The first thing I notice about Mum when I get back is that she’s looking really well, healthier than I remember. On closer inspection, I can see she’s wearing makeup, which is unusual for a Saturday.
“Oh, it’s nothing, I just wanted to try my new mascara before wearing it to the office,” she explains, brushing me off as we take off coats and gloves in the hall. “I haven’t touched your room, except for cleaning it, so you should be pretty comfortable.”
Now she’s back to just wearing a jumper and jeans, I notice that the jeans seem new. I figured with me away from home, she would have a little more free money, but she’s not the type to go out and buy a new pair of jeans if her old ones are still wearable.
“New clothes?” I ask, trying to sound casual as she puts the kettle on.
“Oh, well, yes,” she admits, sounding pleased that I noticed. “I, um, actually lost a bit of weight recently, so I needed the size down. Got these nearly-new in that charity shop opposite Costa.”
So that’s what I’ve noticed – she’s looking healthier because she’s lost weight. I’m glad I didn’t say it myself, because she’s been known to be touchy about things like that.
“Well, you look great,” I tell her, and she gives me a soppy smile.
“It’s pretty quiet here at the weekend, so as well as swimming I’ve been going to some exercise classes at the leisure centre,” she says, pouring the tea. “It’s been really good, practically free because of the membership and it keeps me from rattling around the house.”
“Good for you,” I say, leaning up against the counter with my eye on the biscuit tin.
“You look good, too,” she says, a hint of pride in her voice. “The football training must be keeping you fit. And your hair looks a lot tidier now.”
I laugh. “Well, I knew you’d notice my hair,” I say, but I’m flattered by the compliment, even if it is just from my mum.
By the end of the evening, I’ve had half of a six-pack of beer which I suspect has been in the house since I left, and she’s finished half a bottle of white wine and has got to a giggly phase.
“So, you’re not coming home to tell me about a girl you’ve met?” she asks, her voice low even though there’s nobody to overhear. “I was sure you would have found someone by now.”
I shake my head. “No, still no girlfriend,” I admit, but then I pause. Probably the beer clouding my judgement, because telling parents about love interests is never a good idea, but I went on anyway. “There’s actually this girl, I-”
Mum interrupts. “Lydia, right? You’ve mentioned her a few times.”
“Yeah, Lydia,” I say, leaning back on the sofa. “She, well, she’s got a boyfriend.”
“Ahh,” Mum says, giggling again. “That old dilemma.”
“She’s great, and she seems really happy with Mark. She wants me to be her flatmate next year.”
“That’s great! You know, if she ever breaks up with Mark, you’ll be in the perfect place.” Mum taps her nose and I shake my head, laughing.
“Whatever. I like her, she’s a really good friend, but this whole situation is hard. I don’t want to, you know, say anything, in case she gets weird about it.”
Mum shrugs. “You need to do what feels right. If she’s happy, maybe you need to move on and just keep her as a friend.”
Dating advice from my mum. I must be at rock bottom here.
“In my opinion, she’s missing out,” Mum tells me, giggling again.
“Well, I’ll tell her you said that,” I say, grinning back. “I’m sure that will change her mind.”
There’s a pause and I sip my drink, tilting the can back to get to the beer at the bottom. I thought it was just a lull in the conversation, but I realise Mum has been working up to saying something.
“I wanted to tell you, Dave, but on the phone it didn’t seem right… I thought I would try getting back into dating, now you’re away.” She avoids my gaze, but I smile.
“That’s great, Mum. I really think you should go for it.”
“I haven’t really done anything, you know, it’s all online these days and when I started losing weight from these exercise classes I thought I’d wait until I could take a really good photo. Eighteen years is a long time to be out of practice, and it all feels a bit strange.”
I laugh. “Well, I don’t think it matters that much what you put as your photo, you’ll look good. But that’s really great, I’m happy for you.”
She blushes but smiles. “I’ll let you know how it goes. But, not too much detail.”
I groan. “Thanks, Mum.”
“Bedtime,” she announces, finishing her glass. “I know you don’t have to get up for anything tomorrow but I still need to clean.”
The Sunday clean gave me some less welcome evidence of my mum’s return to the dating world. I’d finished washing up the dishes for Sunday lunch when I noticed the washing machine had finished its cycle.
“Mum, the washing machine is done!” I shouted up the stairs. She’d said she was going to go and clean the bathroom.
“Can you get the wet clothes out for me and hang them on the clothes horse?” she shouts back. “I’ve got wet gloves on at the moment.”
Well, it’s just one day, I told myself as I went to go and sort it out. Tomorrow she’d be back at work and I could lie in all day if I wanted.
Dumping the clothes out of the machine and into a basket, I set up the clothes horse in front of the radiator and started hanging things. I didn’t want to bring too many clothes home with me, since my suitcase was full enough anyway, so I wasn’t the typical uni student with bags of dirty clothing to wash. Most of the load was Mum’s, especially work clothes, which needed hanging carefully to keep it from creasing. I worked my way through it, finding the occasional pair of workout leggings as well as the usual swimsuit from Saturday. However, I also discovered, in the delicates bag with her comfy work bras and sports bras, a pile of thongs. Now, I’m no expert on my mum’s underwear, but she was very much a M&S five-pack kind of mum when I was growing up. This was definitely new, and more information than I wanted. But, I hung them up anyway and tried to forget.
Eventually, when she was putting the clothes away later in the week, she came clean about them.
“Asos online three-pack, really good value,” she said, waving one around in my bedroom as I cringed away. “Perfect for wearing when I’m at the exercise class under my leggings.”
Well, at least it wasn’t an insight into her dating life.
The big event of any Christmas holiday in our house wasn’t Christmas Day, which was usually just me and Mum eating in front of the TV, but Boxing Day. It was the one day in the year that Grandpa and Granny came over to see us, and Mum would do a whole massive meal, multiple courses, I had to be on my best behaviour and somehow there would still be a family row during pudding. Mum had virtually no other contact with her parents, but they had realised they would effectively never see their daughter and grandson again if they didn’t make the effort one day a year. Of course, this meant Mum got into a huge stress about it all morning, dashing around, clattering away in the kitchen and generally making it my fault that things weren’t going right.
“Okay, okay, I’ll change,” I say, rolling my eyes after she screamed at me to tell me that what I thought was a smart shirt was actually unacceptably sloppy. As soon as I’d pulled on a different coloured shirt, there’s a knock at the door. I know I’m going to be expected to open it, but Mum couldn’t shout at me this time because they might hear through the door.
“Hi Granny, hi Grandpa, come in,” I said, smiling and taking their coats as they shuffled inside, a bottle of red wine clutched in Grandpa’s hand.
“Parking was a nightmare as usual,” he grumbled. “You’d think some people would be away over this period, but for some reason they’re all here.”
Mum appeared from the kitchen and exchanged a half-hearted hug with Granny and waved at Grandpa.
“Take a seat, dinner will just be another ten minutes,” she said, sounding apologetic. Despite her harassed air, she’d done her hair into waves and she was wearing a smart dress, so she looked great, but nobody else seemed to notice.
“You look tired, Catherine,” Granny said, patting her shoulder. “Are you sleeping well enough?”
Mum catches my eye and we both hold in a laugh.
“Parking was a nightmare,” Grandpa repeats, loud enough for Mum to hear this time, but she ignores him.
I usher them into the living room, currently set out with the sofa pushed back and the table extended to seat four. Mum’s found all the decent silverware, so all I need to do is entertain for ten minutes.
“Well, how’s university treating you?” Grandpa asked once he was settled into his seat.
“It’s good,” I reply, smiling. “A bit of a different world, lots to study.”
“You’ll manage, I expect,” Granny says, looking around the room. I know she’s looking for things to criticise, but I keep my mouth shut.
“I’m on the football team. Well, the B team, but still,” I say, and luckily this piques Grandpa’s interest. We manage to pass the rest of the time until dinner chatting about football, while Granny sulks in her chair because there’s nothing out of place in the room for her to criticise.
Dinner goes pretty much as expected. Mum is anxious to make sure everything is perfect, so when I accidentally spill some gravy on the placemat, I get a glare that could crack glass. Grandpa eats the entire thing happily in silence, but then declares afterwards that he’s ‘had better’, and Granny goes on and on through the meal asking Mum a million awkward questions to try and get her upset.
By the time Mum puts a trifle down in the middle of the table and hands out bowls, I can tell she’s seething underneath the polite smile.
“All I’m saying, Catherine, is that if you accepted our help, the situation could be different. I always thought you should have made more of yourself, I was saying to Andrea, you know, Mrs Young from the school, that I always thought Ian was a bad influence, but you wouldn’t listen, and now look-”
“Okay, I know. I know I made some mistakes. Please, just leave it,” Mum says, holding her head in her hands, trifle untouched.
“Well that’s an understatement,” Grandpa says, sniffing as he scrapes his spoon across the bottom of the bowl to get the last scraps of cream.
“So, I read somewhere that they’re planning to start charging for parking on Church Street?” I say quickly, getting Grandpa back onto one of his pet hates. He starts chuntering on about council incompetence and Mum gives me a grateful look.
With dinner over, the relief is all over Mum’s face as we shepherd the guests to the door.
“Lovely to see you,” Granny says to me, holding my hand in hers and smiling, but when she turns to Mum, she just smiles tightly and turns away. They amble away down the street towards their car, already bickering with each other, and I push the front door shut.
“At last…” Mum sighs, collapsing into a chair. “Every year is such a nightmare.”
“You shouldn’t let them bully you,” I say, still pissed off, but she just smiles.
“It’s only a few hours a year and makes them feel like they’re still in touch. I can handle it. Now, I need to see about the dishes.”
I shake my head vigorously. “No way, you go and relax, I’ll do the dishes. Seriously, you cooked all that, let me help you.”
She gives me a look so happy I instantly know I’ve made the right decision. “Dave, you’re a lifesaver. I’m off for a bath, then.”
I smile. “Enjoy. Everything will be clean and tidy when you get out.”
For some reason which has never been made totally clear, Mum kept all the nice silverware and dishes in a suitcase on top of her wardrobe, wrapped up in an old pair of curtains so they wouldn’t get damaged. Once I’d washed and dried it all, she was still in the bath, so I went into her room to get the suitcase and the curtains so I could wrap it all back up again. The odd thing was, she’d tucked the suitcase out of the way beside the bed, and there was no sign of the curtains, a floral-patterned pair I’d never seen hung up anywhere. I’d expected them to be right there in the case, so I was totally thrown.
Shouting at my mum through the door to the bath seemed a bit helpless, so I hunted around the room, without any success. After a couple of minutes of searching, I remembered that she kept spare sheets and material in one of the drawers under her bed, and maybe she’d tucked the curtain material in there to keep it out of the way when she was moving the suitcase. I got down on my knees and tugged the drawer open, only to realise immediately that this was the wrong drawer.
The first thing I laid eyes on was a medical-looking tube of cream which I quickly realised was actually lube. Averting my eyes, I immediately saw a slim black cylinder which could only be a vibrator, lying next to, yes, a pink rubbery dildo. I didn’t waste any more time examining any other contents there might be, slamming the drawer shut. My face felt hot and I took a couple of deep breaths, mind racing as I moved around to the other side of the bed and opened the right drawer. The curtains were lying neatly folded on top.
When I saw Mum at teatime, which was just cheese on toast after such a huge lunch, I had to try very hard to keep visions of sex toys out of my head when she was telling me how tired she was and how relaxing the bath had been. Once we’d eaten, she cleaned everything away and came back with a cold can of lager.
“A bribe?” she said, holding it just out of my reach. “I was on my feet all morning in the kitchen and they’re absolutely killing me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, but you have to keep your socks on. I don’t want to touch your disgusting old-lady feet.”
She just shrugged and handed me the can. “A yes is a yes, you can be as rude as you want.”
Getting herself comfortable on the sofa next to me, her glass of wine on the coffee table, she parked her feet on my lap and tipped her head back, stretching out as I started rubbing my thumbs over the balls of her feet, her fluffy yellow socks wiggling as she shifted around to get me to rub the right spot.
“Wow, that’s it, perfect,” she eventually said, and I settled into a rhythm, trying to focus on the TV rather than her feet. It was one of her programmes so I wasn’t interested, but it was better than nothing. We sat in silence for ten minutes until an ad break came on, when she reached out and turned the volume down.
“I bet you wish you had a girlfriend to rub your feet like this after you’ve played football, right?” she asked, and the slight tone in her voice made me look over at her wine glass, now empty. I also had my suspicions that a bottle might have made it into the bath with her.
“I suppose so,” I say guardedly, pausing the foot massage to sip my own drink. She waited until I had gone back to rubbing her foot before saying anything else.
“Dave, I know this isn’t a conversation you want to have with your mother,” she said, after a pause, and my heart sank. “But, I saw that you’d been in my room and one of the bed drawers wasn’t completely closed.”
“Look, Mum, I’m sorry, I was looking for the curtains and I went in the wrong drawer, it’s no big deal,” I said quickly, feeling my cheeks burning. “We really don’t have to talk about it.”
She pulled herself into more of a sitting position, sliding her feet across my lap and making eye contact. “Listen, I know that as your mum I probably should have been better about having ‘the talk’ with you, but I never knew what to say to a boy,” she admitted. “I always assumed your dad would do it, or someone at school.”
“Dad’s version of ‘the talk’ would definitely not be suitable,” I said, unable to avoid rising to the bait even though I was desperate to avoid this conversation. “He’d probably think it was a chance to show off.”
Mum giggled. “I expect so. But, now you’re away at uni, I just worry a little that you’re having new experiences and I haven’t prepared you very well for all that.”
I scoff. “Trust me, new experiences have been harder to come by than you’d think.” Mentally, I smack myself. Why am I getting drawn into this?
“Well, I am hardly the right person to tell you what’s right after getting pregnant at eighteen,” she says, “but I do want you to feel like you can talk to me if you need to, okay?”
Sensing an exit to this awkwardness, I nod rapidly. “Definitely, I will.”
Unfortunately, she interprets my new enthusiasm as a sign that I want to keep going.
“Now, I’m sure I don’t need to go into the details about exactly what’s under my bed, I assume we both now know, but, David, masturbation isn’t something shameful for men or women.” She catches my eye and I look away rapidly, cheeks burning more than ever. “It’s important to feel like fulfilling your sexual needs, even if that’s on your own, isn’t something to be ashamed of. The, um, sex toys are just a healthy, natural part of that process.”
I’m ready to be sick now and I squeeze my eyes closed to keep mental images at bay. “Mum, seriously, I don’t need-”
“If I want you to be open with me if you need to be, then I need to set an example,” Mum says, her confidence growing exactly when I don’t want it to. “I use masturbation as both a way of relieving stress and for sexual pleasure.”
My nausea is getting stronger, but I realise with sudden dread that my body is completely betraying me. Mentally I’m screaming for this to stop, but physically my dick is hearing about a woman touching herself and her feet have shifted up my lap so they’re resting against my crotch. There’s no way of denying it – totally against my will, I’m getting hard.
“The lube is because as women get older, natural lubrication is sometimes harder to come by,” she explains, oblivious to my problems. “And, of course, it’s essential if anyone’s going to do anything with their bum.”
I push her feet off my lap and clench my fists, determinedly looking straight at the TV. “Mum, I do not want to hear you talking about… bums,” I announce, losing steam towards the end. “Seriously, can we just, drop this.”
“Okay, Dave,” she says, sounding a little annoyed as she pulls her feet back. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“Well you did a good job,” I say, shifting my sitting position to hide my crotch. For a second, she pauses, and my wild mental state wonders whether she noticed, but she turns to face the TV without saying anything.
After a few minutes, I get up. “I’m going upstairs to read,” I tell her, grabbing my drink.
“Okay, good night love,” she says, watching me leave the room and shut the door behind me.
I want to be able to say I blocked the entire episode out of my head and put it down to a traumatic experience, but, being a teenage boy, there was no chance of that. As soon as I was in the privacy of my room, and fairly confident Mum wouldn’t be getting up until the end of the programme, I’d pulled my trousers down, laid myself on my bed and I was wanking. In my defence, I was picturing Lydia naked with a vibrator, but I still felt pretty guilty afterwards.