The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs by Christina Hopkinson Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m so lucky.”
    I can almost hear the tracks running in my head all these years later as I pass the pregnant women in the café when we get up togo. There are three of them. One of those will split up with the father of their child, statistically, and another will feel as full of irritation toward their partner as I do toward Joel. I do a little eeny-meeny-miny-mo and pick on the woman in designer glasses as the only one who’ll still be happy in five years’ time.
    I get home before Joel, despite having to get some shopping on the way back. Each working day, I’m a Cinderella who must get to the child minder’s in time to pick up the kids. As I run through the streets from the station, I feel as if when the clock strikes 6:30, Deena will spontaneously combust, leaving nothing in her wake but two abandoned children and a pair of inappropriately high shoes. Childcare runs on a strict meter: I shove the coins in to cover just the amount of time I need, to the last minute, not wanting to pay anything more than I might possibly want.
    26 ) The fact that childcare is paid for out of my salary. As if paying someone else allows me to work whereas it actually allows both or either of us to work, doesn’t it? Which means I have less money than Joel does. Of course, it’s both our money, or more accurately both our debts, but I can never buy clothes for myself without clearing it with him first as there’s never any money in my account, while Joel is always downloading music that he’ll never listen to. If he were a woman and those tracks were shoes, he’d be hiding them in a cupboard and saying, “These old things, I’ve had them for years.”
    27 ) That whenever I complain that it’s me who has to rush back to pick up the kids, Joel says, “Just pay Deena for extra hours, then.”
    28 ) Similarly, when I complain about the house being a mess, he says, “Just pay someone to clean, then.” I remind him that we do, for a few hours a week, to which he just says, “Pay her some more, then.” But we’d need a cleaner to work full-time, to follow him about picking up the trail of clothes, food and half-empty glasses that he leaves in his wake. Is the cleaner going to be there last thing at night when he drops all his clothes on the floor? Will she be there every time he eats? Is she going to flush the loo for him? I don’t want to pay for a cleaner, I just want him to be cleaner .
    My most frequent nightmare used to be the one about discovering that you hadn’t in fact finished your exams at school, but had to do one more paper that you hadn’t done any revision for. Now, my recurring one is that I’ve left the house, arrived at my destination and suddenly realized that I’ve forgotten to arrange for someone to look after the kids and they’ve been left at home on their own. I’m rushing to get back, frantically phoning neighbors, but things keep stopping me from getting there.
    “Hello, Deena, sorry I’m a couple of minutes late,” I say breathlessly. I run not only because I don’t want to be late, but also because I long to see the boys again, like a girl on her way to a first date.
    “Don’t you worry about it, we’ve been having a grand time, haven’t we?” Deena beams, balancing her latest grandchild on her hip. I look past the door to the sitting room to see Rufus and Gabe’s ketchup-smeared, television-glazed faces and don’t doubt it. Deena is, as ever, looking as if she is about to enter a glamorous granny competition, with stacked heels, makeup applied with a paint-sprayer, and a magnificent embonpoint. After the patchwork of disastrous childcare arrangements that we’ve had over the years, I’m craven in her presence. I want to say something about the television, the nuggets, and the fact that the squash she gives my kids is not butternut but additive-filleddrinks, but am worried that whatever I say will have an invisible subtitle ticking along below it, reading: “Can you just be a