9

31 October

It was Hallowe’en, and Lisa was fighting demons of her own.

Keith had called to ask when the kids’ half-term was. It made her feel fed up.

‘Last week,’ Lisa said crossly. She’d left him a lot of messages asking if he’d help out with looking after the kids. The kids liked to go to his place, because you couldn’t spit without hitting a flat-screen TV. Keith had not called Lisa back.

‘Oh. What a shame. I’d have loved to have them stay,’ said Keith.

Clank, clank, what’s that I hear? The binmen collecting the rubbish he spouts. She didn’t believe him. It was a sort of progress. Now she knew every word he said would be a lie.

‘Where were you last week?’ Lisa asked.

‘The Canary Islands. It’s the only place to get any sun this time of year,’ said Keith.

The kids would have loved that. Suddenly, her week filled with mornings in the café and afternoon trips to her mum’s, the cinema and the swimming-pool seemed dull. Lisa wondered if she could prevent the kids from hearing about Keith’s holiday. No, Keith and the Big Breasted Woman probably looked bright orange. And they would make everyone sit through a slide-show of photos of the two of them drinking Bacardi. The poor kids! They’d be hurt.

‘How’s the DIY course going?’ asked Keith.

Mostly Lisa was enjoying it. Although she wasn’t talking to Gill any more, since Gill had wrongly told everyone she was pregnant. But she liked the idea that she could cope if she had a DIY problem. Still, she wished it hadn’t been Keith’s idea to do a course in the first place. He’d been very smug ever since.

‘It’s OK,’ Lisa said. She didn’t want to give too much away. But she sounded a bit like Paula.

‘I was wondering if you knew much about overflow. We’ve got a back-up in the downstairs loo. Do you think you could fix it?’ asked Keith. ‘It really stinks but I don’t want to pay a plumber.’

Lisa thought her sawing skills might finally come in useful. She could cut Keith up into little bits and feed him to wild cats – not that you got many wild cats around there. Luckily the beep-beep of ‘call waiting’ cut the chat short. Keith was saved by the bell.

The person on the end of ‘call waiting’ was Lisa’s mum. Lisa moaned that Keith could offer the kids more than she could. It left her feeling bad. Lisa’s mum pointed out that even though Keith could offer the kids more, he never did.

Lisa then confessed to feeling jealous of the Big Breasted Woman’s curtains. In fact she was also jealous of her trim size-ten body, her clothes, the hours she spent at the beautician’s and her foreign holidays. But Lisa knew she’d have the best chance of her mum understanding if she stuck to curtains.

‘Stop looking over your shoulder at what Keith has. Or what you might have had. Or what you once had. Think about the here and now. You’d be better for it. We all would,’ said Lisa’s mum. She sounded really cross.

Lisa’s mum never got snappy with Lisa. So Lisa felt about an inch tall. She got off the phone as quickly as possible.

Lisa sat still for quite a few minutes and thought about her mum’s words. She might have a point. In an effort not to think about Keith’s holiday to the Canary Islands, Lisa popped out to the local vegetable shop. She bought a pumpkin to carve with the kids. It would be fun.

Two Elastoplasts and some very bad language later, Lisa had carved a lopsided cat’s face. It looked funny, not scary. She told her kids it was the effect she wanted.

‘To avoid scaring little kids,’ she said.

‘Really?’ asked Kerry. ‘Very thoughtful.’

All three kids agreed to go trick or treating. After all, free sweets are free sweets. Even when you’re fifteen. They were less happy with the costumes Lisa had made that afternoon. Wool-worths had been emptied by the mums who buy Hallowe’en costumes in August. Lisa’s kids had to make do with old sheets and black tights.

While Lisa was out trick-or-treating with the kids, Mark called her on her mobile.

‘Have you done the pregnancy test yet?’ he asked.

‘There’s no need,’ said Lisa.

‘Why, have you er… ‘ said Mark.

‘No, not yet. But I’m late because I’m menopausal. I wish everyone would stop going on about it. Why can’t I sink into my old age without all this fuss?’ Lisa asked crossly. Luckily the kids were fighting over mini Mars bars. They were not paying Lisa much attention.

‘Lisa, you’re too young to be menopausal. Besides, you look great at the moment. Really glowing. You’re being sick and you’re late. Those are signs of pregnancy, not the menopause. Why won’t you admit it? Would it be so awful?’ asked Mark.

At that moment Jack rushed across the road to catch up with his friends. He didn’t look for cars.

‘Jack, for goodness sake. How many times do I have to tell you? Be careful on roads.’

‘Is that your answer?’ asked Mark.

‘No.’ Lisa said.

‘Well, what then?’ he asked.

‘This is nothing to do with you,’ said Lisa.

‘Lisa, if you are pregnant, this has everything to do with me. Or at least I hope it does. Why are you always pushing me away?’

Was she? Lisa couldn’t answer his question. After what felt like about five years of silence, he said, ‘Well? Is the idea of being pregnant with my child so terrible? Is that why you are in denial?’ He sounded cross, but that couldn’t be right. Mark was never cross.

Of course the idea of being pregnant with Mark’s child wasn’t terrible. The idea was wonderful. But it was a fantasy. It couldn’t be true. Lisa thought it was a daft question. She didn’t dare tell Mark she’d love to be having his baby. She didn’t dare tell him that the idea of starting again was too much to hope for. She no longer dared to want anything that much. So she said nothing. They were both silent for ages.

Then Mark coughed and said, ‘I see. Well, call me if you need anything.’

Then he hung up.

Suddenly the ghosts and goblins looked really scary to Lisa.