Man of the Month Club Page 5

  “Now!” exclaimed Amy’s mammy, this being her favorite punctuation.

  With a gallows grin, Amy unraveled the Merry X-mas wrapping to reveal a glass orb that encased a plastic Virgin Mary holding a tiny Baby Jesus. The underside was flat and covered with badly glued-on green felt. It bore the inscription “A Souvenir from Fatima.” There was no mistaking it. It was a novelty religious paperweight. The full set. It was too funny to be painful anymore.

  “Thanks, Mum, it’s just what I’ve always wanted.”

  Amy’s mum rushed off into the kitchen ostensibly to turn off the kettle but actually to avoid the terrible awkwardness she always felt at giving gifts. She’d never really understood what they were for, never having received one from her own mother.

  “I got it at the church bazaar last Christmas, but I forgot to give it to you, what with all the excitement.”

  “No worries. I’ve lived without it,” she mumbled as Germaine strolled in and commenced her beard-wiping ceremony on the rug covering the new cream carpet Amy had insisted on paying for six months ago. Tired of seeing her mum’s shame at the state of the house whenever a visitor dropped by, Amy had refurbished and refitted the whole of the downstairs in tasteful neutral shades, desperate to haul her mum into the minimalist twenty-first century. Thrilled with how “clean” it looked, Amy’s mum had proceeded to accessorize with every dusty old knickknack and grannyish antimacassar she could find, covering the lush carpet with rags and frayed offcuts in order to “keep it nice.” There was just no helping some people.

  Three cups of tea and a doorstep of ham sandwich later, Amy checked her watch and tried to work out if she could slip away yet. Her mum always spotted this gesture, even when her back was turned. It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other—her mammy always brimmed up with irritating sentimentality every time Amy left—but that they had never formed a relationship beyond their early years together. Try as she might, despite the dreadful communication exercises she’d had to endure on her way up the corporate ladder, she had never managed to bridge the gap and “interface effectively” with her mum. Something about the long-suffering Virgin Mary routine, the thin set of her hard-done-by mouth, the Catholicism of her sloping shoulders, the fatalistic sighing, and the whispered rosaries (completed at alarming speed and seemingly without the aid of oxygen) had always antagonized Amy, from as far back as she could remember. She looked at her mum now and felt a sudden pang of—what, guilt? Anger? Resentment? Mostly just sadness. Was this the great gift of motherhood? To end up old and confused about where you went wrong, unable to understand your offspring, feeling just as alone as when you first entered the world but without the milky breast of your own mother for comfort? It seemed too sad all of a sudden to be in this familiar lounge, staring at this intimate stranger, conscious of nothing but the desire to leave, hearing nothing but the beating of her own heart as it clattered away in her rib cage, desperate for escape. How was it possible to be so distant from someone whose body had given you existence, whose flesh-and-blood interior had been your whole world for nine months? The fact that her mum sensed this unease didn’t help. Rather than do what nice middle-class parents did and pretend either that it didn’t exist or that it didn’t matter, Amy’s mum would spend hours just gazing longingly at her daughter, not even sure herself what she was looking for.

  Amy bristled under her mother’s gaze. She felt at once invaded and afraid that whatever it was her mum was hoping to find simply was not there.

  “Better get going, Mum,” she sighed, as if the wrench was as deeply felt on both sides. “Traffic, you know . . .”

  “Yes, yes, no doubt you’ll be getting ready to go out tonight to some party or other or maybe to a wine bar, but you will remember to eat, won’t you? I hate the thought of you and an empty stomach. I’ll bring Germaine out to the car.”

  Having announced her departure, the clattering inside her ribs subsided immediately, so much so that she was able to genuinely smile as she watched her mum wrestle a crotchety Germaine off the back lawn and to the front door, chiding her all the way. The dog loved all the fuss of a visit to Grandma’s (her mum’s sickening term for these duty calls). She loved the attention, the choccy drop treats produced in abundance for the simplest of paw-raising tricks, the tolerance of her muddy undercarriage on any chair she chose to perch on. Germaine knew the leaving signs only too well and protested violently at the early exit.

  Impatient to get away, Amy jumped into her car and waited for the dog to be dropped onto the passenger seat.

  “Come on now, Germaine, your mammy’s in a hurry to get home, so don’t be like this. Sure you’ll have forgotten all about me in a minute. I know, I’m not stupid, now stop that licking! Stop it! Ha, ha! You silly thing, you. Come on, let’s put you in the car and we’ll not say another word about it.” With that, Germaine landed with an unceremonious plonk onto the easy-wipe leather seat, throwing a “How dare you?” scowl in Amy’s direction. This was why Amy loved her—she didn’t need Amy, and she took every available opportunity to remind her that she was far better treated elsewhere.

  “Come on, let’s get you home,” she said, ruffling the dog’s shaggy beard as she pulled the gear stick into reverse with her free hand.

  “Bye, Mum—I’ll call soon,” she shouted as she released the handbrake and pushed down fast, boy-racer-like, on the accelerator. Classic FM burst out of all four speakers. A quick glance in the rearview mirror and she released all 1.9L of power onto the empty street. With a satisfying roar the car shot backward as she turned to wave her good-bye at last. But something was wrong—her mum was shouting, pointing, running down the path. A moment and a stomach-lurchingly soft thud later, her hand shot to the brake and she pulled the car to a sudden halt, only to see the empty seat beside her. Germaine. Where was Germaine?

  “Oh, God, no. Oh, no, oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God bless and save us, no,” chanted Amy’s mum flatly as she ran to the back of the car. And then there came a noise that Amy had not heard for a quarter of a century, not since they lowered her father’s coffin into the ground. Amy’s mother let out an anguished, banshee cry and covered her face with her hands.

  . 6 .

  Three hours later, still thick with snot and numb with shock, Amy found herself on Ang’s doorstep.

  “Hello! Where did you get to last night, you—oh, God, Amy, what’s wrong?” said Ang as she opened the door. “You look awful.”

  “Have you got any whiskey?”

  “I’ll get some. Come in, come in. Dave? Dave! Can you go down to the liquor store quick? It’s an emergency—scotch!” ordered Ang to an invisible Dave, who was somewhere in the house. She ushered her friend into the chaos of the living room, shooing the three older kids upstairs.

  “And when you get back, take the kids to the park,” she yelled, sensing a genuine crisis.

  “Now, what’s happened?”

  “I went to visit Mum today—”

  “Oh, dear,” Ang said knowingly.

  “No, no, that’s not it. The dog’s dead.”

  “What? What do you mean? How?”

  “I killed it.”

  “Killed it? Why?” said Ang, confusion clouding her soft, chubby face.

  “Not deliberately, obviously. I feel like shit. I was backing out of the street and I didn’t notice she’d jumped out of the car—she likes my mum. Liked my mum.”

  “But . . . how did she get out of the car? I don’t understand. . . .”

  “I had the roof down. She hopped out.”

  “The roof down? Today? Oh . . .” said Ang, casting a doubtful glance out of the window at the dark sky.

  “Oh, God, Amy, that’s terrible—so, you ran over her?”

  “Yes. I ran over her. She’s dead.”

  “Cool! Did she burst all over the road?” came a disembodied voice from behind the sofa.

  “Jason! Get upstairs now!” screamed Ang, mortified at her fourteen-year-old’s insensitivity.

  Amy allow
ed herself a small smile as the boy thundered up the stairs.

  “Sorry, Auntie Amy—didn’t mean it!” shouted Jason, trying to repair the damage but mostly trying to avoid a lecture on eavesdropping.

  “Oh, you poor thing!” cried Ang, her bosom approaching Amy’s face at maximum speed.

  And at once, enveloped in her oldest friend’s maternal embrace, Amy let rip with an avalanche of tears, the ice over her heart melting and sliding, crashing in chunks to the nylon carpet.

  “What am I going to do? She’s in a garbage bag in the trunk. We took her to the vet, but she was already dead. I can’t bury her on the roof terrace! I’ve got these magpies up there, they’ll eat her, and there’s no earth to stick her in, just bamboo tubs. Oh, Ang, what have I done?”

  “Sssh,” soothed her friend, rocking her gently with mum expertise. “Ssshh. Don’t upset yourself—it was an accident, happens all the time, she was a daft little doggie, wasn’t she? Fancy jumping out of a moving car like that! It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I’m such a bad person! I’m always in such a rush, always trying to get away fast, I can’t look after anything. I’m sorry, you don’t need this in your condition,” Amy sniveled, suddenly remembering the new baby.

  “That’s not true! You do look after things! You keep that flat lovely!”

  “That’s not me—that’s Joan the cleaner. It is true. I’m useless. Remember Cyclops?”

  Despite herself, an amused grin spread across Ang’s face. She remembered Cyclops, the one-eyed hamster Amy had begged to take home for the school holidays. She’d played with it for an hour, then got bored and let it roam the house. Within forty-eight hours, it had gone missing. Amy had at first accused her dad of selling it, but a day later, her mum had noticed a funny smell in the kitchen. It seemed to emanate from the toaster. Peering inside, Amy had discovered the charred remains of a small furry thing. It looked like a relic from Pompeii, its sharp little teeth visible through the blackened fur of its death mask. Ang had contributed 25p toward buying an identical hamster before the start of the next term, and had quietly taken it to her own home for the duration of the holidays.

  “That was different! You were only a kid. You couldn’t cope with the responsibility.”

  “You could!” sobbed Amy, mindless of the large wet patch appearing on Ang’s blouse. “It’s just me. It’s just who I am. I’m no good at looking after things. I shouldn’t be allowed to go near living things. I just kill them.”

  “Oh, come on, Amy,” cooed Ang as Dave arrived back with a half-bottle of Bells. Pouring Amy a large glass, she shooed him upstairs to get the kids out and see to the baby.

  “Drink this.”

  “Yeah, this’ll make it all all right, won’t it? This is what I always do—if in doubt, get pissed,” Amy said bitterly as she downed the lot in one gulp.

  The scotch helped. After a few stiff ones, she was feeling much perkier. The kids poured in the door, nosily peering round the door to see what a dog murderer looked like.

  They gaped, unabashed.

  “Ang, can I ask you a favor?”

  “Yes, darlin’, what can I do for you?”

  “Can I bury Germaine in your garden?”

  “Oh, please, Mum, can we? Can we, Mum? Oh, go on, pleeeeaaassse!” chorused the kids, desperate for a bit of morbid excitement.

  “Yes. Of course. You can put her next to Lucky.” Lucky had been the inaptly named black cat Jason owned, who had been found spread thinly across a hot, newly tarmaced road last summer. Jason had said it looked like a cartoon accident.

  Staggering slightly, Amy went to the car to collect the poor corpse as the kids crashed around inside, fighting over the possession of the shovel.

  “Let me have it! I want to dig the first bit!”

  “No, it was my idea to get the shovel, let me have it!”

  Ang watched from the front door until she saw Amy hesitate as the corner of the black bin bag flapped open in the breeze. A small, bloody paw flopped out as if its owner were reclining in a hammock.

  Rushing over to where her friend stood shaking, Ang scooped up the sack and marched toward the back garden, where the children had already assembled and were trying to generate the solemnity required for the occasion. The funeral party. They had seen it on TV, and had witnessed it firsthand at their Nana’s graveside only three months ago. If dogs had souls, over the next twenty minutes, Germaine’s would have hovered above the assembled mourners long enough to witness a touching display of naïve grief. She would have seen Jason dig the hole deftly and deeply enough to cheat the local foxes; she would have cocked her head to one side as Kelly played a halting, breathy but heartfelt “Amazing Grace” on her recorder and Ang lowered her earthly body into the ground. She would have even wagged her tail with pride as Sammy spoke a few spontaneous words by way of a eulogy, something along the lines of: “Dear Germaine, we didn’t know you that well, but you are with Baby Jesus now and he liked dogs, so there’ll be lots of biscuits and cats to chase in doggy heaven. Amen.” Above all, Germaine would have marveled at the gut-churning sobs that wracked her owner-cum-assassin as she stood by the graveside.

  “It’s all right,” she would have said. “I know it was an accident . . . but I didn’t know you cared that much . . .”

  . 7 .

  It had been a difficult week. The flat seemed empty without the small, loud dog. Without realizing it, Germaine had provided a pulse, a vital sign to the cold, urban chic of the “authentic industrial architecture.” The air was still thick with that wet-dog smell, a smell that Amy had tried for years to eradicate with little success. Plug-in room deodorizers, neutralizing sprays, and expensive perfumes could only vaguely mask the pong of mud, fur, and dead leaves that follows every dog like a shadow. Now Amy clung to it. In a fit of madness, she’d even dampened an old towel of Germaine’s in order to resummon the odor. She couldn’t yet bring herself to throw away the Burberry bed in the corner, and a few of Germaine’s old toys still lay about the place, waiting to be shaken and killed all over again. On the Monday after her death, the dog walker had arrived as usual, only to find the flat dogless and Amy slumped in the corner, watching daytime TV, still in her dressing gown. The explanation had prompted a renewed bout of crying, and the dog walker had backed out of the door explaining that she was very sorry but she had a car-load of restless canines to attend to. On Tuesday, she’d accompanied Soph and Greg to the hospital fertility unit, and had found it oppressively hopeful. The sight of all those desperate, childless couples eagerly awaiting their chance to create life had only served to remind her how she’d recently snuffed one out. The implantation complete, Soph had looked so full of joy at the prospect of what might be about to burrow itself into her that Amy had to look away. Not that she didn’t want it to work—she’d even offered to pay for this, the final attempt—but she felt cut off from life in a way that totally surprised her. She felt melodramatic, childish, and kept trying to tell herself to snap out of it, that it was only a dog, and that in a way it was better that Germaine went suddenly than via a lingering old-age illness. Nothing worked. Even alcohol, her old standby in times of trouble, failed to numb the curious listlessness she felt toward her life. She’d given herself official notice that this was her last week of work before the big sabbatical she’d been looking forward to. How could she let such a small thing as the dog dampen her enthusiasm for her newfound freedom? But the moment of Germaine’s death haunted her still. She recognized the grief signs—it felt as if it were the only thing that had ever happened. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday she returned to her design HQ just down the road from the Chelsea shop in order to tidy up a few last-minute handover details. She’d poached the best new textile designer on the block from her biggest rivals just last week. Saskia was a perky twenty-four-year-old who’d shown just the right mixture of respect and resentment at her interview—cocky but eager in equal measure, just like Amy had been all those years ago. She’d be able to keep things ticking ov
er, and perhaps even come up with a few new lines. Amy balked at the idea of training a new member of staff. The precise ins and outs of her quirky business felt personal, and she didn’t relish the exposure. Saskia asked a lot of questions—how should she deal with Mr. So-and-so, what was the best way to approach Ms. Whoever on a late deadline. It was all Amy could do to stop herself from screaming, “I don’t care! It’s not important! None of this matters!” People’s mouths moved, but it was as if she was hearing them from underwater, with a few seconds’ delay. Her head felt full of damp cotton wool, and her heart felt tight and heavy, as if a giant, invisible anvil had been dropped from a great height and landed on her sternum. All this because of the dog. And yet . . . and yet . . . if she was honest with herself, she mused during her Friday afternoon smoke break, this feeling had been resident in her body for some months. Her work was great, her flat was state-of-the-art, her friends all loved her, and yet . . . there was something, something she felt she lacked. Was it from without? Was it something she could buy? A trip somewhere hot and exotic? She’d always wanted to go to Marrakech . . . or perhaps she should really think about upsizing and moving to the country . . . London was great, but maybe a slower pace would ease her soul? Clearing her desk and emptying the ashtray on her drawing board, she was struck by how easy it would be to wipe out any trace of her existence. She’d never gone in for toys, photos, or personal novelty items. Her desk was a model of sleek professional chic. She watched with a wry smile as Saskia staggered in with a crateful of knickknacks, grinning framed relatives and wacky desktop gadgets in citrus colors. Turning for one last look at her workstation, she was struck by just how empty, how anonymous it looked. As Saskia started excitedly taking up residence, she noticed how claimed the desk looked now, how lived-in and lively it appeared. A hollow chasm opened up in the pit of her stomach as the stark realization came that she was utterly singular, totally self-contained and alone—a discrete unit you could pick up and put down elsewhere in a moment, no strings attached, no roots pulled, no props needed. Usually this state of being was a comfort to Amy when she felt low—it was reassuring to know that she had only herself to account to, only herself to rely on. Alongside her constant, quiet sense of superiority, she had also always nursed a faint sensation that other people were more connected with the world than she was. There was something about seeing groups of friends laughing in an easy way with each other in the windows of smart, glass-fronted bars, or watching in awe at the checkout as couples unloaded all manner of future feasts from their supermarket trolleys and wondering how they thought of all those things to buy (occasionally, Amy succumbed to the food police and stocked up on exotic cheeses and strange-sounding fruit, only to find it all festering in the bottom of the fridge three weeks later). As she watched the backs of her colleagues—Jules; Sam, the accountant; and Dee, the carpenter—retreating down the stairs ahead of her, she felt this sense of unbelonging, of a life lived in the ironic margins all too keenly.