How Hard Can It Be?. Allison Pearson

onto something there,’ I say, placing scrambled eggs on the table. Richard is washing his bacon butty down with a glass of some weird energy drink which looks like that purple Dioralyte we gave the kids when they were dehydrated from vomiting.

      ‘Emily, you’ve got to eat something, darling.’

      ‘You just don’t get it,’ she says, pushing the plate of egg away from her with such venom that it tips over the edge of the table and smashes onto the floor, scattering fluffy yellow florets over the terracotta tiles.

      ‘Everyone’s like going to the O2 to see Taylor Swift. S’not fair. Why are we poor?’

      ‘We are not poor, Emily,’ says Richard in that slow, soft, vicar voice he has adopted since starting his course. (Oh, please, not the South Sudan lecture.)

      ‘There are children in the Horn of Africa, Emily …’

      ‘OK!’ I jump in before Rich can build up a head of sanctimony. ‘Mummy’s going to get a full-time job very soon, so you can definitely go and see Taylor Swift, darling.’

      ‘Kate!!!’ protests Richard, ‘what did we say about not negotiating with terrorists?’

      ‘What do I get?’ wails Ben, looking up from his phone.

      Lenny, seizing this optimal moment of family friction, snarfs up the scrambled egg and licks the floor clean.

      Rich is right to be cross. Extortionate concert tickets are not part of our agreed budget cuts, but I sense that Emily’s distress – panic even, did I detect panic in her eyes? – is about more than Taylor Swift. The girls she mentioned are all part of the Snapchat group that Lizzy Knowles shared the belfie with. The last thing Emily needs is to miss their outing. If Rich can blow one hundred and fifty quid a week talking about himself, and Ben’s new braces will require us to take out a second mortgage, then surely we can find the money to help Em be happy?

      7.54 am: When the kids have gone upstairs to do their teeth and get their stuff together, Richard briefly raises his eyes from his cycling website and notices me – me as a person, that is, not as diary secretary and rinser of Lycra – and says, ‘I thought you were at the gym today.’

      ‘I was, but your dad rang really early. Couldn’t get him off the phone. He was on for twenty minutes. He’s really worried about your mum. She’s obviously pissed off the new carer. Told her that her English wasn’t good enough after she caught her smoking by the Bishop of Llandaff.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘It’s a flower. Passive smoking harms dahlias apparently. You know what your parents are like about the garden. And the carer sounds hideous. Donald mentioned a bruise on Barbara’s wrist, although that could be a fall. The whole thing’s a mess, but now they haven’t got anyone going in again.’

      ‘For fuck’s sake.’ Richard allows himself a very non-Dalai Lama reaction and I’m glad. Like most couples, our relationship has been held together by a common outlook on life, and by laughing at or despising those who don’t share it. I neither much like nor recognise Mr Wholefoodier Than Thou who is currently occupying the body where my lovely, funny husband used to live.

      ‘Mum’s impossible,’ he says. ‘How many carers is that they’ve gone through? Three? Four?’

      ‘Barbara’s really not well, Rich. You need to get up there and sort things out.’

      ‘Cheryl can do it. She’s nearer.’

      ‘Cheryl has a full-time job and three sons doing twenty-seven after-school activities. She can’t just drop everything.’

      ‘She’s their daughter-in-law.’

      ‘And you’re their son. So is Peter.’ (Don’t you hate the way families assume it’s always the women who should take care of the elderly parents, even if a son lives nearer? That may just be connected to the fact that we always do.)

      At least Rich has the grace to look sheepish. ‘I know, I know,’ he sighs. ‘I thought Mum seemed fine in Cornwall. That was only two months ago.’

      ‘Your father’s good at covering things up.’

      ‘What kind of things?’

      ‘You’ve seen how forgetful she is.’

      ‘That’s perfectly normal at her age, isn’t it?’

      ‘It’s not normal to ask your fourteen-year-old grandson if he needs a wee wee. She genuinely thinks Ben is in kindergarten. She needs proper help. We can’t just leave your dad to cope, Rich. He’s amazing but he’s almost ninety for God’s sake.’

      ‘Could you? I mean, would you mind going, Kate? I would go, you know I would, but I can’t take a break from therapy right now. This is such a crucial time in my personal development. I know you’re job hunting and it’s a big ask, darling, but you’re so good at these things.’

      ‘Are you kidding?’

      That’s what I am about to say, anyway, but something in Rich’s expression makes me pause. For a moment, he looks like Ben did that time in the middle of the night when he was kneeling on the bathroom floor next to the toilet bowl and admitted he was scared of vomiting.

      Rich has always been horrified by anything to do with illness or doctors. Like most men he believes he’s immortal and I guess there’s nothing like witnessing your parent’s decline into dementia to dent that treasured myth. Despite his phobia, if I’m ill Rich always forces himself to be a good nurse. When I got salmonella from a cheap chicken, not long after we first met, he refused to leave me alone in my grotty shared flat though a combination of paper-thin partition walls and thunderous visits to the loo should have dealt a lethal blow to our budding romance. I remember thinking, between bouts of retching, how tenderly devoted this new boyfriend was. Not at all like the emotionally shut-off public schoolboy I had imagined him to be. If Rich’s passion could survive hourly explosions from all orifices, he must be a keeper. I had had better lovers, men my body was helplessly in thrall to, but wanting someone who was also kind to me? Now, that was a first.

      When did we stop being kind to each other, Rich and I? All the pressure and upheaval of the past few months has made us scratchy and inconsiderate. I need to do better.

      ‘OK,’ I say, ‘I’ll see if I can go up to Wrothly and check in on Barbara and Donald before they invite me to interview for new Governor of the Bank of England.’

      Richard smiles (haven’t seen one of those for a while) and swoops in for a kiss. ‘Brilliant. You’ll get a job offer, darling,’ he says. ‘Once that headhunter guy sends out your CV you’ll be beating them off with a stick.’

      I haven’t told him how badly things went with Kerslaw. Don’t want to worry him.

       Josh Reynolds to Kate

      Hi Kate, Josh here. I’ve notified Facebook that the pic of Emily breaches their Community Standards and it should be taken down by now. As she’s sixteen she no longer qualifies as a child & won’t get highest priority. Although she’s not recognisable in the pic – you can only see her back and her bum which won’t identify her – I’ve zapped everything I could find and I’ve set up notifications which will alert me next time a pic of Emily’s bum is shared. I’ll kill it, natch. There are ways in which I can make Lizzy Knowles’s online life very unpleasant but you didn’t hear me say that, OK? If you want me to do what can’t be mentioned, let me know. You know if this is revenge porn you can get police involved. Do you want to do that? Thanks for asking me. It was fun!

       Kate to Josh Reynolds

      Thanks so much, Josh. Brilliant job. Really appreciate it. No, not revenge porn. Just teenage girl stuff. Not serious. Don’t want police involved!! Let me know how much I owe you.

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