Mummyfesto, The Read online

  The

  MUMMYFESTO

  Linda Green

  First published in 2013 by

  Quercus

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2013 Linda Green

  The moral right of Linda Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  PB ISBN 978 1 78087 522 4

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78087 523 1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Praise for Linda Green

  ‘Smart, witty writing’ ELLE

  ‘One of the most touching books I think I

  will ever read. A triumph’ Chicklit Reviews

  ‘Witty and funny’ Company Magazine

  ‘Laugh-out-loud funny’ Reveal Magazine

  ‘Utterly riveting’ Closer

  ‘Linda has a great writing style which is almost

  effortless but be prepared to laugh and cry’

  LoveReading.co.uk

  Also by Linda Green

  And Then It Happened

  Things I Wish I’d Known

  10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love

  I Did a Bad Thing

  The Resolution (short story)

  Linda Green is an award-winning journalist and has written for the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday and the Big Issue. Linda lives in West Yorkshire. The Mummyfesto is her fifth novel.

  For Rohan

  ‘If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it.

  You have an obligation to change it.

  You just do it one step at a time.’

  Marian Wright Edelman

  1

  SAM

  ‘Mummy, watch how fast I can go.’

  I had this crazy, outlandish dream, well, more of a fantasy really, that one day we would arrive at school not just on time but actually early, maybe even by as much as five minutes. As I watched Oscar career along the canal towpath, totally oblivious to the mound of dog poo he was fast approaching, I realised that this was not going to be the day that happened.

  ‘Oscar. Stop. Now.’

  It was too late.

  ‘Mummy,’ called Zach, who was a few paces ahead of Oscar but had turned to see what all the commotion was about, ‘Oscar’s gone straight through that pile of dog poo.’ He said it with an air of fascination and awe rather than any hint of trying to get his little brother into trouble.

  Oscar looked down and wrinkled his nose. ‘Urrgghh,’ he said, ‘I’m going to be the smelliest boy in school today.’

  ‘No you’re not, Oscar,’ I said, at last catching up with them and surveying the wheels of his powerchair, ‘because we’re going to get you cleaned up right now.’

  ‘Are you going to take me through the carwash, Mummy?’ asked Oscar. ‘Please, can you take me through the carwash?’

  I smiled down at him, resisting the temptation to ruffle his hair in case he insisted on redoing the gel and prolonging the delay even further.

  ‘No, love. I don’t want you getting squished in the rollers. It’s going to be good old-fashioned elbow-grease, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why are your elbows greasy?’ asked Oscar. There was no time to try to explain.

  ‘Zach, stay here with Oscar. Don’t let him go anywhere or do anything he shouldn’t do. Oscar, do what your brother says and I’ll be straight back, OK?’

  I ran back down the towpath. It was the sort of occasion when I was grateful I was not one of those pristine power-dressing mums who totter to school in their stilettos (not that we had many of those in Hebden Bridge). Say what you like about Doc Martens, they are bloody good for legging it down muddy towpaths during a school-run emergency.

  It was not the first time I’d had to abandon my children and run home. Usually it was a forgotten book bag, packed lunch, PE kit or something for show and tell. But nor was the powerchair-meets-dog-poo situation entirely new to us. Which explained why there was a plastic container in the toolshed in the front yard marked ‘poo’ (as opposed to the one next to it marked ‘punctures’), which contained a scrubbing brush and a mini-bottle of washing-up liquid.

  I grabbed the watering can, which was half full with rainwater (one of the good things about living in the Pennines) and set off back down the towpath.

  When I arrived, Oscar looked at the watering can and back to me, rolled his eyes and said, ‘Mummy, I am not a sunflower, you can’t water me to make me grow.’

  Zach laughed obligingly, knowing full well, as I did, that Oscar understood precisely what the watering can was for and only said it to get a laugh. I winked at Zach, held the watering can over Oscar’s head for a second to make him squeal before I sprinkled it on the wheels of his powerchair and attacked it with the scrubbing brush and washing-up liquid.

  Miraculously, we still made it through town and up the hill in time to see the last few stragglers heading through the main doors into school.

  ‘Come on, Mummy,’ called Oscar over his shoulder as he whizzed up the road in front of me. I joked sometimes that the reason we chose this school in preference to the nearer one was that I knew the school run would keep me fit. It wasn’t the real reason, of course. We chose it because we thought it was right for Zach and, very importantly, that it would also be right for Oscar. Everything always had to be right for Oscar.

  Shirley the lollipop lady bent to talk to Oscar who threw his arms around her in his customary greeting. It was only when I finally caught up with them and Shirley stood up that I noticed the tears in her eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I managed to keep myself together for other kids but second I saw your Oscar that were it.’ She sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand before managing a watery grin at Zach.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Just been given me notice by council. Doing away with me they are. Me and half a dozen others.’

  ‘But they can’t. That’s ridiculous. This is such a busy road.’

  ‘Bean-counters in suits, that’s all they are. Don’t give a toss about kids, all they’re bothered about is cutting budget.’

  ‘What’s Shirley saying?’ asked Zach. ‘Why is she crying?’

  I crouched down to Zach’s level and put an arm around him and Oscar.

  ‘The council are trying to take Shirley’s job away,’ I told them. ‘They’re trying to save some money.’

  ‘But we need Shirley,’ said Zach. ‘She keeps us safe.’

  ‘She stops us getting run over by lorries and splatted flat on the ground,’ added Oscar. Letting him renew Flat Stanley from the library twenty-four times had obviously been a bad idea.

  ‘Council bigwigs don’t know you kiddies, see,’ said Shirley. ‘They don’t realise how important you all are.’

  ‘We’ll write to them and tell them,’ said Zach.

  ‘But we’ll say please,’ pointed out Oscar. ‘So they don’t think we’re being rude.’

  They both looked up at me. It scared me sometimes. How tru
sting they were that those in charge would always be fair and just. I wasn’t sure when I would sit down with them and explain that it didn’t always work like that in the big bad world out there. All I knew was that I wasn’t ready to do it just yet.

  ‘Yes and we’ll start a petition,’ I told them. ‘Get all your friends and their mummies and daddies to sign it. To say we need Shirley to keep you all safe.’

  ‘Can I write a bit about not wanting to get splatted flat by a lorry?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘You can if you like, love.’ I smiled.

  Shirley sniffed and held up her lollipop. A white transit van drew to a halt and she ushered us across.

  ‘We’re going to fight this,’ I told her, squeezing the hand which wasn’t holding the lollipop. ‘We’re not going to let them do this, don’t you worry.’

  We hurried across to the playground. I kissed Zach and Oscar, distributed the correct book bags and lunch bags and waved them off with instructions to apologise to their teachers for being late.

  ‘Can I tell Mrs Carter about the dog poo?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘If you must,’ I said, shaking my head and hoping the description wouldn’t be too graphic, though the memory of his detailed account of the time another child was sick in the swimming pool led me to suspect otherwise.

  I actually managed to leave work on time for a change that afternoon. I was keen to get back to school to talk to other parents before the children came out. Anna was the first one I saw. Anna was always early. She had a phone which beeped to remind her to leave for school in plenty of time. And she had the advantage of working from home on Mondays.

  ‘Shirley’s being made redundant,’ I blurted out to Anna.

  ‘Hello, Sam,’ she said, reminding me that I had forgotten to do the pleasantries. ‘Who’s Shirley?’

  ‘You know, Shirley. The lollipop lady.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Anna said. I took it she didn’t know Shirley as well as we did, what with her living on the right side of the road. ‘Well, that’s outrageous.’

  ‘I know. She told me this morning, in tears she was, poor thing. I said we’d do a petition. That we’d fight it all the way.’

  ‘Of course we will. I’m surprised you didn’t know about it, though. You’d think they’d consult the governors.’

  ‘Obviously not. I spoke to Mrs Cuthbert on the phone and she only found out this morning. We’re going to have a governors’ meeting next week, but in the meantime I’ve run this off. Tell me what you think.’

  I handed her the petition form I’d printed out.

  Anna read it, nodding as she went. ‘Seems fine to me.’

  ‘Good. Because I’ve printed a couple of dozen off already. I thought we’d better get started as soon as possible. You don’t mind do you?’

  Anna looked at me, a slightly bewildered expression on her face, as I produced a clipboard with several copies of the form attached from my shopping bag and handed it to her.

  ‘You don’t hang about do you?’ She smiled.

  ‘Well, no. The council are voting on this in a couple of weeks. We need to get started.’

  ‘Started on what?’ asked Jackie, collapsing on the wall beside us and immediately removing a pair of red platform shoes which were so unsuitable for walking up the hill, let alone being on your feet all day teaching, that they took my breath away.

  ‘We’re starting a petition,’ I told her.

  ‘Who’s we?’ she asked.

  ‘Er, me, Anna, you, I guess.’

  ‘Great, count me in. Where do I sign?’

  ‘You haven’t asked what it’s against yet,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I guess I’m just a born rebel,’ she said, taking a clipboard and pen from me and beginning to read. ‘Jesus, they can’t do this,’ she said a moment later.

  ‘I know. That’s why we’re doing a petition.’

  ‘We need more than a petition. We need a meeting, letters to MPs, a protest march. Let’s throw whole bloody works at them.’

  ‘You’ll be suggesting the children go on strike too, I suppose?’ said Anna. She was trying to be funny, but the fact was however long the Islington brigade lived here, they never quite stopped being taken aback by the no-nonsense Yorkshire way of doing things.

  ‘I don’t think we should rule anything out,’ said Jackie, her feet back in her shoes now as if preparing herself for battle. ‘Not if they’re putting kids’ lives at risk.’

  I looked at Jackie’s face, her jaw set, her forehead tensing. There was no way I could warn Anna to tread extremely carefully without making an awkward situation even worse.

  ‘Yes, but we’ve got to be careful we don’t sound over the top,’ warned Anna.

  ‘I am not waiting until a child gets killed trying to cross this road to get angry,’ said Jackie, her finger jabbing the air in front of Anna’s face. ‘Because that will be too bloody late.’ She took the clipboard and walked off across the playground to accost a group of Year One parents. I remembered once reading an article which said the most dangerous creature on earth was an angry hippopotamus mother who had been separated from its young. Right now, I thought the hippo would come a poor second.

  ‘Did I say something wrong?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Er, yeah. Bit of a delicate one. It’s all right, she’s not mad at you. She’s just mad.’

  ‘Should I go and apologise?’

  ‘No, just go and get some signatures on your petition. She’ll appreciate that far more.’ Anna nodded and set to work. I didn’t feel it was my place to tell her. Jackie had taken a long time to confide in me. When she was ready, maybe she’d do the same with Anna.

  I’d managed to collect a page full of signatures by the time the school doors opened and the children exploded into the playground like an uncorked bottle of champagne. I spotted Zach straight away amongst the melee – it was one of the benefits of having a son with a mop of auburn curls. Fortunately he hadn’t yet reached the age where he was bothered about standing out from the crowd. If I remembered rightly from my own childhood, he still had a couple of years to go before that kicked in. At least when the time came I would be able to regale him with stories about all the names I’d been called over mine. The weird thing was I liked them now. Maybe, at thirty-eight, I’d finally grown into them.

  ‘Hi, love,’ I said, letting Zach nuzzle his face into my tummy. ‘Had a good day?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to the clipboard.

  ‘The petition. The one to say we don’t think the council should get rid of Shirley.’

  ‘Can I sign it?’

  ‘Yes, of course you can.’ I handed him the pen and watched as he carefully wrote his name and then attempted a spidery scrawl of a signature. It always made me smile, how difficult children found it to write messily when they set their minds to it.

  ‘Can I get some more people to put their names on?’

  ‘Yeah, that would be great. Just be polite when you ask them. Explain that it’s to save Shirley’s job.’

  Zach looked around and headed straight up to the mum of one of his classmates, clipboard in hand, a determined look on his face. I smiled to myself, imagining what Rob would say if he could see him. As if he needed any more evidence that I had produced a mini-me. Still, he’d got his own back when Oscar had arrived. In a certain light there was an auburn tinge to his blonde hair but in every other respect he was straight out of the tin marked ‘pintsized version of his father’.

  I glanced around the playground for Oscar. Not that there was any doubt about where he’d be. Somewhere in the middle of a cluster of children, most of them girls, who seemed to follow him wherever he went. Any worries we’d had about him not fitting in at mainstream school, about him not being accepted, had evaporated pretty much on his first day when he’d emerged Pied Piper-like from the classroom and informed me that he had a girlfriend and his teacher had told him off for being cheeky. I’d been worried that he would get special treatment because he was in a w
heelchair. I don’t think a parent has ever been so relieved to hear their child had been told off.

  Esme ran up to me. ‘Oscar’s been telling rude jokes again,’ she reported, bouncing up and down as she spoke.

  ‘Rude like about bogeys and bottoms, or ruder than that?’ I asked.

  ‘Just bogeys and bottoms.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘You just let me know if he gets too rude, OK?’

  Esme nodded. ‘They were very funny jokes.’ she said.

  ‘Well, I suppose that makes it OK then.’ I smiled. Esme skipped off in Anna’s direction, shrieking a greeting in a voice seemingly several decibels higher than the rest of the children in the playground put together. I watched Anna recoil as she heard it. Esme was definitely not a mini-Anna.

  Gradually, the cluster of children around Oscar dispersed to reveal him hand-in-hand with Alice, who was giving him a wide, gap-toothed grin.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, walking over to them. ‘I hope you’ve been behaving yourself.’

  The last comment was directed exclusively at Oscar. Alice wouldn’t be capable of misbehaving if she tried.

  ‘Can I go and see Alice’s rabbit?’ Oscar asked.

  ‘Not tonight, love. You’ve got to go and see Katie for your exercises, remember? Maybe another day this week. Would that be OK, Alice?’

  Alice nodded. That was generally as much as you could get out of her, unless you were Oscar, of course, in which case she would whisper sweet nothings in your ear all day long.

  ‘Look, I’ve got loads of signatures,’ Zach said, running back over to me brandishing his clipboard.

  ‘Fantastic,’ I said. ‘Well done you.’

  ‘I think Zach’s going to be my shop steward,’ said Jackie, coming over to join us and patting him on the back.

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Zach.

  ‘That you’re very good at getting people to do what you want them to do.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Zach. ‘That’s good then.’

  ‘Has Anna gone?’ asked Jackie scanning the playground.

  ‘No. Over there,’ I said, pointing to the pavement outside where Anna was grabbing parents as they left.