Women Behaving Badly_An uplifting feel-good holiday read

  WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY

  Frances Garrood

  For my sister Rosamund, with love

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Alice

  Mavis

  Gabs

  The First Meeting: February

  Part Two

  Alice

  Mavis

  Gabs

  The Second Meeting: April

  Part Three

  Alice

  Mavis

  Gabs

  The Third Meeting: June

  Part Four

  Alice

  Gabs

  Mavis

  The Fourth Meeting: August

  Part Five

  Alice

  Gabs

  Mavis

  The Fifth Meeting: October

  Part Six

  Alice

  Gabs

  Mavis

  The Funeral: December

  Epilogue: A Year Later

  RUTH ROBINSON’S YEAR OF MIRACLES

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  Prologue

  The Catholic Church has always had a problem with sex, and never more so than with that of the extramarital variety.

  A certain Catholic bishop reflected gloomily upon the problem of adultery in his diocese (it was a large diocese, and there was a lot of adultery), and after much thought and some heartfelt prayers, he hit upon an idea: a self-help group for adulterers! Why had no-one thought of it before? There were self-help groups for drug-users and alcoholics, so why not for those who were slaves to their illicit passions? It was a wonderful idea, and he knew just the person to lead the group.

  Father Cuthbert O’Donnell was not pleased. He was a shy man, he had never led a group before, and he had enough problems on his own doorstep without extending his boundaries any further. When the Bishop approached him, he prevaricated and he reasoned — he even cited his asthma attacks — but to no avail. The Bishop was insistent. The meetings must obviously take place somewhere away from the big towns where people might know one another, and Father Cuthbert’s little village was just the place. Money would be provided for tea and biscuits, and the Bishop himself would put in motion the business of recruiting people to attend, making as sure as was possible that the individuals concerned did not already know one another.

  “And how will you do that, Your Grace?” Father Cuthbert enquired boldly.

  The Bishop tapped his nose and smiled. “I have my ways.”

  “But —”

  “No buts, Father. I’m sure you will carry out this duty as conscientiously as you do all your others.”

  “Adulterers Anonymous?” hazarded Father Cuthbert, accepting defeat.

  “No, no, Father. Theology. We will call the meetings Basic Theology for Beginners, to preserve confidentiality, and avoid embarrassment.”

  And that was the start. To Father Cuthbert’s surprise, the group went well. The members seemed to enjoy the opportunity to discuss their problems with their fellows, and gradually, some of them came to see the error of their ways.

  Within six months, of the ten original group members, just three were left. Five had broken off their irregular liaisons, one had resorted to divorce, and one, tragically, had killed himself, thus (as Father Cuthbert sadly informed his fellows) further compounding his tally of mortal sins.

  Notwithstanding the fine example of some of their fellows and unmoved by the suicide, the three remaining members of the group — all women — seemed unwilling to mend their ways, and after consulting with the Bishop, Father Cuthbert informed them that it was with much regret that he had decided that he could no longer extend to them his hospitality (not to mention the coffee and biscuits) at the presbytery. If they wished to continue their meetings, they would have to make alternative arrangements.

  Alice, Mavis, and Gabs decided to do just that. This is their story.

  Part One

  Alice

  Alice hurtled round Tesco’s, throwing things into her trolley, with one eye on the time. In half an hour, she was due to pick up Finn from football practice, and then she had to get him home and feed him before she left for her meeting. Baked beans, biscuits, cereal — what kind was Finn into these days? It seemed to change from week to week. Something crisp and chocolatey would probably do. Washing powder, socks — would Finn mind Tesco socks? Probably not. After all, socks were socks, weren’t they? Alice threw in a couple of packs. She would take off the labels, and Finn probably wouldn’t even notice.

  At the checkout, Alice realised she’d forgotten the milk. Well, they’d have to make do with what they had. If necessary, they could always borrow some from next door. The woman who lived there kept cats and always had plenty. Alice disliked the cats, who came over the fence and killed birds and dug up her one flower bed. Their owner was sympathetic but said there was nothing much she could do. Cats would be cats. Alice had heard once that in the eyes of the law, cats weren’t possessions; they were “free spirits.” In other words, they could more or less do what they liked. The title somehow exonerated the owners from any responsibility.

  If only the same could be said of teenagers.

  Finn was fifteen, the age of the ‘great ennui’ as a friend of Alice’s (and mother of three sons) put it. Everything — school, holidays, television, some of his friends and most of hers, even life itself — everything was “bore-ring.” Wherever he was, his gangling frame seemed to fill the house, his boat-size trainers tripped her up in the hallway, his music blared from the open door of his bedroom. He languished across armchairs or along the sofa, his bare (and none too clean) feet dangling, his jaws slowly masticating gum, his eyes either closed or glazed over. He slept for twelve hours at a time and ate enough to feed a small third-world village. The smell of toast would waft up the stairs long after Alice had gone to bed (how was it that a smell could wake one up?), and they were always running out of food. As for his room… well, to use an awful cliché, don’t even go there (Alice didn’t).

  But he made her laugh. No-one had ever made Alice laugh the way Finn did. He was an excellent mimic, told wickedly funny stories, and his bagpipes act (an upside down kitchen stool and a very rude “Scottish” song) could make her cry with laughter. His quick ripostes, the little notes he left her (‘out of bread, peanut butter, and chill pills for Mum’), his bear hugs (he was very affectionate), and on good days, his companionship, all made it worthwhile.

  Alice would look at this huge, towering boy-man and remember with horror how she very nearly got rid of him.

  Finn was an accident. Alice had known his father just three hours (or was it four?). They’d met at a party and ended up in the summerhouse on a heap of rather smelly cushions with a bottle of cheap wine (Alice had been just sober enough to know that the wine was disgusting, but too drunk to care).

  Alice was not the kind of person to have one-night-stands. She was organised, disciplined, focused and ambitious. At thirty-one, she had been fully occupied in developing her career as a journalist and wanted nothing to get in her way. A husband and children — especially children — had never been part of the plan. Alice liked men and enjoyed sex, but her relationships, like her work life, were organised, with secure boundaries. She never went out on a date if she had a deadline to achieve, she didn’t sleep with a man until she knew him pretty well, and she never went out with anyone from work. But it had been a difficult week, she’d been tired, the party had offered a welcome diversion (Alice wasn’t usually a party-goer), and Finn had been the result.

  It had taken Alice a month to decide what she wa
s going to do. She wrote down all the reasons why she should and shouldn’t continue with her pregnancy; she listed all the pros and cons; she consulted her closest friend. In the end, she decided to go ahead and have the baby. As a friend said, people often regretted getting rid of babies, but rarely regretted keeping them. She might even grow to like her child. Stranger things had happened.

  To her great surprise, she adored Finn from the start. Never having had much time for babies before, she put her feelings down to hormones and waited for them to wear off. But the love increased as Finn developed from what looked like a rather surprised baby hedgehog into a plump, sunny human infant, who slept through the night, ate all the right things, and was quite happy to be handed round and looked after by anyone to whom his mother gave him.

  Of course, a baby was not the greatest of career moves. The local newspaper for which she had been working was male-dominated, and while she wasn’t exactly discriminated against (that wasn’t permitted), little allowance was made for her new status as a mother. Alice had made her decision, and she would also have to make such arrangements as were necessary to look after her child.

  So Alice juggled. She had read about mothers juggling children and careers but had never realised how hard it could be. Even when she was able to work from home, Finn and his needs were a constant distraction, and despite the services of an excellent childminder, things could go wrong. Besides, children didn’t always go according to plan. They could be sick in the night, springing sudden alarming fevers; they could have accidents, the aftermath of which required the presence of a parent. Later on, there were school sports days, speech days and school plays. Finn wasn’t much of an actor or a sportsman, but had still been given small parts requiring a maternal audience (a tree in a nativity play; a reserve for the school second football team), and since Alice was a perfectionist and this now extended to motherhood, life became complicated. But after fifteen years, Alice would have been the first to admit that having Finn had made her a better person. She no longer fretted over a dirty kitchen floor or an unironed shirt, or whether fish fingers twice in a week would permanently damage Finn’s health. There simply wasn’t time. She became more relaxed over her own minor shortcomings and more tolerant of those of other people.

  “Welcome to the real world, Alice,” said her mother.

  It had taken Alice two years to decide to contact Finn’s father. It had been quite a job tracking him down (the friend of an acquaintance of a friend — that sort of thing) and had required a lot of courage to phone him. At first, he’d been disbelieving, then shocked, and then angry.

  “Two years? All this happened two years ago, and you didn’t think to tell me? If I am this child’s father, which I very much doubt. As for you, I can’t even remember your name, never mind your face.”

  Alice refrained from reminding him that it probably wasn’t her face that had preoccupied him at the time, and explained who she was.

  “A journalist? I don’t trust journalists. How do I know you’re not going to sell your story to some sleazy little newspaper?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. This is strictly between you and me.”

  “Well, I’ll need DNA of course. Proof. You can’t just go around telling someone you met two years ago that they fathered your child, and not expect him to want proof.”

  “Of course you can have proof. I expected you’d want it, and you can have it.”

  “What’s it like, this child?”

  “He. He’s a boy.”

  “He, then.”

  “Blond. Blue-eyed. Very sweet.”

  “I’ve got brown eyes.” The voice was indignant.

  “Well, I’ve got blue eyes.”

  “Brown eyes are dominant. Everyone knows that. If it — he — was mine, he’d have brown eyes.”

  Alice had sighed. “Let’s just do the DNA thing, shall we? Then we can talk about the colour of his eyes.”

  Finn’s father turned out to be an artist of mediocre talent and minimal means. Known to his friends as Trot (something to do with an interest in Trotsky as a boy), he was, Alice thought, pleasant enough, although when they met, she didn’t recognise him at all. He was not exactly what she would have chosen as the father of her child, but she could have done a lot worse. Once the DNA was sorted out (eye colour notwithstanding), he seemed to warm to the idea of fatherhood, and while he made it clear that financial support would not be forthcoming (Alice never asked for any), he did take an interest in Finn. Trot was bad at birthdays and Christmas, but good at exciting trips and occasional surprises, and he and Finn got on remarkably well. Finn never called him Daddy or Dad, and nobody asked him to. He was just Trot. Alice privately thought that Finn preferred to think of Trot as a mate, and that was fine. At least he had a father. What he called him was immaterial. Trot remained single, and this seemed to please Finn, although Alice wasn’t quite sure why.

  Now Alice loaded her groceries into the back of her car and started the engine. If she hurried, she would just about make it to the school in time. Finn was a poor timekeeper and was probably still changing out of his football gear or gossiping in the changing rooms. He disliked football but was fond of the master in charge, and the second team was short of players. Alice reflected that in spite of his shortcomings, Finn had a very kind side to him. She hoped very much that he had had a shower.

  While she was preparing their meal, Alice asked Finn about his plans for the weekend.

  “Fishing with Trot,” was the somewhat unexpected answer.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Trot’s taken up fishing, and wants me to go with him. He’s picking me up from Kenny’s in the morning.” Finn was spending the night with Kenny, a friend of whom Alice didn’t altogether approve.

  “Is this another of his crazes?” Trot was given to sudden enthusiasms, which as often as not fizzled out before they’d had a chance to get going. To date, he’d clocked up, among other things, birdwatching (he got bored), horse riding (he fell off and lost his nerve), motorbikes (ditto), and visiting steam railways (Alice suspected that the necessary travelling involved too much effort). Finn frequently accompanied his father on these forays into new, if not always fascinating, territory, and never seemed to mind if they didn’t last. Trot was fun to be with, and Finn enjoyed the fun, if not always the activities.

  In some ways Alice was envious of their relationship. While she’d never wanted or expected any help with Finn’s upbringing, she couldn’t help feeling that Trot had all the fun of parenthood with none of the responsibility. She had borne him an intelligent and on the whole rather nice son, and Trot was free to pop in and out of Finn’s life at will, taking him out when he felt like it and yet sometimes not bothering to contact him for weeks on end. Oddly enough, Finn didn’t seem to mind, possibly because Trot had always been like that and he didn’t expect anything else, but Alice found herself minding on his behalf. On his last birthday, Finn had only received four cards (theirs was a small family), and Alice had felt for him. It wouldn’t have hurt Trot to make the effort; he certainly knew when Finn’s birthday was. But as Trot himself had said, he’d never been good at birthdays.

  “Birthdays, smirthdays…” he’d mocked when Alice had mentioned it some years ago. “Who cares?”

  “Children care,” she’d told him. “Birthdays mean a lot to a child.”

  “They didn’t to me.”

  “Well, you had a mother and father, and as far as I can recollect, grandparents. I doubt very much whether you went short on your birthday. Would it be so difficult just to send a card?”

  “He might expect to find money in it. I’d hate to disappoint him.”

  “Well, money in it wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” said Alice, infuriated. “After all, you spend money on him at other times.”

  “There you are, then,” Trot said. “I am a good daddy after all.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re just another kid. That’s why you and Finn get on so well.”

 
“I rest my case.”

  But fishing sounded like a good idea. It would get Finn away from his computer and out into the fresh air, and as she was behind with her current deadline and was going to have to put in some extra work, they wouldn’t be missing time together.

  “Oh, I forgot. Trot asked if I could bring some lunch with me,” Finn said.

  “Now you tell me!”

  “Just a few sandwiches. I’ll make them.”

  “We’re nearly out of bread. I do wish you’d told me this earlier.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “And I suppose Trot intends you to feed him, too.” Trot’s domestic arrangements were haphazard.

  “As a matter of fact, he did ask. He’s had a busy week.”

  “And I haven’t?”

  “He’s got an exhibition coming up.”

  “When?”

  “Well, not for a few weeks, but he’s busy getting it organised.”

  “Well, I’m busy trying to earn enough money to keep you in peanut butter and cornflakes.”

  “Twisty Chocolate Honey Flakes,” Finn said. “I like those.”

  “Okay, whatever. The point is that I work, Finn. Work. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “All right. Keep your hair on.”

  “And,” Alice said, trying very hard to keep her temper, “Trot is not busy. Or certainly not as busy as I am. He’s his own boss, he’s got no one else to think about, he can work when he wants, and… and… go fishing when he wants. And make his own bloody sandwiches!” She dumped a pile of folded laundry on the kitchen table. “I wish I had time to go fishing!”

  “He’s bringing the drink,” Finn said.

  “What drink?”

  “Oh, just a few cans.”

  “Finn, you are underage, and Trot will be driving.”

  “We won’t have much, and it’ll have worn off by the time we come home. Trot doesn’t do drink-driving.”

  “Well, if you say so. But you know how irresponsible he can be. You’ll have to try to be the sensible one.”