Page 19 of The F*cking Fabulous Forties Club

‘Saul,’ I say as I answer the phone. ‘How are you, love?’ A part of me always cringes that I’ve adopted the affectations of an Irish mammy and unconsciously add love or son to the end of my sentences when speaking to my boys. It feels like something a middle-aged woman would say and while I know I am middle-aged deep in my soul, I struggle when my status becomes so obvious.

‘Hi Mum,’ this deep man-voice booms down the line. Is this really someone I gave birth to? I swear I still expect to hear their high, light childhood voices when we speak. ‘Look, I don’t have long, but I need your help if that’s okay?’

‘Of course,’ I tell him, simultaneously proud that he has come to me for help but also terrified of what his request might entail. I can manage if it’s to guide him in whipping up a lasagne, or to check in his room at home for a forgotten textbook. I’m not sure I’ll be able to react quite so calmly if he tells me he’s phoning from the back of an ambulance or, worse again, the back of a cop car. None of those four scenarios would be beyond the realm of possibility for Saul. Not that he’s a troublemaker, as such. The police haven’t had reason to come my door. Not yet anyway.

‘What do you need?’ I ask him.

‘Well, you know how I’m your favourite son?’ he asks.

‘My favourite first born, yes,’ I tell him. I always answer my children in this way. Saul is my favourite firstborn and Adam my favourite second born. The true answer to that question, of course, is my favourite is whichever one is causing me least trouble at the time.

‘Your favourite, son, yes,’ Saul replies and even though I can’t see him, I can hear that he is smiling. I can imagine the cheeky glint in his beautiful blue eyes. He’s a handsome boy – a perfect combination of the best bits of my father and the best bits of Simon.

‘Saul…’ I say, my voice offering just enough of a warning to let him know I might not be overflowing with the cup of maternal kindness today. Call me a psychic, but I can see my fairly small savings pot start to disappear in front of my very eyes. I glance at my notebook and the excited doodles I’ve drawn on it and feel the heart that was so excited just moments ago sink to my boots.

‘The thing is, Mum, that I’ve found myself a little financially embarrassed. You know there’s a cost-of-living crisis, and the price of everything has gone up so much and I’ve been trying to be sensible. Honest. I’ve not been pissing it up the wall.’

‘Language…’ I chide, in a voice not unlike my mother’s but he pays no heed.

‘So look, I just wondered if I could borrow some money to get me through till I come home for Christmas maybe, or until my next student loan payment comes through.’

And there it is. My night in Ponden Hall gone. Over the past ten years I’ve become adept at doing boy-related maths very quickly. It’s still a few weeks until the boys are due to come home for Christmas, and another three weeks after that until they get the next instalment of their student loan money. And I know that if Saul has to hand over an immediate chunk of that as soon as it arrives he’ll find himself back to square one relatively quickly. And then there’s the accommodation to be paid for the next term, and the boys’ final year. I’ve already had to remortgage the house to fund their education – and that’s with Simon helping and me saving as much as I could in their younger years. As it stands, the cost of their accommodation comes in at twice what my mortgage payments are. It’s certainly not cheap to be a student.

I try and hold back my instinctual reaction of losing my actual shit by taking a few slow, deep breaths and reminding myself it’s only money, and if Ponden Hall has stood this long it will stand a little longer until I can afford to visit. While I’m internally talking myself off a cliff, Saul tells me he has been budgeting and living off pasta and cereal and really, truly, he hasn’t been at the Student Union in weeks.

‘And Adam? What position is he in?’ I ask, girding my loins for a double hit. The joy of having twins is that there has never been any reprieve since they were born. Every single thing I’ve bought has had to be multiplied by two. If one of them wrecked his shoes, the other would follow within days, if not hours. They grew together at a rate of knots. Getting ahead of myself financially was as pointless a goal as emptying buckets of water from the deck of the Titanic.

‘He’s fine,’ Saul says. ‘You know, Adam. The golden child.’

‘You are both my golden children,’ I say, even though at this moment Adam is definitely the shinier of the two. When he was home in the summer he worked all the hours God sent in Tesco and saved two thirds of his salary. He went back to Manchester with a healthy bank balance. Saul, on the other hand, worked two days a week in a pub and enjoyed spending his wages in the same establishment, or on clothes and a PS5. I had warned him he would be in for a rougher ride and now, here he is, dealing with the consequences of his own actions.

But what am I supposed to do? Leave him to starve? Tell him to suck it up?

‘I feel really bad about this, Mum,’ Saul says and the slightly cocky bravado appears to disappear. ‘It’s the last thing I want to do to come and ask you for help when you do so much for us anyway…’

He chats as I’m spinning beads on an imaginary abacus in my head. If I cut back on my own shopping, and hit my savings a little then I can help him out without bankrupting myself. Sure, it’s a mother’s duty, isn’t it? To put her children’s needs above her own. I have always wanted to be that kind of mum. The kind who remains close to her grown-up children. Who doesn’t abandon her maternal responsibilities simply because they’ve turned eighteen. The kind who feels needed…

‘Okay, son,’ I say in my best Irish mammy voice. ‘I’ll send you £50 over now and you get some shopping in and have money to keep you going, and then I’ll do some sums and come back to you about the rest of term.’

‘There’s just one more thing, Mum,’ he says. ‘I kind of spent the money you sent me to book my flights for Christmas. I didn’t even realise I’d done it until it was too late and now the prices have gone up and…’

‘How much?’ I ask, starting to shiver with the cold of my wet clothes and with the fear of what this is going to cost me.

‘One hundred and forty pounds would cover it, Mum. To get me home on the same flight as Adam.’

‘Okay,’ I say, doing my best to sound upbeat and not annoyed, because the last thing a mother wants to do is make her child – who is hundreds of miles away – feel bad about themselves. Especially not if their child is a teenage boy and in the demographic group most likely to harm themselves in any way. ‘I’ll book your flight as well,’ I tell him, ‘and I’ll send you a message when it’s sorted.’

‘You’re the best, Mum,’ he tells me. ‘You’re an absolute legend. I love you.’

I tell him I love him too because of course I do absolutely love him more than words can say, and I try to bask in the feeling of being considered an ‘absolute legend’. Even if I’m now an exceptionally skint absolute legend who will have to call her ex-husband to see if he can help with a bit of extra financial support.

14

THE UNBEARABLE SEXINESS OF MAGNUM PI

I don’t often have to call Simon, especially now that the boys are older. With no more handovers of children at weekends, I rarely see him any more. That’s kind of okay with me. We’ve long run out of things to say to each other – not that our conversations aren’t amicable, they’re just more businesslike. As if we are CEOs in the lives of Messrs Adam and Saul Cooke and have to discuss our strategy going into the next quarter.

Thankfully in most things parenting related, our values align pretty well although I am definitely the softer of the two these days. The boys moving away has certainly upped my generosity of spirit towards them.

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