Read Mummy Said the F-Word for Free Online Page B

exclusive, the kind of bag that can only be purchased via a waiting list and certainly doesn’t boast a dusting of cookie crumbs inside. She checks her watch, kisses my cheek fleetingly and announces, ‘Got to run. Let me know, will you? I’m serious about this.’
    ‘OK,’ I murmur.
    She pauses. ‘I’m … I’m really proud of you, you know. I could never do it. After all you’ve gone through, dealing with the kids on your own …’
    ‘Thanks.’ My smile wavers.
    ‘All I have to worry about is deadlines and crap like that. I think you’re amazing.’
    The snort bursts out of my nose as she turns to go.
    Travis waves and cries, ‘Bye, Billie!’ but all that’s left is a gust of her Gucci perfume.

4
    While Millie zips off to instruct the British public on the Correct Way to Raise Children, Travis and I take the bus to Mimosa House. This is the optimistically named care home where Jeannie, my seventy-seven-year-old mother, is currently bickering with a fellow inmate (sorry, resident).
    ‘I only asked how old you are,’ protests the woman in the neighbouring chair.
    ‘None of your business,’ my mother snaps, failing to register that her beloved daughter and youngest grandchild are traversing the day room to bestow her with kisses and news from the outside world.
    We pause a discreet distance away, waiting for the spat to subside. The TV is blaring –
The Flintstones
, the colour cranked up to the max – and two carers are dispensing tea and biscuits from a squeaking trolley. Behind us, in the corridor, nurses are cackling over something in the newspaper. Despite its purpose – and the fact that my mother lives here – the atmosphere at Mimosa House is reasonably jolly. There is no mimosa, though, as far as I’ve been able to detect. Just a few dusty dandelion leaves piercing the gravel at the front.
    ‘Whose child is this?’ Mum’s neighbour asks eagerly, craning forward to inspect Travis. She tips her head to one side and smiles benevolently. ‘Pretty girl,’ she adds. ‘Doesn’t look like you, Jeannie, with your heavy jaw.’
    ‘Shut your face,’ Mum thunders, drawing in her lips to form a thin line.
    ‘I’m not a girl!’ Travis protests. ‘I’m a boy.’
    ‘Needs his hair cut,’ Mum adds.
    ‘Hello, Mum.’ I bend to kiss her papery cheek.
    ‘Where’s my breakfast?’ she demands.
    ‘It’s me, Mum, Cait, your daughter. There isn’t any breakfast. It’s the afternoon – tea and biscuit time. Look – I’ve brought Travis to see you. Your
grandson
.’
    From her vinyl-covered chair, she scans his face with flinty eyes. Then she slides a bony hand into her brown cardigan pocket and extracts a fistful of Fox’s Glacier Mints. For a moment, I assume she’ll hand one to Travis. She unwraps one, pops it in her mouth and stuffs the rest back into her pocket.
    ‘Granny, can I have—’ Travis starts, but I shush him.
    ‘These people,’ Mum mutters, ‘they come in the night and take my purse and my eiderdown.’ She slides a hand beneath her seat cushion as if the thief might have stashed said items there.
    ‘Mum,’ I say gently, crouching down to her level as there are no seats free for visitors, ‘I’m sure no one’s taken your things. You said that last time, remember? And we found your purse in your handbag. I’ll ask Helena if she’s seen it.’
    Helena, Mum’s key worker, is warm and comforting, like a milky pudding. Sometimes I wish she was
my
key worker.
    ‘That witch,’ Mum hisses, spraying minty spittle. ‘She thinks I don’t know.’
    ‘Uh-huh,’ I murmur.
    Travis totters away and stands in front of the TV.
    ‘Thinks she’s better than us with her dad a chemist and not having to join the army,’ Mum rattles on. ‘Bone bloody idle! The things they get on the black market – the lamb and the chocolate – and of course she makes her own lemonade out of chemicals from the hospital …’
    Here we go.
    ‘Some of us,’ she growls, with an angry crunch