A Cupboard Full of Coats by Yvvette Edwards Read Free Book Online Page A

him…’
    ‘I don’t wanna hear it,’ he said. ‘This is the end of the line. I’m not doing this any more.’
    ‘If you would just let me explain…’
    ‘But I don’t care what your reasons are. He’s been here for five hours. You haven’t seen him for a fortnight. How could things get this bad so quick?’
    ‘Red, if you would just listen…’
    ‘But it’s just more rubbish. He’s a little boy. Four years old! Don’t you think he’s already got enough on his plate?’
    I didn’t answer, because what was on his plate was me: absent mum, useless mum, bad mum. I knew it and I didn’t want to discuss it in more detail in front of Lemon, but Red was on a roll.
    ‘You don’t visit. You don’t phone. You don’t do anything. I’m the one going round mopping up, making good, lying to him so he thinks, despite everything you do and every word you say, that you care. Well, I’m done with it. No more.’
    All I wanted to do was wrap the discussion up as quickly as possible. ‘It’s obvious there’s no point trying to discuss this with you, so where do we go from here?’ I asked.
    ‘I’m not bringing him any more. You want to see him, you come to our home and see him there. You wanna talk to him, pick up the phone and ring.’ He glanced at Lemon lounging on the settee in his dressing gown, like a sugar daddy. ‘Assuming you can make the time.’
    ‘You seem to have forgotten something; he’s my son too!’
    ‘Really?’ Red asked, looking at me, waiting for more, but I could see no need to elaborate. The fact that I was Ben’s mother was irrrefutable. He shifted the bag to his other hand and turned around to leave. He was almost through the livingroom door when he stopped and turned around. The anger was gone, replaced by an expression I could not identify.
    ‘Do you know he cries for you?’ he asked. ‘Did you know that?’
    He watched me for a moment, waiting for a response, but it was so inconceivable I could think of nothing to say. Then he waved his hand as if I were a waste of space, dismissing me. He left the room and a moment later the front door slammed shut.
    And then, in case the whole thing wasn’t already bloody obvious, and only Lemon had been endowed with sufficient insight to recognize this was not a positive development, at that moment he turned around to look at me, shook his head slowly and said, ‘Hope you don’t think I’m minding you business when I say that did not go well at all, at all, at all.’

3

    Although it was not yet three, and early in the day even by my standards, I poured myself a glass of wine. I did not offer Lemon a drink. The rational part of me knew that the episode with Red and Ben was not Lemon’s fault, but another part of me held everything that had happened firmly against him; if it had not been for him I would have changed my clothes and gone to the park instead of the cinema, so there would have been no wet trousers and no scene. If he had not been here when we returned, Ben would have been paying attention to me and because I would have been paying attention back there would have been no cleaning done upstairs and the old car would still be sitting in the corner of the bedroom gathering dust. If it had not been for him, my head wouldn’t have been so filled with Berris that I could hardly think properly, never mind function. No matter which angle I approached from, Lemon sat squarely in the way, and however much I tried, it was impossible to push the blame beyond him.
    He helped himself to a vodka on the rocks anyway, watching me all the while, giving me a look that asked: Well? Are we going to talk about this or not? It was a look I pretended not to understand; my private business was nothing to do with him. Instead, I fixed my face into an A sk me any questions and I’ll chop your head off look to keep him at bay. And so for a while he said nothing.
    He looked comfortable leaning on the counter, glass raised, examining the contents as