The Cows: The bold, brilliant and hilarious Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller

скачать книгу бесплатно


‘I know. Sorry, Annie. Mummy’s not well. Come on, what do you want to watch, anything you want, I don’t mind?’

‘I don’t want to watch TV. I want to go out.’

I look at my phone again even though it didn’t make a noise. Why hasn’t Jason texted me? Maybe he thought his message had sent? But then he’d be waiting for an answer from me and he’d look and see it hasn’t. No, he decided to stop writing. But why? I want to text him again, say something cool, easy, funny? But I can’t bring myself to. The least I can do for myself is retain some level of dignity by not saying anything else mortifying. Annie huffs loudly.

‘I’m bored inside, it isn’t even raining,’ she says, staring at my phone like it’s another child that is taking me away from her.

‘OK, I’m sorry, I don’t feel well,’ I say.

We sit in silence for a few more minutes. I know she isn’t watching the film, I’m not either, but we both stare at the screen anyway.

‘I’m hungry,’ she says, eventually. ‘I want to go to the park and get an ice cream.’

‘Can’t we just have one day where we sit around doing nothing?’ I realise I’m sounding like the child and tell myself to grow up. I am a mother, not a lovesick teenager. I must parent and stop moping. I skulk into the kitchen. There is a plate of chicken in the fridge, I think it was from Thursday night’s dinner; it should be fine. I flop a big dollop of mayonnaise into it and stir it up, then squash it between two slices of bread. I sprinkle a few Pringles onto the plate next to it, and pour her a glass of water.

‘There,’ I say, offering it to her. ‘I made you a sandwich. Chicken mayo, yummy. Eat up and then we’ll go out.’

She takes a few bites and swallows hard. ‘It tastes weird, Mummy.’

‘Oh Annie, please will you stop being so grumpy and just eat the sandwich!’ I snap, instantly regretting it. But I feel so tired, and embarrassed, and I need to wallow in all of those emotions until they go away. I look at Annie, she looks so upset. ‘Oh baby I’m sorry, I …’

‘You’re SO mean!’ she shrieks as she throws the plate on the floor, the sandwich popping open and mayonnaise splattering everywhere. She storms out of the living room and flies up the stairs. Her bedroom door slams and makes the house shake. That’s the first time she’s ever done that, I couldn’t feel more terrible. I throw a tea towel over the mayonnaise and pretend it isn’t there. Covering my face with my hands, I tell myself I have to be strong, this is not Annie’s fault, our weekends are precious, and I can’t waste one just because I am a total loser. We’ll go to see Sophie, everything will be fine. I’ll make up for yesterday. I have to be strong.

I look at my phone again as I plod up the stairs.

Still nothing. Why hasn’t he texted me?

Stella

Last night was shit. Halfway through my stir fry, Phil came back and sat in the living room with the TV on so loud I could barely think. I stood in the kitchen for ages, calming myself down. I wanted to go in there and rip the TV out of the wall and smash him over the head with it. Why is it him that’s so annoyed? Is it his whole family who died? His body that is under threat? I stared at the back of his head from the kitchen door and mouthed everything I wanted to scream at his face. He is supposed to be the strong one. He is supposed to take care of me, to make me feel better. That is the person he was when we met. That is who I thought was moving into my home. He was the one who persuaded me to get the test, with his ‘I’m here for you, baby’ and ‘It’s better to know.’ And now we have the result, he is the one who isn’t man enough to deal with it.

But I held myself back. And I thought about what I want. And I don’t want to be alone, and I want to have a baby. So as I so often do, I swallowed my pain, I took off Alice’s lovely skirt, I went and sat next to him, put my hand on his leg, and I told him I was sorry. For what I should be so sorry for, I’m not entirely sure. But he turned the volume down, and he accepted a plate of food, and we sat and we watched a movie side by side.

Now, a day later, we are at the kitchen table, eating the roast beef that I just prepared in a further attempt to stop him leaving me. I am running out of conversation; no friends to catch up on, no work gossip, no family news, and I’m trying to avoid the b and the c words.

‘Did you know that if you Google “What if I die with no legacy” the first four results are about what happens to your Facebook account after you’ve died?’ I say, with a small piece of meat stuffed into my left cheek.

‘I didn’t. No,’ replies Phil, taking a sip of red wine.

‘Apparently, now you can nominate someone to be your “legacy contact”, and then they can take control of it after you’ve gone. So basically I’d give you my login and then you could change my pictures and accept friend requests and stuff.’

‘Why wouldn’t you just shut the page down?’

‘Who?’

‘You?’

‘Well, I’d be dead,’ I reiterate.

‘OK, then why wouldn’t the legacy contact just shut the page down? A Facebook account is no good to you when you’re dead, is it?’ Phil says, bluntly.

I take a moment.

‘What if it’s all you leave behind?’

‘Well that would be pretty depressing, wouldn’t it?’ says Phil, obviously hoping this conversation stops soon.

‘Maybe that’s all I’ll leave behind,’ I say, pushing him to respond.

‘OK, Stella. Do you have to talk like this?’ Phil blurts, standing up from the table and taking his plate over to the sink. He drops his head. ‘I can’t have more of these casual conversations about death, it’s wrecking my head.’

‘Sorry,’ I say, even though I’m not. I creep behind him and put my arms around his waist. We stand like this for a minute or two, Phil’s body stiff and uninviting. I undo his belt.

‘I want you,’ I say gently as I take his flaccid penis into my hand and try to work it into something functional. I don’t remember ever having to do this at the beginning of our relationship. It’s standard now.

After a long silence, it’s finally hard. ‘Come to bed,’ I say, taking him by the hand and leading him into the bedroom.

As I take off my jeans and knickers, Phil lies down. He pulls his trousers down a little but leaves his underwear on. I crawl on top of him. ‘I might need a little help,’ I say, seductively putting my fingers into his mouth. He sucks them and turns his head to the side. I run my wet fingers around the opening of my vagina, a move he taught me, that he used to like to watch. I position myself above him and lower until he’s inside me. He keeps his head to the side. I move slowly up and down, not taking my eyes off his face. I try harder, making the noises that used to turn him on. I lean forward and kiss his neck, then his cheek. I kiss the side of his mouth as I groan and move faster, but he refuses to look at my face. He’s managing to retain an erection but he’s not moving, he’s not offering anything. I keep going, ramping up my speed a little but getting nothing back from him.

‘Phil, come on,’ I bark, frustrated. ‘Just fuck me, will you!’

Phil pushes me off and onto the bed. I roll and face the other way, covering my face with my hands. It’s too embarrassing to bear.

‘I’m sorry, Stell,’ he says, sincerely. ‘I’m just really full.’ A lie.

He gets off the bed, does up his jeans as he goes into the living room. I hear the TV go on.

Tara

Sophie and I used to work for an agency that supplied waiting staff for posh people’s parties. We’d serve miniature Yorkshire puddings with horseradish cream, or other such pretentious tiny things, to London’s society crowd. We dealt with a lot of pretentious arseholes, but we also got to snoop around their houses. Huge Notting Hill townhouses and massive Sloane Square apartments. They were another world from what we were used to in Walthamstow. Our families did well by our local standards, we were the upper end of the scale for where we were from, but nothing in comparison to the people who had these parties. They seemed like something out of the movies, and they lived in a London that we didn’t recognise as ours. We used to laugh about how we would be if we lived that way. We fantasised about wearing wild dressing gowns, marabou slippers, wafting around our mansions with glass after glass of champagne. It was a ridiculous dream, but every time I arrive at Sophie and Carl’s house, I realise she is living it.

I pick Annie up so she can ring the doorbell. It’s Victorian, so quite stiff. Her little fingers struggle to push it, so I put mine on top of hers and say, ‘One two, three.’ We hear the perfectly tuned, beautiful bells of Big Ben that their £400 doorbell bellows out whenever anyone pops round. Sophie’s voice booms out of a speaker, ‘Hang on, just upstairs,’ but as she says it, we hear heavy footsteps walking towards the door. Annie holds onto me a little tighter, which makes me feel so good. She’s been angry with me all day. But in that way that kids do, when a shred of fear from the outside world creeps in, she knows her mummy is the one to make her safe. I squeeze her back, happy to be a team again, as the door slowly opens.

And there is Carl. All six foot two of him. His dark hair neatly cut and parted at the side. His fifty-one-year-old, well-looked-after body hidden underneath a cream V-neck jumper, with a checked shirt poking out from underneath. I’m not sure what you’d call the trousers he has on, a casual chino? This is him when he’s relaxing at home, but he still looks smarter than most of the men I know when they’re at work.

‘Hey Carl, so nice to see you,’ I say, stepping inside and kissing him on each cheek. I feel under surveillance, like I could say something incriminating to piss him off. I remind myself I am a parent, that he is not my husband, and it actually doesn’t matter if he likes me or not. But still, I feel judged.

‘Hello Tara, Annie; welcome. Sophie is somewhere, come in,’ he says, warmly, reminding me that most of my opinion of Carl comes from Sophie’s paranoia.

‘Hiiiiiii,’ says Sophie, coming down the large staircase. She looks fully the part and as beautiful as ever. All casual in black, but impeccably styled.

‘Aunty Sophie!’ says Annie, letting go of my hand and running over to her. They’ve always got on great. Sophie is childlike by nature, so connects well with kids. I am pretty certain this would not be the case if the kids were her own. It’s another reason why marrying Carl suited her. He has three boys by his first marriage, and no interest in having any more.

‘Hello sweetheart,’ she says, picking Annie up and giving her a huge kiss. I see her shoot a look to Carl, to make sure he is watching. She thinks him seeing her with children makes her seem responsible in some way, I think. ‘Shall we go into the kitchen?’ she says.

In the kitchen, a huge white three-sided cube that opens up to a sprawling and perfectly preened garden, Carl goes over to a wine fridge that is four times the size of my actual fridge and says to Sophie, ‘Maybe a 2008?’

‘Lovely,’ she replies.

As he opens it, Sophie opens the back doors so that Annie can burst into the open air and run around the flower beds. She gets to do no such thing at home, because my garden is basically a shed with no roof on it. I do love seeing her play happily, a gentle reminder that maybe I am doing OK at being a mum.

‘So, did he text?’ Sophie asks me, as Carl puts three enormous bulbous wine glasses in front of us. He puts three fingers’ worth of wine in mine, three fingers’ worth in his, but as he’s pouring Sophie’s, she puts her hand up as if to stop him putting so much in hers. That is the first time in the history of my existence I have ever seen her do that. Carl looks impressed. Sophie looks at me and winks.

‘No, not yet,’ I say, tasting the wine. It’s unbelievably delicious, like the smoothest, creamiest, most perfectly chilled drink I have ever consumed. I bet it cost £50 a bottle. I drink it slowly, despite wanting to neck it. ‘I obviously gauged that completely wrong. He hasn’t contacted me all weekend, I’m gutted,’ I continue.

‘I presume you’re talking about a young man?’ says Carl, like an old dad.