Prime Time

Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2012

ISBN 9781908262790

Copyright © Jane Wenham-Jones 2012

The right of Jane Wenham-Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Xcite Books, Suite 11769, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY

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Acknowledgements

Some novelists spend years on their research, involving long hours poking through dusty archives, months holed up in The British Library and weeks of background reading.

My own approach is generally to hit Google or ask a friend/colleague/bloke in the pub, who might know.

This time those kind souls have included:

Anne Catchpole, Domenic De Paolis, Joanne Derrick, Lyn-Marie Fabes, Sally Forgette, Helen French, Bill Harris, Lorna Marchant, Trevor McCallum, Catherine Pool, Lynda Wenham-Jones, Tom Wenham-Jones and the person I've forgotten (there is always one).

I am also grateful to Dr Mark J Hudson-Peacock FRCP (a whiz with the Botox) and Laurence Shaw FRCOG (if
your
hormones are in uproar – he's the best) for sharing their professional expertise; Heather Leatt for being my gym buddy (and task-mistress!); Lynne Barrett-Lee for my first taste of Daytime TV; Jacqui Cook for the inclusion of Green's Wine Bar and Tony Mulliken for being such a pal when I was losing heart.

Thanks too to my agent The Fearsome One, Hazel Cushion, Della Galton and Liz Coldwell. We got there in the end, eh?

www.janewenham-jones.com

Chapter One

Recent research has shown that the kind of male face a woman finds attractive can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For instance, if she is ovulating she is drawn to men with rugged, masculine features. Whereas if she is menstruating she is more prone to be attracted to a man with a heavy pair of scissors shoved in his forehead …

Ho bloody ho. I sit on my hands so I can't punch the computer screen. Hilarious, these Internet jokes. Or they might be if not so close to the truth. I quite often imagine Daniel cowering in a corner, whimpering while I take a blunt instrument to him. Or the way he might look if I wiped away that supercilious expression by treading on it. Especially on Day 19. Day 19 of my menstrual cycle is when I am at my most malevolent and think my darkest thoughts. Then I write vitriolic letters in my head and fantasise about wreaking revenge on everyone who has ever done me wrong. It is when I smash crockery, forget things, scream, shout and eat four KitKats without drawing breath. It is Day 19 today and already I am …

‘Am I going to Dad's tonight?'

Stanley appeared in the doorway in his school shirt and boxers. His hair, as usual, stood up in tufts. He yawned and wrinkled his freckled nose. ‘Do you know where my tie is?'

I gripped the edge of the keyboard. ‘No, I do not know where your tie is. It is wherever you left it, the same as it is every morning when you ask me, and yes, you are going to your father's. We've been talking about it for five days. Since the last time you went, in fact. Which was last Sunday. When your father said he would pick you up this Friday, which is today, and you could stay the night with him and he would take you to the football match. You
know
you are going to your bloody father's …' I clapped a hand to my mouth and bit it.

Stanley's face, which had lit up at the thought of 22 blokes kicking a bag of air, clouded again. ‘I hope
She
isn't there.'

‘She will be,' I said grimly, suffused with shame at swearing and giving my son's future therapist even more material to work with. ‘She lives there.'

She
is Emily, Daniel's new girlfriend, who is totally welcome to him because I wouldn't have him back if his was the last paunch on earth. She has set up home with him which I don't care about at all. I do think, however, it smacks of indecent haste as far as Stanley, who has to visit them, is concerned. Them and their laminate floors and low black coffee tables and single lilies in tall glass tubes (I didn't press Stanley for these details – he gave them up quite readily under cross-examination).

Stanley wrinkled his nose even more. ‘I can't find my trousers either.'

‘Boiler!' I got up from my desk in our tiny spare bedroom and stomped to the door in two paces. ‘They were muddy, remember? I washed them. I told you they were on the boiler to dry. I knew you weren't listening … And why weren't you dressed ages ago? I've got to get this lot finished today,' I shrieked, jabbing a finger at the pile of paper teetering on the top of the ancient filing cabinet. ‘And how can I do that with you constantly interrupting me?'

‘All right. Take a chill-pill.' Stanley sighed and plodded across the landing. He knows when it is
that
time of the month.

‘Keep it on,' he called from the safety of the stairs while I kicked the waste bin. ‘Will you make me some toast?'

One, two, three, four, five. Breathe in and out. Adopt sing-song voice to disguise the fact I want to throttle him
. ‘Yes darling,' I trilled through gritted teeth. ‘I will make you toast even though you are 11 and a half and quite old enough to make it yourself. Even if I am right in the middle of a paragraph.'

‘You were doing emails.'

‘Work ones. When I was 11 …'

‘You got up at dawn to scrub all the floors, made breakfast for the whole family, did all the washing and walked through fire and flood 20 miles to school …' Stanley poked his head back round the door and grinned.

I glared. ‘Just get ready!'

The bloody toaster has a mind of its own. It knows when I am tense and uptight and in a hurry and it quite deliberately sends the bread out pale and flaccid, then, when you push the lever back down for just ten more seconds, burns it to a cinder.

I hurled four blackened slices out of the back door, where a squawking herring gull immediately pounced. ‘Bugger off, you vulture,' I snarled. It ignored me and swallowed down the first slice whole. It stuck out in a ridge from the creature's fat white neck as the bird salivated, pop-eyed.

‘Peanut butter or Marmite?' I leapt onto the toaster to stop it cremating the third lot. ‘Juice or milk?'

Stanley heaved a rucksack through the kitchen door. ‘Can I have hot chocolate?'

Hot chocolate, yes, yes. If we've got enough milk which we probably haven't. It's all feast or famine in our house. There's either six pints in the fridge door, in various stages of becoming cheese, or there's half an inch which the whole world wants.

I got out two more slices of bread for me. I was going to start the Atkins again but who's got time to start buggering about with eggs first thing in the morning? And anyway carbs release serotonin which is supposed to keep you sane (fat bloody chance) and Marmite is full of B vitamins – ditto. The peanut butter jar was empty. Carefully scraped out, lid screwed tightly back on, replaced on the shelf. The hot chocolate drum was bereft of hot chocolate.

I waved it at Stanley. ‘What is the bloody point of putting it back like this? Why don't you write it on the shopping list instead? I am not psychic, Stanley. I can't mind-read or see through cardboard.' I poured milk into a mug and plonked it down in front of him. It slopped and sent white drops across the table. ‘Damn it.'

Stanley picked up the mug and began to drink with maddening slowness. He chewed on a corner of toast and flicked open his PlayStation magazine.

‘
Stop doing that, you bastard
 …' Stanley's head shot up as I hurled myself at the toaster that was belching out black smoke. ‘I don't eat carbohydrates anyway!' I yelled, chucking more burnt offerings through the door and restraining myself from ripping the plug from the wall and hurling the toaster after them.

‘Stop shouting!' Stanley yelled back.

I picked up a J Cloth and scrunched it into a hard ball. ‘I'm talking to the toaster,' I shrieked. ‘Not you …'

Stanley sighed.

‘Sorry,' I said.

‘It's OK.'

I ran a hand through his spiky hair, leaning over to pick up the crust he'd left. ‘Look at the time – we're going to be really late now,' I said, with my mouth full. ‘You must go and clean your teeth. Have you checked whether you've got enough money? Is your phone charged? I want you to text me when you get to your father's. I want to know you've been picked up safely …'

‘I will.' Stanley shook his head at me. ‘Don't stress.'

‘I'm not stressing. I just worry about you.' All of a sudden I felt my chin trembling and I turned away quickly and looked in the sink for some crockery to break when he'd gone to school.
Get a bloody grip
,
stop bloody bursting into tears over nothing. Be
nice
…

I got one of my secret supply of plain chocolate Bounty bars out of the tin hidden behind the teabags. ‘Take one of these for break.'

Stanley smiled. ‘I did yesterday.'

How it takes Stanley 20 minutes to brush his teeth I don't know, but it does. Another five minutes goes on putting his shoes on. He ambled his way to the front door as I squawked my way through the daily check-list. ‘Money? Food? Drinks? Phone?' (Here there was a short interlude while we discovered it was still upstairs and needing charging) ‘Homework? Games kit?' Stanley's rucksack was a solid block I could barely lift.

‘Yes, yes, yes,' he said wearily.

‘Overnight stuff?'

‘
Yes
.'

‘Let's go then,' I cried brightly. The quiet night in on my own I'd been looking forward to all week suddenly seemed a rather dismal prospect.

I picked up my car keys and strode to the front door.

‘Mum!' Stanley shrieked. ‘You're still in your dressing gown!'

So I was. It wouldn't bother me driving like that but Stanley still hasn't recovered from the day when the head of Year Seven came across the road to reprimand me about stopping on the zigzag lines and I was wearing a nightie and slippers (I've never recovered either – he's really quite attractive and I hadn't even had a shower).

I ran upstairs for some tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. ‘Don't worry,' I called heroically. ‘I'll get you there …'

It takes twelve minutes to drive to Highcourt House Grammar, nine and a half if I break the speed limit and the lollipop lady at the top of the hill nips out of the way. Today she was on the pavement, deep in conversation, and only three of the five sets of traffic lights we encountered were red. My china might be safe after all. We pulled up outside school, at exactly 8.35 – I could hear the first bell clanging. ‘There you go!' I said triumphantly. ‘You have got clean socks, haven't you?'

‘Yes, Mum.' Stanley got out of the car.

‘Your bag!'

Stanley shook his head at me and heaved the rucksack out after him.

‘That bag's so heavy – I do worry about your back.'

‘It's OK, Mum, don't fuss.'

‘I'll see you tomorrow night.'

‘Yep.'

‘I'll get us something nice to eat.'

‘OK.'

‘I'm sorry for being such an old dragon and for shouting so much this morning.'

‘It's OK.'

Stanley got out of the car and hoisted the rucksack onto his back, frowning with concentration as he struggled to get his arms through the straps. As he shut the door, my solar plexus went into spasm. I jumped out of the car, leaving the engine running, and ran round it after him.

‘Stanley,' I said, as he began to wander off, ‘I really love you. You're a lovely, kind boy and gorgeous and I'm so proud of you …'

He stopped, rolled his eyes and looked nervously at three passing girls. ‘Do not,' he hissed, through gritted teeth, ‘kiss me.'

‘Coffee, hurry, urgent!'

By the time I got back, Charlotte was already on the doorstep, hopping with impatience.

‘I think we're out of milk.' I growled, sticking my key in the lock.

She followed me into the hall. ‘Hello Charlotte,' she intoned. ‘And how are you today? How lovely to see you, oh best friend of mine …'

‘Shouldn't you be at work?'

‘I am. I'm doing a viewing round the corner.' Charlotte is Wainwright & Co Estate Agents' top negotiator and, despite the ailing state of the economy, still earns herself a small fortune in commission, though how she ever sells anything by spending her entire working week in my kitchen is a mystery.

‘Looks to me like you're here, holding me up …'

‘Laura Meredith, you are a terrible old bag,' said Charlotte, shooing Boris, my large tabby cat, off the work surface and putting the kettle on.

I sat down at the table and put my head in my hands. ‘Yes, I know. I was gruesome to Stanley this morning. Chalked up a whole load more WIT points. Referred to Daniel as ‘your bloody father' – not something they recommend in the “how to handle your separation so your child's not damaged” handbook – and then mortified him by hugging him outside school.'

‘It's one's job to embarrass one's children,' said Charlotte. ‘it'll toughen him up for when he's got a wife.' She ran her hands through her frizzy blonde hair. ‘I called Becky a little bitch last night – more WIT points for her too.'

WIT stands for When-in-Therapy. It goes without saying that with a mother like me (and a traitorous, philandering father who can't keep it in his trousers) Stanley will probably succumb to treatment at about 22. So far he has enough material to keep him going, at two sessions a week, until he's past 30. I keep a mental tally of my wrongdoings to supply to him when the time comes. So the shrink can cut straight to the chase.

‘I hope that bloody Emily woman doesn't make any more comments to upset him,' I said. ‘I don't want him to have low self-esteem – and you know what she's like.'

Emily is blonde and perfect. Pin thin, given to wearing sharp little suits and spiky heels. Daniel is smitten. As well he might be – he probably can't believe his luck. There he is, 47, with a receding hairline and a beer gut and there she is, 28 years old (a whole decade younger than me – bitch), perched in their minimalist flat on her pert little buttocks, while I sit here on my droopy ones. Actually there is more than a decade between us. I might pretend I'm 39 but really I'm 42. All my 40th birthday cards – apart from the ones full of witticisms about being over the hill and one's teeth falling out – were at pains to point out that I was now entering my prime. It doesn't feel that way to me. Though
She
is, undoubtedly, in hers.

‘Wait till she has his baby,' said Charlotte, in what she clearly imagined was a comforting manner. ‘Remember Karina being all distraught because Mark's new bird was all blonde and willowy and made her feel like an elephant? Until they started producing. Now she's put on about three stone and looks a right mess. Karina calls them Mark and Stretch-Mark.'

I laughed, although the thought of Daniel with a new baby had sent a shaft of pain right through me.

‘She's as thick as two short planks too,' said Charlotte.

‘Emily isn't,' I said gloomily.

Emily is very clever with a degree in Food Science and a lucrative job being a food “stylist”. She spends her days arranging beautiful, inedible displays – waxing fruit or spraying pork pies with varnish so they shine for the camera. Making food look pretty before it's thrown away – that's her speciality. We wouldn't actually want to eat anything, would we?