Read Take Mum Out for Free Online Page B

an attempt to inspire me, has switched the topic to her current dalliance with some whippersnapper she pounced on in a bar. Although the four of us are close in age, Viv has by far the whizziest life these days. As studio manager at a textile design company, she easily passes for a decade younger with her Mia-Farrow-esque crop, which she carries off beautifully with her large brown eyes, pronounced cheekbones and the rosy complexion of the child-free. Viv married young, at twenty-one; the ring had barely been slipped on her finger when her husband started to micromanage the way she dressed (no hemlines above knee-length) and even her make-up (i.e. none). So jealous was he, she used to joke that he’d probably implanted some kind of tracking device in her while she slept – then he caused an almighty scene when she was chatting to some man at a party, and it stopped being remotely funny. Sick of being ‘under surveillance’ as she put it, Viv packed her belongings into two battered old cases and walked out. There’s been a dizzying amount of flings since, though nothing remotely approaching serious.
    ‘You need to cast the net wide,’ she instructs me now, smoking a cigarette at the open kitchen window. ‘Find yourself a younger man. Everyone’s doing it these days.’
    ‘You mean
you
are,’ I snigger. ‘Anyway, how young is too young, d’you think? I mean, what are the rules?’
    She takes a drag of her cig. ‘Half your age plus seven is perfectly fine.’
    ‘And how did you work that out?’
    She grins and drains her wine glass, refilling it to the brim from the bottle. Viv drinks fast, with seemingly no ill effects next morning; but then, my hangovers were child’s play before I had kids.
    ‘Well,’ she explains, extinguishing her cigarette under the running tap and dropping it into the bin, ‘that way you avoid people crowing that you’re
twice
his age. And think of the energy levels, Alice. Younger guys don’t need much sleep, and when they do it’s at the proper time – you know, at night, and not when you’re watching a movie together.’ My mind flashes back to Tom sleeping, seemingly for days on end, like a hibernating dormouse in his duvet nest on the sofa. ‘Although, I have to say, it’s not all good,’ Viv goes on, cheeks already flushed from the wine.
    ‘Sounds pretty good to me,’ Kirsty says ruefully. I know she and her husband Dan have been having problems lately; their three children are home educated, and he appears to have reneged on his part of the deal, which was to teach them science and maths. As Kirsty has pointed out, home educating is a cinch when you’re sitting in a peaceful office, ten miles from home.
    ‘I mean, look at the state of my face,’ Viv laments. ‘I’m so sleep deprived, I can’t tell you.’ She jabs at the faintest hint of under-eye baggage.
    ‘That’s normal,’ Kirsty retorts. ‘I’ve had mine for so long, they’re permanently etched on my face.’
    Ingrid leans forward. ‘You know the best treatment for those? Pile ointment. Alice, d’you have any old tubes kicking around?’
    ‘Thanks a lot,’ I scoff. ‘When you think of my bathroom cabinet, you’re not picturing a beautiful pot of Crème de la Mer. You’re thinking a mangled tube of Anusol.’
    ‘Well,’ she says with a smile, ‘you have had that …
problem
over the years, haven’t you?’
    ‘Not for ages,’ I insist, heading to the bathroom anyway and returning with the requested tube.
    ‘Great. Dab it on,’ she instructs Viv.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Fergus, who’s returned to the kitchen for further supplies, stares at us from the doorway.
    ‘Emergency beauty treatment,’ Viv explains, patting an eye-bag with a finger and waggling the tube. ‘This, Fergus, is your mum’s bum cream but as you can see, it has other uses. It
multitasks
.’
    She is slurring a little, and he regards her with horror before backing out of the kitchen.
    ‘Thank your lucky stars you’re