When you were born, I didn’t know anything. It would have put the fear of God in me had I believed in Him and His Grand Design, but I’m a heathen. It wasn’t Him who gave you us; we made you. And then — Pow! Pow! Pow! — your brothers and sister too.
But if there is no God, and everything is our own decision, and we choose our own path, we have a huge responsibility to bear. Then when I hear you say: ‘You only have yourself to blame’, it’s an echo of my own terror, and instead of forbidding you to say it, I should thank you for the tip. Thank you, darling, so far, so good! But now please take your hands away from your ears.
I thought children liked hearing about their births. In my mind, I see families sitting together in harmony, celebrating the myth of their origins, ideally all cuddled together on a sofa, ideally in autumn. In the hearth, a wood fire crackles — no, too much fine-dust pollution. They are nestled close together by candlelight, eating biscuits and drinking hot chocolate. They’re thinking back to the white-hot stove in Leipzig that winter morning long ago. They say: ‘You were our bundle of joy. That’s why we called you Bea — it means “happiness”.’
But you’re angry with me. Your happiness isn’t showing. Everything gets on your nerves — the sofa is too small for the six of us. The thing about autumn is true: next week the half-term holidays begin and everybody, literally everybody, is going away. Apart from us. Yet again we’ll be stuck at home in our cluttered flat where I’m desperately trying to find some candles. Wait, Bea! I’m not finished yet!
Don’t worry. You’ll come round in the end.
At Christmas, if not before, we’ll turn into that family from the hot-chocolate ad, and then even you like to be in the bosom of your family, because without happy families there is no Christmas.
We will gather in the stable, with Mum as the medium, and the little child as the saviour, and both will be so adorable and silent—
Jesus Christ, no, that’s wrong: at Christmas, we won’t even be here. Our flat isn’t ours, it’s Frank’s, and he’s decided to terminate the lease, and that’s that.
It can’t be true.
I just can’t believe it.
‘Nothing lasts forever.’
‘Children cost money.’
‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world.’
And: ‘We’ve made it.’
Want to hear any more pearls of wisdom, Bea?
Bea isn’t listening — she’s at school. School isn’t over yet, so I can still sit here and write in peace and quiet.
I sit in my broom cupboard, which is actually the pantry no one needs anymore. These days, most people use it for their washing machine. But not in our flat. This is where Resi sits and smokes. Smokes and types on her laptop, which is going to give up the ghost any day now. The clock has already stopped, and that’s the simplest component of a computer, right? The Wi-Fi is always on the blink, but that’s normal. Networks are fragile — I should know, I used to be part of one.
‘Sounds like you’re making yourself the victim again,’ grumbles Ulf inside my head.
Yes, that’s true. I stand corrected: I only have myself to blame. My laptop is twelve years old, and everybody knows that devices like these need replacing at least every five years, because they’re not built to last.
‘O-U-T spells OUT!’ the children chant. They do it in unison when one of them is picked up from childcare.
‘Nah-nah — your mum’s here!’ and ‘O-U-T spells OUT!’ Because when you’re picked up, you’re out of the game.
Somebody has to be out, after all.
When the kids sang this, I managed to keep a grip on myself. I bit my lip to stop myself snapping back at them.
Kids, I thought, sing all sort of things at the end of the day, and in day care, the day is seven hours’ long, and the kids can only get through it by being a team and singing at the top of their lungs — any old thing, all kinds of rubbish.
What, for example, is a cakehole?
‘Shut your cakehole’ passed without comment for years too. But I don’t give kids the benefit of the doubt anymore, nor do they get concessions for ignorance. I’ve stopped using silent calming techniques to soothe the loud buzzing in my head. None of that works anymore, Bea, do you hear? It’s not comforting — it’s torture.
From now on, I’m going to avoid pacifying phrases like ‘Of course I understand’, ‘It’s going to be fine’, or ‘It’s enough now.’
‘It’s not enough’ is now my motto, or ‘It’s the last fucking straw’ or ‘It’s all got to come out in the open.’
I’m going to call things by name, and there’ll be no more holding back.
In the short time I still have before the landlord rings the bell and shows hordes of potential successors round our flat, I will tell the truth all the time. I can already feel the good it’s doing me. I don’t give a shit about the time being wrong in the taskbar of my computer, I light another cigarette and—
The school is already on the phone saying that Jack has a headache.
‘Oh, really,’ I say.
‘Yes, really,’ says the school secretary. ‘He’s even crying.’
‘Okay, well,’ I say, ‘he has a cold.’
‘You’ll have to come and pick him up. He’s not allowed to go home on his own.’
When Jack cries, I’m powerless. When the secretary asks me to come in, it’s better to do what she says. Perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember going home on my own as a kid, no matter where I ached, armed with nothing but a dismissal slip. Maybe I’m wrong. How was it back then?
No truth without proof, as
