OMG Baby! (14 page)

T
he great thing
about being your own boss is that you can choose to work from Pret a Manger all morning if you like. I’m meeting Rainey nearby, so I don’t have to schlep across London and back. I have my laptop and my phone, therefore I have my office. I love it when life is this easy. Give up the struggle, I say.

I already rang Christie to tell her I’ll be in later this afternoon and asked if she was OK with Damon, who I could already hear in the background going on about his old mum. She said she was fine. I asked her to email every major retailer we know and get a sales meeting. Michael wasn’t even there, but I guess if you’re working for free, you get to turn up whenever. I settle down to researching wedding favours, hen-night gimmicks and a ‘circle of life’ thing for pregnant women where you answer questions and follow arrows that lead to the answers, which seem to be ‘Take time out’, ‘Enrol support’ or ‘Let go.’ No matter which answers you give, you always get to these three solutions. It’s absolutely maddening, actually. I break off from work only once to order a soya chai latte, which smells like fermented trainers, but before I know it, I’ve spent the whole morning dicking about on the internet.

I meet Rainey in a kind of veggie canteen with booths and chalkboard menus. There’s an open kitchen with a salad display and a grill for the huge mushrooms they make into burgers here. Brick-shaped white tiles cover the walls, and over every table hangs a shiny brass flying-saucer light. It’s busy, but I manage to get a table near the toilets at the back. She dances in with her aura; people notice as she floats past in her flowing purple and yellow robes. I’m transfixed. I know she’s tricking us, trying to make us believe in this role she’s playing, but I want to suspend my disbelief until the end of the performance, whenever that might be – I want to find out what happens. Instead I have to cut it short. I feel a pounding in my guts. Is this going to be our showdown? Will I be able to get the answers I need and tell her to go? My throat feels dry, and now she’s at the table, sliding into the opposite booth in a cloud of cool, fresh outside air.

‘Hello, Vivienne. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ she says, arranging fabric and scarves and her hair. Then she studies me. ‘I think it’s that nondescript hair colour – it really drains you. Do you feel OK?’

‘Well, I did.’

She gathers up the three card menus, shuffles to the relevant lunch list, her eyes moving over it. ‘Do you know what you’re having?’ she asks without looking at me.

‘Not yet,’ I say, watching her. What is it about her? I like her and I can’t help it. I like her hair and her straight nose, her little hands with the bangles. I want her to like me.

‘Hmm,’ she says, reading the menu.

‘They don’t do beefburgers, if that’s what you’re looking for.’

She looks at me, the pupils of her eyes narrowing to pinpricks.

‘I saw you in McDonald’s, Rainey – you don’t have to pretend to be vegan anymore,’ I murmur.

She watches me for a few long seconds. Then she looks down at her hands.

‘And Max wants you to move out,’ I continue.

‘I see,’ she says. ‘Well, what that artistic rake wants is of no concern. It’s your flat. What do you want?’

‘It’s our flat, Max and me together. I’m sorry, Rainey – I said you’ll go in a week. It’s difficult. It’s a very small space, and with you in the main bedroom . . . I mean, I don’t sleep well on the sofa bed.’

She spreads her hands flat on the table and clears her throat with an ‘ahem’ sound. She takes a deep breath.

‘Look, I’ll come out with it. I’m in a lot of trouble, Vivienne,’ she whispers, and she looks up into my eyes like a snake charmer. I start blinking as if I’m staring into a hot wind. ‘If I tell you something, will you swear not to tell a soul?’

‘No! It depends what you tell me.’

‘I can’t tell you unless you swear.’ She presses her hands together in a prayer position and points them at me.

‘All right, I swear. I won’t tell anyone.’

‘Solemnly swear.’

‘I swear on my mother’s life,’ I say sarcastically.

‘No, I don’t feel I can trust you.’ She shakes her head, eyes closed.

‘Well, it’s up to you,’ I say, looking away.

‘All right . . . I was involved with a married man whose wife is the daughter of a very powerful drug dealer. She found out about us. He stole a whole load of money and disappeared, and I received death threats. It got out of hand. I had to leave Colombia in a hurry, and I can’t stay in hostels, because that’s the first place they’ll look for me, and I can’t stay at Mother’s, because that will be the second place they’ll look for me. Then I met you and, well, no one knows I had a daughter, so . . .’

I make word shapes with my mouth, but I’m totally speechless.

‘I just need to lie low for a few months, and your place is so perfect, so unlikely a place for me to be. And no, I’m not a vegan, and no, I’m not particularly spiritually connected to animals. I just wanted to seem appealing to you. I remember you always loved animals. Didn’t you collect those little pottery woodland creatures?’

‘What?’

‘That little hedgehog and the squirrel?’

‘So let me get this straight. You are on the run from a drug dealer who wants to kill you?’

‘I think they’ll give up looking for me in a few months.’

‘What were you going to do in Madrid?’

‘Madrid fell through,’ she says, shaking her head impatiently.

I lean back against the leatherette bench, trying to take this in. The waiter appears at our table. Rainey orders curly fries and a Greek salad.

‘Did you not think? You might have put me and Max in danger? Or Nana?’

She laughs. ‘You’re not in any danger – don’t be dramatic. They want me, that’s all,’ she says.

‘A fricking drug baron is after you!’

‘This is exactly why I didn’t tell you the truth in the first place. I knew you’d overreact. Look, all I need is a place to stay for a few months. By then they’ll have forgotten about me and I’ll move on.’

‘I don’t know what to say. Are you for real?’

‘Oh, it’s very real, Vivienne. Look, OK, I’ll go. I’ll find somewhere else. I’m sorry I dragged you into this, and if they catch up with me, if I end up murdered in a ditch, it won’t be your fault.’

‘So you might get murdered, but we’re not in any danger?’

‘They’re not after you. Look, I’ll leave.’

‘What?’ Oh my God. I rub my eyebrows. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t actually have much money left until I can get some wired over to me. But listen, it’s not your problem.’

The waiter brings drinks and seems to take an age arranging the table. I sit watching her and wondering what to do. Rainey has always had a vivid imagination/is a liar. I don’t believe half of what she says and it drives me crazy to be lied to, letting her think I’m some gullible fool, but there’s always that chink of doubt, isn’t there? Didn’t I promise myself that I’d put up with whatever she does for the sake of knowing her finally?

‘Well, obviously I’m not going to turn you out onto the street.’ I was thinking this, but I’ve gone and said it out loud.

‘No, don’t trouble yourself, Vivienne,’ she says sadly.

‘Are you telling the truth?’

‘I am many things, but a liar I am not,’ she says, looking into my eyes.

‘But you didn’t feel my unborn baby calling to you, did you?’

‘No.’

‘So it was a lie, then?’

‘Well, I may have exaggerated a bit, but I definitely felt something pressing me towards you.’

‘And was it gun-shaped?’

‘Oh, Vivienne, please.’

‘I can’t believe this. You didn’t come to London to see me at all! Why should I help you? You left me to fend for myself and I was only seven,’ I say, and feel my lip wobble.

She watches me carefully. ‘I’m just your mother, that’s all, and I didn’t leave you to fend for yourself – I left you with Eve,’ she says, then thinks a bit and adds, ‘OK, I see what you mean. You might as well have fended for yourself.’

‘She loved me at least! Why do you always have to slag her off?’

She purses her lips, shrugs.

‘You told me t never o call you “Mummy”. Remember that? Why did you leave?’ I release a gaggle of caged emotions and old hurts. They clamber up my windpipe until I swallow them down again. I must get a hold of myself; these childish feelings of abandonment are clogging up my thinking. I look at Rainey. I want her in my life, but there’s such a lot of pain to grapple with. I’m pregnant and emotional; I can’t think straight. I need to talk to Nana. Things would be clearer if she was here. Why is she on a stupid world tour? I suddenly get a huge surge of missing Nana and fight the urge to cry.

‘I was a child, Vivienne,’ she says, and looks away.

‘Not when you left. You were twenty-three.’

‘Let me tell you something – age has nothing to do with it. Some people are eighty and still children inside. I was thinking I’d wake up one day and be grown-up, be ready to take on my responsibilities, but it never happened. There’s no training to being adult; you’re suddenly just doing it.’

‘You were never grown-up enough to care about me?’ I ask, feeling emotion prickling behind my eyes.

‘I remember the day you were born, Vivienne,’ says Rainey softly. ‘I danced you out. I just danced around the room to Bob Marley and then you were suddenly in my arms, a little pink bundle smiling up at me.’

‘Well, for a start, newborn babies can’t smile, and secondly, I thought you said I was stuck in like a coat hanger?’

She blinks and looks off to the left. ‘Ah yes, you were for a bit before that. It was a long time ago now.’

‘Huh.’ I laugh and shake my head in disbelief. ‘You are such a liar.’

‘Storyteller.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘One is bad.’

What can I do? What should I do? She’s my mother and I can’t tell her to go. I need time to think about this, but there is no time. If she can’t stay with me, where will she go?

‘What Bob Marley song was it?’

‘“Three Little Birds.”’

One of my favourites. ‘You can stay, Rainey,’ I sigh.

‘Really?’ She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.

‘Stay as long as you need.’

‘But you can’t tell anyone about what I told you, not even Max.’

‘You’re not really in a position to be making conditions,’ I say.

‘Without that promise, I’ll have to leave. He’s unsympathetic to my cause.’

‘You’ll have to respect Max; you can’t keep nagging him, and stop over-explaining things about art. He’s an artist. It’s very annoying.’

‘But you won’t tell him?’

‘No.’ I grimace, and she comes round the table and hugs me. She has never spontaneously hugged me before. There in her arms I feel a wave of relief and compassion. I’m in the unique position of being able to help her. We’ll be closer. I’ve done the right thing. I squeeze my eyes shut and think about the generations of my family – my baby, me and my mother – all stacked together here and now on this bench like Russian dolls.

I
arrive
at work mid-afternoon with an uneasy feeling blooming, a bit like I’ve accidentally given away a favourite irreplaceable vintage handbag to the charity shop and then seen them selling it to someone for 20p. I’ve given away something precious. ‘
Your integrity
,’ pipes up Angel. Who knew babies could be so astute?

No, no, no, what I need to do is re-brand this feeling, make it about being a marvellous, generous, selfless, loving daughter.

That’s better, but then every time I think of Max, my stomach hurts. I’ll speak to him. I’ll make things work somehow, but right now I have bigger fish to fry. As I open the office door, I hear Damon’s voice.

‘Who here knows about Moomintrolls?’ he says as I stand in the doorway. Michael is sitting on my chair with his feet up on my desk, Christie is at her desk wearing some sort of patterned quilted two-piece skirt suit with her hair in a messy bun, and Damon is leaning against the partition.

‘Oh, all right, Viv?’ Damon says.

‘Damon, hello,’ I say, and Christie looks up over her laptop. Michael spins his chair round to look my way, grinning. ‘So what’s been happening today? What deals have been done? What meetings organised?’ I ask.

‘Mike’s been sorting me out about my aquarium,’ says Damon.

‘Has he?’ I look at Michael, who nods knowingly while rocking his legs side to side.

‘I need more bottom-feeders,’ explains Damon.

‘Yeah, get yourself a couple of false julii corydoras. Easy, peaceful, nice to look at. A bit like you, Viv,’ says Michael.

‘Ah, you with your saccharine words. Now shift off my desk.’

He shuts down a couple of sites, then stands behind the chair holding the back of it for me to sit. The seat is strangely over-warm and smells of patchouli. ‘Right, so moving on from Moomintrolls and aquarium bottom-feeders just for a tick, who here has got us a sales meeting?’

‘We are in at Belle Peau on 29 November,’ says Christie with her hand up.

‘Belle Peau? Upmarket lingerie,’ I say, writing it into the office diary and circling it so it looks more substantial against the acres of white meeting-less space of the week-to-view page. ‘I’d have thought they’d be a bit too upmarket for sex crackers.’

Christie shrugs. ‘It was hard to get a sales meeting with any of the mainstream retailers for sex crackers,’ she says dejectedly.

I get a sinking feeling. I gaze out of the window at the shuttered-up building opposite. I thought we’d have an order by now, ready for Christmas. Maybe it’s time for me to face up to it: this whole shebang is going down, taking the last of my redundancy money with it. Unless . . . maybe we can do something drastic. We must be doing something wrong. Is it the product? Is it apathy? Are we inept? What? Is our product appealing? Can it sell, and if so, who would buy it and how and where? Should I have thought of all this before?

‘Right – Christie, Michael, my desk now,’ I say in a bossy manner.

Christie totters over on hoof-like shoes with a notepad and the lens-free specs she wears in order to look like she has some clue. Michael takes a step closer to me.

‘What about me?’ asks Damon.

‘All right, you too, since you seem to have nothing better to do.’ I beckon him with a flapping hand. ‘So, Tease UK are out. They don’t think the crackers will sit with their range, which loosely translated means they don’t think they’ll sell.’

‘Weird, I thought I’d got a twinkle off of that chick,’ mutters Michael.

‘Oh, she asked for you to call her,’ I snap.

He narrows his eyes. ‘Shabbah,’ he whispers.

‘Anyway, obviously that’s very disappointing, so I think what we need is a brainstorming session,’ I continue.

‘Ideas shower,’ corrects Christie, somehow setting off Damon’s funny eye.

‘Whatever. Let’s think about the product. Is it good enough?’

‘No,’ says Michael.

There’s a silence while we look around at each other and take in this unfathomable truth. Christie snort-laughs down her nose.

‘Well, then. Good. That we’ve realised. Because. Then. We have the opportunity to make it better.’ I slump into my chair with the weight of the knowledge that our product isn’t good enough. ‘OK, so come on – what’s wrong with it?’

‘No one wants it,’ says Michael, showing why no one really invites the IT guys to creative meetings.

‘Let’s have a think. What
do
people want?’ I make a rolling motion with my hand, staring at Michael. His eyes dart around, looking for an idea.

‘Umm . . . sexy underwear?’ asks Christie.

‘In a cracker. The cracker packaging is our USP. Unique selling point,’ I explain to Damon. ‘Maybe we need lots of different types, not just a sex version – maybe a romance one?’

‘A night-in one?’ says Christie. ‘It could have chocolate truffles, a romantic-comedy mini disc and a bottle of Malibu.’

‘Another version, two hundred Lambert and Butler, a case of Breezers and some nasty porn,’ says Michael.

‘What about extending the wedding crackers?’ I say, ignoring him. ‘We could have the romantic one, the sexy one, the one for the kids?’

‘Or a Lady Diana one,’ says Damon, getting excited.

‘Yeah, fan crackers. Anyone who has fans can have a cracker . . . Occasion crackers! So births, divorce, civil partnerships . . .’ I say, writing it down.

‘Coming out of the closet!’ gasps Christie.

‘What would that have in it?’ asks Michael, and she looks doubtful.

‘Doesn’t matter, Michael – we’re just coming up with ideas,’ I say, getting into it.

‘Yeah . . . I think you need to look at the transitions people go through in life. Nearly every life transition could have its own cracker,’ says Damon, waving his hands in the air.

I point at him with my pen. ‘You are a genius, my friend,’ I say, and his great head wobbles with pride.

I look from Michael to Christie to Damon, with ideas madly whirling in my head like snowflakes.

‘Transitions . . . being born, going to school, leaving school . . . er, starting your period . . .’

‘Congratulations on menstruation!’ Michael announces, doing a little dance. ‘What’d we put in? A hot-water bottle, a packet of aspirin and some bloke to snap at!’ He guffaws at Damon, who ignores him.

‘Going travelling, getting married, first job – it could be massive!’ I shout, and bang the desk.

‘Getting divorced, getting repossessed, death of a pet or death of anything,’ says Christie, shaking her head with the flow.

‘Well, we can’t shrink away from reality, can we?’ I say, wide-eyed.

We go through the rest of the afternoon filling five pages of foolscap with ideas, and even when it gets dark, we carry on. Eventually Damon has to lock up the building for insurance purposes, but we’re all so full of it we decide to move down to the Old Fountain for dinner to try and come up with a shortlist and possible contents over scampi and chips. These are only ideas, mind. We know some of them definitely do not have legs.

W
edding 1. Romantic (Loveheart sweets
, heart confetti, dance card, Kissy Lips lip balm, floating lantern)

W
edding 2. Sexy (penis bubbles
, edible pants, lube, choccy boobs, sexual-positions card)

C
ongratulations – you’re
pregnant (see above)

C
ongratulations
on your new baby (teddy bear, sleepsuit, booties, bath and body lotion)

C
ongratulations – you’re
out of the closet (club listings, Gay Pride stickers, novelty pants)

C
ongratulations – you’ve passed
your test (mini champagne, number plate, furry dice)

C
ongratulations – you’ve lost
your virginity

C
ongratulations – you’re
single

B
oys’ and girls
’ night in (various possible contents – depends on price)

D
iana memorial crackers

I
’m
at the bar feeling very positive about our venture when I notice it’s eight o’clock. I’ll have to make this my last orange and soda, and get along home to face the music. I feel immediately low, remembering my promise to Max and subsequent conflicting promise to Rainey. I know how Max feels. Of course I’d like Rainey to find herself a nice little flat somewhere nearby. The novelty of her staying with us has long worn off. It’s been a month – she should go and leave me and Max to our lives and our baby. I know enough about her now to see she isn’t going to suddenly become the loving mother I crave. I have a loving nana instead. Rainey is intolerable, and she won’t change, and why should I expect her to? I should just let her go. But how can I make her go, into the possible death grip of drug barons? I know it’s unlikely, laughable even, but what if? I imagine my own shocked face in the news under the headline ‘Daughter Turns Mother Over to Drug Barons.’ I can’t do that, can I? Asking her to leave is something I might regret for ever. I’ll just have to put up with her a while longer, while subtly helping her to leave of her own accord. Max will understand if he loves me.

I turn with the drinks and walk back to our table, where Christie looks to be getting on with Michael. She’s chewing the arm of her glasses and gazing at him; he’s leaning back against the bench with both arms spread out mid-air, lecturing. Damon is staring into space like a gargoyle and gritting his teeth. No, hold on, he’s smiling – teeth pointing one way and his lips another. I snake my way back through the tables, thinking:

T
his group
of people are all here because of me.

T
hese are
the people upon whom my livelihood depends.

T
hese people and ‘transition crackers
’.

I
take
a deep breath and suck up that terror.