Gill Sims

Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****


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home to demand what the children had been doing all day (lounging around, eating and making a mess – such are the joys of teenagers in the school holidays), stomping round shouting about the mess the children had made, hurling the trail of plates and glasses left around the house in the dishwasher, and bellowing about who had drunk all the milk again, before spending the evenings in a whirl of unpacking boxes, wishing I could go to bed because I was knackered, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer number of boxes needing to be unpacked and wondering why the fuck I’ve so much stuff.

      When Simon and I first moved in together, every single thing we owned in the entire world BETWEEN US fitted in his rusting Ford Fiesta, with room left over. Over twenty years later, and it took two vast removal lorries to distribute our possessions, not to mention the skip full of crap, the innumerable bags to the charity shops and several runs to the local dump. I’d packed everything up in a tremendous hurry, flinging things into boxes and promising myself I’d sort it all out at the other end (this rushed packing also led to some raised eyebrows from the removal men as they looked askance at my boxes labelled with things like ‘kitchen crap’, ‘general crap’ and – this was one of the last boxes I packed – ‘more fucking shit’), but this was proving harder than I thought, as I pulled out Jane’s first baby-gro – so tiny, and rather faded and yellowing now, but even so, I couldn’t possibly get rid of it.

      Jane wandered in at that point. She looked at my little box of teeth that I was gazing at fondly and said, ‘You do know, Mother, that one day you’re going to be dead and we’re going to have to clear your house out and it’s going to be like totally gross if we have to come across things like boxes of human teeth.’

      ‘But they’re your teeth,’ I protested. ‘It’s not like I’m a serial killer and I’ve kept the teeth of my victims as a souvenir. They are keepsakes from your childhood.’

      Jane gave another one of her snorts. ‘It’s still gross,’ she insisted. ‘In fact, it would be less weird if you had killed people for their teeth. Why do you have them?’

      Of course, the standards slipped in later years – any old pound coin would do – and quite often I’d forget, and when an angry child burst into my bedroom complaining the Tooth Fairy hadn’t been I’d have to hastily rustle up a pound coin and pretend to ‘look’ under their pillow before triumphantly ‘finding’ it, and accusing them of just not looking properly. Luckily they fell for this every time, and I still constantly complain about them never looking for anything properly. Now though, looking into the box filled with yellowing little teeth, several of them still bearing traces of dried blood where, the sooner to get his hands on the booty, Peter had forcibly yanked them out, it did seem a rather macabre thing to keep. But on the other hand, a) I wasn’t actually going to admit that to Jane, and b) I’d really gone to rather a lot of effort to collect those teeth and so I wasn’t quite ready to part with them just yet. Anyway, they might come in useful for something.

      ‘Useful for what?’ said Jane in horror. ‘Seriously, Mother, what exactly do you think a box full of human teeth might be useful for? Are you going to become a witch or something? Eye of newt and tooth of child? Is that why you’re getting chickens – you claimed it was because they were chatty, but actually you’re planning on sacrificing them and reading the portents in their entrails while daubed in their blood? I’m not having any part of that. I’m going to go and live with Dad if you do that. That’s just going too far, Mother.’

      ‘What?’ I said in confusion. ‘How did you get from your baby teeth to me becoming some sort of chicken-murdering devil worshipper? I’m not going to sacrifice the chatty chickens. The chickens aren’t even here yet and you’re accusing me of secretly wanting to kill them!’

      Simon chose that moment to arrive and collect his darling children.

      ‘Errr, hello darling,’ said Simon. ‘Why is your mother becoming a Satanist?’

      ‘I’m NOT,’ I said crossly.

      ‘She collects human body parts,’ said Jane darkly.

      ‘I BLOODY WELL DON’T!’ I shouted.

      This wasn’t the scene I’d envisioned for Simon seeing me in my new home for the first time. I’d lost track of time, and instead of being elegantly yet casually clad in a cashmere sweater and sexy boots, perhaps with some sort of flirty little mini skirt to remind him that actually my legs really weren’t bad still, while reclining on a sofa in my Gracious Drawing Room, I was in my scabbiest jeans, covered in mud from walking Judgy earlier, with no make-up, dirty hair and clutching a box of teeth, with the house looking like a bomb had gone off and boxes everywhere. Simon meanwhile appeared to have finally cast aside his scabby fleeces in favour of tasteful knitwear and seemed to be attempting to cultivate some sort of designer stubble. Or maybe he just hadn’t bothered to shave. Either way, it suited him. Bastard. I glared at him.

      ‘Right …,’ he said, wisely deciding the best thing to do would be to ignore this whole conversation and pretend it had never happened. ‘Jane, are you ready? And where’s your brother?’

      Jane looked surprised. ‘Ready? What, now? Like, NO, I need to pack. How should I know where Peter is? I’m not his mother!’

      I sighed. ‘I suppose you’d better come in then, Simon. Would you like a cup of tea?’

      ‘Could I get some coffee?’

      ‘Fine.’

      At least the kitchen was unpacked and relatively tidy. I reached for the jar of Nescafé, as Simon said, ‘Don’t you have any proper coffee? You know I don’t like instant coffee.’