Denis thinks I’m mad for taking on a fella as a Montessori teacher. But then he realized he used to know your man’s father years ago; he was a dentist or something like that, near where Denis grew up, but they were real bigshots anyway, with a big high wall around their house. I’d say your man just wanted a job where he wouldn’t have to be near manly men, spitting and farting and talking about their balls and making each other feel like shit about themselves. Why do fellas do that? They’re always slagging each other and calling each other queer and trying to outdo each other like fools. Men working together shouldn’t be allowed. Anyway, it’s none of my business, I don’t care what happens, I have my lovely Montessori teacher and I can take on kids for the free preschool year and everything is rosy in the garden.
Sometimes I think Denis is a bit raging that my crèche took off like this. Isn’t that awful? Like, wouldn’t you think he’d be delighted? That’s men, though; they can’t bear to be second to a woman in any way. The time of Dell closing, Denis had nothing going on at all, there wasn’t an electrical job or a carpentry job to be got anywhere, but we lived off the profits I had built up in the crèche account, and it nearly killed him. I felt sorry for him at the start, I suppose it was weird for him, but for a finish I just wanted to slap him and tell him to take the puss off him and just get on with it. He just has to do the small jobs again that he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing five years ago. Hard luck, like. Build a bridge and get over it. God, Denis hates that phrase. He’s some worker, though, I have to give him that. He just pretends there’s no crèche now, we can’t really talk about it. He doesn’t mind the money shoring us up, though. God, like, I have to pick my steps around him these days. Why has he to be so sensitive? We haven’t even had sex in about four months. He better not get any ideas about having a look around for himself. I’ll cut it off of him. I’ll cut it. Clean. Off.
The only thing pissing me off now is that little Nuala bitch. Like, if you saw her, the way she stomps around, acting like she owns the place. I caught her rotten the other week, hissing into a child’s face. Just eat it, just eat it, just eat it, she was saying in a vicious little whisper, with a spoon of food pushed up against the kid’s closed mouth. Jesus, she has a poisonous little temper on her. I pulled her on it and she was as bold as brass about it. What, she said, what am I meant to do? She wouldn’t bloody eat her bloody lunch. Are we meant to let them get malnourished? I told her to never do it again and I was making a note of it and she wanted to know where was the note going to be kept, could she have a copy of the note, what was it going to say, who else was going to see it … For a finish I had to say, look, there’ll be no note this time, but don’t dream of being nasty to a child like that again. So she bested me. Jesus, she makes my blood boil. She had some comment up on her Facebook page one Sunday night a few months ago about going to work the next day, and my friend Liz saw it, something like OMG, sooo hung over, have to go wiping shitty arses all day tomorrow, and she must have gotten nervous because Liz says she took it down again straight away. I’ve been checking all their Facebooks regularly ever since. They all know well, but they can’t very well start blocking me now. Little witches.
WHEN DENIS was really quiet he still went off in his van every day. I didn’t ask him where he was going. He was checking things out, he said. One day I asked him to put in some extra sockets in the kitchen and the nursery and he huffed and puffed and ummed and aahed about it. Can you imagine that? Oh, I said, Jesus, sorry, I thought you’d be delighted with the work! I was bitchy, I admit. Denis can be wicked when he wants. His father was a horrible bollocks; I’d say he gave Denis an awful time growing up. But wait till I tell you, that little bitch flounced in for her break and smoked a fag right outside the patio door, right beside where Denis was putting in a socket and I swear to God I saw the dirty prick looking up along her legs with his tongue hanging out like a dog on heat. And she wearing a little denim mini, which I specifically told her not to wear in work. Oh, it’s so hot, she goes. Can I not just wear it this week? I also specifically told her not to be smoking fags on her break — one or two of the posh mummies have noses for smoke like bloodhounds. But she reckons she has some kind of right to smoke fags as well as everything else. I’ll tell you what she has no right to do, though: wag her little arse in my husband’s face!
You know the way when you start going with someone first, and you don’t really mind if there’s a bit of a smell off them sometimes? Like, I used to think Den’s BO was sexy, because it meant he’d been doing physical work and was strong and manly. There’s something about that, like, it’s scientifically proven that women are attracted to men’s body odours when they’re in the first flushes of fancying a fella. But I’ll tell you one thing — it soon wears off. Sweat is fine when it’s fresh, on lovely hard muscle, but when it’s dripping off a big flabby man-boob or dried into a filthy T-shirt it’s a different thing altogether. When BO is just there because someone would rather sit on their arse watching soccer matches than have a two-minute shower, it’s just repulsive. Although I suppose it was a bit lousy how I reacted the last time Denis tried it on with me. Get your big sweaty arse away from me. That was a bit harsh, thinking about it. He looked really hurt. He went off downstairs and put on the telly and watched his Sopranos DVDs for hours. I wonder if he cried? I think he thinks he’s a bit like Tony Soprano.
I HAD a dream one night last week. Denis took Nuala for a spin in his van. I saw him stopping at the end of the cul-de-sac for her. I followed them down the road. I caught up with them in the car park outside the church. I crept up to the window of the van and looked in and they were in the back. She was straddling him with her little denim mini bunched up around her middle. The van doors were locked. I was shouting and screaming and slapping my open hands against the glass. It was like I wasn’t there; they just stayed doing it. I could see right up Denis’s hairy nose. He was lying on his back. He raised his head and looked straight at me and smiled. She turned around and smiled as well. Her teeth were small and sharp. The door suddenly gave way and I realized I had a hose in my hand. The hose streamed fire. I pointed it at them and they caught fire. I pushed the door closed and listened to them burning and screaming. When I woke up and realized I was dreaming I didn’t feel that sick relief that usually accompanies waking from a horrible dream. I actually felt a bit disappointed. Jesus. What kind of a weird bitch am I?
Lloyd
I KIND OF thought actually that Trevor was gone completely mental when he called up here a few weeks ago. Like, why would he not text or email or Facebook? What’s with all the reality, I thought. Does he not know he’s a million times cooler in virtual form? God, he’s misshapen. He wanted me to help him to kidnap a kid. I thought he was pitching something to me, some concept or something, some angle to keep the Dryffids guessing in Warlock Universe — like the thing he thought of last year where we hacked into their harems and stole all their girls (and boys in Ming’s case) and totally screwed up the spec of all their sex slaves and made them into fat animal-headed creatures and wiped out millions of their cred points. But he wanted me to actually swipe a living child with him: he was going deep undercover as a goddamn Montessori teacher in some nursery or something and all I was meant to have to do was drive up, he’d hand over the kid and I’d keep him for like, a night or some shit.