‘Jude,’ I said. ‘You made a choice. Just because some guy is a fuckwit it doesn’t mean it was the wrong choice. It’s a good choice for you. Children are . . . are . . .’ I glanced murderously back down the stairs.
She held out her phone, showing an Instagram picture of the fuckwit holding his baby. ‘. . . Cuddly and sweet and pink and six pounds twelve ounces and all I do is work and hook up and I’m all on my own on a Saturday morning. And—’
‘Come downstairs,’ I said lugubriously. ‘I’ll show you cuddly and sweet.’
We clomped back down. Billy and Mabel were now standing cherub-like, holding out a drawing saying, ‘We Love You, Mummy.’
‘We’re going to empty the dishwasher, Mummy,’ said Billy. ‘To help you.’
Shit! What was wrong with them?
‘Thank you, children,’ I purred, bustling Jude back upstairs and outside the front door, before they did something worse, like emptying the recycling bin.
‘I’m going to defrost my eggs,’ sobbed Jude as we sat down on the steps. ‘The technology was primitive then. Crude even. But it might work if . . . I mean, I could get a sperm donor and—’
Suddenly the upstairs window in the house opposite shot open and a pair of Xbox remotes hurtled out, landing with a smash next to the dustbins.
Seconds later, the front door was flung open and the bohemian neighbour appeared, dressed in fluffy pink mules, a Victorian nightdress and a small bowler hat, carrying an armful of laptops, iPads and iPods. She teetered down the front steps and shoved the electronics in the dustbin, with her son and two of his friends following her, wailing, ‘Noooooo! I haven’t finished my leveeeeeeel!’
‘Good!’ she yelled. ‘When I signed up for having children, I did NOT sign up to be ruled by a collection of inanimate thin black objects and a gaggle of TECHNO-CRACKHEADS refusing to do anything but stare with jabbing thumbs, while demanding that I SERVICE them like a computer tech crossed with a five-star hotel concierge. When I didn’t have you, everyone spent their whole time saying I’d change my mind. And guess what? I’ve had you. I’ve brought you up. And I’ve CHANGED MY MIND!’
I stared at her, thinking, ‘I have to be friends with that woman.’
‘Children of your age in India live entirely successfully as street urchins,’ she continued. ‘So you can just sit on this doorstep and instead of putting your ENTIRE BRAINS into getting to the next level on MINECRAFT, you can apply them to CHANGING MY MIND about letting you back in. And don’t you dare touch that dustbin or I shall enter you in the HUNGER GAMES.’
Then, with a toss of her bowler-hatted head, she flounced back into the house and slammed the door.
‘Mummeee!’ Shouting and crying erupted from my own basement. ‘Mummeee!’
‘Want to come back in?’ I said to Jude.
‘No, no it’s fine,’ Jude said, happy now, getting to her feet. ‘You’re completely right. I have made the right choice. Just a bit hung-over. I need to have breakfast and a Bloody Mary at Soho House and read the papers and I’ll be fine. Thanks, Bridge. Love you. Byee!’
Then she teetered off in her Versace knee-high gladiator sandals looking hung-overly fabulous.
I looked back across the street. The three boys were sitting in a line on the doorstep.
‘Everything all right?’ I said.
The dark-haired son grinned. ‘Yeah, it’s fine. She just gets like this. She’ll be all right in a minute.’
He glanced behind him to check the door was still closed, and pulled an iPod out of his pocket. Then the boys started giggling and bent over the iPod.
Huge wave of relief washed over me. I bounded cheerfully back, suddenly remembering that the password for everything was 1890, the year in which Chekhov wrote Hedda Gabbler.
‘Mummeeeee!’
I grabbed the Xbox remote, grabbed the Virgin remote, and typed ‘1890’ into both of them at which the screens burst miraculously into life.