The Fat And The Thin Of It Read online

about it, but they finally straggled out, gathering their coats and bags and muttering between themselves ‘like I thought that she was sort of away, like’ and ‘God, she’s like such a gripe’. Whilst the crowd were gathering their belongings, Jackie’s eyes scanned the state of her living room, and it was a total mess, but she’d have to worry about that later on, just as soon as she found her sodding son. She followed the last out to the hall and slammed the front door behind them, but when she turned round, she saw another two stragglers coming down the stairs, which made her stomach flip.

  “Where the fuck were you two?” if they said they’d been in her room, she’d tie them to the banisters until she’d checked that the plastic bag in her wardrobe was still there.

  One jerked his thumb at the bathroom. “Like, in there?”

  “Are you telling me or bloody asking me, moron?” Jackie put her hands on her hips and glared at the boy, but he gave her a confused look and shrugged.

  Jackie turned and locked the front door, then whirled back to the stragglers. “Stay there and don’t either of you bat a sodding eyelid!” she pointed a menacing finger at them as she hurried past and up to her room.

  Her bedroom door was locked, though, so she hammered both fists on it and screamed. “Open up! Open up in there, you little buggers!”

  There was a sound of scurrying as she waited, heart pounding, for the door to be opened, but she heard Mark’s door behind her open instead.

  “Wassup?” he sounded annoyed as he jerked his door opened, but then whispered, “Oh fuck!” when he saw Jackie.

  She had no time for lecturing, as she needed to get into her room. “Who is in my bedroom?”

  Mark pulled his bathrobe round him and hurriedly tied the belt. “Like nobody. I kind of locked so like no-one would sort of go in there.”

  Jackie stormed up to him. “Where’s the key?” Mark half disappeared behind the door before reappearing with the key, which she grabbed and hurriedly opened her bedroom door.

  The room was as she’d left it; bed made, clothes away and the wardrobe door shut tight. She pulled a chair up to the window and climbed up, ran her hand along the pelmet until she found a key, then she jumped back down with a thud and put the key into the wardrobe door’s tiny lock. When she pulled the door open, everything was again as she’d left it; clothes hung or folded and the plastic bag stashed under a pile of jumpers.

  Jackie sighed noisily and sank onto the bed. She sat for a moment until her heart had stopped pounding in her left ear before getting up slowly and heading out to the hallway.

  “Mark!” she yelled at his bedroom door, which had closed again. “Get dressed, tell that Teesha to get dressed too and then both of you come downstairs!”

  Jackie descended the stairs and found the two remaining stragglers waiting for her with their arms folded and looking bored. She pushed past them, unlocked the front door and growled, “Sod off!”

  Jackie went into the living room to get a good look at what had happened in there. There were plastic bowls with the remnants of crisps and nuts on the sideboard, and beer bottles were on the coffee table, dining table and dotted about the floor beside the armchairs and sofa. One bottle had overturned and a wet patch of beer was obvious on the coffee-coloured carpet by the fireplace. “Oh, for the love of Pete!” she groaned as she picked it up and placed a hand on the patch. It was fresh, so she dashed to the kitchen to get tea-towels to soak the beer up.

  When she entered her kitchen, she groaned again. The oven door was wide open, there were a half dozen empty pizza boxes on the counter beside the sink and the sink itself was over-flowing with mugs, glasses and plates. Empty packets of crisps and nuts were strewn around the rubbish bin, which had the lid up. It looked as if they’d been trying to slam dunk them into the bin but missed every time. There were crumbs and bits of food all over the work tops and floor, but she needed to get that beer soaked up so she left it all until she’d done just that.

  Jackie knelt beside the beer stain and dabbed at it with a tea towel, changing it about until it was well and truly beer-soaked, then she dabbed again with a fresh one, repeating the process. She heard footsteps on the stairs then Mark’s dragging gait and lighter, quicker footsteps approaching the living room, but she continued her dabbing until she heard his voice behind her.

  “How come you’re like back so soon?” he asked. No ‘sorry’, no ‘can I help’, just a pouty question about her early return.

  Jackie clambered on to her feet and turned to face Mark, ready to throw a soggy tea towel in his direction, but she stopped short when she saw Teesha standing beside him.

  Teesha was wearing electric blue leggings, enormous trainers with bright pink laces and a bright pink t-shirt that matched the laces. The t-shirt was skimpy and short, and it was stretched over her midriff that flashed a distended navel in the middle of a roughly five-month pregnant belly.

  Jackie couldn’t move or speak. Her jaw moved up and down in the effort to say something, but she simply couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be an oath. She made do with a gesture of her hand and wide eyes glaring in the direction of Teesha’s belly.

  Mark and Teesha returned her look with a gormless stare, until Mark seemed to fall in with what Jackie was trying to get across. He giggled and patted the air with his hands. “Oh, like chill, Mum! It ain’t like mine, if that’s what you was sort of thinking.”

  Jackie raised her eyebrows. Was her son so thick as to believe it was a bloody immaculate conception? “What exactly do you mean; not yours?”

  Teesha came to life and giggled as well. “Nah, it ain’t like Mark’s, it’s kind of Cliff’s.” she clarified.

  Jackie’s eyebrows went right under her hairline. “‘Kind of Cliff’s’?”

  “Well, yeah, I think so.” Teesha said quite calmly.

  “Who else could it kind of be if it isn’t kind of Cliff?”

  Teesha looked at the ceiling as she made a calculation. “Well, like... it could sort of be Alan’s, but I kind of don’t think he had nothing to do with it ’cos we only like sort of did it once.”

  Jackie’s eyebrows dropped along with her jaw. She thought of herself as a modern, liberal mum, but this was going way past her idea of being liberal. She’d had terrible battles with her mum because she was always lecturing her about ‘sleeping around’ and ‘getting a bad reputation’. Jackie could rarely confide in her mum and she hadn’t wanted her children to feel the same towards her, so she’d been open about sex. She’d spoken to both about contraception, especially to Chloe, and she’d told her daughter a few of her own escapades and experiences to show that she hadn’t been born the same day as her, which is what most teenagers think about their parents. She’d advised Mark to use contraception himself and not trust that a girl will take care of that side of things so as not to come unstuck. But, she’d never advised him on what to do if he slept with a girl who was already pregnant and wasn’t sure who the father was. To boot, Teesha didn’t look any older than fifteen, and she wondered what Teesha’s mum thought about her daughter’s state, and it made her mind boggle.

  She looked at her son and although she loved him, at that moment she did not like him one little bit. Somehow, somewhere along the process of educating him, she must have messed up. She didn’t know how, but it was obvious she’d messed up; big time. But, her son’s lack of… morals was the best word she could think of, couldn’t be her doing, that she was sure about. How he could be with this pregnant girl with such disregard made him quite unpalatable to her, even though he was her son. It had to be sorted, she concluded, now, before the boy went off the rails and fell onto Yob-land Station.

  “Teesha, I’d like you to leave now.” She said quietly and calmly. Mark made to protest, but she shut him up with her hand. “Please leave, Teesha.” She insisted.

  Teesha glanced at Mark, who shrugged his shoulders. She tutted loudly then lumbered out of the living room in an obvious strop and slammed the front door behind her.
/>   Mark folded his arms and pouted angrily at Jackie. “What did you do that for?” he growled.

  Jackie put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You know what you’re going to do? You’re going to go into the kitchen and clean it of all the crap, then you will polish it till you can see your stupid face in all the surfaces. After you’ve done that and I have checked that it’s as I like it, you’ll go upstairs and pack some things, then I’m going to take you to Grandma Walker’s.”

  Although she shooed him away with her hand, he stayed there with his arms folded. The expression on his face had changed from pouty anger to a gormless query, though, as he didn’t seem to understand the meaning of the words ‘clean’ and ‘polish’ and ‘pack’.

  “I’ve had it with you, son,” Jackie clarified for him. “And I don’t want you in this house right now. You dropped out of school, you slouch about the house doing absolutely nothing to try and find a job or, at the very least, a purpose in life, and then you plant yourself in front of me every Friday with your hand out. Your dad leaves us, I go off in search of him and all you could think to do is disobey my order of no parties, leave the house in a complete mess and shag a slut. I’m stressed, I don’t know what’s in front of us and you couldn’t care bloody less and, frankly, I’m so upset with your