No-One Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday (9 page)

‘Do you have any idea how boring you sound?’ Daniel got up and straightened his jacket. ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

‘One more try,’ said Katy, picking up the receiver and pressing the number redial button.

‘Boring, boring, boring,’ said Daniel, sitting down and pretending to go to sleep.

‘Do you think I should pop home and check everything’s okay?’ she said as she put the phone down again.

‘No!’ Daniel shrieked, getting up and striding around the back of her desk to forcibly lift her from her seat. ‘You will get your arse down to this fabulous new wine bar I have found so we can have a proper gossip about who’s shagged who in the office whilst you’ve been away.’

Katy gave Daniel an incredulous stare.

‘I know,’ he nodded. ‘It’s shocking. I would never have put those two together. In the lightbox room at the end of a very long night preparing for a pitch, apparently.’

‘I cannot possibly go to a wine bar!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve not come back to work to enjoy myself.’

It was Daniel’s turn to give Katy an incredulous stare.

‘Then what’s the fucking point?’ he cried.

‘The point, of course,’ she replied, getting frustrated, ‘is to provide for my family. Not to swan about gossiping with you like I used to.’

Daniel looked as though someone had slapped him in the face.

‘And to think, I was so excited to have you back. God, I wish Freddie were still here instead of you. He’d have come to the wine bar all afternoon if I’d asked him to.’

‘Of course he would,’ retorted Katy. ‘He’d have spread peanut butter on his stupid shiny bald head and let you lick it off, he was so far up your backside.’

Daniel creased his brow as if considering it as a serious option.

‘That is a mental image I’m not wholly averse to,’ he declared eventually.

‘You’re welcome,’ spat Katy.

‘That’s the Katy I’ve missed,’ Daniel said after a pause.

Katy nodded, feeling suddenly tearful. ‘Me too.’

‘Fucking bollocks, stupid fucker!’ shouted Ben.

Millie was in the baby chair again on the kitchen floor, screaming her head off.

‘It’s coming, Millie, it’s coming,’ said Ben, raking his hands through his hair. ‘If I can ever get this stupid bloody machine to do as it’s told.’

He glared at the innocent-looking steriliser before jabbing wildly at the buttons for the millionth time in the vain hope it would do something . . . anything. He cast his mind back to Katy showing him what to do. It was so simple he’d told her not to worry about getting any bottles ready the night before, he’d sort it the following day. No problem. He could master a simple steriliser, absolutely no worries at all.

‘You bastard!’ he shouted when the machine failed to respond to any of his manhandling. ‘You utter bastard. Which idiot designed this? All I need is a simple switch that just says ON. Not five switches with stupid symbols that mean bugger all to me.’

Millie continued to cry.

‘Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger,’ Ben muttered, looking at the ceiling. He could sort this. He had to sort this. He couldn’t ring Katy on his first day and admit he couldn’t even work the steriliser. He suspected that Katy thought he wasn’t up to the job, that he would fail and be forced to admit it was a lot harder than he’d realised. He was determined to be a success and he wasn’t
going to let a stupid blue and white machine trip him up on his very first day. He looked at the bottles lined up by Katy, ready to be sterilised. They looked clean enough to him. What if he used one without sterilising it? One couldn’t hurt, surely? He picked one of the bottles up tentatively then collected a teat, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger.

‘Fuck,’ he exclaimed, dropping it on the floor. He’d touched it with his bare hands. Had he washed them properly last time he went to the toilet? It was entirely possible soap may not have participated in the ritual. He may have just done a cursory run of his hands under water, never guaranteed to do the job properly. He may have just covered his daughter’s bottle teat in his own wee! Oh God, he was such a bad parent. He could have killed his own baby by making her drink his own wee. He should never have been allowed to be left home with her. His heart was racing now as the paranoia of being the sole responsible adult in charge of a helpless baby kicked in. He’d never felt like this before. He normally had back-up, he realised. There was always someone else nearby to take the responsibility. Now it was down to him. This baby would live or die because of him and
only
him. He needed back-up and he needed it fast. He reached for the only person he could think of who would be at home and available to help.

‘Braindead,’ he gasped into the phone, Millie balanced on his hip, still wailing.

‘Yo,’ his friend replied. ‘What is that you’re watching?
Nightmare on Elm Street
Three or Four?’

‘Come here now! To the flat. It’s an emergency!’

Fifteen minutes later Braindead was staring at the steriliser poised with a screwdriver.

‘Do I have permission to go in?’ he asked. ‘It’s clearly faulty. Let’s open her up and take a look.’

‘But it was working perfectly fine yesterday,’ said Ben, bouncing Millie high in the air, which was distracting her for the moment.

‘But it’s not working now. You said so yourself. Come on, let’s have a look. I’d love to see how one of these work.’

Ben gave a weary sigh and Millie resumed her distressed call.

‘Alright,’ he said. ‘You take a look but make sure you can put it back together, okay? If Katy comes back and finds it in bits she’ll go mental.’

‘You have so little faith,’ smiled Braindead as he turned the beast over and tackled his first screw.

Ben watched, feeling zero confidence that anything like an end was in sight. There was nothing for it but to try a Plan B, which he didn’t hold much hope for either.

‘Charlene?’ he said when she picked up the phone.

‘Hiya,’ she replied. ‘You were epic this morning. Half the class walked out after you did. Linda was broken.’

‘Help me, Charlene, perleeease,’ he breathed down the phone. ‘I can’t work the steriliser and Millie needs feeding, listen.’ He held the phone next to her puce red face as she wailed down it.

‘Abby’s here,’ said Charlene when he put the phone back to his ear. ‘Can she have a word?’

‘Noooo,’ cried Ben. ‘Just tell me what to do if I’ve got no sterilised bottles and I need to feed her.’

‘Oh. Well, just pour boiling water over the bottle and teat. It’ll be fine.’

‘And that’s okay, is it?’

‘It’s what I do sometimes, and Rocco doesn’t seem to be suffering. He’s a right little fatty.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. My mum says there weren’t these fancy sterilisers about when she had babies and it never did us any harm.’

‘Right, right, okay,’ said Ben. ‘Brilliant, that’s what I’ll do. Thanks, Charlene. Look, gotta go feed Millie. Thanks again. Really. Bye.’

‘Braindead – step away from the steriliser. Put the screwdriver down. Down, Braindead, down. Good, good boy. That’s it. Now put the kettle on and let’s get a bit of peace.’

Katy had intended to leave work bang on time at five p.m. Her coat was on and her computer was switched off but then her phone rang. She hesitated before picking it up. She couldn’t be late home on her first day. She knew only too well what it felt like when Ben drifted home a mere ten minutes after he
said he’d be back. She was prone to an apoplectic meltdown such was her desperation to be near another human being and no longer the sole carer for their bundle of helplessness. However, the number flashing showed it was the Group Marketing Director for Family Cereals, who oversaw the Crispy Bix brand. She’d been trying to get hold of him all day to salvage the account they were teetering on the edge of losing due to Daniel and Freddie’s digression into a literary rebranding. She picked up – she had to. Her boss had told her in no uncertain terms to do whatever it took to save the lucrative account.

There was no exchange of pleasantries. Richard Makeney’s tone was stern, clearly indicating that the relationship between client and agency had turned very sour indeed. Before Richard could even begin to launch into a tirade of exactly what he currently thought of their level of service, Katy stepped in. She took him through a mentally rehearsed spiel on what action she had already implemented to steer the latest campaign back onto a sales-winning course. By the time she had taken him through the new brief she’d written, shared some of the initial idea’s they’d brainstormed in a meeting that day and explained how she’d adjusted the timescales to make sure they still came in on time and on budget, Richard’s tone was entirely different.

‘I know that our Brand Manager is keen for us to revisit the Crispy Bix chipmunk, and I really like your idea for how we can do that in a new way. I think it could work.’

‘Well, it so ties into your core brand values,’ replied Katy, feeling the old jargon coming back to her as if she’d never been away. ‘The Fifties were all about Mother being the centre of the family and caring for her children. We want mums to feel that by feeding their children Crispy Bix they’re as good as any of those pinny-wearing homemakers around then. We do a Fifties retro campaign with the Crispy Bix Chipmunk at the centre of it – we get all those great home values in one.’

‘And are the creative team on board?’ asked Richard. ‘They seemed to be the ones who were choosing to ignore the brand essence.’

‘It was the Creative Director’s idea,’ she lied. She and Daniel had had a stand-up row during the brainstorming about the loss of the Shakespeare idea. A row not so much because they disagreed, more because they so loved shouting the odds at each other in front of the junior creatives, who
cowered in the background. The retro slant had been her idea, knowing it would appeal to Daniel’s desire to do something different. However, by the end of the meeting it was of course totally down to Daniel’s genius that a solution had been found to suit all parties.

Katy smiled at herself as she put the phone down. The adrenaline rush of winning someone round, solving a problem, having a proper adult conversation, seemed at that moment like the best feeling in the world.

Then she saw the time. ‘Shit!’ she exclaimed, jumping out of her chair and grabbing her bag. It was already five-thirty. The witching hour in any household containing young children, when all hell could break loose and any sane rational thought would be thrown out the window. She had to get home fast.

‘Leaving early?’ the receptionist called to her as she ran out of the lift.

‘Fuck off,’ she muttered under her breath to the time-happy singleton.

‘Hi,’ said a tight-lipped Ben as she walked through the door.

‘So sorry I’m late,’ gasped Katy, taking Millie out of his arms immediately. ‘Hello, baby, how are you?’ she said, clutching onto her and showering her with kisses. ‘Richard from Crispy Bix called and I’d been waiting to speak to him all day because they were about to ditch the agency. I’m so sorry. So how have you been? Everything okay?’

‘Fine,’ said Ben, nodding his head with a slightly glazed look on his face. ‘Great, no problems at all. Seriously. Look, Braindead popped in just now for a chat and he’s gone down the pub for a quick one. Mind if I join him? You don’t mind, do you? Good, I’ll see you in about an hour then. Bye.’

Katy stared after Ben open-mouthed, clutching Millie very tightly as she gurgled happily.

She walked into the kitchen to go and put the kettle on. However, she couldn’t actually see the kettle, such was the chaos that met her. The dishwasher hadn’t been unloaded, so there were dirty pots everywhere on the side. The pushchair and baby seat cluttered the floor and the steriliser seemed to have disappeared to be replaced by a screwdriver. Eventually she located the kettle on the breakfast bar next to a bowl of water. What on earth had gone on that day? She scrutinised Millie for signs of discomfort, distress
or harm. She appeared to be fine. She gently laid her down in her baby seat and handed her a rattle to wave around and spit all over before she began the process of restoring some order into the totally trashed kitchen.

Chapter Ten

Ben, Braindead and Rick sat in the corner of the Nelson sipping on pints as they contemplated the white and pale blue steriliser sitting on the table in front of them.

Ben wasn’t really taking anything in. His first day as a stay-at-home dad had hit him like a steam train. His ability for conversation was limited and his appearance – well, his appearance was dishevelled, to say the least. His usual post-work uniform of tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie had given him an active, lively air in the past, whereas today his shock of ginger beard, unbrushed hair, T-shirt he had slept in and stained tracksuit bottoms indicated boy on benefits at best, tramp at worst.

Braindead had plugged the steriliser into a socket he’d spotted on the wall and was peering at the buttons on the control panel.

‘Is anyone going to tell me what that is?’ asked Rick, nodding at the plastic contraption on the table.

Silence.

‘Braindead?’ asked Rick, when it was clear that Ben was not capable of speech just yet.

‘Still not exactly sure,’ replied Braindead. ‘Cleans stuff for Millie, I think. Ben called in a state, so I dropped everything. Well, luckily I’d seen the episode of
Location, Location, Location
I was watching. I went round and offered to open it up, take a look inside for him, but he stopped me before I could get stuck in.’

‘It sterilises the baby bottles,’ said Ben wearily.

‘Right,’ Rick nodded.

‘Katy showed me how to use it and it looked so easy that I told her not to bother writing it down,’ sighed Ben. ‘But then I couldn’t remember and tried to poison my own child.’

‘Wow!’ shrieked Braindead. ‘You didn’t mention that. How did you manage that?’

‘I touched the teat,’ said Ben, shaking his head. ‘Always use the tweezers. I do remember Katy saying that. Not your fingers. Then I couldn’t
remember if I’d washed my hands.’ He put his pint down on the table and buried his head in his hands.

Braindead and Rick stared at the broken man.