looking distinctly unenthusiastic, and becomes more so once the meeting starts.

I am trying to establish exactly the point at which our duty to protect staff and others would take precedence over our duty of confidentiality, and am a bit astonished to discover that several of the constituents that Greg and I deem the most dangerous have already been the subjects of a number of multi-agency meetings and risk assessments,
none
of which we have been included in. We deal with these nutters
daily
– and without any security at all!

After I point this out, there’s a lot of embarrassed clearing of throats, and then it is agreed that we will be faxed copies of the relevant risk assessments this afternoon – on a ‘need to know’ basis – and we’ll also be invited to attend the meetings in future. Greg and I are well-pleased at this development, but James looks decidedly pale.

I’m not looking much better myself by the time I’ve read the risk assessments. It’s amazing how many of our usual suspects have convictions for ABH,
^fn8
are known to carry weapons, and are considered to pose a high risk to any staff who have to deal with them.