69

Margret was away with her friends the other weekend. It was a hen party thing. I hesitate to mention that, as English women on hen nights are quite the most repellent spectacle it's possible to encounter — if we happen across a group of hen night women when we're out together, Margret will invariably point at them and dare me to defend a culture that has incubated such an embarrassment. So, let me stress that, though it was technically a hen weekend, it wasn't the whooping, cackling, "Look! We have a huge inflatable penis and an openly desperate desire to have you think we're fearless unfettered rebels so don't let the fact that we clearly all work at a local building society and are trying way too hard!" kind of affair that you'll often see congoing through Brannigans in ill-advised skirts. It was still hen, though, there's no escaping that. I stayed here with the kids; if they asked where she was, I had planned — to avoid inflicting on them the psychological damage of knowing their mother was at a hen weekend — to say that she was simply away serving a short sentence for shoplifting.

Before she went, she asked me to record a couple of gardening programmes that were going to be on the TV. The first night she was there she rang me. She'd had a row with some bloke in a bar. He'd apparently pinched her bottom and then, when she responded, um, 'unfavourably' to this, had tried to smooth the waters by saying he couldn't resist as she was the best looking woman there — a point which Margret found really quite an insufficient reason for being pinched by somebody; she expressed this concept to him. Now, as I was a good two-hundred miles away and, in any case, had a big pile of ironing to do, there wasn't really very much I could do to support her. I did think of demonstrating that I shared her contempt for him by pointing out that the bloke was clearly also a calculating liar: 'There's no way you could have been the best looking woman there — I mean, what about Jo, just for a start?' Some tiny alarm rang deep in my head, however, and told me that not saying this would work out better for me in the long run. She continued to talk for a while, and finished by reminding me to video the gardening programmes.

The next day, right on cue, I forgot to video the gardening programmes.

I can't quite convey to you the icing I felt on my skin and the claustrophobic tightening of my chest that occurred when I idly glanced down at the clock on my taskbar and realised I'd forgotten to record them. I know you think I should have set the timer on the VCR, but I deliberately didn't. The timer on our VCR has poor self-discipline and vague life goals and will often fail to work, just for kicks. So, rather than risk giving the job to a recidivist video recorder, I decided it was far safer to do it manually. And to fill in the time until that point by going up on the computer, entering 'Fairuza Balk' in Google and, you know, just seeing where that led. It was obvious I was going to have to tell Margret what had happened and — although it was just 'one of those things', for which no one was really to blame — I knew very soon, and with a clarity of understanding that bordered on the spiritual, that the best time at which to inform her about the situation was while she was still two-hundred miles away from me. Therefore, I immediately texted her mobile — knowing she wouldn't have it switched on, because she never has it switched on, but that she'd see it before too long. Only, the second I'd sent the message, I began to worry. I'd assumed that letting her know now would give her a chance to cool down before she returned. But, equally likely, it would just give her a chance to work up a head of steam. And, if Margret's playing a, 'The trouble with Mil is…' riff, then the very worst place to ensure that it doesn't build and build is in the company of a load of exclusively female friends on a hen night. And she was in Manchester. Manchester. She was going to come back after a day and a half of, "…well, it's not for me to say, Margret, but if I were going out with Mil, then…", wired on crack, and carrying an Uzi.

That night, I slept under the children's bed.

70

We had an earthquake here the other week. Surprisingly, I'm not being metaphorical. I mean we had an actual earthquake: in the geological rather than the emotional sense. It happened at about one o'clock in the morning, we were pretty close to the epicentre, and it was 4.8 on the Richter scale. Now, I'm depressingly aware that all you Californians are right now glancing up from your crystals and pausing mid-mantra to snort, '4.8? Poh. That's not an earthquake, that's just someone slamming a door.' Well, yes, I suppose it's all relative, but here in England where tectonics is less brash and showy, 4.8 is easily vulgar enough to stand out.

The important thing is that just before 1 A.M. the whole house shook. Naturally, this woke us up. Cupboards rattled and banged, furniture shivered across the floor, the bed struggled like it was possessed by the spirit of a wild animal that was trying to get out. The instant it ended, Margret's freshly woken face slid in front of me. Her voice irritated and her eyes accusatively thin, she hissed, 'Was that you?'

71

I better note this down before I forget it again. I was reminded of it last week — apologies if you were around at the point when my memory was jogged but, before you start whining that you've heard me mention this observation already, may I just point out that anyone who's sitting around watching daytime TV probably oughtn't to get too captious, eh? So, Margret and I were having an argument (you'd think I'd have a shortcut key for that sentence by now, wouldn't you?). I can't remember what we were arguing about, but that doesn't matter here because in today's lesson we're focusing on style, not content. Say we were arguing about, oh, lettuce (even if we weren't, it's surely only a matter of time):

Margret: You haven't washed all the lettuce.

Mil: I've washed the bits I'm going to eat.

Margret: And left the rest for me to wash.

Mil: If you wash it all, it goes off quicker.

Margret: So, we'll eat it quicker, then.

Mil: I don't want to eat it quicker.

Margret: But I do.

Mil: Then wash it yourself if you're so bloody desperate to gorge on lettuce. What am I? Your official Lettuce Washer?

Margret: My last boyfriend was taller than you.

Etc.

Fairly standard stuff, clearly, but what you need to realise is something that I can't get across on the page. It's that, as the exchanges switched backwards and forwards between us, there was a kind of bidding war going on with the pitch. It's not just that each one of us upped the volume a little for our turn, but that we also changed the tone by raising our voices so that our reply was about a fifth higher than the one that the other person had just used. It was like two Mariah Careys facing off — pretty quickly, we were having an argument that only dogs could hear.

I've noticed that this often happens, and I reckon Margret secretly initiates it as a ploy. She raises her pitch, subconsciously luring me to respond. It's tactical. She knows it increases her chances of winning the argument because — when I come to deliver the final, logical coup de grace with great imperiousness and gravitas — I discover I'm doing so in the voice of Jimmy Somerville.