My Secret Lover

because they can tend towards violence.
Robbie’s mother came to blows with Dean’s just before Christmas after Dean cut
the sleeves off Robbie’s uniform sweatshirt. I felt slightly responsible
because we’d been doing a Christmas collage for the hall and I’d asked them to
use a variety of materials. A little further away stands a group of Neurotic
Mothers who always hand in very neat homework and worry about SATS and next to
them the Harassed Childminders (this is not a nanny sort of catchment) with
babies sleeping in double pushchairs. Then there are the Embarrassed Dads whose
bond of minority, unemployment and sports talk, is strong enough to overcome
differences of colour and class. Collecting round the gates are the Suburban
Martyrs, insufficiently acknowledged women of the PTA who spend the little free
time they have devising and creating fund-raising activities for the school. To
them we owe the Christmas Fayre, the Summer Fun Day and the annual Auction of
Promises. ‘Have Fun and Help to Raise Money for Your School!’ shout the posters
one of them gets her husband, who’s got the local Kail Kwik franchise, to print
off. The numbers that turn out barely make all the work worth it. But that
doesn’t put them off. In fact it drives them on to further feats of joyless
self-sacrifice like craft evenings where they fill jam jars with bath salts and
decorate bargain picture frames with sequins.
    I know I should be more grateful.
     
    The usual parents are late. I don’t
mind because it’s stopped raining. Standing in the playground after school amid
kids charging around pretending to be aeroplanes is a nice bit of the day, and
a necessary transition between the random and relentless noise of the classroom
to the measured tones of Radio 4.
    I listen to Radio 4 on the way home
because I feel I should at my age, and to have Capital on all the time would be
like going into the newsagent’s and buying Hello! OK! and Heat when
you should get the Guardian with the Education Supplement. (To be
honest, even when I do buy the Guardian, I only read G2 magazine,
which is really just like Heat in black and white with articles about
single mothers so that they can print a picture of Liz Hurley.)
     
    The playground is suddenly silent, as
if a tornado has swept through and blown everything just beyond earshot,
leaving only the memory of noise, and Ethan, who’s got stuck at the top of the
climbing frame and doesn’t quite trust his flying ability.
    ‘I’ve left Nimbus 2000 at home,’ he
explains as I jump him down.
    I’m about to go to the office to look
up his emergency numbers when his father arrives out of breath, and full of
apologies.
    ‘No problem,’ I tell him. ‘Ethan’s a
good boy.’
    His father takes his lunch box with
one hand and puts his other hand on the little boy’s shoulder. Ethan moves
towards him and they walk away as if he’s stuck to the outside of his father’s
leg. If they were a photograph they could be the cover of a Tony Parsons novel,
if he ever wanted a change from shoes.
    ‘Guess what? I’m writing a book,’
says Ethan.

6
     
    Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beeeeep!
    ‘BBC Radio 4. The News at Four
o’clock.’
    ‘Statistics released today by a
government think-tank show a further decline in manufacturing output
    I’m not an expert on economics but
whenever someone says that Britain is becoming a service economy, I know
they’re talking about my sister Joanna. Joanna employs a huge number of people
to do all the chores that ordinary people do for themselves. Joanna has a
cleaner and a gardener, which is not unusual for someone in her income bracket,
but she also has someone who does her ironing, and a cook, who also does the
shopping except when there’s a dinner party, when Joanna gets in caterers. She
has an interior designer, a garden designer, a closetologist (apparently it’s
someone who sorts out your cupboards twice a year. Everyone in New York has one),
a real Chinese feng shui expert (must remember to take that piece of paper the
minicab driver gave me because when I discovered it in my coat pocket stuck to
a Starburst that had gone squishy, the restaurant he had recommended was
written in Chinese characters). Then there’s her personal trainer, personal
shopper, Korean manicurist, hair stylist and colourist.
    Joanna is not the sort of person who
goes to the GP. She has
a whole army of -ists and -icians and — paths on call, whether she’s ill or
not, as