Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****!

On the doorstep stood a very welcome sight in the form of my lovely friends Colin and Sam, and Hannah and Charlie. Not quite a rugged farmer to fall in love with me, but probably much, much better, because, really, who could arsed with all the emotional upheaval of falling in love again?

‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

‘Well, that is a nice way to greet your oldest and bestest friend,’ said Hannah.

‘We thought you might like some company,’ said Sam, ‘what with it being your first night on your own in the new house. It’s always a tough one, that first night without the kids.’

‘But how did you know?’ I said.

‘Oh, Jane told Sophie she was at Simon’s tonight,’ said Sam. ‘So we thought what better way to spend our Saturday night than by getting pissed with you and shouting “Bastard” about Simon in a supportive way.’

‘That does sound quite good fun,’ I admitted.

‘I’ll definitely shout “Bastard” the loudest,’ said Hannah.

‘And also,’ put in Colin, ‘we haven’t even seen your new house yet, so I’m obviously dying to conform to the gay stereotype by coming round and criticising your décor. But also what Sam said.’

I do love Colin. Sam spent several years as a single father, following the departure of his dastardly former partner Robin, and after years of lurking around supermarkets (he read an article about it being a good place to meet men, but felt his trolley full of fish fingers and Petits Filous was off-putting to the singletons on the prowl in the produce aisle), a flirtation with Tinder (I don’t think Hannah and I helped there, we just kept shouting ‘No! SWIPE!’ every time he showed us a potential date/shag), a period of announcing he was Never Going to Find Love and thus was giving up looking and Focusing on His Inner Self (he pulled a muscle his first week at yoga and was thrown out of the class for shouting ‘Fucking hell, I think I’ve broken my arse!’, after which he accepted that his inner self preferred tequila slammers to Downward Dogs), he met Colin at the gym – ‘I’m almost afraid to tell people that’s how we met,’ he admitted. ‘It’s such a cliché.’

‘And Hannah told me I was to come and make myself useful, which I suspect will involve being sent for a takeaway and then driving everyone home. Which I think will actually be quite useful of me,’ said Charlie.

Oh lovely, lovely Charlie. Hannah’s divine second husband is so much nicer than her horrible first husband Dan, who was nothing more than a rancid streak of weasel piss. To my utter horror, I found myself for the first time ever thinking that maybe I should have made better choices in my life and married Charlie and not Simon, because once upon a time, at university, about a million years ago, when we were all young and foolish and irresponsible, Charlie had been in love with me, but with the callousness of youth I’d rejected good old dependable Charlie Carrhill for the dashingly gorgeous, romantic and slightly dangerous Simon Russell. Simon was so gorgeous back then. I think the very fact he noticed my existence was enough to turn my head and make me fall in love with him, breaking poor Charlie’s heart in the process.

And now look at us. All that hope and promise and love Simon and I once had, reduced to trying to make him jealous through my Instagram feed. What if I hadn’t let Simon seduce me with his wicked smile and come-to-bed eyes and had made a more sensible and considered choice, like Charlie? I gave myself a shake. No one deserved lovely Charlie more than Hannah (my bestest and oldest friend indeed, I reminded myself), and to even begin thinking like that … Well, that would make me a terrible person, and if I was determined one thing was going to come out of this sodding divorce, it was that I was going to be a Better Person. Do Good Works and things like that, and become universally beloved so I don’t die alone and unwanted, and small children would call out, ‘God bless you, Ma’am’ when I walked down the street. I probably wasn’t doing very well so far after my Instagramming earlier, though. Maybe I could make up for it by retweeting something worthy later. And actually, divine though Charlie was with Hannah, he hadn’t actually been any better than Simon when he was with his first wife, so he wasn’t really Mr Perfect either.

‘Ellen, are you going to stand there gawping and staring into space or are you going to open that nice champagne I brought? Go and get some glasses while I decide why all your paintings are in the wrong place,’ chided Colin.

‘It doesn’t matter what you think about my painting placement,’ I informed him. ‘They’re positioned like they are for a reason, to hide a multitude of sins. Likewise, why the sofa is where it is. So it’s all staying put, because otherwise it all looks a bit shit.’

Colin sighed. ‘You’re spoiling all my fun,’ he said. ‘How am I supposed to be a Proper Gay with you thwarting me at every turn when I try to express myself?’

‘Colin, darling, you’re a corporate lawyer, you express yourself by making obscene amounts of money for evil corporations, not by prancing around rearranging Ellen’s furniture. If you want to unleash your Proper Gay, just stick some Madonna on and leave the sofa where it is,’ said Sam.

Colin looked sulky. ‘You know I don’t like Madonna,’ he complained. ‘I’m not a total cliché, you know. Anyway, Ellen, cheers! New house, new life, new you, new start! How are you feeling?’

‘A bit lost …’ I confessed.

‘Oh Ellen,’ said Hannah. ‘Of course you are, that’s totally natural. But this is an amazing opportunity for a fresh start. Imagine if Dan had never left me, and I was still stuck with him.’

‘But Simon wasn’t Dan, was he?’ I said sadly. ‘I mean, he could be a bit of a lazy arsehole at times, but he wasn’t a bad person. There were a lot of good bits too. I really do love him. Loved him. I did love him, I mean.’

‘This is the hardest part,’ said Hannah. ‘The bit where you think you’re going to be on the shelf for evermore, and die alone and unloved in a damp basement flat surrounded by seventeen cats. Remember when I was at that stage?’

‘Vaguely. Instead I shall die alone and unloved in a damp hovel of cottage with weirdly placed paintings to hide the mildew, surrounded by terriers who will fight over my dead body. I don’t even think the roses round the door are roses, I think they’re just brambles.’

‘Well, maybe it’s time to think about getting back in the game then?’ suggested Colin.

‘Back in the saddle, so to speak,’ added Sam with a lascivious wink.

‘Saddle? Game?’ I said in confusion. ‘What on earth are you talking about? You think I should take up tennis? And riding? Or cycling? Do a triathlon like Fiona Montague?’

‘Well, riding of a sort,’ snorted Sam with another leery wink. ‘Crikey, is Fiona doing a triathlon? I’d have thought she’d be too worried about her make-up running!’

‘Sam,’ snapped Colin. ‘Your double entendres are not helping, nor is your winking, which frankly is just disturbing. Please never do that at me. And we’re not here to talk about Fiona Montague.’

Sam muttered something mutinous.

‘No, Ellen,’ Colin went on. ‘We’re talking about you getting back in the dating game. Finding yourself a man. Getting a bit of cock. You’re a beautiful woman in her prime, who deserves to have a bit of fun, and we thought you maybe just need a nudge.’

I looked at them both in horror. ‘No. Just … no. I can’t. It’s not possible. And please don’t describe me as a woman in her prime, because that just reminds me of Miss Jean Brodie, who was a mad, sex-obsessed fascist who came to no good in the end. I’m not a nympho Nazi, thank you very much!’

‘But Ellen, don’t you miss sex?’ asked Colin gently.

‘No,’ I said bluntly. ‘I don’t. I miss Simon. I miss the man I thought he was. I miss having someone to come home to and tell about my day, even if he doesn’t listen, and someone to make me a cup of tea in bed on Sunday morning, and having someone I’ve spent my whole life with so that sometimes when I see something funny and I know they’d be the only other person in the world who would find that funny too I can just tell them or text them a photo and know they’ll get my joke without having to explain it. I miss having someone who remembers our children’s firsts – their first steps, their first words, their first days at school. I miss having someone who knows me in the way you can only know someone after twenty-five years together. And he wasn’t annoying all the time. There was a lot of good stuff too, when he took off his ratty fleeces and wore the nice jumpers I bought him. We had a lot of laughs together, and now I’ve no one to think about going on Nile cruises with when we’re old, or to share my indignation when the first SAGA catalogue drops through the door, and I miss the thought of all the things we should have done together when we finally had time and money and were free from the children. But I don’t miss fucking SEX, if you’ll pardon the pun!’

And then I burst into tears. Hideous, wracking tears, the tears I’d been holding in for months, ever since the furious, scalding, angry tears the night that he told me he needed some ‘space’, and I decided after those tears that I could either get on with my life or I could give in to the tears, but I couldn’t do both because if I gave in to the tears I’d drown in them. But it seems they were still there and had sneakily found a way to escape, which after all is what water always does. I sobbed and I sobbed, while Sam did the awkward man thing of patting my back gingerly and mumbling ‘There, there’, until Colin dispatched him in search of tissues and ‘a PROPER drink, darling, something stronger than bloody champagne, but for Christ’s sake not gin, she’s in enough of a state as it is!’ and I attempted to howl something about there being twelve packs of Mansize tissues in the cupboard under the stairs, and Colin took over and pulled me into a huge bear hug and just held me while I cried and cried, until the storm started to pass and I became uncomfortably aware that I’d drenched the front of his shirt in tears and, much worse, snot.

As the howling subsided into that awkward sniffling hiccupping that comes at the end of a really bad crying jag, and I attempted to gain some sort of control over myself, Colin handed me a large wad of tissues, and an eye-wateringly strong vodka and tonic.

‘Better?’ he enquired.

‘Uh huh,’ I gulped.

‘I think you needed that, didn’t you?’ he said gently.

I had needed it. I felt oddly cleansed, and calmer than I’d been for months.

‘Ellen,’ said Hannah. ‘Do you really still love Simon? Do you regret divorcing him?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It’s all so confusing. We’d been together so long, and I was so hurt and angry by what he did, but I thought we’d get through it in the end, we’d find a way, but then he started all that shit about “needing space” and not knowing if he loved me, so that was that, really … But it’s strange, life without him, because there were good bits too, you know. I know you thought he was an arse, but I do, did, I don’t know, love him, and despite everything, deep down I always thought he loved me too. I just always thought we’d grow old together. I’ve thought that since the very first night we got together. And now we won’t. And that takes a bit of getting used to, the idea that I’ll be on my own now for the rest of my life, with no one to accompany me on that Nile cruise.’

‘In fairness, you’d been trying to persuade Simon to go on a Nile cruise for years and he always refused on the basis that you’d only be disappointed when no one was murdered on board so you could don a shady hat and solve the mystery, gin and tonic in hand. Same as he wouldn’t go on the Orient Express with you either, because the murder-free reality would just shatter all your Agatha Christie fantasies,’ pointed out Colin.

‘And anyway, things like that are exactly what we were talking about,’ said Sam. ‘You seem to think that that’s it, that you’re now condemned to some lonely nun-like existence for evermore, but it’s the twenty-first century, people split up, move on, find new partners all the fucking time, babe. Look at me. Look at Colin. Look at Hannah and Charlie. We’ve all had failed marriages or long-term relationships, and we’ve all found someone else. Why do you think you won’t?’

‘I didn’t say I thought I won’t,’ I pointed out. ‘I said I can’t. There’s a difference.’

‘But why not?’ said Colin, looking baffled. ‘Unless you are still in love with Simon and feel you’ve made a terrible mistake, in which case it’s probably not too late to tell him, don’t be like Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, both too proud to admit how they feel. If you want Simon, do something about it. You’re not actually divorced yet – you could just put all this behind you and move on and we’ll say no more about it.’

‘I’m not pining for Simon,’ I said, remembering the very annoying coffee conversation we’d had that morning and his utter uselessness in attempting to galvanise his children into action even when it was officially his time to be responsible for them, and also reminding myself he was probably even now having red-hot contortionist sex to put on Instagram while his children were shut in their cupboards. ‘I just miss the companionship and the shorthand of an established relationship. Anyway, I can’t tell you why I can’t find someone else. You will just have to take my word for it,’ and I took a large slug of my drink.

Two more enormous vodka and tonics later, while Charlie was out getting a curry, I thought maybe, after all, I could tell the rest of them why I was now destined for a life of celibacy and loneliness.

‘I can’t have sex with another man,’ I announced.

‘Why not?’ said Colin.

‘Of course you can!’ said Hannah. ‘It’s hardly like you were some virgin bride when you married Simon, you’d been round the block a few times by the time you hooked up with our Mr Russell! I mean, you’ve even shagged Charlie!’

‘What, your Charlie?’ said Colin in surprise. ‘When did she shag him?’

‘She is here, you know!’ I said frostily. ‘Thank you, Hannah. I thought we’d agreed never to speak of the unfortunate fact that I’d shagged him, not once you two were an item. And it was years and years ago, Colin, before Simon, before any such thing as a hint of Hannah and him.’

Colin, who had obviously been hoping for something a little juicier, looked disappointed. ‘So if you’ve not been averse to a bit of the old casual sex in the past,’ he said, ‘why can’t you go back to your wicked and wanton ways?’

‘Because I can’t be naked!’ I burst out. ‘I cannot take my clothes off in front of a man! Not now!’

‘I know it’s daunting, babe,’ said Sam. ‘Men feel like that too, you know. The fear someone might laugh at the size of our dick (not that that has ever happened to me. I’ve never had any complaints in that department, thank you).’ Colin snorted. ‘Or they might think, I dunno, our balls are weird.’ Colin snorted again.

‘Would you please stop that, darling?’ said Sam. ‘You are the one not helping now. But you know what I mean, Ellen. It’s scary taking your clothes off in front of a new person. But just remember, they’ll probably be feeling exactly the same.’

‘NO!’ I shouted. ‘NO, THEY WON’T! Because it’s DIFFERENT for men!’

‘Of course it’s not,’ said Colin kindly. ‘We might be better at seeming OK about it, but really we do get nervous too.’

‘NO! Seriously, men can never understand what I’m talking about. Your bodies have not been ravaged by child bearing. My stomach looks like an uncooked focaccia –’

‘At least you manage to stay middle class with your metaphors,’ interrupted Colin approvingly.

‘Well, it DOES. All saggy and dimpled and with stretch marks all over it. It’s not a case of just going to the gym, either. No crunches in the world are going to sort the ravages of pregnancy. And my tits. My tits were once perky and firm, but not anymore. Now, I hardly dare take my bra off in winter, lest the floor is too cold, so far south are they migrating.’

‘But it can’t be that bad,’ said Sam. ‘You look all right with your clothes on.’

‘That is rather the whole point of why I can’t take them OFF,’ I shouted. ‘Just because I can cover the ravages in Zara’s finest doesn’t change the horror that lurks beneath.’

‘I’m sure you’re just being self-conscious,’ said Colin kindly. ‘It really can’t be that bad. You’re overthinking this.’

In answer, I pulled up my top and showed them my stretch-marked stomach. They recoiled, and then remembered themselves.

‘It’s fine, really,’ said Sam.

‘It does look a bit like an uncooked focaccia, doesn’t it?’ said Colin, with interest. ‘The stretch marks are like the little holes in the top of the focaccia. Maybe you should just put on some fake tan? After all, a nice baked loaf always looks more appealing than a lump of dough.’

‘COLIN!’ said Sam.

‘I’m trying to help,’ said Colin.

‘But I felt just the same with Charlie,’ said Hannah. ‘And it was fine.’

‘But you already knew Charlie. You’d known him for years. He wasn’t someone new.’

‘Yes, but he’d never seen me naked.’

‘No, but he was Charlie. Lovely, lovely Charlie. You knew he was wonderful and adored you and was a very good person. If I were to have sex again, it would be with a stranger. I mean, not an actual stranger, but in relative terms, when you’ve spent twenty-five years shagging the same person, really, anyone else counts as a stranger. What if I do sex wrong? What if it’s all different now and I didn’t get the memo? I can’t even remember what any other penises look like apart from Simon’s.’

‘Not even Charlie’s?’ said Hannah curiously.

‘Especially not Charlie’s. I have put that right out of my mind. I don’t want to think about what Charlie’s penis looks like.’

‘Why is Ellen thinking about my penis?’ enquired Charlie, coming back at exactly the wrong moment.

‘I’m not thinking about your penis!’ I insisted. ‘Or any penises. No penises. I mean, as far as I recall, I don’t remember being shocked or surprised by Simon’s, so I assume that most penises look like his, but even so, to look at someone else’s? To touch another man’s willy, let alone, well, you know! It would be too … strange. Too intimate. It would feel wrong.’

‘Or it might feel very right?’ suggested Colin. ‘You won’t know until you try.’

‘Anyway,’ I said darkly. ‘My stomach and my willy worries aren’t even the worst of it.’

‘Please don’t show us your tits,’ begged Colin.

‘I’m not going to show you my tits,’ I assured him. ‘The tits are not what I’m talking about anyway. The horror I’m referring to can never be seen by any man. Except perhaps a gynaecologist.’

Sam and Colin looked at me fearfully. Charlie retreated to the kitchen muttering something about heating up the naan bread.

I nodded. ‘Yep. I mean my fanny is the issue. Two human heads have squeezed through it. It has been sewn up twice. Basically, I’ve a fanny that looks like a patchwork quilt and I fear it’s not as … embracing … as it once was, so I can’t ever be naked or Do Sex with another man again. It was OK with Simon, he saw it all happening gradually, the stretch marks and the sagging, and even the baggy tapestry fanny didn’t all happen at once, and also it was mostly his fault. Have you noticed that he has quite a big head that he probably passed on to his children? So that was different. But I could no more inflict my Flaps of Doom on a new man than, well, than I could show them to you. It Just Is Not Going to Happen!’

‘Well, anyway, we’re not advocating you pick up randoms on Tinder and booty-call them,’ said Colin sternly. ‘If you meet someone that you find you connect with enough to want to go to bed with him, then he’ll probably be a nice enough person to not care that you have a few flaws and imperfections. He’ll probably be too busy worrying about his own imperfections anyway. But you can get to know someone first, and then think about bed. There’s no obligation to shag anyone you don’t want to.’

‘But what about dick pics?’ I whimpered.

‘Well, they’re quite useful. Look at it like this, if they send you a dick pic, you can instantly discount them, and not waste any more time on them. Unless, of course, you like what you see …’

‘OK, OK,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll think about it. I’m trying very hard to be a strong independent woman and not need a man, though, but it’s bloody lonely being a single mother and coping with everything on your own.’

‘You are a strong independent woman,’ said Hannah firmly. ‘You’ve always been a strong independent woman, and really, you’ve been coping on your own for years as Simon was always working or away so much.’

‘I know, I know, but I’m starting to realise he did do stuff. It’s the little things, you know – like having someone open a bottle of wine for me after a bad day. Someone to warm my feet on in bed. Judgy won’t let me, in fact he growls at me when I try. I don’t need a knight in shining armour to rescue me, but occasionally I’d so like someone to bring me a glass of wine after a long day.’

‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘in the meantime, remember you’ve always got us. You’re not on your own.’

Monday, 16 April

And at last the children have returned to school after the Easter holidays or the Spring Break or whatever the fuck they call it these days. I thought things would be easier when they were in secondary school. I thought as they got older they’d get more self-sufficient, they’d be able to get themselves up and out the door in the mornings, they’d not need me to find all their stuff (though why I thought that age would bring them the magical ability to locate lost items, I don’t know, given that it had never bestowed that gift upon their father), they’d be able to make their own lunches and breakfasts and possibly even their own dinners sometimes too. Oh, what a poor, sweet fool I was! Trying to get teenagers out the door is possibly even more stressful – more reminiscent of banging your head endlessly against a brick wall – than trying to get bloody toddlers out the door.

The happy fun joy started with trying to get them TO bed last night. I’d duly packed them off at a decent hour, reminding them that they needed their sleep, that they had to concentrate at school today and also that they were still growing, for which I was rewarded with the same whinges about how everyone else gets to stay up as late as they like that I’d been hearing for the last ten years, and which fell upon deaf and unsympathetic ears. Then there had been the arguments from Jane that it was not fair that she had to go to bed at 10 pm, just like Peter, when she was a whole two years older and so should be allowed to stay up much later, to which my only counter-argument was that she bloody well had to go to bed because I was going to bed, followed by me having to sit in the kitchen and guard the fridge until I was sure Peter was safely in bed to stop him downing three pints of milk before retiring for the night and then complaining when there was nothing to put on his vat of Weetabix in the morning. Then there had always been Simon’s role – after I’d shouted in vain at them to go to bed, he’d finally wade in to the argument and bellow that they were to go to bed NOW and they’d be so surprised by him shouting at them, that they’d go. Now that it’s just me shouting, I think they simply tune out.

THEN, when their lights were still on at 11 pm, despite increasingly furious bellows from me, I had to go downstairs and switch the router off, which resulted in further furious bellows from them because Peter had been number one on Fortnite and about to win the battle and Jane had been having a like, really, like, important chat with Millie and Sophie on Snapchat and now her life was ruined. Neither of them seemed the slightest bit concerned that these things had been happening when they were supposed to be sleeping – it was still all my fault according to Jane because Simon apparently let her stay up as late as she wanted over the weekend.

So, after all that, it was no bastarding surprise when the little fuckers showed no signs of wanting to arise from their fetid pits this morning. I banged on the doors, I shouted and I shrieked, all while trying to get myself ready for work. I eventually threatened to go in and dump a bucket of water on them. But all to no avail. Someone needs to invent a special bed for teenagers, so that when their alarm goes off, if they’re still in bed after five minutes they get a mild electric shock. If they STILL don’t get up, the shock increases in intensity, and so on and so on until they finally deign to arise. Some might say this is harsh, and probably contravenes the Geneva Convention, etc, etc, but those people clearly have never had to get a bloody teenager out of bed in the morning …

Jane finally emerged from her room half an hour before we had to leave, and locked herself in the bathroom. This immediately set alarm bells ringing, because Jane is incapable of spending less than an hour in the bathroom at the best of times.

I banged on the door and shouted, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I need to wash my hair,’ she screamed back.

‘But you washed it last night before bed,’ I pointed out.

‘Well, I need to wash it AGAIN, don’t I, Mother,’ she snarled.

‘But we need to go in half an hour at the most if you want a lift to the bus stop,’ I wailed. ‘And if I don’t give you a lift to the bus stop you’ll miss the bus and be late for school and then you’ll get another detention and I’ll probably be summonsed to see your head of year and made to feel like a shit mother because you were late again, when actually it’s not my fault, but Mrs Simmons won’t see it like that, she’ll judge me for being an incompetent single mother and probably have you taken into care because when she starts giving me her judgy look I’ll revert to being a sulky teenager too and huffing and rolling my eyes, and last time I had to go and see her she actually asked me if I was chewing and Jane, please, just be ready in time.’

There was no answer, probably because Jane had her head under the rubber shower attachment I’d purchased as the solution to her hair-washing woes. Jane had looked at it in disgust. ‘WTF is that, Mother?’ she’d enquired in scathing tones. I’d explained that it attached to the taps, to wash your hair with, and that everyone had them in their bathrooms when I was her age. She gave me the same look of blank incomprehension as when I tried to explain to her about telephone boxes. In fairness, I’d forgotten how rubbish those shower attachments were, and despite brightly telling Jane that it was just the same as a real shower, it really wasn’t, not least on account of its ability to choose the most inconvenient time to detach one side from the tap and spray water all over you.

Meanwhile, Peter finally emerged from his room and shuffled downstairs. I abandoned trying to prise Jane out of the bathroom and ran downstairs, as he slouched over the kitchen counter shovelling Weetabix into his mouth.

‘Peter, how many Weetabix have you got in there?’

Peter considered my question as he crammed another shovelful into his mouth.

‘Six?’ he finally offered.

‘And is there any milk left for your sister’s breakfast?’

‘Oh yes,’ Peter assured me virtuously. ‘I put two bananas in as well, so I wouldn’t need as much milk.’

I was unconvinced by his logic, especially when I looked in the fridge and found the milk carton had been put back in empty.

‘PETER! You’ve finished all the milk again!’

‘No, Mum, I haven’t,’ he insisted, ‘Look.’ He took the carton and tilted it, so a tiny dribble ran into one corner. ‘There’s still some left.’

‘No. No, there isn’t. That was a full two-litre carton last night.’

‘Was it?’

‘Well, maybe Jane can just make do with orange juice and toast then.’

‘Oh yeah. I meant to say, Mum, we’re out of OJ.’

‘HOW? That was another full carton last night.’

Peter shrugged. ‘I dunno. I only had a couple of glasses. And now there’s none left.’

I sighed in despair. I’d been fretting for years about how I was going to feed Peter as a teenager, and now the reality was upon me, I was genuinely fearful I might have to remortgage the house. When we were working out how much maintenance Simon should pay for the children, apparently you can’t have ‘feeding giant teenage child with a possible tapeworm and hollow legs who can eat like a plague of locusts’ taken into account to have the amount increased – according to the law, which has never seen how much a teenage boy can eat, he’ll cost no more to feed than Jane. With only one income, the days of blithely flinging anything I fancied in my trolley at Waitrose are long gone, and budget German supermarkets are now my best friends.

Peter turned his bowl upside down and drained the last drops.

‘Mum, I think I’ve left my PE kit at Dad’s,’ he said.

‘What? Why?’

‘You said we’d be at Dad’s for the weekends, so I put it in the box of stuff to go to his, because I thought that would be best. I didn’t know we’d be coming home on Sunday nights. Sorry, Mum. It’s confusing, trying to live in two places.’

I wanted to be angry at him for having no PE kit, but I remembered all too well the confusion of the early days after your parents’ divorce, when something essential always seemed to be at the other parent’s house.

‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about all this. I really am.’

Peter gave me a very brief hug. ‘It’s OK, Mum. It’s just a bit hard sometimes, you know?’

‘I know. You can talk to me about it, if you want?’

‘Yeah, no, maybe you can just give me a note off PE?’