Diary of an Unsmug Married (9 page)

WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE

After we finish work, I find out why Greg wanted the list. He insists we wait around in the office until it’s almost dark, and then he says, ‘Here are the keys to the Gregmobile – you go and get in. Won’t be a minute.’

Five minutes later, he reappears and dumps fifteen manila folders in my lap, together with a map and a torch. I get really worried. Is Greg’s Patrick Bateman exterior an unsubtle indicator that he is a menacing rapist who carries a chainsaw around? Should Max have been more concerned for my safety, and when will he notice that I’m missing?
Will
he notice that I am missing?

‘What’s number one on the map?’ says Greg, swerving wildly to avoid a cyclist.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Map,’ says Greg. ‘On your lap. What’s number one?’

I open the map, but can’t see what I’m doing, so then I start dropping files all over the place.

‘Torch,’ says Greg, and then, ‘F*ck’s sake!’

I direct the torch at the map and find fifteen small, coloured dots affixed to various parts of East Lichford. These are cross-referenced to a list of numbers stuck at the side of the map. I cheer up – surely Greg wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to rape someone (almost) old enough to be his mother?

‘Number one – Eleanor Road,’ I say. ‘Why?’

‘Find the file with number one on it,’ says Greg.

I do as he says. The file is labelled ‘Edmund Beales’. Oh,
Jesus
Christ.

‘Gregory,’ I say, ‘I
thought
we were going for a drink. What the hell
are
we doing?’

‘Our DIY version of a CRB
^fn6
check,’ says Greg. ‘I am sick of waiting for a mad constituent to chop my head off with a samurai sword, so you and I are going to make a pre-emptive strike.’

‘Huh?’ is my considered response.

‘We are going to check out what little we actually know about the crazy f*ckers we have to deal with every day – without security – and see if any of it stacks up. We could get killed waiting nine months for the Criminal Records Bureau, and Special Branch only ever seem to notice the animal-rights loony tunes. First stop, the home of Edmund Beales.’

THURSDAY, 17 JUNE

I have a very bad hangover from the bottle of gin that Greg and I drank when we got back last night, after our narrow escape from the dog in Mr Beales’ garden, so I’m taking today off as a holiday.

At lunchtime, I get an email from Greg who says:

The carpenter is here, working away on the security improvements. He tells me that he hasn’t bothered to fit bulletproof glass to the new door he has just installed. The consequence for me, if anyone needs reminding, will simply be
this.

I open the attachment to find a video clip of JFK’s assassination.

FRIDAY, 18 JUNE

God, I’m so glad that Connie’s coming home from uni today for the summer holidays. I’ve had about as much testosterone-related craziness this week as I can take. Mainly from my lunatic son.

I have to ask Greg to take over for the second half of this afternoon’s surgery, as Max and I have been called into school to see Josh’s tutor, Mr Bowen. When we arrive, we discover that Josh is
furious
that we’ve been contacted, and he doesn’t even calm down during the lengthy period we spend waiting outside the tutor’s office. He spends the entire time ranting, just like a mad constituent.

‘That bloody man’s got it in for me. He just picks on me –
all
the
time
. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing, it’s always, “Joshua Bennett. My office –
now
!” He’s just jealous because I haven’t got a disability,’ announces Josh, with venom.

‘Disability?’ I ask.

‘We call him Mr Thumb,’ says Josh. ‘‘Cause his thumb’s five times the size it should be.’

Josh draws various illustrations of Mr Bowen’s affected appendage to support his claims, and his outrage seems so genuine that Max and I are feeling really hostile by the time we enter the office. I will
not
have someone picking on my youngest child, just because his digits are undamaged.

I put on my best MP’s office voice and walk to the desk, my hand outstretched. ‘Mr Thumb? I’m Molly Bennett. Pleased to meet you.’

Max and Josh collapse in hysterics, while Mr Bowen looks at me in disbelief. I realise what I’ve done and have to excuse myself. I clutch at my forehead and say, ‘I am
so
sorry, I’m unwell. I think I may be going to be—’ and then I run for the door, making (very convincing) retching noises.

Max tells me later that things didn’t get any better after my departure. Apparently, when he complained that Mr Bowen was picking on Josh, Mr Bowen replied that Josh was in the sixth-form common room all morning – and all afternoon – of every day, playing
poker
. Max didn’t believe this, so Mr Bowen made him watch a CCTV recording of Josh in action.

Max then tried to argue that Josh was probably only relaxing during free periods but, again, Mr Bowen’s response wasn’t exactly helpful. He demanded Josh’s homework diary, to enable him to show Max the lesson timetable. The entire cover was decorated with extremely realistic, outsized thumbs.

Max says there’s nothing for it but to kill Josh. Connie’s (unsurprisingly) in favour, and even I agree to think about it. We don’t ask Holly her opinion, in case she objects.

SATURDAY, 19 JUNE

Ouf, I don’t think Connie’s got the H&M job she was interviewed for today, although she says that everything went well until the manager asked her whether there was anything that really annoyed her about people. (The Boss never asked
me
that!)

The trouble with Connie is that she’s so truthful that she can’t understand the point of those interview questions to which the only correct answers are lies, such as what she
should
have said on this occasion: ‘I am very tolerant, and
really
like dealing with the general public.’

Connie doesn’t say anything of the sort. Her argument is that any interviewer worth his or her salt would assume that a candidate who answered with such bullshit must be a compulsive liar, and should therefore be avoided.

She takes the same approach to interviews as she does to life in general: tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (I have strong suspicions that this characteristic may also be linked to Asperger’s, along with a pathological inability to judge when to explain oral sex to an elderly relative.)

Anyway, Connie’s answer to the H&M manager apparently goes like this: ‘Well, one thing really,
really
annoys me …’

‘What?’ says the (presumably incredulous) manager.

‘When someone has thin hair, and their ears poke out – right through it.’

Connie says the interview ended shortly thereafter.

SUNDAY, 20 JUNE

I bet you can tell a married woman from a single one, just by the state of her underwear. Mine is tragic. Rather worryingly, this thought occurs to me while I am trying to draft a reply to Johnny’s last email – the one in which he mentioned massage.

I’m hoping that he was so distracted by the oil spill that he forgot that he was writing to me, and thought he was emailing his wife instead – but now I have no idea whether to respond to his suggestion, or whether it’s safer to ignore it altogether.

I draft several clumsy attempts at suitable replies, but my political skills seem to have deserted me entirely so, eventually, I give up and decide to phone Dad instead. It
is
Father’s Day, after all – even though Connie seems oblivious to the fact that this also applies to Max. She’s still in bed, moaning to her friends on Facebook about retail managers with no sense of humour.

I, however, am in my father’s good books, due to being the only one of his many children who has remembered to send a card, or to phone – or at least I am,
until
the subject of Facebook comes up again. Along with a mention of Dad’s young Thai women ‘friends’ who are all, without exception, ‘neighbours’, or so he says.

He gets quite cross when I question the likelihood of this, on the basis that: a) he lives in a really small village, and b) it’s in Dorset. Then he says he’s not interested in women since Stepmother Mark III left him, anyway – so I have to phone Dinah as fast as I can.

‘Di,’ I say. ‘Can you set Dad up with one of your friends’ mums?’

‘Why? What’s he up to?’ says Dinah.

(We have a sisterly shorthand which avoids the need for a lot of explanation, which is lucky as she talks so much that I often can’t get a word in edgeways.)

‘He says he’s
not
interested
in
women
again,’ I say. ‘
And
that the Thai girls are all his neighbours.’

‘Christ!’ says Dinah. ‘I’ll get onto it straight away. In the meantime, why don’t you write something off-putting on his Facebook wall?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like asking him if his willy’s still bendy, for a start.’

There’s a distinctly triumphant tone to Dinah’s last comment. I wonder if this is how most daughters discuss their fathers? Mind you, I also wonder how many fathers have women friends as young as
those
. Maybe Max fantasises about starting all over again with someone new, probably half my age, and from another continent.

I don’t think I want to know if he does, but I’m unsettled for the rest of the afternoon now that the thought’s occurred to me. I keep finding myself staring at him, until he notices and says,

‘What’s up? Have I got a bogey hanging from my nose or something?’

He hasn’t, but it’s odd how you don’t really notice the person you’ve been married to for aeons, until you start to consider how attractive they might appear to another person – which is a bit alarming, not just because I bet
I
look terrible, but also because I suspect Max doesn’t. And, as if that isn’t quite depressing enough, Josh is taking Max out ‘for a Father’s Day drink’ – at a lap dancing club, or so he says.

Honestly, is there no end to the pressure? First, I need new underwear, and now I shall have to learn to pole-dance, too.

MONDAY, 21 JUNE

God, why do I look so different in photographs to how I
imagine
I look?

The Boss’ website is being updated, to allow him to blog – talk about asking for trouble – so I have to have a new photo taken. The result makes me look like Mr Burns in
The
Simpsons
. When did I become a hunchback?

I blame it on the weird position I have to adopt, in order to preserve an ear-protecting distance from the receiver while talking to Miss Chambers on the phone – and last night’s misguided attempt at pole-dancing didn’t help much either, but what are you supposed to do when your husband and son spend five hours in a lap dancing club on Father’s Day? (Max claims they only went to the pub and that Josh is winding me up, but he looked suspiciously cheerful when he left for work this morning.)

I suppose my photo could be worse, though – Greg looks even more like Patrick Bateman in
American
Psycho
than usual in
his. He says he thinks he looks ‘damned attractive’ and ‘will scare off lunatics’, so I can’t persuade him to change it – but I’m not letting mine go anywhere except into the virtual trash.

I’m going to suggest the web designer uses the most recent photo I sent to Johnny instead. The constituents probably won’t notice that I have my eyes shut or, if they do, they’ll think I’m wincing with empathy for their plights.

Actually, I
am
feeling rather uncharacteristically empathetic today, seeing as Anti-Social Behaviour is on the agenda. Such an
idiotic
term, which doesn’t at all reflect the utter misery that is wreaked on so many by so few.

If there’s one thing I blame the Labour Government for, it was their complete inability to call a spade a spade. ASB sounds like a toddler tantrum, which drastically understates the case if our constituents are anything to go by. Whole neighbourhoods are being terrorised, by one or two nightmare families who are out of control.

Whenever the subject comes up at dinner parties – which is pretty rare, anyway – our friends look at me as if I’m making up examples for the sake of entertainment. East Lichford might as well be
A Tale of Two Cities
, given how little awareness of the underclass those who live in its richer parishes seem to have.

When I mentioned the horse and the burned-out cars Steve Ellington keeps in his front garden, David said, ‘Oh Molly, you
are
funny.’

He should have seen Edmund Beales’ bloody Doberman the other night; and I bet there were three pit-bulls inside that house as well – Greg and I escaped by the skin of our teeth. I didn’t even recall Mr Beales’ shotgun licence until afterwards, so I suppose things could have been even worse.

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked now, which is what empathy always does to the brain. You can’t afford too much of it in my job but, getting back to ASB, there seems to be no meaningful deterrent at all. If the nightmare neighbours have children, they’ll be re-housed straight away if they
are
evicted – in order to protect their children; and then their new neighbours will quickly end up as frantic as the old ones were.

What’s even more depressing is the way that so many of the Council’s Housing Officers seem to view desperate, but otherwise reasonable, residents as ‘moaning minnies’.

I’d find this rather less irritating if almost everyone who worked in the Housing Department didn’t live miles away in rural bliss, as evidenced by their complete inability to get to work at the first hint of snow.

I wonder if they have ASB in Russia? It seems unlikely that Putin would tolerate anything like that, but I forget to ask Johnny about it when he emails me, just before I leave the office. He asks if I’m not talking to him, seeing as I haven’t replied to his offer of a massage yet – so that
must
have been directed at me, and not his wife!