Happy Birthday and All That (13 page)

Frank's menu went like this:

9 a.m. or anytime up until 3 p.m. (i.e. anytime between when the children left for school & when they returned)
Whole French stick with packet of bacon
or
All Day Breakfast (extra mushrooms) at the Jackpot Café
8.30 p.m. Dinner with Posy
or
11.45 p.m. Chicken kebab and chips
or
Large doner and chips
or
Chicken Buna/Vindaloo/Masala with rice and naan.

He would also have at least five mugs of tea (always drunk) and either a litre or so of red wine if he was staying in, or seven pints or so of bitter if he was out. He snacked on the smelliest type of crisps he could find.

Posy was trying to re-establish her fitness regime. She knew that she would probably never make it to the skinny heights of the playground mums who were training for a half-marathon, but she was trying. She had a copy of ‘Back to Me', a post-pregnancy exercise video which she did every so often. How wise and kind the Mummy Exercise Guru looked. If only Posy could enlist her help, or perhaps, she thought, just miraculously turn into her. The instructions often seemed to include special messages.

‘Keep your arms soft, but your lower body hard like steel.'

‘I will try, I will try,' Posy puffed along. Frank would appear in the doorway, usually with a can of beer or a bag of bacon-flavour wheatcrunchies and put her off by making unhelpful comments.

‘What a hideous, emaciated, prancing pixie,' or ‘Come on Pose, your legs are meant to be straighter than that,' or ‘You could buy some weights if you were really serious about this, you don't have to use cans of beans.'

She knew that she was never going to measure up.

Kate was looking utterly serene in the school playground. Posy felt fat and tired and haggard and poor. Also close to tears.

‘Oh I wish I was you,' she blurted out. Kate noticed the extra sniffing.

‘Are you all right?'

‘Of course, of course,' Posy said, rooting in her bag for a tissue that wasn't too disgusting.

‘No you aren't, you're tired and miserable.'

‘Don't be nice to me or I'll cry.'

‘Come back for a cup of tea.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Excuse the mess,' Kate said as she put on the kettle and began to load the cereal bowls and plates into the dishwasher. Posy noticed two crumbs on the granite work tops, and five rice krispies on the table.

‘You should see ours.'

‘I'm making you some toast and jam.'

‘Thanks. I really shouldn't.'

‘Shouldn't what? Eat? Have breakfast?'

‘I do wish I was you. You are so sensible, and so slim.'

‘Have you tried this?' Kate held up a packet of St John's Wort tea. ‘Three cups a day. You'll be a different person. Practically everyone's on it.'

‘Practically everyone else has a perfect life.'

‘Don't be stupid. You sound like a teenager.'

‘I know.'

‘You have what everybody in the world wants. Good-looking, kind husband, lovely healthy children, big house with a garden. Nobody's life is glossy. Everybody's broke. You're just imagining it all. If things aren't perfect, it doesn't mean that they aren't right.' She passed Posy a blue-and-white plate with eight little triangles of golden toast with raspberry jam, and then went on, ‘Did you know that Jan works in Asda on Friday and Saturday nights? Sue might work at the university, but her partner's lost his job and he was just turned down for a hospital cleaner position. Nobody has a perfect life.'

‘OK. Sorry. I know I've got to stop whining. Frank says that anyone with two bathrooms has no right to moan about anything ever.'

‘Hmm. But they still do. Give up the domestic-perfection nirvana idea. Yes, you can have the whole house clean and perfect, but then you sit down with a cup of coffee, and you've spoilt it. The cup needs washing!'

‘But you
have
achieved domestic nirvana!' said Posy.

‘Ha. I don't think so. And try to find something for yourself to enjoy. Taking the children swimming does NOT count.'

‘I guess I have to pull myself together. Pull my socks up. Tuck my shirt in. Pick myself up, dust myself down, start all over again.'

‘That's not what I meant. I can just see that you aren't that happy. Is there anything specific, anything I can do? Maybe we could do some child-swapping to give each other breaks.'

‘That would be good.'

‘And take this St John's Wort. I've a spare in the cupboard.'

Posy wondered whether drinking it would turn her into someone who had spare herbal remedies for her friends in the cupboard. She would try. Perhaps it had some Alice in Wonderland properties too. That would make life more interesting.

Kate put a mug of tea in front of her, and another plate of toast cut into soldiers for Izzie.

‘I'll make you some St John's Wort now, it works really quickly. You'll need something else to take the taste away though.'

Posy picked up the box and read it.

‘Oh, it says you can't have it if you're breastfeeding. Thanks anyway.'

‘I don't suppose it would do any harm, but you never know. Take it for when you've finished.'

‘Well she's down to a couple of feeds a day now. I'm sure there must be something else I can do to get myself together. I might stop having baths. I always get depressed in the bath. My aloe vera bath and shower gel looks like intestines when it hits the water …' Posy realised that she was droning on.

‘Hmm,' said Kate. She saw that Posy's mug was half-empty. Really she could sometimes do with a big kick up the behind.

‘If I just have a shower I emerge much zippier,' said Posy, trying to sound zippier.

‘Good idea. Just one bath a week from now on.'

‘Maybe that was why they were so tough in the olden days.'

‘Fancy going into town? We could have coffee at John Lewis. You don't have to buy anything.'

‘Well I have got to get a few birthday cards. I could really do with some new underwear.'

Kate was too kind to comment that she had noticed the ancient grey straps that spoilt the look of Posy's actually very pretty shoulders. ‘I'm still wearing my horrible old nursing bras.'

‘Really? Well there you are then. Let's go shopping!'

When Posy had first met Frank he had seemed very alone, very independent. He lived in a semi-derelict house shared with three second-years, and him a fresher too - when all the
other freshers were in halls, getting excited about grilling their frozen pizzas all by themselves under the communal grill. It was a PRANGLE house. She'd never known what that stood for, but it meant that the house had been condemned, along with the rest of pretty little Salisbury Terrace, and was awaiting demolition. It belonged to the University and was destined to be the site of the new School of Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy. How clumsy that sounded. Frank pictured the therapists of the future massing in their blue slacks, rolling up their sleeves, and climbing into JCBs, ready to pummel his house into dust.

Frank and the second-years made home-brew. This seemed impressive and exotic to Posy as she hadn't come across it before. They were meant to use the talents that they had professed to on the PRANGLE application forms to keep the house habitable, but of course Frank didn't. The maps of damp, the broken sash cords, the leaks and draughts and no heating all seemed romantic to Posy, used as she was to the ideal homes and gardens of Surrey. She even liked the ghostly scratchings of the pigeons (or were they rats?) in the loft. Frank's room was what should have been the sitting room. Sam had the dining room and Al and Rupe had rooms upstairs. It was a long time before she found out that Frank was in the PRANGLE-£12-a-month-house not only through choice and being utterly cool, but because he didn't get a proper grant because Southampton was his home town; and that not much more distant than the invisible pigeons (or were they rats?) was a trio of Parousellis, who hadn't wanted Frank to leave and were scrabbling and scratching, or so Frank thought, trying to get him back.

The first time Posy met Mrs Parouselli was not very auspicious. She was sitting in Frank's bed at 11 a.m. eating Dutch crisp bakes with margarine and jam, wearing Frank's black jumper. Frank was in the bath.

Now that Posy was at university she was definitely not Posy
Fossil from
Ballet Shoes.
At school she had done time as both Amy and Jo from
Little Women
(the world is crammed with them), then Cathy in
Wuthering Heights
and Emma Woodhouse (hard when your dad is a violent heavy drinker). She was now an aspiring Françoise Sagan heroine, forever ‘raising her hand as if to suggest futility', a gesture and persona that was sadly lost on her fellow students. She was meant to be working on her dissertation about the costumes of Queen Marie of Roumania. Her choice of subject hadn't cut much ice in the university's history department. Her tutor thought that ‘Threads of Time' was a silly title too, but an improvement on Posy's first suggestion of ‘What This Old Thing?: The Historical Significance of the Costumes of Queen Marie of Roumania'. Posy had chosen the subject only so that she could include one of her favourite Dorothy Parker vignettes. She discovered afterwards that this was also the preface to the most important biography of Queen Marie, a book that she had managed to miss in her research.

Posy heard someone banging on the front door. She went to open it wearing only Frank's jumper, which did reach almost to her knees.

‘Is Francis in?' It was a cross-looking Mrs Tiggywinkle carrying a blue plastic laundry sack of familiar-looking clothes.

‘Francis?' Posy was perplexed. ‘There's no Francis here.'

‘Francis Parouselli. I'm his mother. Here's his washing.'

Posy stepped back.

‘Oh, Frank!' The woman was already in Frank's room, surveying the unmade bed, the copy of
Elle,
Posy's jeans, boots, socks and underwear on the chair beside the bed, the drawn curtains, 400 records out of their sleeves on the floor. The daffodils Posy had bought were in a pickled onion jar, looking, Posy thought, brazen and foolish. The lid was off the cheap red jam, and crumbs were strewn across the bed and the floor.

‘I'll just tell him you're here.'

Bending neatly at the knees to retain her modesty as best she
could, she scooped up her clothes and fled. She could get dressed in Sam's room if he was out, but he wasn't. Lou Reed was playing, and Louise his girlfriend was probably in there too.

She went on into the kitchen, her feet stuck to the filthy, beer-filmed lino and made a plakky sound as she walked. She was into her knickers and jeans within seconds, but the impostor was behind her. Everything else would have to wait. She darted past the back door where slug trails criss-crossed the carpet tiles, and banged on the bathroom door.

‘Frank! Frank! Your mother is here!' She hoped that he detected the urgency in her voice. ‘Your mother is here!'

It would be very like Frank to claim to have fallen asleep or to have been underwater for half an hour and not have heard. He might even climb out the window and leg it off to the bar, but Posy didn't know this about him yet. She heard: ‘Shit! Be out in a minute.' There were cascades of water as Frank washed his hair using the huge, heavy glass tankard that Sam had filched from the Oktoberfest.

Mrs Parouselli stood firm behind her, still holding the washing. Why didn't she put it down?

‘Let me take that,' Posy said politely. Mrs Parouselli dumped it in her arms, and Posy became the strumpet who put away Frank's clothes. She thought of all the things she didn't want to be as she plak-plakked her way back across the kitchen floor to Frank's room.

The Parouselli family hadn't always been in brick. A few generations back they had been ‘The Family Parouselli', Italian trapeze artistes. A distant branch of the family were still working, some never-heard-from cousins of Frank's toured perpetually with Apollo's Circus.

Frank's great-grandparents had been performers, but his grandparents had settled, opening Fancy Ways, which his parents now ran.

In Fancy Ways there were clowns crying a single sparkly
tear, dolls that weren't meant to be played with, musical rocking horses and carousels that looked as though they had been crafted out of icing, lucky black cats, silver plastic keys for twenty-one-year-olds to receive from their relatives, balloons, ribbons, christening presents, cards for every occasion. The trapeze-artist blood appeared to have thinned by the time it reached Frank. He did have strong, ropey wrists, and he loved to perform, well, to play with the band anyway, but he couldn't do back flips or handsprings, or somersaults in the air. He knew that Posy watched their children, wondering whether they might be throwbacks, throwabouts. She hoped the gifts would be tossed forwards down the generations; perhaps one day James, Poppy, Tom or Isobel would be pulling on the Lycra and spangles, flying away from her, swinging fifty feet above her head and safely, Posy crossed her fingers, landing in the net and coming back to her.

Frank had tried to distance himself from his family. He never talked about the Family Parouselli. He hated Fancy Ways. It had been the uncoolest place imaginable to grow up. How could he be an existentialist in a card shop? Or a rock star whose day job was selling Engagement, Wedding, New Home, New Baby, Fiftieth, Anniversary, Retirement and Sympathy cards?

‘Hell,' he thought, when he saw the people come in and ponder, endlessly, which tawdry greeting with which trite little rhyme to choose. ‘Why not get a mixed box, one for every occasion, a box for everyone you know, and post the whole lot at once? Save time and money!' It was a real wrist-slasher working at Fancy Ways.

He had spent too many long dull afternoons, the dead after-school hours there, doing his homework in the back of the shop or behind the till at his parents' behest. He'd look up from his O level revision (Macbeth. Eng Lit. His favourite) and say to his mum,